On the morning of seventh of November 2007, Shiv-Ganga Express of the North Eastern Railways brought me to a city I had never visited before. This city is the one that every Hindu in the world desires to visit at least once in a lifetime. There are countless places of religious importance to Hindus in India. Yet, none of these places compare to Varanasi, the city of Shiva on the banks of Ganga.
My parents both upper caste Hindus have never visited Varanasi. Something tells me they never will. My father has traveled extensively in this part of the country. Despite his familiarity with this region, my father, a pious Brahman has never visited this holiest of the holy city. He dislikes what one sees in this region- gross poverty, corruption and virtually no development. He also finds this region highly disturbing as he fails to understand the deep rooted complexities seen in every aspect of life here. Though my father likes to have a holy dip of Ganga twice every year, he does so at a cleaner spot in Haridwar, a town not far removed from his.
My parents both upper caste Hindus have never visited Varanasi. Something tells me they never will. My father has traveled extensively in this part of the country. Despite his familiarity with this region, my father, a pious Brahman has never visited this holiest of the holy city. He dislikes what one sees in this region- gross poverty, corruption and virtually no development. He also finds this region highly disturbing as he fails to understand the deep rooted complexities seen in every aspect of life here. Though my father likes to have a holy dip of Ganga twice every year, he does so at a cleaner spot in Haridwar, a town not far removed from his.
Being the first member in my family to visit Varanasi, I faced some bit of envy and some ridicule. “Why would you choose to go to a city of cow dung and pee?” asked my mother trying hard to convince me otherwise. Clearly, the pretty Incredible India posters of Varanasi did not leave much of an impression on my mother. I decided not to not mention an article titled ‘Varanasi-Shit Hole of the Gods’ that I had read a week before. Today, in retrospect I know the immediate reason I decided to move to Uttar Pradesh was to find just how bad the ‘evil land’ can be.
For me the region of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar till November 2007 was a land where the goondas lived. This was the land where you could get killed in an instance. Newspaper reports on U.P and neighbouring Bihar were full of crime, gang rape of Dalit women, murder and kidnapping. As a student of history, I learnt that U.P and Bihar geographically fall in the region that formed the first ever organized monarchies and oligarchies in India’s history. These two states have also produced some of the best remembered figures in Indian History and contemporary Indian society. This historical fact is in all likelihood forgotten by all Indians like my father in lieu of a memory of the biggest scams, corruption charges, trafficking and goondaraj. He like many other Indians addresses people of U.P and Bihar as bhaiyyas (brothers) and likes to entertain people at a social with his reserve of ‘attributes’ and ‘characteristics’ of the bhaiyyas.
I found Varanasi like any other city in North India that I had seen before. As I took an auto to get to my new home, I passed by small food stalls, auto repairs shops, large hoardings and shanties around the railway station- nothing uncommon to Indian cities, small or big.
As our auto rickshaw jumped over historic potholes, pools of pee and cow poop, we barely escaped two massive bulls blocking nearly 10 feet wide roads. I was already working a date to return back to Delhi in my mind. I could not help but observe that one thing that outnumbers temples and saree shops in Varanasi is the paan ki dukaan. Viola! I had finally arrived in the Bhaiyyadom. The jokes that my father shared with his friends and family about the bhaiyyas were all falling flat on me. I had arrived in the land of orangy spit marks and garbage.
After a week of deafening Diwali celebrations in the city, I decided to explore the eternal city on what else but a cycle rickshaw. It was a big circus outside with riotous processions blocking major roads. SUV’s of the Samajwadi Party (chief opposition and the last ruling party in U.P) leaders who sat in the vehicles chewing paan, wearing their aviator glasses zipped through the narrow roads. What I saw disturbed me- pedestrians, cyclists, rickshaw-wallas alike as also mine all drew themselves to a corner in a display of bizarre surrender. I learnt my first traffic rule in Varanasi. No one gives way to alarming ambulance vans but police or goonda jeeps.
My rickshaw-walla, a 40+ Yadav told me that it is best to give sides or else you would be trampled under these speeding jeeps. I noticed that he did not pay attention to heaviness of his words. I returned home all upset and ready to leave for Delhi. But the very next day I was all excited about going out again.
