dev deepavali
the fire of faith
the ganga
c.k. nirmal
the aarti on the ghats
mahabodhi temple
stupa
buddha
my ten questions
The land with
5000 years of tradition. A place where people from all over the world come to
pay their respects to the great Vishwanath. A river which comes to earth from
the heavens itself. The place where people come to attain moksha and become one
with their mother Ganga. This is the biggest hub of religion and spirituality.
This is the land of BENARES.While going to
the guest house from the airport the one thing that struck me the most was the
number of temples. There seemed to be a temple every 100 metres or so. This got
me perplexed. A visit to the Kashi Vishwanath temple was an eye opener because
I got a very queer feeling from inside and it made me question all my beliefs
and convictions. Seeing people worshipping the lord with such devotion moved me
and also reminded me of my childhood, when I would see similar aartis in
Mathura. The next day when we went to the Ghats I was surprised to see the
devotion of the people to the river. All along the ghats till Manikarnika ghat
there was a sense of excitement in me. Personally I have never been a religious
guy,so this was the perfect opportunity to explore this aspect in Benares.
That’s when I decided that my topic would be Religion and Spirituality in
Benares.
An excellent
meal and a good night’s rest got me refreshed for the next day. Boating along
the ghats during the wee hours of morning was a great experience. The ghats
took up a new role at this time. People used them for their daily chores rather
than for worship. Right up till Raj Ghat people were bathing, brushing, doing
their laundry or just having a cup of tea. In the evening I told Narendra and
Urvashi that Religion and Spirituality was going to be my topic. The next
morning I decided my plan of action.
My process was
fairly simple:
1) Talk to people
from various areas and backgrounds for information.
2) Observe
people while they are worshipping or doing any religious activity.
3) Try to
connect them to my past and make a connection.
The next morning
a cycle rickshaw took me to the ghats. The old charm of the city was very
appealing. It attracted you towards the city in very peculiar ways. Here I will
share my interviews with various people which gave me a better understanding of
religion in Varanasi.The first person
I spoke to was a Jewish man called Alom. He was taking a dip in the Ganga and
saying a prayer. I waited for him to complete before approaching him and tring
to strike up a conversation. Surprisingly, he started the conversation as soon
as I sat next to him. He was a very jolly person. He told me he was taking his
ritual bath before Shabbat. On being asked about the people of Benaras and
their faith he said that the people were very warm but he had not interacted a
lot with them. According to him faith was a very powerful and pure thing. He
said that faith gave you an identity which was very pure and that it was
something we should never lose. He didn’t say a lot more as he left for his
Shabbat. But the aspect of purity which he raised stuck in my mind.
The next person
was by far the most interesting. His name was C.K. Nirmal. He was born and
brought up in Benaras. He had been the manager of a silk emporium for the last
25 years. Although he was 73, he was extremely active. His views on religion
were very different. Like most of the people of Varanasi he also thought Ganga
was like his mother. According to him Benaras will always be the same when it
came to religion but there would be a drastic change in the cleanliness of the
city because of Narendra Modi. He connected religion with politics very easily.
To him Hindus were very calm people. They never started a fight unless
agitated. He used the example of Pakistan here. He said if we, a hindu nation
had acted firmlypakistan wouldn’t have bothered us. Here I found another link
to religion, which was politics. He seemed like a man who was content with life
and had his fill. To him religion was a driving force in his life. It was his
inspiration and motivation. The talk with this man left me thinking for a
really long time.Absorbing all
this information was a really tiring process. That’s where the street food of
Benaras helped. You could get delicious food at very reasonable prices. The
markets too were very interesting with a lot of local handicrafts and clothes.
After a hearty meal I slept like a baby.
On one of the
boats near the Jain ghat I met 4 old people
passing their time away on a boat. They too had very intriguing things
to talk about. They told me that the rituals of the people in Benaras had never
changed. For the past thousand years they had been doing the same thing.
According to them the government was fooling them in the name of religion. They
were secretly building sewers under the ghats which bought the entire city’s
sewage straight to the Ganga, without any kind of treatment. They said that
they did not believe in the commercialism of today’s religion. They believed
only in the holy texts. To them Ganga was the bedrock of life. They bathed
,cooked in and drank the water of the Ganga. Their faith in the gods was
unfaltering and absolute. They were staunch believers of Shiva. The interesting
fact was that one of them was a Muslim. When we asked him his name the other 3
jumped to his defence. This shows somewhere there is still a divide or a
misunderstanding.That very day in
the markets near the old Vishwanath temple I spoke to a man who sold different
goods such as toys, key hangers, chillums and knives. His name was K.K. Sharma.
