BENGALURU: I watched the movie Kalki 2928 AD and was fascinated by the world they created. But the real reason for my excitement for the movie was their depiction of one of my favourite cities in the world – Kashi. A city with so much personality, it needs three names to encompass it – Kashi, Varanasi, and Benares. Some of my favourite human beings were born in the city – Ravi Shankar, Kabir, and Premchand.
I had read books, watched movies, and lived with people from the city. I loved their usage of Hindi – refreshingly unlike the Urdu-filled lingo of Bollywood Hindi. In Telugu weddings, there is a custom called ‘Kashi Yatra’, where the groom decides to give up everything and sets out to the city of Kashi to live as a hermit. But the bride’s brothers convince their brand-new brother-in-law to reconsider his decision and get married! (The hope of dowry probably makes the decision a little easier).
While I haven’t been married, life got in the way of me making my own Kashi Yatra. When I finally embarked on my journey to the city, I left like a child visiting an amusement park of history. In mythology, Kashi is considered the first city where humans began living. Historians consider it one of the world’s oldest continually inhabited cities. But for most others, it is a city to end life on a high. A reminder that our lives, our Instagram likes, and our cinematic dislikes – will all vanish with our bodies. This fatalistic nature is reflected in the city’s inhabitants too.
The streets run like veins in a central nervous system. The animals of Kashi seem wise and brooding. Cows chew their food in the middle of the roads, with the sagacity of Socrates. Dogs have a permanent look of confusion Confucius on their faces. Goats were unaware that Virat Kohli is now being associated with them, and continued to ruminate on life’s important questions. Human beings, animals, and motor vehicles walked the streets of life with the calmness of Buddha on herbs.
The same sense of fatality is also reflected in the businessmen of Kashi. Paan shops only sold paan – no cigarettes, mints, or chai. Countless shops sold just one item – malai. The learned men running the shops made you wait for as long as they wanted. Shops were shut in the afternoons, but you could see the owners lounging on cots inside. Customers might be kings, but even kings come to Kashi to die. And what is a little time in the larger scheme of things, when everybody was going to finally end up in a ghat a few kilometers away? If Jeff Bezos visits Kashi, he will end the same-day delivery processes that he has perfected so well.
I spent an unhealthy amount of time on Manikarnika ghat and watched as bodies were burnt one after the other. It made me question my anxiety, my goals, and my desires in life. Once I had feasted on the heavenly foods of Kashi, I returned to my hotel room and ordered a burger from an app. The delivery agent took 75 minutes to deliver the burger, completely upending the meaning of the term ‘fast food’.
Our scriptures say that when the world gets incorrigibly corrupted, Kalki's avatar will descend on the earth and bring an end to the world as we know it. I hope Kalki spares the city of Kashi. A city where life and death pay rent and co-exist peacefully. A city where people begin their days with sweets – for what are calories in front of the Kaala Chakra?
(The writer’s views are personal)