Fervour by the river

SULTANPUR ... Jaunpur... Ballia ... Barabuter. Names read only in history texts were flashing past in the early twilight of the northern winter. The chair car of the train carrying us to the City of Siva and named the Varuna Express was over-heated and gave no indication of the cold outside. It was an unpleasant journey, but the city celebrated in ancient HIndu texts, chosen by the Ganga to be the cradle of her religion, had arrived. It was 1.20 a.m..

The drive to the hotel was silent. The outside chill and silence and our own tiredness made us dumb and the sudden warmth and light of the hotel was a shock. Once inside and shown our rooms, we fell on our beds and the morning arrived. Back in the dining room, we quickly breakfasted. Banarasi breakfast is meant to be tried. Quick plans are now made in consultation with the very knowledgable young executive sitting with us and we are to go down to the banks of the Ganga.

But to reach it is not easy. A good 20 -minute drive through some of the thickest crowds, horns blaring and people and animals scattering left and right as our car makes its way through the dusty streets. Even at 10.30 a.m., the shops are closed. At last we reach and get our first glimpse of this magic scene celebrated in so many ways in every aspect of Indian life. The Ganga flows majestically and silently in front of us, uncaring, yet life- giving, dirty, yet pure, full of a play of light and darkness.

Our guide is waiting at Rajghat and we are to go slowly down to the celebrated Dasashwamedh Ghat, past the time honoured Manikarnika Ghat. The names are hoary with association. We clamber in and the boatman sets off. The slap of the oars in this water; the waters of the river which has flown down several thousand years, several thousand times and several thousand miles from its silent and sombre beginnings has been the cradle of India's civilisation, its life-giver, its sustenance. Her quintessential largeness is the largeness of this country's background, the ability to give and absorb so much.

We pass long lines of steps, ghat flows into ghat - Nishad gives way to Prahlad, to Teliyawala, to Sakha, Nandeswar, Trilochan, Badarinarayan ..... The houses are perched way up and drop sheer into the river. At its highest point, the river will reach the top step of any of these ghats. The place abounds with life. There is leisure, men are talking and gesticulating, there are others who are at their ceremonial ablutions, women wash clothes. There is enough time here to just sit on the banks of the river, engaging in conversation, even playing cards at 11 a.m. luxuries for those who work ... Even staring at the river is work. Smells waft up - I try to identify them - glorious cooking smells, marigold, incense, sandalwood, dungfire, urine, rotting matter. There is place for all these. I think of waste disposal, but Varanasi is not the place for it.

Our host is full of information. As we glide past in our boat we see the far bank, where lies Ramnagar famed for its Ramleela, the yearly festival of Dasara, enacted on its palace grounds. Complete democracy and equality is observed: even the Maharajas of Ramnagar traditionally sit on the floor with the least of their subjects. Even the 21st Century does not encroach into the territory of the ancient custom of not using modern gadgetry. Cloth torches dipped in oil light the show and only local material is used for the effigies. A 10,000 strong crowd watches in absorbed silence as the play is enacted while women watch from the ramparts of the fort. On this side where we are sitting in the boat at a spot called Nat Imli is the scene for Bharath Milap. Two lakh people crowd the eight foot narrow gali for this two-minute ceremony at which the Maharaja of Benaras has to be present in memory of his ancestor who was with Bharat at the original meeting. By this time we have reached the Manikarmika Ghat famed for its ability to liberate one from earthly bondage. From the top step, I view the river below. Buffaloes and human beings vie for space on the banks, in the river, on the ghats, stray dogs growl playfully at each other. There are wrestlers, card players and hookah smokers looking on at both.

We wend our way up the cobblestone paths to the temple of the Lord of Varanasi. Built in the 18th Century by Ahalyabai Holkar of Indore, the temple is small considering its importance as the venerated shrine of a Jyotirlinga, one of 12 scattered all over the country. The crowds are immense and disorderly. Police personnel are in evidence. Going into the temple is a bit of a jostle. The lingam comes into view and has a cordon around it which people disregard and lean over to touch. Full of a self- generated light and power, the power of Siva is kept cool by the constant dripping of water from a pot over it. Intense fervour and loud prayer are all around and wave upon enthused wave arrives - and departs. The temple is jam-packed, each person engrossed in his own worship and we are taken into an inner room and given prasadam. We exit via another disputed site - the Gnanavapi Mosque, said to have been the original temple. From here we go on to the Annapurna temple.

