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…

Join the photographer at
www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved.
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

The hijras’ house

 

© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved. 
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

To give birth to a hermaphrodite is still considered by simple Indians to be one of the most terrible curses than can befall a woman.
At the same time the blessing of a hijra is considered to be unusually potent.
It can make a barren woman fertile.
It can scare off malevolent djinns.
It can nullify the evil eye.
In the streets hijras are jeered at, sometimes even pelted with rubbish.
Yet at a poor family’s most crucial and most public celebrations, at a marriage or at the birth of a male child, the absence of a hijra would almost invalidate the whole ceremony.
(From City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi by William Dalrymple – 1993)

This house is in a village nearby Varanasi (Benaras) where leaves a Hijra community.
Sunita, the guru, is Muslim and Shushila who wears a yellow sari was born in a Hindu family.
Spirituality has been overpowering religion, they can’t have children but they take care of most of the children of the village.
Hijras are physiological males who have feminine gender identity, women’s clothing and other feminine gender roles.
They have a long recorded history in the Indian subcontinent, from the antiquity, as suggested by the Kama Sutra period onwards.

Join the photographer at www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

 

Encouraging

 

© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved. 
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

“Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.”
(Swami Vivekananda – Indian Spiritual leader of the Hindu religion (Vedanta), 1863-1902)

Anil is standing inside his house while his father enjoys the rays of the winter sun.
I met Anil many years ago when he was a young boy, it is nice to see him changing season after season, becoming a young man, having “his own ideas”…
His house is facing the Ganges close to the place where Chai Baba, his uncle, makes his famous tea in Varanasi (Benaras).
After school Anil comes nearby to sell postcards, sacred threads and jewels made of glass beads.
He is learning French, in order to be able to speak with some friends of mine who are encouraging him since a long time.
This picture is dedicated to them and especially to Erik Truffaz who once titled a track of his album “Anil” for him.

Join the photographer at https://www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

Far From The Madding Crowd

© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved. 
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

“…Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way…”
(From “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray – British poet, 1716–1771)

This is Nandeshwar Ghat which stands along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
Anyone who comes to this part of the river which is far from the crowd of the center, is walking in James Prinsep’s footsteps in search of a timeless beauty.
Nothing there has changed from his drawings made two hundred years ago.

Join the photographer at https://www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

A Heavenly Mansion

© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved. 
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

“Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.”
(William Butler Yeats – Irish Writer, Dramatist and Poet. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, 1865-1939)

This amazing mansion stands at Rani ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
This ghat is near the bridge where no tourist goes, it is a very quiet place away from the noise and the turmoil of the center.
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…

Join the photographer at https://www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

A True Home

© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved.
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

“…A community needs a soul if it is to become a true home for human beings.
You, the people must git it this soul.”
(Pope John Paul II, 1920-2005)

As I was walking in the old Kashi I saw this door opened and those ladies talking in the courtyard kept my attention.
Like in many houses in Varanasi (Benaras) this is where it is possible to feel what is commonly defined as the soul.
It is not only a place to live but a shelter and a real home for the members of a family.

Join the photographer at www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography