Photo Essay: Lost without direction, and happy to keep moving—Varanasi’s labyrinthine old gullies and the Ganga riverside provide the glimpse of a world without time, where the ancient world collapses into the present.

- Karan Madhok

A couple of times every year, I decide to get lost.

In Varanasi, my birthplace, I start at the ‘mouths’ into one of the city’s old gullies, either by Assi Ghat or Harischandra Ghat or Gadaulia, from where I could leave behind my vehicle and set off on foot. Alone or accompanied, I have become familiar with the labyrinthine ways of these old neighbourhoods, which are part of one of the oldest continuously-living civilizations on Earth. And yet, every time I venture out, I discover places I have never seen before, or I see familiar places with surprising new eyes, or I land up in unknown parts, lost without direction, but happy to keep moving.

These walks around Varanasi’s gullies and out to the ghats on the banks of the Ganga river are a surrender to chaos. I know that, if I’m walking in the general direction north, the river will be to my right and the motorable road on my left. Walking around in these ancient by-lanes, I’m surrounded by old homes, multitudes of excellent chai-wallahs, some of the best samosas on Earth, and traffic on foot and bicycles and motorbikes. I wade past cattle with their swinging tails and avoid their excrement on the stone-paved paths, and I see old temples and shrines on the way, and tiny music academies, and language schools, and factories and mills, and playing children, and religious pilgrims and tourists, and bhang shops and bakeries and kauchari-wallahs, and dogs and cats and rats. The experience is the entire universe minimised to a dense, Indian maze.

When I want to get out of the claustrophobic commotion, the ghats are usually a close clearing away. I take a right and find the steps, and boom! the world opens up. The smell of the river wafts up to me. Sometimes the scent is pleasant and fresh, like flowers offered for prayer or homemade perfumes for sale in the Vishwanath gullie; sometimes, the smell comes leaded with the effervesce of the dead, of the cremating bodies from the Manikarnika or Harishchandra ghats.

I see old temples and shrines on the way, and tiny music academies, and language schools, and factories and mills, and playing children, and religious pilgrims and tourists, and bhang shops and bakeries and kauchari-wallahs, and dogs and cats and rats. The experience is the entire universe minimised to a dense, Indian maze.

There are close to a hundred ghats, each one with its own unique history or quality, ghats dedicated to the gods, to royal patronage from different parts of the country and Nepal, ghats for different communities, ghats where temples stand and ghats with mosques, ghats filled with music, ghats filled with buffaloes, ghats used as a cricket pitch, or ghats that open up to semi-luxury hotels, ghats where people practice yoga, where they bathe, where they worship, where they relax, where they cremate the dead, where they live their lives. Except for the monsoon months when the river rises up to flood the steps, one can walk end to end over an hour or two, Assi to Rajghat. Or, one can take a boat over the holy river itself, see the ghats’ majesty from a distance, feel the splash of the water close up, get a glimpse of life as it has moved here for thousands of years.

In recent months, Varanasi’s old gullies and temples have come into special scrutiny, as the central government has purchased hundreds of old homes from their owners around the popular Vishwanath Temple, only to demolish them to build a wide ‘Kashi Vishwanath Corridor’ to encourage religious tourism. For someone who marveled over the heritage of these old homes, I was disappointed at this decision. No one temple is worth hundreds of other little histories of the city. The new corridor will no doubt give a more modernised look near the temple area, but this project will also snatch away much of the soul of these neighbourhoods.

Of course, the pandemic and the lockdown has also brought upon an unforeseen new challenge to this old city, hurting the casual chaos of old Banaras. Nevertheless, this is a city that continues to carry on: past a series of kings, viceroys, and prime ministers, past floods and plagues, past the rises and falls of the world around it. It often celebrates its perfections; it often relishes in its imperfection.

I’m only an amateur photographer, armed with no weapon greater than my iPhone camera. But there is a certain magnetism of Varanasi’s ghats, gullies, and the Ganga that makes even the most pedestrian of photographs look breath-taking. Here is a small assortment of some of the many photos I’ve taken over dozens of times of ‘losing myself’ in old city.

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Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar, whose fiction, translation, and poetry have appeared in The Literary Review, The Lantern Review, F(r)iction, and more. He is the founder of the Indian basketball blog Hoopistani and has contributed to NBA India, SLAM Magazine, FirstPost, and more. Karan is currently working on his first novel. Twitter: @karanmadhok1

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