Despite having lived in Varanasi for four months now, I have problem understanding our rickshaw-wallas, sabzi-walla, and grocery-walla not because of the bhojpuri dialect but paan full mouth. I was annoyed with the ease that everyone I dealt, with carried on their sleeve. I pass by rows of squatted men; rickshawwallas, subzi-wallas, dukaandars gossiping for hours on the side of narrow roads. I have often wonder what they speak about.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are the strong bastions of the concept of ‘traditional India’. Rarely seen things in Delhi like happy joint-families, sarees clad women with covered heads, celebration of underdog festivals in the Hindu calendar and wishing each other by hailing God are a way of life here. I also discovered during my conversations with the locals that these are not some mandatory burdensome rituals, Banarasis are proud on being able to live this life of tradition. It makes me happy to hear people I meet in Varanasi speak in high Hindi. This is my mother language that I had left behind in school text books.
To get my household started in Varanasi, I dealt with people who did not speak a language I thought originated from this region. One of my early achievements in the city was to get people to know their duties and settling their salaries. I considered myself particularly lucky when I found someone to take the garbage away. To find someone in Delhi at the rate she quoted would be finding roses in a public garden. I decided to pay her some extra for the mighty job that includes collecting garbage in a big bag and putting it away into a municipal container at some distance. In the evening while returning home from my city visit, I found all the trash she had collected in the morning outside my house's main gate.
To find garbage on the roads after the homes have been cleaned spic and span, playing loud (est) music, screaming and shouting in private or public are by no means a reflection of a selfish society. “This is an outburst of a suppressed society that was let loose overnight.” My landlady who belongs to a well-known aristocratic family of Varanasi explained, “We all live in a zoo that that where the lions and tigers are in chains and the monkeys are let loose. The historic pyramid of hierarchy has been reversed and I am saying this with my personal experience, people who served us earlier and who cannot sign their names, are now making decisions for us.”
It is indeed awkward if I think about it. I have never been able to understand why Uttar Pradesh and Bihar is still so backward. Our domestic help used her earnings from me to buy the latest cell phone in the market and asked me to load up a phone tune. “Why don’t these people use their money to give their children good food or good clothes?" I was thinking aloud. Their children are dying of malnutrition and disease. Men buy latest phones, spend money on cigarettes and alcohol but never buy medicines for their sick wives. "They have ten or twelve children on an average and the four to five year olds are left to look after new born. All this is despite our constant warnings about women’s health and awareness campaigns. How can you expect them to be study? The just want to live for the day.”, said a friend who works as an intern at the city's well-known university hospital. “In Banaras there are many people who wish to donate to the temple but the priests are all chors, they suck up the money and send it to their sons to start a new business.” Mrs. Yadav my neighbour says. Mrs. Yadav's son has started a new business allegedly with the money that he was 'gifted' by his good American friend. She invited him to move to Kentucky but he did not want to leave India where his parents live.
Mrs. Yadav is right, this is a city built with donations. Maharajas and their families, rich zamindars and pilgrims were all eager to shed some percentage of their money, whether hard or easy earned. To donate to a temple and the city would earn them spiritual merit. Patrons from all over India donated generously, built magnificent temples, some migrated, and others built vacation homes. It is not a coincidence that most of the extant havelis were built either by Bengalis or Banias who came from Rajasthan or Haryana. By the mid 18th century the landscape that was primarily forest covered with a few ponds in between started to expand southward along the banks of Ganga. (It is believed that it was in this forest that the Buddha left his Brahman companions before attaining enlightenment.) Because of a highly strategic position of the city; in between the two economic zones and rich alluvial soil deposited by the Ganga many traders and mercantile communities from the country settled here. It may not be presumptuous to say that Varanasi in the 19th century was as or more cosmopolitan than New York today.
Despite having lived in Varanasi for four months now, I have problem understanding our rickshaw-wallas, sabzi-walla, and grocery-walla not because of the bhojpuri dialect but paan full mouth. I was annoyed with the ease that everyone I dealt, with carried on their sleeve. I pass by rows of squatted men; rickshawwallas, subzi-wallas, dukaandars gossiping for hours on the side of narrow roads. I have often wonder what they speak about.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are the strong bastions of the concept of ‘traditional India’. Rarely seen things in Delhi like happy joint-families, sarees clad women with covered heads, celebration of underdog festivals in the Hindu calendar and wishing each other by hailing God are a way of life here. I also discovered during my conversations with the locals that these are not some mandatory burdensome rituals, Banarasis are proud on being able to live this life of tradition. It makes me happy to hear people I meet in Varanasi speak in high Hindi. This is my mother language that I had left behind in school text books.
