Sometimes being impulsive can pay rich dividends. Unfettered by the need to scrutinise every minute aspect of a choice or portend the varied outcomes of a single decision, you are rendered free to act without fear or responsibility. For that one reckless moment, you exist outside your own consciousness as you pull the trigger - figuratively speaking1 - and let your future-self bear the consequences of your actions.
This can be freeing and help you grow as you gain experiences which would otherwise have remained outside your ken. On such occasions, you can later commend yourself for taking the plunge, for being impetuous.
But there are other times when those impulsive decisions don’t work out. Like the time you - a person who lives in Mumbai - bought three new sweaters in a desperate attempt to make yourself feel some semblance of winter-time. Or when you decided that of all the places in the world, you'll spend New Year’s Eve in Benares2.
To be honest, I had always wanted to visit Benares. So, when my parents said they were going to be there over the New Year’s Eve weekend, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. A family reunion and a city ticked off my bucket list. Two birds, one stone.
My interest in Benares was not religious, or even spiritual. Rather, the fact that it is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, is what I found deeply alluring. When you walk the streets and lanes of Benares, you are stepping on land that has been trod by human feet for over three thousand years. It is a city that has waxed, waned and endured as the world around it has changed with every passing millennium. Even the names by which it is known - Benares, Varanasi, and Kashi being most popular - have etymological origins that are older than many civilizations.
I had imagined Benares would be pulsing with ancient wisdom; its air suffused with the essence of mythology; history radiating from its ghats and archaic lore rising like mist from the life-giving Ganga. After all, no less a personality than Mark Twain had (in his travelogue Following the Equator) described this venerable city thus:
Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together!
I suppose he visited Benares before Shopper’s Stop made its way there.
The march of modernity is relentless and pervasive. No place is safe from its assault and it was naive of me to imagine Benares would be any different. Yet, as our cab wound its way through a stream of two-wheelers, I admit I was rattled. I cannot quite describe what I had imagined the multi-millennia-old city would look like but I certainly hadn’t pictured a string of shopping malls peppered with Subway and Baskin-Robbins outlets. (The snazzy airport should’ve given me a clue but I was blind to its glass-and-metal-plated hints.) As one boxy building after another flew by, it seemed as if Benares was much like any other town in North India. Albeit with vehicles that had been fitted with super-powered horns, which came with instructions encouraging constant use.
At first, the honking seemed to be a function of the traffic. McDonald’s may have reached Benares but traffic lights have not. Consequently, negotiating a junction has little to do with rules or road etiquette. Everything hinges upon the driver’s bravado, skill, and tireless usage of the horn. To stop honking is to cede space in a tumult and be left behind. A silent vehicle is bound to be stymied, and only the resonant are able to carve a path through the melee.
But this did not explain why people continued honking on empty streets with such passion. To unlock that mystery, I had to dig deeper. My research led me to theories claiming that for the people of Benares, honking is akin to the ringing of the temple bell. It is a pious act - blessing both the honker and the multitude of honkees whose eardrums have been assailed - and is thus pursued by the citizenry with zealous dedication. If this is indeed true, who are we to question their holy mission?
The banality of commercial architecture and urban traffic had left me feeling deflated, but our first meal in Benares gave me some cause for cheer. I was pleased to note that non-vegetarian fare was widely available in the city. In my past travels to places of Hindu pilgrimage I had often found non-vegetarian food hard to come by. In fact, on a family trip covering various holy cities of North India, sometime in the mid-2000s, we had gone many days without so much as a morsel of meat. After nearly two weeks of travelling and forced vegetarianism, we had trooped into a small restaurant in Mathura seeking lunch. As is typical in such establishments, the waiter had started reeling off the dishes on the menu but his recital was rudely interrupted by my uncle who had leapt from his seat, his eyes ablaze with lust.
“What did you say!?” my uncle queried, his voice quivering with desire. “You serve mutton panner?! Yes, yes! Get us three plates of mutton paneer, right away!”
By the time we were able to explain that the waiter had said “matar paneer” (peas paneer), the light had dimmed in my uncle’s eyes. The trip had ended soon thereafter.
Over an invigorating meal of mutton seekh kebabs and chicken butter masala, I mulled over my initial impression of Benares, formed in the first few hours I'd spent there. I had - irrationally - imagined I'd discover a place that had stepped out of the pages of a history book; but all I could see was a seemingly ordinary, crowded and noisy town with remarkably ancient roots that I was desperate to glimpse but did not quite know how to find.
Over the next couple of days, I would walk its impossibly-narrow lanes threading through old, vertiginous buildings whose innards had not seen sunlight for decades, perhaps centuries. I would learn the story of one such building that had once belonged to our own family and been a shelter for widows. I would see the famous ghats that have stood over Ganga for eons and whose very existence is the stuff of legends. I would visit forts and museums and millennia-old monuments built to commemorate millennia-old events.
Would I find the primordial, mythical soul of the city I had come looking for? Find out next week in Part 2!
P.S.: Earlier this week, my essay on the show The Bear was published in the Readers Write section of Film Companion. The Bear is a fantastic show (available on Disney+Hotstar) and if you haven’t watched it, you should check it out. You can read my essay (click here) to know more about it.
Unless you are in North India and are asked to pay at a toll booth. (This is an, admittedly, pedestrian joke.)
I can neither confirm nor deny whether the need to justify the purchase of three new sweaters had played any part in this decision.
I am really amazed at the immense array of words in your arsenal and the magical thread you are able to weave them in such a descriptive tale. Transponding us to destinations, as if we were there physically. Not just reading but actually visualising the moment you describe so eloquently. Yes Rohan i can hear the cacophony of the deafening horns.
Great read. But didn't you meet Benares' privileged, high caste, revered denizens with noise cancelling earphones who serenely hold court on the roads in traffic-swirling splendour, aka holy cows? -:)