Varanasi

On a crescent-moon sweep of the Ganges

The rejuvenated sun strikes the City of Light:

Ashrams, temples, pavilions and shrines

Shine gold and majestic, casting deep reflections.

Bathers go down to the ghats, whose roots

Reach into the water.

In the narrow streets samsara proliferates

In infinite protean forms,

But here, here is moksha.

On the river steps students practise yoga,

Smoke spirals from perennial funeral pyres

And famous spires elevate the mind.

The city that rules the earth’s centre

Gathers Creation within its mandala,

The crossroads of the soul.

Here, all is darshana,

Oneness witnessed through innumerable lenses.

Varanasi guards the eight directions;

Time itself is earthed in these walls.

The world turns through creation and destruction

But Kashi the imperishable cannot be moved;

Between two rivers, the Sword and the Averter,

See the kshetra, the chakra between the eyebrows,

Obliterator of sins.


Birds still sing in the Forest of Bliss,

Bees make gold, and blossoms swell,

All the animals prosper in peace,

And even the gods are envious.

Transparent here is the membrane

Between dimensions;

Shiva is in every stone, every atom,

Every pilgrim come here to be free.

Here, the corpse of the universe, its cycle run,

Will coil in serpent slumber.

From the Himalayas to Kanya Kumari,

India spins the pilgrims’ web,

All the fording places of the spirit,

Where avatars descend and men rise up.

Kashi, the crystal, focuses and refracts

The light of all India’s tirthas;

Kashi inheres in every place,

And every place inheres in Kashi-

The seven sacred cities and the seven sacred rivers;

The one hundred and eight seats of the Goddess;

The twelve places where the linga shone forth as a column of light;

The sixty-eight places where linga appeared self-engendered;

The four divine abodes, arms of a swastika,

Badrinath, Puri, Rameshvaram,and Dvaraka.


In every shrine Shiva-linga focus power,

Shaft set in circular base,

Womb-seat of Shakti;

From the womb a vaginal channel

Drains off libations.

A snake coils up the channel

Or winds around the shaft.

Centrifugal evolution into infinite variety;

Centripetal involution into the moveless centre;

Opposing forces body forth in stone.

Manifest, unmanifest God

Phases through innumerable forms;

The three worlds are transpierced

By the lingam of light.

A devotee, his rite completed,

Casts a makeshift lingam into the river.

These waters are liquid wisdom,

And liberation-seekers once came here

To drown themselves, happy to die in Kashi.

Bathers climb the steps of Kedara ghat,

To the self-born lingam in the temple.

In the Age of Perfection this lingam was a jewel;

Then it became gold; and, after that, silver;

And now, in the Age of Strife, it is stone.


The sun has come to Kashi for a year,

Disguised first as a beggar,then a rich man,

Then a heretic, and finally a sadhu.

A husband and wife bathe together

In a solar pool, offering squashes to the water,

Praying to conceive a son.

An old man standing in the Ganges

Cups the filthy water in his hands,

As the ashes of the dead swirl by-

To him, it is the purest nectar!

O, Ganges, quintessence of all rivers,

Moving mass of scriptures,

Vigilant energy of the Supreme!

Every drop is divinity distilled,

Cleansing ingrained sin.

Each temple, each image has its own day and hour;

Each moment in time has its pattern.

When the Earth sinks, weightless, deathless.Kashi

Will float upon the flood,


City of transcendence, sheathed soul

With five layers, each subtler towards the core-

Food, breath, heart, intellect and bliss.

The city itself is the yogic body,

Veined with meridians and channels,

A fiery ladder, a demi-god’s spine.

Here the simplest pleasures

Delight the complex man-

A succulent mouthful

Or freshly laundered clothes’ caress...

He who dies in Kashi

Hears Siva whisper in his ear

The mantra of the crossing-

Liberation for all beings.

Even the tiniest microbe, if it dies here,

Will be released into nirvana,

A crawling ant no less than a Brahmin.

These inconspicuous birds, pecking on the ground,

Were they not once celestial spirits

Translated to earth in myriad forms,

Now congregating in Kashi for the final crossing,

Each flying in at his appointed time?


In the cremation ground, the eldest son,

Clutching flaming splints of kusha grass,

Circumambulates the pyre counterclockwise

Then stoops to set the wood alight.

Once the fire has done its work

And the corpse has shrunk to nothing,

He cracks his father’s skull with a stick,

Opening an exit for the soul.

Filling a clay pot with river water,

He throws it backwards over his shoulder,

At the dimming embers, then walks away,

Not looking back, trying to tame his grief,

For the tears of the living can only pain the dead.