To get my household started in Varanasi, I dealt with people who did not speak a language I thought originated from this region. One of my early achievements in the city was to get people to know their duties and settling their salaries. I considered myself particularly lucky when I found someone to take the garbage away. To find someone in Delhi at the rate she quoted would be finding roses in a public garden. I decided to pay her some extra for the mighty job that includes collecting garbage in a big bag and putting it away into a municipal container at some distance. In the evening while returning home from my city visit, I found all the trash she had collected in the morning outside my house's main gate.
To find garbage on the roads after the homes have been cleaned spic and span, playing loud (est) music, screaming and shouting in private or public are by no means a reflection of a selfish society. “This is an outburst of a suppressed society that was let loose overnight.” My landlady who belongs to a well-known aristocratic family of Varanasi explained, “We all live in a zoo that that where the lions and tigers are in chains and the monkeys are let loose. The historic pyramid of hierarchy has been reversed and I am saying this with my personal experience, people who served us earlier and who cannot sign their names, are now making decisions for us.”
It is indeed awkward if I think about it. I have never been able to understand why Uttar Pradesh and Bihar is still so backward. Our domestic help used her earnings from me to buy the latest cell phone in the market and asked me to load up a phone tune. “Why don’t these people use their money to give their children good food or good clothes?" I was thinking aloud. Their children are dying of malnutrition and disease. Men buy latest phones, spend money on cigarettes and alcohol but never buy medicines for their sick wives. "They have ten or twelve children on an average and the four to five year olds are left to look after new born. All this is despite our constant warnings about women’s health and awareness campaigns. How can you expect them to be study? The just want to live for the day.”, said a friend who works as an intern at the city's well-known university hospital. “In Banaras there are many people who wish to donate to the temple but the priests are all chors, they suck up the money and send it to their sons to start a new business.” Mrs. Yadav my neighbour says. Mrs. Yadav's son has started a new business allegedly with the money that he was 'gifted' by his good American friend. She invited him to move to Kentucky but he did not want to leave India where his parents live.
Mrs. Yadav is right, this is a city built with donations. Maharajas and their families, rich zamindars and pilgrims were all eager to shed some percentage of their money, whether hard or easy earned. To donate to a temple and the city would earn them spiritual merit. Patrons from all over India donated generously, built magnificent temples, some migrated, and others built vacation homes. It is not a coincidence that most of the extant havelis were built either by Bengalis or Banias who came from Rajasthan or Haryana. By the mid 18th century the landscape that was primarily forest covered with a few ponds in between started to expand southward along the banks of Ganga. (It is believed that it was in this forest that the Buddha left his Brahman companions before attaining enlightenment.) Because of a highly strategic position of the city; in between the two economic zones and rich alluvial soil deposited by the Ganga many traders and mercantile communities from the country settled here. It may not be presumptuous to say that Varanasi in the 19th century was as or more cosmopolitan than New York today.
One can imagine British men on horse backs, Bengali men and women in palkis, Marwari traders in horse carriages and Marathi pilgrims in boats. All these communities today have their own mohallas and their own grocer, jeweller, saree walla, specialist carpenter, mason who either speaks the language they did or was referred to by their community members. This developed a close nexus of patron-service men that one sees even today. There were a few communities however, whose presence in Varanasi is surprising. One of them is that of the Chinese.
Shee- Teh a 23 year old runs one of the most modern beauty salons in the city. Her great grandfather, a doctor came to Varanasi from China and settled here. Meeting Shee-Teh reminded me of my earliest visual memory of a beauty parlour I visited with my mother in my home town of Gurgaon. The plywood walls were full of posters of Chinese women with different haircuts. Visiting a Chinese beauty parlour and getting your hair cut like one of the women from the poster printed in China in the early1980’s was a trendy affair in India in the late 1980's. People just surrendered their hair to the hairdresser. I particularly remember the Nepalese owner of the parlour my mother and her friends visited. There was no friend of my mother that I knew in 1985 who would not call her ‘the Chineje lady’, 'Nepalese lady' would have been too close. Since it helped business and preserved its unique selling point, the Nepalese owner employed girls only from North-Eastern states and subsequently they all were called Chineje assistants.
Shee- Teh a 23 year old runs one of the most modern beauty salons in the city. Her great grandfather, a doctor came to Varanasi from China and settled here. Meeting Shee-Teh reminded me of my earliest visual memory of a beauty parlour I visited with my mother in my home town of Gurgaon. The plywood walls were full of posters of Chinese women with different haircuts. Visiting a Chinese beauty parlour and getting your hair cut like one of the women from the poster printed in China in the early1980’s was a trendy affair in India in the late 1980's. People just surrendered their hair to the hairdresser. I particularly remember the Nepalese owner of the parlour my mother and her friends visited. There was no friend of my mother that I knew in 1985 who would not call her ‘the Chineje lady’, 'Nepalese lady' would have been too close. Since it helped business and preserved its unique selling point, the Nepalese owner employed girls only from North-Eastern states and subsequently they all were called Chineje assistants.
