Kasi, Banaras, Varanasi

Oh holy city!

Oh throbbing pulse of serenity!

Into your arms sublime

 They come

The traveller, the seeker, the seer,

Only upon the blessed though

You bestow, your benediction.

In the crimps of your lanes

They submerge

The saint and the sinner

The living and the almost dead;

Some will lose their hearts

Some their lives

Some their senses

Some shall beget an altered state

Some shall inhabit an altered space

As each of them tread the wormhole to Eternity.

I have come to Beneras

I wake to the sound of bells

Ushering in a moonbeam dawn

The afternoon is a chamapaka yellow

The evening a hibiscus red

The firmament’s tone

Echo the flowers that adorn

Vishwanath- lord of the universe

When dusk dawns

It is time for veneration

For consecration of the Ganga

Light and fire

Honour, their sworn enemy, water.

I have come to Banaras

A seeker of solace

I am here to commune

With the eternal one;

To bathe infinity

With a cupful of water

Anoint with ash

Sprinkle flowers

And signal my surrender.

I have come to Banaras

A mendicant with matted locks

And ash smeared skin

With an emaciated body

I am the most revered

 The dreaded Aghori

Here to hear Shiva’s whisper

Witness His dance on the pyre

Of what significance the funeral,

When Life and Death are both ephemeral?

I have come to Banaras

To witness

The mighty Ganga

To dwell and delve into

Her pulsating waves

Whither will I go with my sins?

If not to purge in your waters

The cleansing, amniotic waters

That births new life

Even as it liberates the dead.

To Benaras I come

To sit at the ghats that

Millions have tread

And a million more

Await their turn.

The serene Ganga flows on

In the crowds and noise

Amid the splashing, dunking, bathing bodies

I experience her silence

She is the purge, the panacea

The ungrudging mother

Who heals;

 All earnest prayers

She heeds, she yields.

In Banaras I am, what I am

A free spirit-

Lauding my every breath

I sense

My timeless ties with Eternity.