VISIT VARANASI

I was walking from Assi Ghat to Manikarnika, the burning ghat, when I heard a man yelling Hindi swear words with intense energy. He walked briskly on the stone steps that fronted the river. He was tall, bespectacled, built like a wrestler, and only slightly dishevelled. There was light stubble on his face and over his shoulders he wore a blanket draped like a shawl. I noticed first the distressed white cotton of his kurta-pyjamas, bright in the dazzle from the river. There was so much noise on the ghat it took a while for it to register: he was yelling at the top of his lungs. He looked straight into the noonday sun and shouted obscenities, mostly to do with sexual humiliation and disputed parentage. And he made what sounded to me like a pun: “Sun of a bitch!”

He was about to pass me when our eyes met. I didn’t look away quickly enough and for a moment he looked directly at me as he shouted his tirade, as if I were the source of his anger. The momentary eye contact had its effect. He stopped shouting. When he spoke, in English, it was in a quiet, reasonable tone. “So many people coming here. Why they want to come?”

I said, “I don’t know. Maybe they’re looking for God?”
He dropped to the ground and sat cross-legged beside a pile of uncleared garbage. There was a dog sitting in the debris and he put his big arm around it and stroked its ears.
“What they are wanting to find? Everything in this place is rubbish! Pollution! This is city of death and dirt.” He stopped caressing the dog and returned his gaze to me. 
“You are lost.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are lost.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”

We could have gone on this way. I had nothing special to do. And, truth to tell, I was even beginning to enjoy the weird exchange. But then I saw his agitation. I saw the truth of it: he was lost. And he’d lost interest in me. He was talking to the dog in a patois I couldn’t follow. I walked on and soon I heard him start up the yelling, he was back to shouting his obscenities to the sky.

Now, some of the men on the parapet were also shouting. They were telling him to shut up. Someone cursed, but softly, without conviction; most watched him with understanding. The man got up and headed toward Assi, his pace furious. One of those sitting in the sun told me his story. He’d lost his six-year-old son when the boy was hit by a truck while cycling to school. He came to Banaras after the accident, from Patna, and ever since he had wandered the ghats, shouting out his grouses against God. In a way, he’d become part of the life of the riverfront. People knew him; he wasn’t considered especially crazy. Not in a town of eccentrics, seekers, characters.

It was a Sunday afternoon, the ghats crowded with colour and life. Whole families were bathing in water that had turned the colour of sludge. If you looked to the sandbank on the far side of the river the water was clear, but here, near the ghats, it was dirty with sewage, plastic, household refuse, and other dangers.

I was tired of walking and I hailed a boat, a low vessel that sat comfortably in the water. At one point, we came alongside a friend of the boatman’s. He was a boy of about 16, in a small boat the size of an armchair. He’d made the boat himself, of blue plastic mineral water bottles that had been cut and melded together. He was parked on the river, in his plastic boat, and he was examining something he’d found in the water: a used syringe floating on the tide. “Throw it away,” I told him. “It’ll make you sick.” It was my mistake. He threw the syringe and its exposed needle back into the river, not far from where the bathing families splashed each other.

The ghats receded from the water in tiered stages crowded with umbrellas, drying clothes, bathers, yogis, tourists, vendors, temples, a dizzying visual history of Indian antiquity. There was the Babua Pandey Ghat, with its sickle moon inlay; the elaborate Buddhist ghat, pagodas dark in the sun; the leaning temples of Reewaghat; the candy-striped approach to the Vijayanagram Ghat; and there were notices in Japanese, English, Hindi and Sanskrit. ‘FORTUNATE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO RESIDE ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGA’, said a sign on Harishchandra Ghat. But it was at the  burning ghat of Manikarnika that I stopped the boat and got down.

Manikarnika was marked by an absence of colour and of women. The men here had come from far away to perform the last rites for their loved ones. There were four fires going, two with bodies on them. Wood was piled above and below each muslin-wrapped corpse. The surrounding buildings had turned a shade of dark brown from long years of wood smoke. I wandered into the gullies behind Manikarnika and found a street of firewood merchants, and I spoke to a woodcutter and his boss. They were small men, muscular but prematurely aged. Though it was still early in the day, both smelled of strong drink. I wondered if the alcohol helped them to work. And I asked how much wood they cut each day. “Depends on how many dead people there are,” said Narayan, with the brittle humour of a man who worked in the vicinity of death. He pointed to the pile of wood he had already cut that morning—800 kilos, or 8 quintals. And how many dead would the pile cremate? “Oh,” he said, laughing a little, “maybe 40, maybe 50.”