Shee-Teh’s mother is of also Chinese origin and runs the most successful and over-priced beauty salon in Varanasi, Eve's. At She-Teh's parlour you have the best beauty products and treatments and Abba, the Beatles, Billy Joel and Jimmy Hendrix. Her assistants have three things in common, fair skin, trendy modern clothes and their village. They all are Nepalese and related to each other by blood or familial ties. However, the two Indian girls who work at the salon are dark, wear Indian clothes and are always seen doing less important jobs. I wondered the reason behind this- could it be that they call her Sita and not Shee-Teh.
I visited another beauty parlour in the neighbourhood. The parlour is ostensibly called 'The Chinese Beauty Parlour'. I found signs in Chinese and Hebrew on the outside and hairstyle posters similar to the ones I had seen in the 1980’s inviting. I pulled the dark tinted glass door excitedly and found myself in a room roughly 15feet by 9feet. I saw two middle aged saree-clad aunties sitting on an old bench. A few inches away from the seated ladies were a motor-bike and a cycle. A synthetic saree-clad auntie was threading a client’s eye brow. Reflecting our bodies was a plastic creeper-framed large rectangular mirror. Surprisingly, the chair on which the client whose eye-brows were being threaded sat facing the entrance door and not the rectangular mirror. There was no electricity in the city so they needed natural light that filtered in from the ripped portions of the dark-tint sheet on the door. The ‘Chinese Beauty Parlour’ is run by an Indian who does not have a connection with China. She even admitted to not knowing anything about China but likes ‘Chineje’ food.
Banaras’s cosmopolitanism is truly marvelous. I have read stories of economic-interdependency of the two communities; Hindus and Muslims and the resultant peace that was maintained despite pressing situations until 1992 when the Babri Mosque fell. One of the most interesting stories I read was about a communal conflict in 1809. An immediate after-effect of the arrests was a unique jail strike by those arrested in the conflict. Muslims prisoners joined the Hindus in protest against the ill-treatment of upper castes in the jail.
Banarasi silk and brocade are world famous. Favoured by the Mughals and the later Indian princes, Banarasi sarees enjoyed the status of being a must have in an Indian girl’s wedding trousseau until recently. These days everything Punjabi and associated is enjoying nation-wide attention. I am no longer surprised to see women wearing Punjabi style clothes at a south Indian wedding with Bhangra music playing in the background. Tele-serials and films have further helped promote this trend. Though everyone in Banaras talks about Banaras silk as dying (just as they say about everything Banarasi), there are some people who have taken Banarasi fabric to the haute-couture. One of them is a Nift (National Institute of Fashion Technology, a highly prestigious fashion institute) graduate from Mumbai, Hemang Agrawal. All of 28, Hemang has taken his father's humble saree business to international fashion houses. Hemang informed me that the weavers are both Hindu and Muslim. Earlier the Muslim weavers outnumbered the Hindus. But now Hindus julahas from neighbouring villages form a majority of weavers. Many Muslim weavers went into other businesses like telephone and photocopying booth or migrated else where in search of 'service'.
I have over a month now been meeting with a few master weavers, small weavers and gaddidaars that our friends recommended in order to buy a saree I want to buy. This particular saree is a museum piece that I saw in an old catalogue. But I found through my interactions with various people that the sarees with the same pattern and technique as seen in the catalogue was popular till the 1970’s. But today only a handful of weavers can weave the kind I want. I met with one of the five recommended weavers. Their product was not only a poor copy in comparison with what I had asked for, but exorbitantly priced. This set me to think why a buyer willing to pay more money than usual does not find product to his satisfaction.
