Aimless in Benaras - it's been a couple of days since I finished reading this book by Bishwanath Ghosh- I noticed that I had purchased the book in 2020 , but I picked it up to read only now!!??
Just got all tangled up in the web of life I guess and perhaps now was the right time...
Bishwananth Ghosh is a writer whom I think, each reader by the time they finish reading his book, will feel that they know him very well. I have read all his other books. It is the way he writes- a breezy, conversational style...like old friends meeting up for a cup of chai chai across a rustic table in an old tea- coffee shop. However, I know that I shall perhaps never go on such a rendezvous, given that I tend to be very wary of meeting people face to face- I can get completely tongue tied. Quite an irony if you had an inkling of the ruckus that goes on in my head nonstop. All that loquaciousness, garrulousness reserved for writing out. The tangible human being unnerves me.
While I can converse almost incessantly in my head or on paper/ monitor- (but then even that gets edited), place me in front of an intelligent being and I shall go all silent after the initial cursory small talk.
So Benaras is a place that does not figure in my list of dream destinations...the other places that Bishwanath took us along with him...seemed quaintly interesting. Aimless in Benaras, as much as I enjoyed Bishwanath's rambling style as always, still the mental association of the place with Death around every corner was extremely discomfiting. The stark, austere ambience, the dinghy, smoky gullies, the ubiquitous crowd and most imposing of all- the constant, looming proximity of that great leveller- filled my soul with a sense of doom.
Ironically, it is this very Benaras which has acquired an abiding sense of equanimity.
And it is in fact his writing style in fact which is the saving grace and transforms the reading experience.
The essence of certain lines were reassuring and redeeming in a strange way-
That since you are anyway going to be a heap of ash someday, you might as well be happy...
Sometimes it is this very fact that feels actually discouraging to try to be happy because anyway in the end nothing mattered, everything would end up in sorrow...What was the point in trying to dredge for happiness when you know it wouldn't last...
And yet, the way Bishwanath arrives at and lead us too towards this acceptance and surrender- I found myself free of fears and insecurities (for the time at least) because I am made to realise time and again that in the end nothing matters.
It is all a matter of perspective and to be able to trudge uphill or downhill, it made sense to look from the better perspective...it helps in the journey.
And then the objective recounting of the demolitions and divisiveness ... gives the reader a dispassionate purview of incidents that have unfolded. In today's times, one is compelled to become circumspect of everything...one is never sure about the hidden agenda. The narrator simply reports conversations of the people who are directly impacted ...their clarity of thought lends credibility to the consequences of the narrative that is being slowly and deliberately scripted/generated....
Bishwanath's travelogues are so different- that one doesn't even want to call it a travelogue- it is such a personal jaunt, the perceptions, the perspectives, the insights are Bishwanath's personal responses to the sights, sounds and people around him- and it is through this trek that he takes us along- it is a favour to the reader- that fly on the wall vantage is what makes the entire sojourn a unique experience for the reader.