The ritual of cremation was unchanging. The body was washed in the Ganga. Butter and sandalwood powder was placed above the corpse, and a special agni below. Spirit was squirted on the flame to make it catch. And when the fire moved into their bones, men burned differently from women. “With men, the chest bones don’t burn, and with women the spine doesn’t burn,” Narayan’s boss told me.

As if in confirmation of the law that death sharpens one’s appetites, there was a Korean restaurant in the gullies behind Manikarnika. It was as authentic a Korean eatery as it may be possible to find in the back alleys of a Hindu holy town. Because it was situated in the vicinity of the burning ghat, it wasn’t considered auspicious. Few Indians ate there. But the low tables were filled with Korean backpackers who spoke very little English and no Hindi. The food was fresh, unexpectedly hearty. I ordered vegetarian sushi and kimchi served with sticky rice and a fried egg. There were small bowls of chicken stew, pickled cucumbers, glass noodles, and I washed down the meal with a mug of steaming ginger lemon tea.

Banaras is three cities in one—the modern Hindu city of Varanasi; the colonial cantonment town of Benares; and Kashi, an ancient place more myth than reality. I spent the rest of the day wandering around the last of these dwellings, and I found scenes and images there that seemed to have existed for as long as the city had.

It was already dark when I began to head back to the hotel. Everything had changed. The crowds were gone and on the river sat a thin fog like the smoke from the fires of Manikarnika. The ghats were abandoned; now they were nothing more than landing stages for long-gone spirit visitors or new ghosts. And, except for stray dogs and those men and women who had no homes to go to, the streets too were deserted. It was as if Banaras had returned to its true aspect of timeless dread.

THE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
A full fare economy ticket between Delhi and Varanasi costs Rs 6,630 on Indian and Jet Airways. But ‘easy fares’ on Indian are available from Rs 3,084. Of Varanasi’s three railway stations, Varanasi Cantt and Mughal Sarai are the best connected to Delhi and Kolkata.

WHERE TO STAY
The Taj Ganges (Rs 3,500-6,500; 0542-2503001, www.tajhotels.com) is set amidst 12 acres of greenery. Clarks Varanasi (Rs 4,310-4,994; 2501011,clarkvns@satyam.net.in) is a heritage hotel, offering stays in either the haveli or in the modern wing. Pallavi International Hotel (Rs 850-2,000; 239012/13) is close to the ghats. Hotel Haifa (Rs 550-1,500; 2312960, www.hotelhaifa.com), originally a restaurant, has good food, serviceable rooms, and it’s around the corner from Assi Ghat.

THE GHATS
A string of about 80 ghats stretches along the western banks of the Ganga. Most of them are used for bathing but there are also several burning ghats, which are used for cremations. The ghats extend from Assi Ghat, near the university, northwards to Raj Ghat, near the rail and road bridge. The best way to see the ghats is to take a one-hour boat trip from Dasaswamedh Ghat, one of Varanasi’s holiest spots, to Harishchandra Ghat and back. Some of the other important Ghats of Varanasi are: Assi Ghat, at the confluence of the Assi and Ganga rivers; Tulsidas Ghat, the oldest ghat; Manikarnika Ghat, a large burning ghat; Man Mandir Ghat which was built by Raja Jai Singh II of Jaipur, complete with four Jantar Mantars and a massive sundial; and the Panchganga Ghat, where, as its name suggests, five rivers are thought to meet (the Alamgir Mosque which dominates the ghat was built by Aurangzeb).

EATING 
Apart from the numerous shuddha shakahari restaurants and mithai shops, pushcarts here sell aloo-puri, pithi-ki-kachori and chaat, all of which are worth trying. For the main course sample a thali of puri, sabzi, dal and rice. Jalyog on Dasaswamedh Road is legendary for its samosas and puris. Don’t forget to try their Kashi-ka-laddu and rabri, and finish off the meal with a Banarasi paan.

WHAT ELSE TO SEE & DO 
Some of the temples in Varanasi are worth a visit—Vishwanath Mandir, dedicated to Vishveswara, is the most important temple in Varanasi. The current temple was built in 1776 by Rani Ahilya Bai of Indore. The small Durga temple on Durgakund road was built in the 18th century in the North Indian Nagara style, with a multi-tiered shikhara.

The Ramnagar Fort and Museum (2339322) on the eastern banks of the Ganga is also worth a visit. The crumbling 17th-century fort has a museum which houses palanquins, astrological clocks and other collectibles.

The Banaras Hindu University, one of the most important centres for the study of Sanskrit, has a large tree-lined campus. On the campus is the Bharat Kala Bhavan (2307621), a museum with a large collection of miniatures, as well as 12th-century palm-leaf manuscripts