Benares as I see it

 

Benares as I see it

Has the Election Commission of India  lately become fond of obsequies? In a morbidly spot on symbolism the final phase of this round of polling ends in Benares, the city where all  Hindus aspire to be to end beingness forever. It alone holds promise of death begetting instantaneous deliverance from recurrent cycles  of  samskaras, numbering an onerous sixteen in a single earthly sojourn.  Benares is the final journey- mortal remains to the elements and the atma dissolved in parmatma. 

Moksha !

‘Charbi’ and ‘Garmi’ melt in glassfuls of the city’s ‘thundai’ without the intercession of a Yogi. And minds get unlocked if one  elects to ‘khai ke paan Banaras wala, khul jayee band akal ka tala…’. Draped in a sparkling Banarasi sari, the  city oozes an esoteric feminine grace, godliness and a rhythm of carefree, cavalier life, one that is getting increasingly ravaged by the elements and inexorable creep of ‘vikas’. 

Till it lasts, one should  let oneself go with  ‘chillum’ in one hand to ‘dam maro dam…’, a glass of ‘thundai’ in the other, and a plateful of rabri to ‘raise’ one’s inebriated consciousness higher. Above that of the city itself poised on the spokes of Shiva’s trident in a niche in space- unsullied by earth’s touch and within sight the shores of immortality. Sins are not worrisome here for all are Shiva indemnified, salvation assured. The city also has the dubious renown for ‘thugee’ or charlatanism. The wily Banarasi thug once had  nothing to fear or lose in the city of liberation. 

Even a visitor to this divinely consecrated upland makes a two way gain- as a pilgrim and a tourist. And to boot, branded a Banarasi Babu. 

Long, long ago Kashiraj performed the ashwamedha yagna on the Ganga river front  sacrificing ten horses to hallow the spot as Dashashwamedh ghat. That rite consecrated victory and power of a ‘Chakravartin’. Not far away lies the Harish Chandra Ghat, the cremation ground where death is the ultimate victor. 

As voters queue up in this city and dusk falls some political aspirants would have been despatched to the Dashashwamedh ghat, some forced to trudge to Harish Chandra ghat and denied, uncharacteristically, the ‘taraka mantra’, the for-all  Shiva’s whisper of deliverance from existential shackles. No liberation for losers, they will have to ‘rebirth’ to have another go. The winner, on the other hand, will claim to have attained a higher state of political  ‘being’ - powers, temporal and spiritual fused . That’s what Banarasi Babus too will hope for in the minimum. 

Eclipse and Halo, the dialectics of power pursuit in play!

Veering off tangentially, one last thought. Benares is perfumed or more appropriately drenched in Hindu religiosity. Its streets, lanes, narrow bylanes and galis are like the capillaries feeding piety and sacredness into every Hindu home. More than that, the city is a repository  of Hindu rites, rituals and traditions from the dawn of civilization. 

However, time takes its toll irreversibly. The Varana and Assi rivers that bound the city are dead streams now. Ganga is like a woman dazzingly painted masking an ugly interior - glistening river front and swacch ghats but the  waters within its confines as impure as pure is its anointed  holiness.The once  symbiotic Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb is now just for the quotes. The talk is to dress it up into a Kyoto, a  smart heritage city with all  the glitter and razzmatazz of modernity. The Kashi Vishwanath corridor, demolishing the  catacomb of mini temples and structures that garlanded the Vishwanath temple, kick-started the process.  

It is a cruel paradox that the new can only rise on the ashes of the old, a process Schumpeter in another context termed ‘creative destruction’. 

But what is being obliterated? 

For a Hindu, pilgrimage is a duality- Asceticism and Darshan. The journey itself is a purificatory rite. Our most hallowed devasthanas require the devotee  to trek through difficult and dangerous terrain. In such circumstances observance of strict dietary control and celibacy  comes easy. The consciousness of the divine is ever present and repeatedly invoked to ensure safe passage to the destination. The devotee turns into an ascetic for the duration of the pilgrimage, at least. 

In the shimmer and glimmer of advancing ‘Kyotoization’ Benares risks losing its bewilderingly charming spidery web of narrow lanes and bylanes throbbing with sacredness and pulsing with chants of ‘Om Namah Shivay’ of the bohemian god ,and the sombre reality check of ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai’. Will this survive the onslaught of creative destruction ?  What happens to the gay abandon and 'masti' of the Banarasi Babu for whom even Yama holds no terror? Yama's domain falls outside the furthest parikrama of the city. Benares is fast  shedding  its unfathomable mystique and inscrutable  joie de vivre. Its unique cultural concoction of commingled  ‘bhukti and mukti’, its soul and the pre-eminent cultural ethos,  is threatened with extinction as consumerism and materialism squelch spiritualism.

That the sacred and smart can be reconciled into a whole is a battle that lies ahead for the victors of the battle of the ballot box today.