Banaras with my girls

If you shy away from loud music, take a U-turn at the sight of very many people, aren’t in love with booze and aren’t a sea-food enthusiast; then you could consider Banaras as a catch-up destination.

I love time with my girls. We are about that silly giggle in a silly café, we are about heated discussions on equality, we are also about experiencing those uncomfortably comfortable silences by the ghats where life and death float in front of you in the evenings and we are about spending an entire evening in a Banarasi Saree store laughing with and at each other. My girls and I connect on a deeper spiritual level and it’s almost as if beneath that laughter, those heated debates, these unnecessary heated debates and those, late night discussions on arts and society; there is a thread that connects our souls.

If you shy away from loud music, take a U-turn at the sight of very many people, aren’t in love with booze and aren’t a sea-food enthusiast; then you could consider Banaras as a catch-up destination.

If Goa is the capital of Friendship Land, I say Banaras should be it’s spiritual brother. Here is a plea to put Banaras up on the friendship land’s map for it won’t disappoint you. We followed our hearts and got ruled by our moods and here is what we did:

Three of us love movement and art, and a dance festival in Banaras hosted by BHU seemed like the opportunity for us to plan this trip. Three days seemed perfect for us to squeeze in given our busy schedules. I tried reading up online on must dos and the list seemed doable: Temples, Ghat, Banarasi Saree and the Kathak dance festival that we had in mind. It sounded so ordinary. “We are meeting after years and we will probably just stay in talking,” I told myself hoping to spend some quality time with my camera. Little did I know that Banaras had planned to sweep us off our feet. Here are a few pointers to plan a good trip without the baggage that the city comes with.

1. Stay and safety: When it comes to women travelling in India, we tend to be careful. We didn’t want to lose our Banaras experience to expensive hotels. We didn’t want to lose our minds in hostels or lodges where we felt unsure and unsafe. Yogashala seemed like a beautiful fit. Blue rooms with white curtains facing Ganga. Fabulous food if you like staying in and going “haiiiiiii” on chai. The place is right on the ghats and towards the end of the stretch, hence not over crowded. The staff is very friendly and helpful. It has the advantage of being secluded yet a small walk connects it to he heart of the city.

2. The Ghat experience: Ghat’s are lovely for you to walk from one end to another post the aarti. Before or during the aarti, the ghats are over crowded and you wont be able to see the ghat or your purse after a while of walking through the crowd.

Ghat some love? Post aarti, I strongly recommend walking down the ghats. You can walk from one end to almost the other and the place is great to make observations. A giant tree with a small temple built around its base with a small dog curled up around the corner giving a napping sadhu company. Quintessential Banaras click-worthy moments.

3. A drifting artist’s retreat, an educationist’s minefield and a sketchers paradise: These were a surprise for me. These ghats appeared to be a barren canvas with the artists expressing and exploring themselves and I can only compare this experience to the visual artists village in France. We had found a couple of foreigners jamming to ‘knocking on heaven’s door’ and that moment made the Banaras experience complete for us.

The Cinderella effect: Pooja in the morning and Party by night:

Assi Ghat has that Cinderella vibe to it. Pious by the morning and party (at the cost of stereotyping party-goers, I would like to clarify that my parties (sorry, not sorry) are about a nice conversation with a lovely drink in good company) by night. There are many cafes and exploring these can be enjoyable.

Some of them are roof top cafes beautifully lit up and quintessentially decorated with stereotypical hippie Om Mani Padme Hum Tibetian flags, books and painted pictures of Bob Marley et al. Some of them are ‘wanna-be’ cafes and some are fruits of passion of photographers or writers. Either way, I loved exploring these.

4. Aarti anecdotes: Both morning and evening aarti are worth watching. The experience was so different.

The evening aarti can be witnessed from a boat. While you sail through ghats hearing the chants and the bells, and see the diyas light up the river; the boat also takes you close to Harischandra and Manikarnika ghats (known for cremation) where the nonchalant end-of-life rituals will move your soul to existential questions and reality. Me and my friends shared an uncomfortable and soul stirring silence here. It felt safe to experience something so profound with people we can count on. We all were in our realities and thoughts exchanging an occasional smile or sigh.

The morning aarti is a must-do. The sky picks up colours while the chants light up the aura and wake you up to some-thing larger than life. The experience is very different from the evening aarti on boat. This one is all about a new day, hope and promises untold. Ting-ting, ting-ting , ting-ting rhythm of the aarti bells still echo in my ears.

5. Temple tour? No? You will say Thank you!

Travel surprises us and gets us to experience new aspects of ourselves. I used to say that ‘I am not a temple person’ with surety. Banaras changed that for me. I think I am going to go to the must-visit Temples in the country because the experience was exhilarating.

Commerce of fear:

To me, temple tourism has two aspects. The religious bit that involves the pandas and this industry that en-cashes your fears. It reinforces the practice of pleasing god. This keeps the travellers and the explorers away

Getting wooed

There is the other side which also revolves around religion but draws it’s energy from science, beliefs and practices that speak of a higher truth. I am very spiritual and this evoked a connection with this other part of universe that I am trying to constantly access. Being a dancer, I know how energy transforms us to do things that can be beautiful. The aarti's here will give you a glimpse of what that creation of energy can look like.

Prologue of narrow lanes

My friends had mentioned Kashi temple as a must-do and I had reluctantly agreed to tag along, especially after getting to know that vehicles cannot enter beyond a point for the lanes are too narrow. While the temples have history, story and blessings to offer; the lanes that lead you to them have stories to tell too. Narrow lanes with beautifully dilapidated houses carefully placed on the sides make it a must-do experience. Legend has it that Varanasi is the oldest city in the world. The shop-keepers say that city is thousands of years old. The houses are older than your grandparents or mine. They are history. Ironically, they will be history too for government wants to widen these roads and take those houses down.

The Temple template: Temple experiences in India are about walking to shrine and praying, hoping to be witness the aarti. Somehow, fate had it but we reached all temples during their aarti times.

Start with Kashi temple: It will give you a glimpse of duality of commerce and faith breathing at the same time. While the believers shut their teary eyes and surrender, their hands carefully clutch on to an aarti thali and money to hand over to the pujari.

Vishalakhi Temple: On your way out through the very same lanes, a colourful Vishalakshi temple offers a warm welcome.

The MUST-HAVE Mahamrityunjaya Temple and Kaal Bhairav are a tuk-tuk ride away and we were inside the sanctum for Kaal Bahrav’s aarti. The aarti is a must-have experience. Use of instruments, chants, fire, water and that energy is something to experience at least once in life.

Tip: We were asked to leave our bags outside in a locker. When the pujari asked me for money, I said that I didn't carry any as the police officers insisted that I leave my purse behind. That helped me keep away from any conversation on money.

The last few pictures will sum up the Varanasi experience. If Varanasi were a person, she would have been soaked in complexities yet living a simplified blissful life absorbed in what can only be termed as a 'nihilistic nonchalance' . There is a space for everyone here. And I was happy to be here with my girls who had the stomach to have discussions on religion, rituals, meaningless day-to-day experiences and experience the strength in solitude shared besides these ghats in Banaras.

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