I visited another beauty parlour in the neighbourhood. The parlour is ostensibly called 'The Chinese Beauty Parlour'. I found signs in Chinese and Hebrew on the outside and hairstyle posters similar to the ones I had seen in the 1980’s inviting. I pulled the dark tinted glass door excitedly and found myself in a room roughly 15feet by 9feet. I saw two middle aged saree-clad aunties sitting on an old bench. A few inches away from the seated ladies were a motor-bike and a cycle. A synthetic saree-clad auntie was threading a client’s eye brow. Reflecting our bodies was a plastic creeper-framed large rectangular mirror. Surprisingly, the chair on which the client whose eye-brows were being threaded sat facing the entrance door and not the rectangular mirror. There was no electricity in the city so they needed natural light that filtered in from the ripped portions of the dark-tint sheet on the door. The ‘Chinese Beauty Parlour’ is run by an Indian who does not have a connection with China. She even admitted to not knowing anything about China but likes ‘Chineje’ food.
Banaras’s cosmopolitanism is truly marvelous. I have read stories of economic-interdependency of the two communities; Hindus and Muslims and the resultant peace that was maintained despite pressing situations until 1992 when the Babri Mosque fell. One of the most interesting stories I read was about a communal conflict in 1809. An immediate after-effect of the arrests was a unique jail strike by those arrested in the conflict. Muslims prisoners joined the Hindus in protest against the ill-treatment of upper castes in the jail.
Banarasi silk and brocade are world famous. Favoured by the Mughals and the later Indian princes, Banarasi sarees enjoyed the status of being a must have in an Indian girl’s wedding trousseau until recently. These days everything Punjabi and associated is enjoying nation-wide attention. I am no longer surprised to see women wearing Punjabi style clothes at a south Indian wedding with Bhangra music playing in the background. Tele-serials and films have further helped promote this trend. Though everyone in Banaras talks about Banaras silk as dying (just as they say about everything Banarasi), there are some people who have taken Banarasi fabric to the haute-couture. One of them is a Nift (National Institute of Fashion Technology, a highly prestigious fashion institute) graduate from Mumbai, Hemang Agrawal. All of 28, Hemang has taken his father's humble saree business to international fashion houses. Hemang informed me that the weavers are both Hindu and Muslim. Earlier the Muslim weavers outnumbered the Hindus. But now Hindus julahas from neighbouring villages form a majority of weavers. Many Muslim weavers went into other businesses like telephone and photocopying booth or migrated else where in search of 'service'.
I have over a month now been meeting with a few master weavers, small weavers and gaddidaars that our friends recommended in order to buy a saree I want to buy. This particular saree is a museum piece that I saw in an old catalogue. But I found through my interactions with various people that the sarees with the same pattern and technique as seen in the catalogue was popular till the 1970’s. But today only a handful of weavers can weave the kind I want. I met with one of the five recommended weavers. Their product was not only a poor copy in comparison with what I had asked for, but exorbitantly priced. This set me to think why a buyer willing to pay more money than usual does not find product to his satisfaction.
Does it signify loss of skill or simply laziness as Hemang puts it. Is it something more than what is apparent on the surface? The fact that I was buying directly from a weaver meant that I was cutting the share of a broker and the gaddidar wholesaler and the retail buyer. The product I asked for therefore should have been cheaper but it was more expensive than a retailer's. Also, the choice at a weaver is limited. A retailer has many varieties of sarees that come from different weavers.
In the world of saree business there are zari makers, zari traders, yarn makers (separate for the warp and the weft); yarn traders, middlemen (brokers), wholesalers, retailers involved. It takes as many as these people for a saree to reach customers. Many more invisible agents are involved in today’s saree business. Silk from China as opposed to Mysore is preferred by the power-loom weavers, mostly used is fake zari (plastic or polyster) from Surat as opposed to real gold or silver ones from Varanasi, dyeing agents are chemical as opposed to natural and these products travel from all over the country and outside to make this a complex business. A basic weaver working for a master weaver may get Rs. 300 for a saree that sells for Rs. 3000 in the market.
Loss of skill is also because a generation of weavers is now weaving in demand, Punjabi style sarees. A new class of people is embroidering on crepe sarees- something that they were unaccustomed to 30 years ago. Demand for real handloom Banarasi saree woven in Mysore silk with real zari shrunk post the polyester and synthetic revolution. For those who still prefer buying handloom sarees there are the handful of weavers that I was introduced to. Says Momin a weaver, “Madam, change is natural. My grandfather can not ride my motorcycle, the same way I cannot work on his loom, in his style.”
It is bizarre to see countless children on the streets and also the same number of government-run primary schools in Banaras. Oblivious to a tomorrow that my friends in Delhi are obsessed with, here the young boys seem contend singing Bollywood songs with their volume going higher each time a young girl passes them. To question what they are celebrating despite broken roads, no water or electricity supply, lawlessness and chaos is easy to answer. They are celebrating life- the art of living that my friends in Delhi have forgotten.
