Aavarana- The Veil

by S L Bhyrappa

  Lakshmi had decided to visit Kashi once more. The visit was necessary if she had to portray Aurangzeb’s destruction of the Kashi Vishwanath temple and the construction of the Gyanvapi mosque on the same site authentically in the novel. She didn’t really need any company. She had come to enjoy her solitude. Her reality was inside the locked doors of her father’s study in the hundreds of years of history and in the characters she had created. They spoke to her when she took breaks and walked in the fields and they looked down at her from the mango trees and the tall coconut trees. Kenchappa and Lakshmamma didn’t speak to her on their own volition. She had looked forward to her journey to Benares alone. She had thought of recalling the story of each station the train stopped at. Recalling the historical or real name of the region it belonged to, and over the past thousand years, the king who had ruled it originally and how it had passed on to other kings, sultans and nawabs, and the temples and Jain basdis, viharas, and Buddhist stupas in the vicinity, and which badshah or sultan or nawab had destroyed them or left them unharmed. She had imagined the journey to be instructive, teaching her the history of the subcontinent in a different way.

  As she had expected, Vishalakshi and Subbanna dragged her into their conversation. Vishalakshi was older to her by eight years and addressed her in the first person. Lakshmi had known Subbanna a little when she was studying in college. And so, despite a difference in age of almost thirteen years, he addressed her in the second person. Two and half days of train journey and every topic eventually turned to Professor Sastri. At least Vishalakshi made sure it did.

  ‘I’m not saying every educated person becomes like this but why did he turn out this way? Like that proverb about a monkey spoiling not just itself but the entire garden…but see, these are not my words. Our Narasimhe Gowda, your father, told me this. He quoted the same proverb. You’re smart enough to know in what context he said…’

  Subbanna cut her off. ‘That’s an old story and it’s over. Why do you rake it up now? Do you even have any sense of what you talk?’

  Lakshmi felt bad for her. She knew Vishalakshi was unrefined, rustic and very direct. ‘No. no. it’s okay. Don’t feel bad. She told the truth.’

  Subbanna said, ‘Even then, one must not tell an unpleasant truth. “Na bruyaat satyamapriyam”,’ he quoted the Sanskrit maxim.

  They had reservation up to Itarsi. They spoke to a fellow traveller who recommended taking the train that left half an hour later. The plan was to alight at Mughal Sarai. Kashi was just ten miles from there. Plenty of buses and rickshaws and taxis plied to Kashi and Prayag.

  ‘Let’s go to Kashi first. We’ll stay there for a day and then head to Prayag,’ said Subbanna.

  They reached Mughal Sarai at 10 a.m. Lakshmi hired two cycle rickshaws. The couple sat in one of them, and she in the other. The pot of ashes encased in a white lungi and tied securely at the neck rested securely on Subbanna’s lap. Fifteen minutes after they left Mughal Sarai behind them, the distance between the two cycle rickshaws had grown to about a furlong. The rickshaw drivers were brothers. The driver of Lakshmi’s rickshaw was a thin man of about thirty years. His skin was charred black. He wore a piece of cloth that served as his lungi. Sweat drops continuously trickled down from his sleeveless short shirt. A roll of dirty thread that looked like the sacred thread peeked from the left shoulder of his sleeveless shirt. A saffron cloth covered his head like a bandanna.

  ‘Bhai, what’s your name?’

  ‘Biswanath Sarma,’ he said between taking breaths.

  ‘Is that Sarma or Sharma?’

  ‘The same. What you said. Sarma.’

  ‘Sarma. That means you’re a Brahmin?’

  ‘Yes, mataji. We’re Kanyakubja Brahmins.’

  ‘You’re a Brahmin and you peddle a cycle rickshaw?’

  ‘What else should we do for a living, mataji?’

  ‘But…’ She stopped abruptly, unsure how to frame the question appropriately. He pulled to the side, slowed down and halted the rickshaw under a shady margosa tree. He opened the string of the pouch tied to the handlebar, extracted a paan, put it in his mouth and began to chew it slowly. A while later, he said, ‘Mataji, you were asking something… I know…you wanted to ask me…’ He paused, then, ‘A Brahmin’s duty is to voluntarily embrace poverty. From the ancient times, this caste has always lived in hermitages in the forest far away from civilization and devoted itself to lifelong learning and transmitting knowledge in the society. Right? Every badshah, sultan and nawab realized that a complete annihilation of this caste was the only way to convert Hindus to Islam. They rounded up Brahmins and forced their mouths open with tongs and spat into it because they knew that would defile their caste. They slit their throats and burned them alive. Thousands of our ancestors fled to the interior villages and began to narrate stories and sermons from our mythology and scriptures to the people and managed to preserve the Hindu faith. When the Angrezis…Britishers came, they quickly realized that breaking the back of this caste would help them make the whole of India into Kiristan. The Angrezis have left but our own leaders continue to fuel hatred against Brahmins to get votes,’ he smiled wryly. She saw the paan juice bobbing in his mouth.

  ‘If you know so much, I’m sure you also know the history of Kashi in depth. Will you show me around Kashi for about two to three days?’

  ‘I will, mataji. I’ll show you every inch of Kashi and tell you the story of every pillar and temple and mosque.’

  ‘What have you studied?’ she was curious now. She guessed that he must at least have a BA from some university. Maybe an MA in Indian history.

