SLEEP..SLEEP DEEP!

Be liberated. Give all your problems to me my son. Sleep..sleep free..sleep deep - the Mother Ganga says to the sons while taking them in her lap. 

This site is quite common on Ganga ghats of Banaras from March to September. And it is so tempting. Come, experience and enjoy it. A group night-out at Banaras ghats, silently watching late-night-stretched-till-sun-rise motions and a boat ride with an experience of life-time - सुबह-ए-बनारस (A morning at Banaras)! 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey 

BEGINNING A DAY WITH GANGA

This photograph was taken on a pre-sunrise summer morning at a Varanasi ghat. The aura of Varanasi ghats has something for everyone. This lady, probably a South Indian pilgrim, is recollecting her thoughts to begin a day on the pilgrimage after taking the holy bath in the eternal Ganga trying to personalize the one coherent course away from a myriad of thoughts. 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey 

PANDA AT VARANASI’S GANGA

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey 

‘Pandas’ at Varanasi Ghats are an conspicuous presence. They are known by many attributes. Some call them priests; some call them half-priests; some call them among frauds. Basically they are a class surviving on the religious tourists who come to the Ganga at Varanasi. Dressed in saffron or white robes or ‘dhoti-kurta’, their day begins with the morning sun and ends after the ‘Ganga Aarti’. In summers, they prefer to sit during morning and evening hours when tourists flock the scene. Come winters, the scene shifts to the sunny daylight. Special religious occasions and festivities are exceptions as they ensure their round the clock presence. They act as keepers of baggages of tourists who decide to take a holy dip in the river. They offer them mirror and comb. In addition, they offer to conduct some ritual worship to the gods expecting some donations or compensation for it. Its simple business and depends on the customer (the religious tourist). If you know about them you won’t go near them or would be practical in dealing with them. Travellers unaware of their ways, like from other parts of India, from abroad or the rural folk, bring good returns for them. But, nonetheless, they are an important part of the ‘Ganga at Varanasi’ ecosystem. Like many inherent attributes of the ‘Ganga ghats’ culture in Varanasi, they form the cluster of continued presence. Not all are in the same league. Some of them are good but like all good things, they are handful. Probably, on the whole, they remind us of the business aspect of religion. 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey 

BINAYAK!!

A DIGITAL SKETCH OF BINAYAK BY RAGINI

Yet, at times, in Soulful moments!

Don’t know what completes me

Can’t say what repletes me

Never cared to know what depletes me

Can’t let happen what obsoletes me

The classical subcutaneous rebel

Comes but fails yet again to compel

O’ yes, that subliminally orthodox spell

What help in biding time to yell?  

Thanks again to all its surface swell

Time and the cruel ordeal of separation!

Relapse and the cool order of anticipation!

Don’t know whether it was,

A spontaneous segregation?

Can’t say if it was,

Pro to natural amalgamation?

Never thought of such a retrospection!

Won’t go again for,

What created that deviation?

So many parallel lines of ambiguous identity

Yet prevails the only fulcrum of innocent probity

Don’t know what completes me

Can’t say what repletes me

Never cared to know what depletes me

Can’t let happen what obsoletes me

Yet, at times, in Soulful moments

The thought surfaces, runs to meet me

Holding the identity, to complete me 

Caring enough to caress, to protect me

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey 

As It Is To BE!

Today I saw the Life
It was,
As dreaming in the wild
Eyes closed,
A mind tuned to the beat
Static though,
Thoughts feel sip of the neat
The late night wind rushes,
The morning rain gushes
The figurative stillness,
Gives way to the,
Normative, wild, Newness
Today I saw the Life
As it was, as it is to BE!

Stooges of the ‘Demo’cracy

An ironical but interesting case study - material for a potboiler, Indian TV style soap opera, case study based documentary, an epoch making satire - elements firmly in place - all the need is now an observant eye - to see how a generation of lip-serving, low on morale, high on arrogance, bottom low on humanity ‘neats’ is giving way to the political progeny of the worst kind of mental make-up  - and we claim to be the world's largest 'demo'cracy - where exist arrogant 'rulers' believing in the need to keep millions deprived n hence ignorant to continue unbridled their run of exploitation. 

And this class of rulers, again, has jokingly gainsome segregations where they look killing each-other on the surface but get ready to share even the bed irrespective of their chromosomal affiliations once it comes to the opportunism of even the lowest denominator. Stooges – all of them, they are. But, here in the case of the largest ‘demo’cracy of the world, no one among the base of this skinny class of leaders, knows who’s controlling whom!

And don’t blame ‘the human’ here. It’s animal. So these stooges are needed to be kept in the zoological realm of classification. For, they know just one emotion – how to keep them and their flock ahead of and insulated from everything – for, they start believing they are the born rulers. Pity them! For, they never learn from the history and fall again and again to human realm of classification where, they start polluting the atmosphere from the day one. And here, we have the circle having another wheel again!

Interesting potboiler material! Isn’t it?