Read Online All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World by Piers Moore Ede - Free Book Online
Authors: Piers Moore Ede
Tags: Travel, Essays & Travelogues
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impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination.’
In my own way, I too was on such a journey, born beyond the imagination. And yet, unlike these Hindu pilgrims, I had some way to go yet. For the time being at least, I remained on the water’s edge, unable to wade in.
Varanasi: the Fortune Teller of the Ghats
After the Mela I made my way, like most of the sadhus , to Varanasi: India’s holiest city, and only a few hours from Allahabad. Here, along the primeval stone ghats of the river, makeshift tents housed a growing number who had come to pay their respects to Mother Ganga now that the festival was over. It was here, too, that I would meet another type of sadhu , a female recluse who would show me, as if by opening a box of delights, a glimpse of the ineffable.
On the day of my arrival, for what would turn out to be a three-month stay, the city was at its finest – a clear, lustrous January day, the air pleasantly chill, the River Ganges serene, and what seemed like all the children in the city upon their rooftops, flying kites. Ahead of the Makar Sankranti festival, an auspicious day on the Hindu astrological calendar and also the date of the great annual kite festival, keen practice was going on. On every narrow rooftop, tiny children gathered beneath their kite strings. The skies above the holy city were dotted with thousands of patang or fighting kites, their lines sparkling with glass fibre to cut opponents from the sky.
Kites have been flown here for more than 1,500 years; it is believed they were brought to India by the Chinese traveller Fa Hien, a Buddhist monk who visited India around ad 400. They’re the simplest of designs: tailless diamonds made from tissue paper and bamboo, and when they fly the paper rustles in the wind. No sound so typifies Varanasi in my mind as that rustling of scores of brightly coloured shapes, some decorated with gods and goddesses, dancing above the ancient dwellings, an orchestra of rustling paper.
Some time later, I found myself installed on the fifth floor of an archaic guesthouse, one of the highest buildings in the city, not far from the Manikarnika Ghat. By some stroke of luck, I was given a room overlooking the river, so that through the large panes I could see a whole stretch of the Ganges, with spires of dark smoke rising from the cremation ground and ancient river craft poling the currents. Numerous rooftops also lay within my view, so that I could see dhobi wallahs hanging out their washing, flame-red chillies spread out to dry in the sun, and women picking the husks from the mounds of silk-white basmati. Many city dwellers covered their roofs with wire mesh to protect themselves from the monkeys, and it was easy to see why as I caught my first sight of an entire tribe, leaping at full speed from parapet to parapet, shrieking mischievously. Monkeys, although sometimes bothersome, are considered avatars of Hanuman the monkey god, and, in Varanasi of all cities, it is forbidden to interfere with them in any way. Consequently, the city dwellers have to put up with all manner of roguish pranks: the theft of food, clothes and shiny ornaments; the destruction of property; fighting and mating rituals noisily enacted on thin corrugated roofs; or in the case of certain hapless tourists naively holding bananas, fully fledged assault.
Nonetheless, for a time at least, it is a pleasure to see them on one’s windowsill. Until now, India has yet to impose those strict barriers between the animal and human worlds that render Western cities so particularly sterile. To see a cow garlanded and sleeping between rows of traffic, a temple monkey receiving prasad or vultures descending upon the Towers of Silence, is to feel connected still to a larger web of life. The Indian gods, too, in all their animal forms, remind us that the natural world is one of the most obvious manifestations of the divine we have.
As the dusk fell, I ventured out on to the ghats for a look at the city.
In my own way, I too was on such a journey, born beyond the imagination. And yet, unlike these Hindu pilgrims, I had some way to go yet. For the time being at least, I remained on the water’s edge, unable to wade in.
Varanasi: the Fortune Teller of the Ghats
After the Mela I made my way, like most of the sadhus , to Varanasi: India’s holiest city, and only a few hours from Allahabad. Here, along the primeval stone ghats of the river, makeshift tents housed a growing number who had come to pay their respects to Mother Ganga now that the festival was over. It was here, too, that I would meet another type of sadhu , a female recluse who would show me, as if by opening a box of delights, a glimpse of the ineffable.
On the day of my arrival, for what would turn out to be a three-month stay, the city was at its finest – a clear, lustrous January day, the air pleasantly chill, the River Ganges serene, and what seemed like all the children in the city upon their rooftops, flying kites. Ahead of the Makar Sankranti festival, an auspicious day on the Hindu astrological calendar and also the date of the great annual kite festival, keen practice was going on. On every narrow rooftop, tiny children gathered beneath their kite strings. The skies above the holy city were dotted with thousands of patang or fighting kites, their lines sparkling with glass fibre to cut opponents from the sky.
Kites have been flown here for more than 1,500 years; it is believed they were brought to India by the Chinese traveller Fa Hien, a Buddhist monk who visited India around ad 400. They’re the simplest of designs: tailless diamonds made from tissue paper and bamboo, and when they fly the paper rustles in the wind. No sound so typifies Varanasi in my mind as that rustling of scores of brightly coloured shapes, some decorated with gods and goddesses, dancing above the ancient dwellings, an orchestra of rustling paper.
Some time later, I found myself installed on the fifth floor of an archaic guesthouse, one of the highest buildings in the city, not far from the Manikarnika Ghat. By some stroke of luck, I was given a room overlooking the river, so that through the large panes I could see a whole stretch of the Ganges, with spires of dark smoke rising from the cremation ground and ancient river craft poling the currents. Numerous rooftops also lay within my view, so that I could see dhobi wallahs hanging out their washing, flame-red chillies spread out to dry in the sun, and women picking the husks from the mounds of silk-white basmati. Many city dwellers covered their roofs with wire mesh to protect themselves from the monkeys, and it was easy to see why as I caught my first sight of an entire tribe, leaping at full speed from parapet to parapet, shrieking mischievously. Monkeys, although sometimes bothersome, are considered avatars of Hanuman the monkey god, and, in Varanasi of all cities, it is forbidden to interfere with them in any way. Consequently, the city dwellers have to put up with all manner of roguish pranks: the theft of food, clothes and shiny ornaments; the destruction of property; fighting and mating rituals noisily enacted on thin corrugated roofs; or in the case of certain hapless tourists naively holding bananas, fully fledged assault.
Nonetheless, for a time at least, it is a pleasure to see them on one’s windowsill. Until now, India has yet to impose those strict barriers between the animal and human worlds that render Western cities so particularly sterile. To see a cow garlanded and sleeping between rows of traffic, a temple monkey receiving prasad or vultures descending upon the Towers of Silence, is to feel connected still to a larger web of life. The Indian gods, too, in all their animal forms, remind us that the natural world is one of the most obvious manifestations of the divine we have.
As the dusk fell, I ventured out on to the ghats for a look at the city.
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