Nandini Devdutt Tripathy
Eternity
Winding through the cluttered, hawker-laden lanes of Banaras to its fabled riverside, I hear the Ganga before I see her. The sound is not of water flowing—the river’s pace in this ancient city is languid, her gait barely audible—but of prayers, hymns, mantras drizzling from pious lips and pouring from loudspeakers mounted high on rickety poles.
But once I am on the water, gliding along its muddy, satin surface on a wooden boat, silence cocoons me like a quilt even as the breeze keeps me cool. My boatman is a storyteller weaving a tapestry, adding yarn from each ghat that passes by.
One is notorious for starting fights while another is famed for reconciliation. One invites penance while another offers absolution for a specific crime. Two are hallowed cremation grounds that assure salvation. Every grievance has a solution here, and every question, an answer.
When we turn around at the city’s rim, tangerine-colored flecks dance in the water and sing of the dying day. On an embankment next to one of the grounds, a sound-and-light show is underway—the smoke from a hundred pyres is catching its pinks and blues, and carrying them into the sky.
final lullaby dancing on a dying flame the song of silence
About the Author
Nandini Devdutt Tripathy is a writer and poet from Delhi, India. Formerly a culture and lifestyle journalist, she is an editor by profession and storyteller by passion.