The city is among the oldest in the world. While walking down some of the really narrow lanes of the city, I felt the inexplicable excitement of the very thought that people have used the lanes for thousands of years! The crowd that came was as diverse as it can get - from the VIPs to the poorest of the poor. People queued up to worship the GOD, took bath in the river Ganges that flows through it, flocked the already busy streets bordered by road-side fast food vendors...its something that you have to live to believe in. Its one place where so many different types of people and culture meet! The mornings were foggy - visibility was hardly 50 metres or so. The temperature was low. And yet people thronged in thousands to take a holy dip.
Benaras is one place where religion and faith have left little space for science and reason. And, though it that may sound controversial, I'm ,at least,not complaining. Living in a world so full of reasons and rationalities, it does make sense to sometimes break the shackles and live in a world that defies all these. It feels good to break the law and let the mind and soul ward as they wish, without causing any civic nuisance. In the olden days when the industry and sewage water did not flow into the Ganges, the river was famous for its medicinal values brought due to the presence of minerals from the Himalayas. Hence people took bath and drank the water to keep them hale and hearty. Today, scientifically speaking, the water of the Ganges is too polluted to even take a sip. And so many are up in arms to show people the rationality of not drinking the water or taking bath. But in the world of analysis and judgement, what we often miss out is the soul. There are at least two components to our existence - the physical body and the soul within. Just like with any other physical objects, we are so much heads and ears over the existence of the physical body, that we almost seem to forget the soul that exists within us. And yet, surprisingly, we all more-or-less tend to believe that the physical body in mortal and the soul is immortal!
So, while the polluted water can be injurious to health, it might be good for the soul. It is the faith and devotion with which the dip is taken that brings the inner bliss to the pilgrims. I am not saying that we all should start believing in superstitions and blind-faiths. What I am saying is, if something makes a man or woman feel closer to GOD, make the person realise the inner self, then whats wrong with it? If some faith has brought people from different parts of India (at least), where the rich and the poor take the dip together side-by-side, where the concept of untouchables has been put to shame, where people realise that we all are one under one sun, then I am for that faith. Because this faith causes the unity and the bonding us. If people come to Benaras to acknowledge and repent for the sin and mistakes they have committed and promise not to repeat them, and for that they take the holy dip, then so be it. Even if causes skin infection, it will make the world, at large, a purer and cleaner place.
It is the way you look at it. Every morning in Benaras to me was a special morning. It was refreshing. It was connecting and communicating with the old Indian civilisation. The narrow lanes, the deserted huge palacial houses on the river bank, the line of beggars along the streets, burning of dead bodies in the many burial ghats along the bank and the smoke from them that swirled up in the air, the aarti or worship of the river during the evening -- all seem to have a deeper meaning than their mere physical appearance and presence. Quite like the statue of a GOD, which has very little to do with its physical existence and much more with what we attach its significance to.
In our day-to-day life we trust our sense organs - our windows to the outside world - eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin to connect with the outside world. In Benaras these physical sense organs are not enough...you need to have a third eye to get a deeper feeling and understanding of the city and the life in the city! The more you start getting deeper into it, the more you fall in love with it and the more you fall for it. After all, its not for nothing that the popularly-believed-world's-oldest-city has stood the test of time and successfully survived for thousands of years when almost all of the contemporary cities built during that time have disappeared into oblivion.
