V for Varanasi

I had never been a very religious person in all my life, in fact, the power of spirituality still fails to allure me.

Since the covid hit our human race, I had been confined to home for the next two years. I could neither step out of home nor stay peacefully at home. The havoc caused by the invisible enemy outside was out there for everybody to see, but my negative thoughts soon turned into my invisible enemy and kept breaking me from inside, which was barely visible.

Even though I try, I cannot complain enough about the virus. It had been a lot kinder to me as compared to others. I have seen in the eyes of people in the country the raw fear and plight, which national media choose to show 24 x 7, and also the helplessness and impotence of others which they carefully and strategically choose not to show.

Every other person, whether celebrity, influencer, or commoner joined hands, and flooded social media to gather whatever little help they could, for the people who they didn't know and probably would never know. This was probably the only time since its inception, that humanity as a whole used it to harness its true potential. Collective Adversity never failed to unite people, whether it be this time due to a deadly virus or some distant mountain summit, where the resources are scares.

That's when I got a chance, and a doubled down on the train to Varanasi, the oldest existing city in the entire human civilization. I was also blessed with a chance to stay inside the BHU university campus, which in itself was one of the oldest existing educational institutes in the country. The city looked pretty usual to me, except for the never-ending appreciation for their current government, orange colors, scores of temples, and hundreds of priests. 

But it all changed the evening when I embarked on the most memorable couple of hours of my life. The first sight of the great Gangas gave me goosebumps. The river so huge in both stature and size was humbly peaceful. It was so vast yet so intimidating, and so inviting. Bhumi, the boatman took us the charge and took us to the ride of my life in his manually propelled boat. He showed us all the 80 ghats of river Ganga, which in its way represented the journey of life, right from Assi ghat, where we celebrate life, with the grandeur of Ganga Aarti, and the holy dip to wash away all the sins, lies somewhere close next to it is Dashashwamedh ghat where the pyre fire never goes off representing the end of everything we spent our beautiful life starving for.

Assi Ghat 

                                           

Dashashwamedh

Watching life being celebrated, and lives getting concluded side by side gave me a good wake-up call. While everyone is busy chasing things in life, we tend to forget that it has to end all here. Just like the ghat we also have to consider life and death side by side. River Ganga is not great just for its religious regions, but it has a lot of practical importance. It's the river supporting the largest number of human lives on its bank, it provides livelihood to thousands of fishermen every day. There are so many temples and places of worship set up on its banks that cater to the faith of millions of devotees, belonging to one of the oldest existing ways of human life. It's the cause behind the creation of the largest fertile plain in the country, which helps feed countless people across the country and the globe. It represents faith, where people come and take a dip with the belief that their sins are getting washed away. Though some might debate if sins get washed away, nobody can counter that it's helping people believe and do away with their bad old selves, into a new better individual. This transition in itself is such a huge thing. There is a tradition to get your hair donated here as well. I don't know the exact story behind this ritual, but I know one thing for sure, that hair represents our pride, our ego, and when we give it away here, it makes us humble, we feel grounded and that reason alone is enough for me to choose to do so.

Let's move ahead to the most beautiful part of the journey. Bhumi, the boatmen dropped us at Assi ghat just after we completed a round of all the ghats. It was the place where the much-hyped Ganga Arti was to take place. Let me tell you one thing first, Ganga aarti at this ghat happens every day both in the morning and in the evening. But it rarely looked like so, the entire road was jam-packed one hour even before the actual time, and the human movement slowed down considerably. Thousands of individuals took a seat much before time just not to miss the event. All the boats started slowly lining up in front of the Aarti platform. Fast forward 30 mins, and there was no space left in the arena for anybody to sit, the boat lined up in several rows one after the other, to block the other side as well. It was easily more than a hundred thousand people, gathered in a small space of around 400 square meters. That's when the priest started the game of money in the religion. They started selling the viewing seat, on the top of temples and building for a very high price. Seeing no resort in sight, and an ocean of humans around us, we secured a seat upstairs. 

After a few minutes, the loudspeaker came to life. It started chanting mantras, and then there are rarely as magical sounds as collective chanting. The complete crowd of more than a hundred thousand people joined in creating an unseen, unimaginable, and unmeasurable amount of energy. The air seemed to be charged with some heavenly essence, then followed the bells. Four big bells hung on both the sides of platform, and there were 11 platforms in total. When the vibrations and sounds of bells overtook the sound of chanting, it was a moment to lose your mind in. The world never appeared more complete and beautiful than at that moment. There never existed more peace in my mind, than in those 45 minutes in the company of the highest number of people I could ever be around. Trust me when I say this, I can replay the entire 45 minutes frame by frame, in my mind even today. It was nothing more than magical, I remember no other thought crossing my mind in the entire period, while my mind doesn't shut up even for a minute on usual days. It was so surreal that I couldn't be anywhere in my mind but there in those blissful moments of my life. For the first time in my life, I was truly present in the moment. No thoughts of the past, no worries of the future, I was just there, in that particular moment.

Ganga Aarti

So this is my story, of the first time in my life when I felt completely in the moment. I had no burden of the past, no headaches of the future, all I had was me and my moment.