Gangetic Visions - I

This has been a year of upheavals, losses, often severe stress and some modest gains. Among the last was a long-overdue trip to Old Blighty. I am yet to assimilate with some discernment much of what was experienced in those hectic days in late July. At any rate, this post - and the next - are on something less substantial but no less deeply felt - the record of a late October visit to the banks of the Ganges.

Over the last two decades, I have seen the Ganga many times at many points on her hallowed course - and indeed lived for over a year on the banks of her main distributory Hooghly - but had never taken a dip in the divine waters. The other day, I did just that at the holiest of sites, the Allahabad Sangam: I dutifully plunged thrice into a cocktail said to contain a few hundred TIMES as many bacteria as are admissible in bathing water but disobeyed my 'handler's' instruction to pour some milk into the river (imagine the impact on the river of such libations from thousands and thousands of pilgrims!) and to immerse a coconut (no rotting husk from me!).

And revisiting Kashi - twice, although quite briefly - was the cherry on the cake.

The first big surprise on this trip was this: Seagulls - in their raving thousands - at the Sangam, a good 1000 kilometers from the nearest sea! I am told they are Siberian seagulls merely halting on their migratory journey.

These kingfishers were no less of a novelty:

Waiting for a morning bus for Banaras to leave, I saw this sight in front of the public toilet at the Allahabad bus stand; a lady alternately talking to someone on her cell and chewing ferociously at that neem-twig:

Kashi is reached after a two hour plus bus ride past flat and intensely cultivated croplands and filthy-looking towns crammed with all kinds of half-plastered and largely windowless brick buildings. Touching down at the main Varanasi bus stand, I am swept into an absolute chaos of traffic. I take a ric to Assi ghat, planning to walk up the waterfront to Panchaganga ghat as I did a few times a decade and some ago. But the river is unseasonally full so I am forced to walk thru the narrow city gallies instead - and it proves as rewarding and full of serendipities as a ghat-to-ghat downstream walk would have been.

For I had never heard before about Kashi street art. IMO, it deserves as much exposure as say, the London Graffiti! Here is a quick selection from the visions my unsuspecting eye was hit by. My guess is that the primary function of these paintings is not decorative but protection from paan spittle - the deities ensure that passersby spit only at the base of the walls and not ON them. But they also bear witness to the vitality and self-reinvention capacity of Indian religious art.

Rama, six-pack and all, goes airborne, every bit as athletic as Bahubali:

... and in the background can be spotted Hanuman as a toddler catching hold of the sun, mistaking it to be a luscious fruit!
A colossal Shiva rises from the Ganga to prop up a bridge:

Kashi has for long had a solid Bengali presence: Here is a very Bengali Kali:

Kali again, although not that obviously Bengali:

A autorickshaw takes wing:

The hooded cobra reaches out over Nandi's hump like its Master's friendly arm:

A cool bit of Trompe-l'œil featuring a ganja-smoking Siva under a spreading tree; some of the foliage is smartly brushed on, some merely real. And instead of tinkling bells ('kilukku' in Malaylam), the bull has a little cobra coiled around its horns-like a tiara!

Some cooler Trompe-l'œil - reeds, leaves, Siva's face, all in an ad:

A towering riverfront wall with Sivas:

Another immense wall with a spot of Londonesque graffiti:

A vertiginous clutter of buildings and religious structures rises above the Ganga near Panchaganga ghat:

A 21st century concrete box patched onto what must have been a pretty elegant late 19th century building:

Musician figures - one playing a snake-charmers 'makudi' - support what looks like a century old sunshade:

And reaching down to the water at Panchaganga Ghat at daybreak with the Venkatesa Suprabhatam being played very atmospherically from a nearby temple, I see this (Kashi, the liveliest of cities, is also the abode of Death):

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On a busy road near 'Girjaghar', I see two men standing by a supine human figure; traffic roars past. I approach to check.

"Gaya!" ("gone!") says one of the men to me. "Now, the cops have to come and take away (the body)... used to see him around... was a beggar!". And that really is that - the 'beggar,' who seems in his sixties lies still, arms crooked and eyes empty.

From around 1940, Pottekkat wrote from Kashi (I quote from memory). "Early on a chilly morning, stepping out of my lodge, I saw the caretaker bent over someone lying on the pavement in front and patting him. Presently, he stood up, shrugged, and seeing me, said: "Thanda ho gaya!" - "gone cold!""