Today's Banaras is a world I used to know in the small town I grew up in the1980’s. The world where shopkeepers are uncles ji’s, neighbours are brothers and sisters and I am a Didi and not Madam. These people will happily sell goods on loan, feed me when I am hungry, help me settle my home. These are also the same people who play loud music despite my repeated requests, much to my agaony break their old beautiful heritage homes, exploit workers and litter on the streets. This is Banaras: where you can live they way you want to live. This is where tradition has redefined itself, self-pride is almost difficult to comprehend and the ideals of the good and the bad vary from one paan chewer to the other. “As my rickshaw walla once said array Didi yeh Shiv ki Nagari hai, yahan sab chalta hai aur sab maaf hai.” “Good, wrong, right is all okay and pardoned when you live in this city under the protective canopy of Shiva.”
It is not just this sense of nostalgia but this celebration amidst the fatalistic attitude of almost not wanting to know or dealing with tomorrow that disturbs me most. What also disturbs me is that it was peace that I was looking for when I lived and travelled in the finest cities in the world. This peace eluded me in awe-inspiring cities with museums, cafes and art. I am at peace amidst the sounds of raucous jumping monkeys on my terrace and hungry mowing cows outside my balcony, beeping, incessantly honking cars and bikes right in my ears, mixed sounds of Bollywood music and sacred chanting from the neighbourhood, noisy drums accompanying dead bodies and celebratory processions… here in Varanasi it is all mixed as one.
In the world of saree business there are zari makers, zari traders, yarn makers (separate for the warp and the weft); yarn traders, middlemen (brokers), wholesalers, retailers involved. It takes as many as these people for a saree to reach customers. Many more invisible agents are involved in today’s saree business. Silk from China as opposed to Mysore is preferred by the power-loom weavers, mostly used is fake zari (plastic or polyster) from Surat as opposed to real gold or silver ones from Varanasi, dyeing agents are chemical as opposed to natural and these products travel from all over the country and outside to make this a complex business. A basic weaver working for a master weaver may get Rs. 300 for a saree that sells for Rs. 3000 in the market.
Loss of skill is also because a generation of weavers is now weaving in demand, Punjabi style sarees. A new class of people is embroidering on crepe sarees- something that they were unaccustomed to 30 years ago. Demand for real handloom Banarasi saree woven in Mysore silk with real zari shrunk post the polyester and synthetic revolution. For those who still prefer buying handloom sarees there are the handful of weavers that I was introduced to. Says Momin a weaver, “Madam, change is natural. My grandfather can not ride my motorcycle, the same way I cannot work on his loom, in his style.”
It is bizarre to see countless children on the streets and also the same number of government-run primary schools in Banaras. Oblivious to a tomorrow that my friends in Delhi are obsessed with, here the young boys seem contend singing Bollywood songs with their volume going higher each time a young girl passes them. To question what they are celebrating despite broken roads, no water or electricity supply, lawlessness and chaos is easy to answer. They are celebrating life- the art of living that my friends in Delhi have forgotten.
Today's Banaras is a world I used to know in the small town I grew up in the1980’s. The world where shopkeepers are uncles ji’s, neighbours are brothers and sisters and I am a Didi and not Madam. These people will happily sell goods on loan, feed me when I am hungry, help me settle my home. These are also the same people who play loud music despite my repeated requests, much to my agaony break their old beautiful heritage homes, exploit workers and litter on the streets. This is Banaras: where you can live they way you want to live. This is where tradition has redefined itself, self-pride is almost difficult to comprehend and the ideals of the good and the bad vary from one paan chewer to the other. “As my rickshaw walla once said array Didi yeh Shiv ki Nagari hai, yahan sab chalta hai aur sab maaf hai.” “Good, wrong, right is all okay and pardoned when you live in this city under the protective canopy of Shiva.”
It is not just this sense of nostalgia but this celebration amidst the fatalistic attitude of almost not wanting to know or dealing with tomorrow that disturbs me most. What also disturbs me is that it was peace that I was looking for when I lived and travelled in the finest cities in the world. This peace eluded me in awe-inspiring cities with museums, cafes and art. I am at peace amidst the sounds of raucous jumping monkeys on my terrace and hungry mowing cows outside my balcony, beeping, incessantly honking cars and bikes right in my ears, mixed sounds of Bollywood music and sacred chanting from the neighbourhood, noisy drums accompanying dead bodies and celebratory processions… here in Varanasi it is all mixed as one.
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