Journey to the City of the Light

By Daniel Dorfman

When I returned from a journey to India, I was met with as many curious questions as befuddled faces. The most popular one was “why?” and while I often stood pontificating on an experience I had seen with my own eyes (a dentist pulling teeth in a street gutter), heard with my own ears (the unforgiving cacophony of car horns) and tasted with my own mouth (well, this one is really beyond words), I was reminded how far I had travelled , and how otherworldly India is when compared with home. The objective of the trip was to film a city called Varanasi, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world and the holy site for more than three religions. The fact that I was a tourist in another country provided me the special privilege to gain a unique insight beyond those who have lived there since the day they were born. (Ever notice how few New Yorkers have actually visited the Statue of Liberty?) More than anything I remember, however, is how desperately I tried to remind myself that when I returned to New Jersey, India would continue to exist; the things that I saw would continue alive in memory. A young girl dressed in a ragged and torn ballerina tutu spots me in a passing crowd. She takes my hand and introduces herself. Her eyes are black but they glow like the Indian sun. “Hi,” she says and smiles. “I’m Muni.” “Hi,” I manage to say but struggle to find words that will break through this unusual encounter. She begins to walk. Pointing. Naming. She acts as if we’ve been friends forever. She pulls me into a labyrinth of dark alleyways that flood with sweet smells, frenzied clamor and gazing faces. The farther along we walk, the narrower the streets get and the tighter I hold her hand. Ordinary norms are quickly lost on me. I realize I am as far from home as I’ve ever been. When I begin to convince myself that none of it is real, a dream maybe, she pulls me out of the alleys and back into the light. The sun illuminates a landscape familiar of pictures in history books of a world that existed two thousand years earlier.


“Here,” she says matter-of-factly, “Ghat.” I was standing on the banks of the Ganges River 8,000 miles rom home. The sun burnt away the morning fog laying bare Varanasi, the City of Light. Our unlikely fellowship, a mix of Indians and Americans, ages ranging from 20 to 60, went off to capture the morning Hindu rituals along the banks of the holiest of rivers. There is little to compare with the splendor of the Ganges River in the morning. Bright rays of the rising sun spray across the glittering water and are met with a crescendo of drums and bells, prayers and salutations. Nowhere in the world is the sun received with such celebration as in Varanasi. It appears as though Hollywood (or Bollywood, really) spotlights illuminate the banks like a grand stage where ancient temples, shrines, ashrams and pavilions stretch along the river for as far as the eye can see. At the foot of these steps thousands of worshippers greet the rising sun with ritual bathing, the practice of yogic exercises, breath control, and conduct meditative disciplines. Along the quiet neighborhood Ghats, the women slap brightly colored fabrics against stone slabs with a rhythm that resembles a classical Indian dance. Enormous stretches of the riverbank are covered with the patchwork of elaborately colored saris. Holy men, or Sadhus, lift their painted faces to the sky and submerge themselves in the river, chanting Sanskrit mantras in deference to the gods.

It is in many ways a sight that is so removed from anything I’ve ever witnessed it resembles a beautiful, strange dream; a dream created when the brain cannot decide on one shade and so relies on an infinite arsenal of color and design. When Muni announces she is going swimming, she asks me to watch over her most prized and limited possessions. Before I can even question or caution that I saw a dead floating ox in the water just moments earlier, she hands me her watch, purse, and necklace. She undresses naïvely, takes a running jump and dives off the steps into the river. She swims underwater and waves. She could be any seven-year-old in the world enjoying the splendour of cool water on a warm day, but when I realize that just one hundred feet away the smoke of cremation pyres is rising and the ashes of the recently dead are swirling through the water, I see that this is no average little girl, at least no average little girl from my world.

By way of necessity, Muni has learned five different languages to be most persuasive when asking soft hearted tourists for rupees. The riverbank is her home, workplace and playground, as it is for thousands of other Indians who live sprawled along the river’s twisted ends. In the ancient days, Hindus believe, it flowed in the heavens as the Great White Milky Way. It is believed that the most revered of Hindu gods, Lord Shiva, was persuaded to catch the Ganges in her hair as she fell so the earth would not be shattered by torrential force. And so it is said she plummeted down from heaven to the Himalayas where she meandered in the tang led ascetic locks of Shiva before flowing out upon the plains of India. So too did Muni dive off the edge of the river banks into the water again and again, smiling and singing. In more earthly concepts, the river is considered a goddess and supreme mother. Devout Hindus on the banks of the river cup their hands and pour the water back into the river as an offering to ancestors and their gods. When we visited a hospice for those who plan to die in the holy city, a woman was brought spoonfuls of river water to quench her parched lips until the time that her body would return to ashes and be laid to rest at the bottom of the river.


Invocations of how the Indians consider the river Ganges as a divine force come from every direction up and down the river. Colourfully dressed pilgrims arrived packed in boats. They claimed to have been travelling for months in hopes of finally reaching the city and having the thrill of plunging into the river for a sacred bath. In this city every aspect of human life is brought into a religious arena. As quoted in the holiest of Hindu scriptures, “if only the bone of a person should touch the water of the Ganges that person shall be honoured in heaven and experience what is called Moksha or the freedom from rebirth. ” The steps that lead from the river to darkened inner streets are flooded with saffron-robed Sadhus, who roam free from material concern. When I looked them in the eye, I couldn’t help but get the sense that they were seeing me but not really seeing me. When I took photographs and they looked at the camera with an unwavering glint of humanity and blankness, this further proved it. They were living in another realm.



A pilgrim’s shelter that resembled what I recognized to be a public park was covered with straw and sleeping bags. Groups of pilgrims flooded the tent surrounded by a sea of odds and ends used mostly for marking the boundaries for their temporary homes. Some had just arrived with their families after travelling for weeks. Some were preparing to vacate and continue onto their final destination. The smells of incense, curry and cow faeces combined to fill the air. I met a man who introduced himself by two names, the second of which was Manohar Babaji. When I asked him why he had two names he said the first man was gone. Before making this journey, I could never comprehend the meaning of a single resource that ignites a sense of immense connectivity within the spiritual life of a cit y. Every person on the banks of the river Ganges is a fibre in a huge woven tapestry. Pilgrims come to bathe in the river; families come to spread loved one’s ashes. For an entire society, the river provides life, from the most mundane daily chores down to the awareness of the next life. It is a massive pipeline of energy that the whole city is tapped into. The rhythm of a little girl’s stride is captured in the eyes of a wandering Sadhu or reflected in the rhythm of a woman pounding her sari on the riverbed. The energy of the river that draws tens of thousands of pilgrims to bathe in its waters feeds the flames of the burning Ghats and the promise of an end to the cycle of birth and death.

The river is a place that opened up a singular awareness. For a moment, I was tapped into the pulse of the city and the river’s auspicious electricity, which powers the lives of millions of people who live through it. It is a notion of such elegant simplicity, and as I gaze out into the river, I can’t imagine anything as poetic or real existing anywhere else in the world. For a moment I began to feel the flow of the river pumping through my own heart and veins. On the plane ride home I reflect on how we did not reach all the places we had planned, and how special it is that within the city of Varanasi there is a sacred place at every step.

Daniel Dorfman is an English major at the University of Delaware. Apart from his college studies, he enjoys visiting places like Israel, Cuba and Africa, and writing about and photographing his travel experiences.