As we pass the busy streets lined with shops, almost every house has a private mandir. It is the City of Siva, the holy of holies. However, the real centre of the special vibrations is the Ganga and its associations, parallels can be drawn between it and Life itself. The river's depths hide grave secrets, the rippling waters have been home to all manner of saints and sages. That the cradle of civilisation has now become home to a certain type of separatism is a tragedy for which we have to blame politics.

Celebrated in description, prayer and song, the philosophy that all earth - viswam - exists to give sustenance - annapurna - is a concept of majestic ecological balance. The river which gives Kashi its magnificence is the power of the earth. The ancients seem to have understood the deepest significance of the balance. Therefore, human life can be given up with perfect peace and equanimity on the banks of this river. I look at the dark mysterious waters going towards its final destination - the ocean - and down at the corpses lined up at the Manikarnika Ghat. Relatives await cremation with perfect composure. There is no sadness. Life ends so that it may begin. The river is the eternal mother, creating and dissolving, gentle and terrible, cool and cold, nurturing and destroying - all at one and the same time. All the forces of life meet in a perfect circle, death is accepted as a part of life and this is why Kashi is the City of Siva - he who is the agent of change through destruction.

From Kashi, the Jaipur Express takes us to Faizabad. Poor beleaguered Ayodhya, centre of a controversy not of its own making is, ironically, the twin city of Faizabad. We are in a veritable pleasure garden, filled with screeching parrots and screaming peacocks. Why do such beautiful birds have such silly voices? Biology has an answer to that, but the fact remains that they are a feast to the eye but not the ear. The weather is salubrious, to use an obsolete word - it really does heighten the sensibilities. We go towards the Sarayu - the river of Rama's life-story and reach a place called Ram ki paudi. The river I had always imagined to be a stream is actually a wide river. "The Ramayan" exists on the plane of ideas, whether it is true or not is inconsequential. To use the eye of one's mind, therefore, becomes a pleasure since there is no limit set by history. Ram ki paudi is on a large and newly-restored riverfront about a kilometre long. Temples abound - there are shrines within and without.

From here we go on to that most controversial temple in India and are shocked at what we see. The security defies description and it is not until we are seated in the car talking to the driver that we realise what December 5 means in Ayodhya. Actually the stringency of the rules and the long covered paths with armed police rob the place of its original charm.

It is a quick visit and from the distance the burnished gold of the idols is seen. Unable to react in any way, we return to the front of the site and there is nothing but an atmosphere quietly charged with hostility. Babri Masjid or Ramjanmabhoomi - neither religion is represented here and it is not likely to be. How can so much be forgotten - all the fights, the deaths, the slanging? In that atmosphere of destruction, no one can attain spiritual progress. It will at best be a symbol of victory for one or the other side. So much for our netas.

Our last stop is Gupt Ghat, the spot in the Sarayu where Rama immersed himself after Sita's final departure. The ghats are quiet, bereft of crowds. It is twilight by now and the northern winter does not encourage outdoor activity. The silence is eerie and we go back to Lucknow, this time by road. The trip has been full of sensations and, tired, we are very quiet. Politics is alive and kicking in the country, whether we can say the same for spirituality and its handmaiden, religion, is debatable. It is all too obvious that religion in its multiple forms is big business here and of the many people we have had acting as our intermediaries with god, very few are not professional. No one has inspired with a single action or word and one almost expects to be handed a bill at any point. The BJP and the VHP have between them created an ambience of suspicion and mistrust and now in operation are the very same features of Hinduism which made reformist breakway groups inevitable in 19th Century India. The BJP and VHP are, in a sense, their own worst enemies because their ideology of India for the Hindus is foredoomed to failure from the point of view even of political manoeuvre. We have been given statistics of the crowds which collect at various parts of the year for festivities associated with the two places we have just visited and all of it is a triumph of religious disinformation. While this journey was memorable at a personal level, at another, more general level it was saddening. Having exhausted all avenues to power, it is obvious the only one left is that of the religious life of the country that is being exploited to the fullest. Whether we are strong enough to resist this onslaught will be a controversial chapter of 21st Century history and the only way to resist it seems to be to put religion in its right perspective as a private and individual affair.

PREMA RAGHUNATH

The writer is vice-principal, Vidya Mandir, Chennai

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