Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
overflows her banks, washing away homes, temples, palaces.
Sometimes she withholds her life-giving waters, running so low
that the fields shrivel and die, the
dhobis
wash clothes in mud, corpses
get lodged on rocks and tree stumps, vultures circle above, the air
stinks of waste and death.
Kashi has been flooded countless times. Even now, parts are still
sinking gradually from sight. Near Harischandra Ghat, the main
burning ground, an entire monolithic temple the size of a small house
lies half submerged, at an angle in the waters, a leaning temple of
Kashi. I pointed it out to my companion, the dom raja's son.
'Not sinking,' he assured me. 'Temple is offering itself to goddess
Ganga.' How many other temples had offered themselves to Ganga
Mata over the millennia? Is the oldest city on earth down there?
It was certainly thriving as a religious and commercial centre long
before Babylon, long before Solomon built his temple. Buddhist
scriptures describe Kashi as a great centre of civilisation 2,500 years
ago. They should know: the Buddha preached his first sermon in
the deer park at Sarnath, five miles north-west of the city.
Capricious as Ganga Mata can be, she is never angry for long.
She favours Kashi above all cities, for here Ganga reaches her
southernmost point, embracing the home of Siva in her broad cool
arm before returning north toward the home of the gods. Eventually
she bursts into a fountain of rivulets before falling into the arms of
that awesome Father waiting eternally in the Bay of Bengal . . .
How out of touch with India I'd become. I asked the hotel to deliver
a letter to the dom raja requesting an interview. I wasn't surprised
later when the messenger said he couldn't locate the dom raja's
palace. This was like a New York courier claiming he couldn't find
the Rockefeller Center. Why was I trying to do things this way?
Benares scared me, was why. Those long months I'd spent studying
the Vedas at the Sanskrit University nearly two decades ago scared
me. The hundred and fifty thousand manuscripts to which my
Brahmin pundit had then allowed me free access scared me. I had
been allowed to transcribe texts no one had opened in hundreds of
years, let alone translated - just to practise my Sanskrit. In Benares,
