Life and death in India’s most sacred city

In 2023, an estimated 40 million tourists and pilgrims visited Varanasi (formerly Banaras or Kashi) making it one of the most frequented destination of the Indian subcontinent. Orthodox Hindus choose to spend their twilight years in this city because of the belief that taking the last breath here liberates their soul from the rebirth cycle. In December, I stepped out of the Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport, Varanasi and inhaled the air of arguably the oldest city of the world. At least Mark Twain, the American author and litterateur, thought so. “Banaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together,” observed Twain. Contemporary Varanasi (pop. 1.7 million), as it was renamed in 1947, is a holy city sandwiched between old and the new. Its ancient temples lie cheek- by-jowl with new buildings. Old dhabas on the street corners adjoin 5-star hotels. It’s a different, unique world. Varanasi aka Kashi, is a city of paradoxes. The buzzing streets, over- stocked shops, flies, masses of people, narrow lanes and alleys, noisy vendors and rickshawallas can intimidate a rookie traveler. The city is not for the faint-hearted as its sensory overload could leave first-time visitors reeling. Nor does it reveal itself easily, testing the traveler to great extreme. Yet there are not a few who experience the spiritual peace and calm it offers, and revisit regularly. In 2023, 40 million tourists and pilgrims visited Varanasi, making it the most frequented destination of the subcontinent. Among the seven sacred cities and the epicentre of pantheistic Hinduism, it hosts one of the 12 jyotir linga sites and a shakti pitha site, and for orthodox Hindus it is deemed a ideal place to die and be cremated. Legends and hymns extoll the healing power of the waters of the River Ganges as the medium of Shiva’s divine essence, and a ritual bath in the river is believed to wash away all sins. The riverine location of Varanasi is considered especially auspicious because within 10 km of this City, the Ganges flows through its confluences with two other rivers, the Asi and the Varana. This holiest of holy cities of the estimated 800 million Hindus of the Indian subcontinent and the diaspora, is believed to host 80,000 shrines of various deities of the Hindu pantheon and over 500,000 images of the deities. Since a devout pilgrim would require an entire lifetime to visit all these shrines, many who visit the city never leave. Its shrines apart, this sacred city also houses 10,000 temples dedicated to different gods and goddesses. Some of these temples are named after the great tirthas, or pilgrim centres of India — Kanchipuram, Dwarka, Puri and Rameswaram, for example and it is widely believed that by visiting Varanasi, a pilgrim attains the spiritual benediction of having visited all the major pilgrimage centres of Hinduism. Apart from the 40 million visitors the city receives annually, Varanasi’s stable population also hosts an…