Kashi

5. 2009

Eyes strained, trying to cut the darkness of distance, we sat with held breaths, until a harmless figure draped in yellow approached us. The confidence, experience, and comfort that engulfed us the moment the priest stood silently in front of us was palpable.

Bowing at the same time, we touched his feet with both our hands and joined our palms after touching our foreheads, muttering a whisper of pranam baba in the meanwhile. A sense of calmness and safety ran through me when he raised his hands and placed each on either of our shoulders.

A prominent purohit, our thoughts synced.

"Pranam, pranam. I'm Gyanesh Shastri, be at ease, kindly. There is no harm intended towards anyone here," he offered with a smile once he saw the underlying discomfort in our tightened limbs. "Could you both not find the hotels you're staying in? The shopkeeper over there," I glanced as he pointed towards someone behind me, and found the man I had bought water bottles from. The man joined his palms in a respectful gesture for Purohit ji, "he notified me about two wanderers, and here I came to scrutinize if you needed help."

Within two minutes, in quite an amazing manner, Siddhant and I shifted from gloom of loss to a hopeful, respectful persona, with the arrival of Shastri ji. He supposedly stood at the offset of middle age, possessing a slight hunch in his lower back. Although no traces of youthful, vibrant black could be noticed over his head, his face housed only a few wrinkles around his mouth and night sky-like dark eyes. Even from within such depth of black, he emitted nothing but acceptance and blessings.

"No, baba, we are merely trying to pass through this night. We shall be leaving early in dawn," Siddhant offered when a good few seconds of silence passed between us.

"This rush! Young eyes seek Benaras with such haste?" Shastri ji mused thoughtfully, and an odd glint of sadness gleamed upon his aging face. Under the moon's shimmer, his complexion remained slightly pale, yet he stood tall, with his shoulders wide, and hands locked behind his back.

This time I forced his stare to root upon me. "We are in no rush to explore Benaras. It was not even in the plans, nor do we intend to make any shift in them. We are simply passing the night, the next afternoon wouldn't be hosting us."

Only once the words left my mouth, did I realize how harshly I had dismissed the idea of being in that city. As if the thought of spending more time in Kashi would burn me anyhow. I held my silence.

To my surprise, Shastri ji, instead of asking something else, sat down on the stairs, with his back to us. His hands now rested on his knees, and his head tilted up towards the sky.

I and Siddhant followed, stepping down and sitting on a stair below his. It was instilled that sitting higher than those who are elder, and those whom we worship, was a sign of disrespect. How much we now believed in such liners was beyond discussion, but the limbs were habituated enough to not wait for the mind to give modified instructions.

A pregnant moment passed without a single utterance. Then, as if realizing a response was to be given, Shastri ji's calm, experienced poised voice floated around us, "this city never calls a casual wanderer in its abode, only a seeker and he who carries a depth of passion in his eyes is called here," he paused, took a brief breath, and concluded, "no one comes to Kashi until she calls them."

I had heard it often already, people longed to dissolve into nothingness in Benaras. I had heard many stories of madness about those who walked for days or even months, just to die by the steps of Manikarnika. Kashi, or Benaras as the crowd outside knew, controlled this vicious cycle of life and death. As for us, we were simply two outsiders who stepped by mistake. When it was a mistake, how could I believe this place controlled our destiny?