His father had moved to Benares from Chennai a long time ago. Despite having his
roots in another city he called this one home. Ganga was a mother to him too
but he didn’t agree with the way people were looted in the name of faith. He
was a devotee of Lord Shiva and visited the temple often. He believed that
every person needed religion in their lives. This prevented the person from
straying onto the wrong path in life.\
My next meeting
was with a man named Vijendra. He is from Benaras and was studying in
Bangalore. The information I got from him was different maybe because he had
that very modern approach to things. He believed in god but found the
commercialism attached to religion really disappointing. He believed religion
was the combining factor that held Benaras together. He wanted to see more
development in Benaras and more respect for the heritage of that place. He
believed god was not yet fully understood by us and definitely not the way we
imagined him.
I decided that I
would finally interview someone from the Muslim community to get their
perspective on things. To my delight I saw two men sitting on the ghat and
cooling their feet in the waters of the Ganga. I struck up a conversation and
their information was very helpful. They said the Hindus in Benares were very
calm people. There was no enmity between the two communities and they
co-existed in almost perfect harmony. To them there was no significance of the
Ganga other than a river normally has. Even though they were in the minority in
Benares they too were proud of their heritage.
After speaking
to so many people I decided to just observe them try to come up with my own
point of view on things. It took a while but I came up with the following
conclusion about Religion in Benares:
The city
overflows with strong sentiment. Almost every person there treats the Ganga
with utmost respect. I realised that people based their entire lives on
religion. Understanding it is something very complex and intriguing. Although I
am an atheist there was an air about Benaras which made my convictions sway.
The very charm of that place was something magical. It was later that night
that it struck me: Religion is the backbone of Benares. Without religion the
city would just crumble away. The role religion plays in Benares is like that
of oxygen in our lives. It keeps the city going. For 5000 years the city has
thrived not because of good kings or government, it is because of religion.
Benares has shaped itself around religion. If you look at all the conversations
above there is one thing in common: all of them are believers. Be it Hindu or
Muslim these people with their faith make Benares. Even in places like Sarnath,
you could feel the vibe of dharma. Benares is one of those cities which does
not rely on modernisation. It takes support from religion and the faith of the
past 5000 odd years it has existed. It feels as if the wheels of the city turn
in the name of religion. This religion is larger than you and me both but it
affects all of us in some ways. Life in Benares revolves around religion.
Everywhere you go you will find a group of people worshipping their deity. It
is this worship that sustains the soul of Benares. If Benares were the body
religion is its soul. A very complex relationship exists between both of them.
To put it simply, they are interdependent on each other. People make a city,
and in the case of Benares it is religion which motivates the people to strive
for a better future for their city. Although I may not completely understand
the complexities of this relationship, I know for sure that Benaras cannot
exist without religion as its foundation. Based on my interactions and
observations, I have compiled the paragraph above to put a conclusion to my
enquiry.
While working on
my main line of interest, I also was doing a side enquiry. I was trying to find
myself in the city of Benares. I was trying to find experiences which took me
back to my past or triggered an emotional reaction. Here is a list of them:
1 1)A pencil I bought reminds me of Mathura. I
used to visit the place every year when I was young and my dad would buy me
loads of these.
2 2) The
diya brings back strong memories of my grandfather’s home in Bhuj as they would
burn similar ones while Diwali.
3) The
entire experience in Benares brought back memories of my grandfather, because
he described the city to me when I went back home.
A
few of the other highlights on the trip were:
1)
The
Dev Deepavli festival
2)
Meeting
an aghori called Black Boom Boom Baba
3)
The
cycle rickshaws
4)
Lots
of food!!
5)
The
trip to Sarnath
The
trip to Benares has been a very emotional journey. The city had an air of magic
about it. You could feel the history of 5000 years slowly evolving in this
modern age. The trip has made me think about matters so deep that I questioned
myself at times and questioned the ideas in believed in. Personally being a
believer of scientology I found this trip as a gateway to the other side of
thought processes where Gods actually possessed powers beyond comprehension.I
would finally like to thank Narendra and Urvashi for a great trip and being
extremely helpful and accommodating facilitators. They made the trip an experience
which mixed work and pleasure perfectly.
I
would like to end by putting forward a line told to me by C.K. Nirmal: “Shiva
ka haath agar sar se uth gaya toh shav ban jaate hain”, which translates as “If
Shiva does not grant us his blessings, it spells certain death for us.”
