Varanasi by Devashish Gaur

Devashish Gaur is a young  journalism and mass communication student from Delhi, India. Devashish always wanted to visite Varanasi, a state 800 km’s away from his hometown. Here’s his full story. 

A flower necklace in the water nearby a crematory bank of river Ganges, used in worshipping and last rites of death procession.

They say “if you are cremated on the ghats of Holy river Ganges, you go straight to the heaven after your death.” I am not a religious person but there was something that always made me want to travel to Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, a state 800 km’s away from my hometown, Delhi, India.


Varanasi, certainly a strange abode where life and death live together, where many people found the ultimate reason and purpose of their lives, where streets take you to a few decades back. Where a comforting silence surround you although children fly kites, people wash clothes and bath in Ganges, meditating, writing, painting goes in parallel with 100’s of bodies being burnt in open on their last journeys to heaven.

The aura  crawled in like a disease getting on my bones, but instead,  it put my interior to ease and peace.  A unique magnetism that made me feel like coming back by the river all the time. The immense pleasure of sitting by the waters and just staring at the boats and birds in Ganges whole day is still unmatched.

Somewhere in between the scenes of death, life, crowd , motors, the worshipping, the rebirth of life and everything, there lies an uncanniness, an un-answered mystery that doesn’t need to be solved I felt, and that is Varanasi.

Migratory birds from Russia, always flying next to the boats full of people and at the same time, over the sacred water of Ganges which also contain the ashes of dead people

Contact:

www.devashishgaur.wordpress.com

Instagram: @devacheez