The Legend of Savitri

Savitri, a princess, fell in love with a poor man called Satyavan.
Narada Muni warned her not to marry Satyavan as he would die at an early age.
He even told her when Satyavan was going to die. But Savitri was unmoved and married Satyavan.
On the day of Satyavan’s death, she saw that Yama himself had Savitri begging Yama for her hushband lifecome to take him.
She begged Yama not to take Satyavan.
But Yama said that no one could stop death.
Savitri followed them for miles and miles. Impressed with her determination, Yama said, “I will give you two boons; you can ask for anything except the life of Satyavan.”
For the first boon, Savitri asked for the well-being of her father-in- law.
For the second she cleverly asked for a hundred sons.
Without thinking, Yama granted her two boons.
At this Savitri asked Yama to return her husband because without him, she could not have any sons.
Defeated, Yama returned Savitri her husband.

This painting explains the life of Savitri, it is on a wall temple dedicated to Sati in a gali of the old Kashi, somewhere nearby the Chowk in Varanasi (Benaras).

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Becoming A Sati

“Let these women, whose husbands are worthy and are living, enter the house with ghee (applied) as corrylium ( to their eyes).
Let these wives first step into the pyre, tearless without any affliction and well adorned.”
(Rig Veda X.18.7 )

This is a picture of a Sati stone sculpture shot near Raj ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
This statue shows a married couple and it is marking the site where a woman died on the funeral pyre of her husband.
Nowadays many of these stones are worshipped as images of Shiva and Parvati.
The practice is banned since 1829.

The term is derived from the original name of the goddess Sati, who self-immolated because she was unable to bear her father Daksha’s humiliation of her (living) husband Shiva.
It may also be used to refer to the widow.
A sati is now sometimes interpreted as “chaste woman”.
Sati appears in both Hindi and Sanskrit texts, where it is synonymous with “good wife”; the term suttee was commonly used by Anglo-Indian English writers.

(Being the son of a contemporary sati, I carry ambivalent thoughts for those ladies even though I have a deep respect for their courage)

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An Endless Well

“Vel once told me that the heart isn’t like a cup of water.
You can’t drain it.
It’s more like an endless well, and the more you love, the more it pumps out.”
(From “Endgame” by Ann Aguirre)

After sunrise this lady was pumping water near Raj ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).

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Out Of The Depths

 

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.
Beautiful people do not just happen.”
(Elisabeth Kübler-Ross – Swiss American psychiatrist, 1926–2004)

This man was enjoying the first monsoon rain nearby Raj ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
I thought that there was a real elegance coming from his attitude, the kind of elegance which belongs to those who know the depth of life…

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The Holiest Situation Upon Earth

“Benares. This holy city of the Hindus was at the height of its prosperity at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ, and was already old when Plato taught in Athens and when the earliest Roman fortress rose upon the Palatine.
The first view that I gained of Benares from across the Ganges quickened my pulse and made me catch my breath, not merely from its great antiquity, but from the fact that to a vast proportion of the human race this is the holiest situation upon earth, raised spiritually as far above the ordinary abodes of man as the unrivaled summits of the Himalayas soar above the plains of Hindustan.”
(From “India – John L. Stoddard’s Lectures” by John L. Stoddard, published by Norwood Press in 1901)

This is a view of the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras) from Scindia ghat to Munshi ghat.
It was shot at the end of the day when the light comes from the west and gives the feeling that sunsets don’t last very long in the Eternal city…

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A Revealed Paradise

“It is this admirable, this immortal, instinctive sense of beauty that leads us to look upon the spectacle of this world as a glimpse, a correspondence with heaven.
Our unquenchable thirst for all that lies beyond, and that life reveals, is the liveliest proof of our immortality.
It is both by poetry and through poetry, by music and through music, that the soul dimly descries the splendours beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings tears to our eyes, those tears are not a proof of overabundant joy: they bear witness rather to an impatient melancholy, a clamant demand by our nerves, our nature, exiled in imperfection, which would fain enter into immediate possession, while still on this earth, of a revealed paradise.”
(Charles Baudelaire – French poet, 1821-1867)

This amazing mansion gathering classical Indian and European styles stands at Rani ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
This ghat is far from the center, in a very quiet place away from the noise and the turmoil of the city.
On this side of the river many other buildings recall the splendour of the past which once made the renown of the City of Lights…

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Ageless, Outside of Time

“There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”
(From “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera)

Sometimes I walk in the maze of the galis, the narrow lanes making the old Varanasi (Benaras), while I am simply following the scent of a deep incense.
I meet pilgrims, beggars, sadhus, lost foreigners and cows along my way who make the essence of the oldest living city in the world…
There is no use to daydream anymore among those ubiquitous little beams of magic soaked in nostalgia…

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A New World

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
(From “The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934” by Anaïs Nin)

Those men where sitting under a big umbrella in front of the Vishnu Temple which is at Manikarnika ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
They seemed to be good friends and they responded my jokes quite easily…

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A Dash of Colours

“All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites. ”
(Marc Chagall – Russian artist, 1887-1985)

As the heat became unbearable, those ladies came to find an illusion of freshness under the big umbrellas used by the priests staying at Shitla Ghat.
The colours of their sarees and bangles enthralled my camera…

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True Wisdom

“I know what I have given you.
I do not know what you have received.”
(Antonio Porchia – Italian poet, 1886-1968)

This man is a worshipper of Shiva and stays in an ashram near Raj ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
Since a few days it has been very hot in the city but last morning there was a gentle breeze which is a sign of a coming monsoon and this wise man seemed to be enjoying the weather from his balcony…

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