Blessings of Banaras – 2019

Sometimes real life is so intense that I forget to leave its shadow on the internet in  the form of posts on the blog or on facebook.

And then on a rainy day like today, when I look at my blog – which to me is my diary more or less – and find that all of November 2019 and most of December I had written nothing, it shocks me. Especially since I’d had the most amazing life-expanding trip to Banaras in those weeks.

Then I remembered that I was too busy relishing the experiences to touch it with digital ink and allow the feelings to be corrupted by thoughts.

For when I write it down, I know that I am leaving out of the writing far more of the real experience than I am able to fit into words – and that loss is unbearable as long as one can remember the ‘feel’ of it all.

“As long as …. ”

Sooner or later the feels fade away and then the thought creeps in ‘what if i forget’ and then it becomes important to jot it down.

So here I am, picking up the little memories of those few days in Banaras and putting them together on a digital page.

The blessings received on that trip were high impact and permanent.

Believers will say that it was destined, but non-believers will say it was serendipity.

And those who are blessed amply with romanticism & imagination may firmly conclude that it was a result of puppeteering by my grandma whose ashes we’d immersed right here in Banaras in the Gangaji that brought me back here.

Whichever it was, it opened doors to unforgettable experiences. And in the end the why & how does not matter.

All that matters is that it did happen.

Some notes (being added one by one maybe once a day) teased out from one monumental composite experience:

Life & Death & Thanatology

The Ganga Arti

Kites

The Musician

Aghori Baba’s Ashram

Handloom Weavers of Banaras

The Family

Ganga Snan

Streets of Banaras

Yoga Initiation

Return to Banaras 2020

Sparsh Darshan on Mahashivratri

RangBhari Ekadashi Festival in Banaras

***

The dots all connect in the end and if you are watching for it you can spot the connections as they occur.

Sometimes the connections are like rivers meeting oceans …slowly and serenely – and hard to notice. And sometimes it is like electric charges from the clouds connecting to earth in an explosion of lightning energy – difficult to not notice. The Banaras experience was like the latter.

And once the dots connect there is no unseeing that connection!

Life – it must be lived to find out the puppeteer’s plan!

***

jm

August 2020