Varanasi- Starting Where The Road Ends

A spiritual journey of time, emotion and transcendence in Lord Shiva’s city and the Mecca of Hinduism

- Aditya Sinha

“Where all others’ paths end, ours begins,” the Aghori baba near Harishchandra Ghat says. His skin is deepest burnt-brown; his head-cloth and body-wrap black. Only his eyes blaze white, answering my questions with weary amusement. I’ve caught him during his daily late afternoon hunt for wood from a spent funeral pyre at the cremation ghat.

Varanasi is Hinduism’s Mecca and Lord Shiva’s city, mystical and weird like Shankar Bhagwan. It is the Lord’s Matrix: it is spiritual punk. Foreigners come perhaps because they see the mysticism with a clarity that sometimes eludes Indians, for whom Varanasi is a filthy, squalid, never-ending small town. Varanasi is the departure spaceport for salvation-seekers before they head to the s-dimension (“s” for spiritual).

Varanasi aka Banaras aka Kashi (city of lights) aka Anand Kaanan (forest of bliss): The name derives from the five kos of land between the rivers Varuna and Assi. Mythically, Varanasi sits on Shiva’s trishul’s middle prong. Eighty ghats watch the river Ganga flow by. A handful of lesser, postmodern ghats have lately sprung up. Cremation mostly happens at Harishchandra Ghat and the larger Manikarnika Ghat. Located near the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, Manikarnika Ghat is a few hundred metres before the popular Dasashwamedha Ghat. Manikarnika’s mythology is that Shiva was passing by with Goddess Sati and she lost an earring (mani karna in Sanskrit) here, condemning the spot to forever have funeral pyres.