Crystal Ships of Benaras

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“Before you slip into unconsciousness
I’d like to have another kiss
Another flashing chance at bliss
Another kiss, another kiss

Oh tell me where your freedom lies
The streets are fields that never die
Deliver me from reasons why
You’d rather cry, I’d rather fly

The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain
The time you ran was too insane
We’ll meet again, we’ll meet again

The crystal ship is being filled
A thousand girls, a thousand thrills
A million ways to spend your time
When we get back, I’ll drop a line”
(“Crystal ship” by The Doors)

This is a view of Bhonsala ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras) where the words of Jim Morrison echo through the ages…

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In Your Light

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“In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest
Where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.”
(Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi – Poet and Sufi mystic, 1207-1273)

This red sari was drying under the sun along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).

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The Absolute and The Particular

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“All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory — of the absolute and of the particular.
Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface of different beauties.
The particular element in each manifestation comes from the emotions: and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty.”
(Charles Baudelaire – French Poet, 1821-1867)

I’ll never get tired of taking pictures of the Taj Mahal…
This is the absolute embodiment of everything on earth.

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One Eternal Sigh

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“Kingly power is like a cruel bolt of thunder,
Let that fade away like the blood-red sky at dusk,
Let just one eternal sigh remain like sadness in the sky
Wasn’t that all you’d ever asked for?
The glittering jewels cast their spell like an eternal magical mystery.
But even if that does vanish,
Let just one tear drop roll down the cheeks of Time;
The pure light of Taj Mahal.”
(Rabindranath Tagore – Indian Poet, Playwright and Essayist. Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, 1861–1941)

Endless passion, everlasting love, eternal sigh…the Taj Mahal should remain forever the essence of perfection…
However there is a threat over this image of Heaven as it could collapse within four years because wooden foundations are rotting.
( Read more at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2045183/Taj-Mahal-collap… )
Nowadays it is almost impossible to take this picture anymore as the army doesn’t allow to go to this side of the Yamuna river.

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The Creators’ Glory

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“Should guilty seek asylum here,
Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.
Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,
All his past sins are to be washed away.
The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;
And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.
In this world this edifice has been made;
To display thereby the creator’s glory.”
(Emperor Shah Jahan)

It is said that Shah Jahan wrote himself this poem about the Taj Mahal that he built for Mumtaz Mahal, his favorite wife (Original Source: Mahajan, Vidya Dhar (1970). Muslim Rule In India. p. 200).
The Taj Mahal seen from the banks of river Yamuna might be a common dream for many but truly this stunning architectural beauty is second to none and each time I come there I simply love it a little more…

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Accepting Decay

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“To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.”

(George Orwell – English Novelist and Essayist, 1903-1950)

This is the back of the main building of the Sampurnanand Sanskrit University in Varanasi (Benaras) which was established in 1791 and this is a part of the jantar mantar (observatory).
Such an architecture wouldn’t be expected there and it is adding mystery to the oldest living city where the hours have definitely decided to stop.
Sometimes during summers I seat at the door of a classroom where flows a light breeze and I can listen to the French lessons at the end of the day.
This is how I met Himanshu who ever since always comes by chance to practice my mother tongue at my office which is nearby…

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Dreaming All The Time

“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.”
(from “Remembrance of Things Past” by Marcel Proust – French novelist, 1871-1922)

This is a view of Panchganga Ghat with Alamgir Mosque on the top which was built by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb on the site of the Vishnu Temple and it is a blend of Hindu and Mughal styles of architecture.
The lower part of this mosque still has a Hindu temple.
Opening a book with drawings of Varanasi (Benaras) by James Princep allows to see that many buildings were kept at that time in a worst condition than nowadays.
It is really surprising because anyone can easily believe that many palaces and temples are today in decay and those sketches prove the opposite, in fact as time went by, people preserved and even restored many historic buildings.
It changes the way to appreciate the oldest living city in the world…

Later, photographers of the XIX° and early XX° century made stunning shots of the ghats.
There is an old picture of this ghat made around 1910 which is a key to a dream,
www.oldindianphotos.in/2012/03/alamgir-mosque-and-ghat-in…
From the same place this was shot with the same angle and, in order to “dream more”, the two minars which fell down during an earthquake are back in the frame…
The Eternal city offers endless dreams for anyone “In Search of Lost Time”…

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Lost Eternity

“How mankind defers from day to day the best it can do, and the most beautiful things it can enjoy, without thinking that every day may be the last one, and that lost time is lost eternity!”
(Max Müller – German philologist and Orientalist, 1823–1900)

This is a view of Bhonsala ghat in Varanasi (Benaras) where the holy waters of the Ganges carry away lost time for a lost eternity…

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The Lost Kingdom

“But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years – and it opens.”
(from ” In Search of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust – French novelist, 1871-1922)

Walking along the Ganges in the Eternal city of Varanasi (Benaras) allows one’s own “Search of Lost Time”.
Every corner opens another drawer of the soul and shows several fragments of a “Remembrance of Things Past”.
Behind this door there is a long staircase which leads to several corridors and to a temple which is at the last floor.
During daytime there are bat echolocation calls providing a mysterious atmosphere of lost kingdom to this palace…

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Memories & Dreams

“We all have our time machines.
Some take us back, they’re called memories.
Some take us forward, they’re called dreams.”
(Jeremy Irons – British Actor, b.1948)

And sometimes time machines are mixing memories and dreams in the old Kashi…
Nearby Alamgir Mosque the milkman was riding a bicycle in the narrow streets of this part of Varanasi (Benaras) in order to deliver a lady who was waiting in the shadow of a door.
The summer heat was already loading down the atmosphere…

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