My wife has been in India since mid-April 2022 and it was supposed to be a 3 month long vacation. We got married in May 2014 and within months, both of us were in the USA – far away from our parents and siblings in India. Life kept happening but then COVID19 struck and our world turned upside down. We suffered a lot the past 2 years but we believe in hope. Amidst that, our daughter Navya was born in December, 2020 and one of my sisters got married in April, 2021. I think dad is watching over us and we are slowly getting comfortable making plans for the future but we are still cautious and don’t want to leave things for the future. So with that in mind, when it was feasible for my wife and daughter to travel to India – even with peak summer in India, we didn’t think twice. Over the years, we have understood one thing, despite the limitations, we have to prioritize family over everything else. So even when we have to travel to India in November, 2022 again, we didn’t plan Neha’s vacation to time that. The weather would have been better too. We didn’t want to leave anything to chance. My laziness, procrastinations and habit of excessive planning has robbed me of so many things over the years. Had I not been the way I am, probably mom and dad’s tourist visa would have been ready by March, 2020 when COVID19 became a pandemic and we would have brought them together with us to the USA. Maybe dad would still be with us.
Anyways, what’s past is past. Neha travelled to India and she was having a nice time. I too was having a nice time with some free time for me at last. I hiked a lot and made some new friends but after some weeks, I started missing my wife and daughter so I thought why not make a quick travel plan to India. Additionally, there is always the excitement of surprising my mom with an unexpected visit. Moreover, Navya was getting naughtier by the day and it would have been an uphill task for Neha to travel with her back to the USA. That’s how the 10 day travel materialized by May-end and I hoped to make the most of it. I purchased my return tickets on May 29, 2022. I was to travel July 1 by Air India and return on July 10 by Emirates.
The plan was to travel from USA to Delhi to Varanasi by plane and then drive to Prayagraj the next day to meet my younger sister Neha – traveling from Bangalore, my wife Neha and her brother Akash. Initially I thought of staying the night in Delhi but Varanasi worked better because there was an Air Vistara flight from Delhi to Varanasi after my Air India flight landed at Delhi and it worked for me. I always had the option of taking an afternoon flight to Prayagraj the next day of reaching Delhi but who would want to miss an opportunity to visit the abode of Shiva? When Kashi was finalised, I asked a friend to join and he agreed. It didn’t take long for June to end and the next thing was an hour long delay from USA. I was still hoping to make it on time to Delhi to take the flight to Varanasi but it would be touch and go. When I reached Delhi, i made a run for the Air Vistara counter – jumping queues and thanking Delhiites who held onto their expletives on a sweltering Delhi summer morning. I barely caught my flight and reached my hotel in Varanasi around 4 PM on July 2. My friends’ train was delayed by several hours so while he was supposed to reach hours ahead of me, he actually came an hour after I arrived. I had informed him of the delay in my flight but he was kind enough to take a chance to travel from Lucknow to meet me and tour Kashi together. After a cold shower – and that became my undoing in the days to come, and a few minutes of rest, we set off for exploring the city at around 6 PM.
We decided to visit the Kashi Vishwanath temple first. I had been to the temple earlier in January, 2020 but it was such a troubled experience back then. For security reasons, we had to keep our phones away but since there is no such facility provided by the temple management itself, we had to keep our items in locks at local shops nearby. And then at the end of the line, someone said, smart watches are not allowed so I had to go back and come again. Towards the end, for a reason I don’t remember, we were separated from our father-in-law so me, my wife Neha and mother-in-law did the darshan together and we were not even sure if father-in-law could do that. It was a mess even when I felt blessed after the darshan. Cut to July, 2022, after the inauguration of the remodelling of the temple complex to open a corridor connecting the temple – a jyotirlinga, with a ghat on the ganges, I was really anxious to notice what changed. We entered from the gate near Gyanvapi and it felt divine to stand among thousands of devotees who patiently waited for their turn. I bought some lal peda for prasad and I had no idea it’s so popular there. There were multiple lines and while we indulged in chit chat between ourselves and with folks in front and behind us, the macaques nearby were a clear distraction. They are known to pounce at devotees and snatch away the prasad and everything else. There was little police presence and there were multiple lines and after some time there was a mini altercation when one of the lines was abruptly told to merge with another. Things cooled down quickly because ultimately it was about the darshan. And while me and my friend Abhishek discussed multiple things – including the revival of Sanatan Dharma by Shankaracharya, the mundane architecture of the corridor – the gate was heavily adorned though, we were approached by a priest to move ahead of the line by paying Rs 300 each. Amazingly, that was the official price for a special line but there was no information board mentioning that at the door near the mosque. We decided to pay because we had other things to do as well. There was quite a tussle at the special line as well and bulk of the tourists there were devotees from down South – mostly Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and this I am basing off my friend’s confidence in his ability to identify languages from down South. Amidst that, a visibly annoyed devotee told one of the devotees from south why they come to visit Kashi Vishwanath if they don’t want to speak Hindi. I thought of intervening but that man was soon lost among the teeming thousands. That was nasty. My friend remarked, South India has a multitude of grand Hindu temples and so many people from the Hindi belt go there for a darshan. What if people from there starting asking us to learn their language before visiting. I understand the politics of language is dirty but these are allegedly normal people with so much ignorance and vitriol and that too in the home of Shiva. I pray for sanity among people. I pray for brotherhood. Even me and my friend were there – getting shoved and pushed, but we kept our cool. The only thing in our mind was Shiva and we kept taking his name. Jai Bhole Shankar. We were able to have a divine darshan after a wait of around 75 minutes and we during that time we were even allowed to touch the Shivling. We visited the remaining temples at the complex, had a view of Ganga from the ghat and then went back to get our phones and watches from a shop outside the complex. It was incredibly hot and my t-shirt was wet but we had a lot to cover. Overall, it was a very pleasant experience at the temple complex. New guest houses are coming up between the ghat and the main temple and it was nice to see so much space at one of the holiest temples for hindus. Happy to see Mahadev having some space which he so deserves.
Next was to have some food because it had been hours and I hadn’t had anything to eat. Since my friend knew the city a lot better than me, we decided for some lassi, tamatar chaat and thandai before visiting Sankat Mochan and Durga Kund temples. There was an ancient Kali temple – one of the oldest in the city, we also visited. The lassi with malai topping was amazing. The tamatar chaat from Kashi Chat Bhandar was good too – but my friend said they make it better. The thandai was cool and refreshing but it hit me after a few hours and even when my friend said I wasn’t any different from my usual blabbering self, I could feel the difference. It was really turning out to be quite an experience. We took an auto from Godowlia – one of the melting points in Kashi, to the Hanuman and Durga temples.
I felt great after both the darshans. The laddu at Sankat Mochan temple is incredibly popular and the owners were one of the busiest folks I have seen. They were packing scrambled laddus non-stop in various denominations. I distinctly remember the taste of the lal peda but not so much of the laddu from either Sankat Mochan or Bade/Lete Hanuman temple we visited next day at Prayagraj. So this is an excuse to visit both the temples again and savor the prasad in a more mindful way. While phones were not allowed at Sankat Mochan – the site of deadly bombings in 2006 which killed almost 30 people, they were allowed at the Durga temple. It was already around 9 PM by the time were were done.
We decided to take some rest at the hotel room, change into more comfortable clothes, have dinner and then visit the ghats before calling it a day. We dined at Keshari – one of the few air-conditioned restaurants in the city, and while I loved the special vegetarian thali, my friend was only mildly impressed. Has 8 years of stay in USA dulled my palette? I think of myself an avid foodie so it becomes interesting when someone challenges me in taste – a subjective thing anyways. I still think there is a lot to learn in Indian food, faith and spirituality and my friend is perhaps more learned there so never stop listening and taking notes. Someone said a while ago, it’s stupid if you are the smartest person in the room.
We hit the ghats next. We started from Dashashwamedh ghat and covered quite a few ghats going towards Assi till Sarveshwar ghat. We then turned back and joined a gentleman at Ahilyabai ghat to feed fishes in the Ganga. We walked till Manmandir aka Manmahal ghat and then returned to our hotel room to sleep but not before having a taste of Banarsi paan. We had to get up early for a bath in the Ganga before I could leave for Prayagraj. Kashi has undergone a lot of development the past few years and the Indian PM Narendra Modi represent the city in Lok Sabha. There is visible change and the cleanliness and hygiene is apparent. We were wandering way past midnight and with the think crowd, the city looked very different. Varanasi is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world – the oldest in India and one of the holiest places for Hindus. It’s such a divine city. I will plan to visit again and this time stay longer and explore more.
The next day, even when I barely had a few hours of sleep, I very much wanted to bathe at one of the ghats in Kashi. The river here was a lot cleaner and there were ropes tied to boats to help non-swimmers. The river wasn’t very wide in peak summer but Ganga is still a big and deep river and one can easily drown if one is not careful. We abandoned the plan of taking a boat to the other side of the river which had sandy beaches and prefered to bathe at one of the ghats and we chose Ahilyabai ghat again.
While returning to our room for breakfast and departure to Prayagraj, we met Shri Surajit Dasgupta at a tea-stall near the old gate of Kashi Vishwanath temple. We had some chai pe charcha and then explored a few roadside stalls – mostly selling fresh rudraksha and shaligram, had a South Indian breakfast at our hotel – Ganges Grand, and then time to bid adieu to my friend and onward to some more explorations.
scrambled thoughts 