  ‘A bit of Sanskrit. I know the Tulsi Ramayan by heart. I learnt it mostly by listening. Mataji, everybody in Kashi must know everything about Kashi. He must know the story of every stone in this sacred city or he’s not fit to live here.’ He looked at the road and said, ‘They would’ve gone far ahead. My brother is stronger than I. He pedals faster but I know our holy epics and mythology better than he does. Let’s go.’

  She saw history in his words. After temples were destroyed on an industrial scale, after the priests were butchered by the thousand and when no idols survived for people to worship, Hinduism survived largely through the oral tradition of the wandering bards and monks. Hymns, verses, poetry, stories and discourses became the means of survival of an ancient religion. When Hinduism could no longer be practised openly, it led to a dilution in the priestly tradition of chanting Vedic hymns in Sanskrit. However, Hindus gave expression to their religious ideals in regional tongues. This development flowed with greater force and became widespread as saints began to emerge from the lower castes. It used and assimilated folk tales and symbols and led to a rapid reinvigoration of the faith. This time, its strength had acquired a new dimension: the Bhakti or devotional aspect of Hinduism overflowed throughout the land.

  She was jolted out of her rumination by what met her eyes.

  Kashi!

  The enormous sprawl that seemed to suddenly unfold itself before her eyes dazzled under the exploding rays of the afternoon sun. Or is that Kashi?

  ‘Which place is that, Sarmaji?’

  ‘Kashi, mataji. Benares.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, mataji. No doubt.’

  From this distance, the towering mosque appeared like a gigantic fist that had wrapped the whole of Kashi in its thrall. Its dominating presence commanded the sight of every visitor much before he actually entered Kashi. Lakshmi wished she had binoculars. She strained her eyes. She could detect a line of ghats just below the mosque. To its right stood another mosque, not as imposing but tall and eye-catching.

  ‘Sarmaji, I see only mosques. Where’s the Vishwanath temple?’

  ‘Oh? Didn’t you know, mataji? See that mosque on the left…’ He pointed with his index finger. ‘The tall, fat mosque that looks like it is sniggering because it’s the biggest mosque in Kashi? That’s the Gyanvapi masjid standing on the original Kashi Vishwanath temple. Aurangzeb Badshah demolis
hed it and built a gumbaz over its walls and pillars in 1669. And though he did all this, people still call it the Gyanvapi mosque. And see the mosque at the right? That’s where the Bindu Madhava temple stood. He demolished that in 1659 and used its pillars and stones and beams to raise this Alamgiri Masjid. That’s what you see now.’

  Impressive! He even knows the dates! The best man to tell me the history of all the mosques out here. She put her bent right palm on her forehead to avoid the harsh sunlight and looked around the entire city. Littered with mosques. Everywhere. Size doesn’t matter. Every mosque built on a pre-existing temple. Built to mark Islam’s supremacy. Using the materials of the same destroyed temple. Kashi. Varanasi. Home to Hinduism’s multi-hued sects and paths and schools. Vedic, Jain, Buddhist, Shaakta, Tantra, Vaishnava, Shaiva, Ganapatya, Rama, Krishna…Kashi opened her portals to everybody. There’s no god or goddess who hasn’t a home in Kashi. Every form of worship that exists in India exists here. People flocked here from all sorts of remote, nameless villages, braving robber gangs and spending their savings to pay the pilgrim tax that the sultans imposed on Hindus, driven only by an unwavering faith that death in Kashi ensured freedom from the endless cycles of birth and death. Every sect has a temple dedicated to its chief deity. Every minor and major god and goddess and character in our mythology has a house of worship in Kashi. No other city has as many temples. That explains all these mosques here. Ruled for centuries by the people of a faith who believed that destroying the temples of other faiths and erecting mosques in their place was the definition of religious piety. Kashi welcomed every religion, sect, creed and nourished them equally like a mother, and Kashi would have given Islam all the land it wanted in keeping with her spirit. And Islam in keeping with its spirit of surviving exclusively…a spirit that always meant the annihilation of other religions…decimated all the temples here and built mosques on their graves.

  The ghats were clearer now. Every ghat had a name. Assi ghat, Hanuman ghat, Shivala ghat, Baccharaj ghat, Anandamayi ghat, Kedar ghat, Chauki ghat, Narad ghat, Amritrao ghat, Chausatti ghat, Pandey ghat, Rana ghat, Dashashwamedh ghat, Manikarnika ghat, Bhosala ghat, Yagneshwara ghat, Rama ghat, Mangalagowri ghat, Dalapat ghat…she couldn’t recall the rest of the names. Manikarnika was built by the Maratha ruler Baji Rao. Actually, these were built by the Marathas or at least in the time of the Maratha kings. She decided to revisit Motichandra and Diana Eck’s scholarly work on Varanasi. She began to think about the alternate history of Kashi. A history where Kashi passed on directly from the Mughals to the British without the rise of the Marathas and asked herself whether it would have survived—whether Hindus would have had their rebirth. Her eyes were focused on the row of ghats in front of her but she stopped seeing them.

  ~

  Vishalakshi insisted that it was irreligious to stay in a hotel in sacred Kashi. They were pilgrims, not tourists. She ate restaurant food without feeling guilty back in Bangalore and elsewhere but her conviction in these matters was firm. It was mandatory to stick to some precepts when you visited holy sites like Kashi and Rameswaram. And now they were here to perform the holiest of rites of immersing her mother’s ashes in Prayag. Subbanna and Lakshmi thought it made sense. Biswanath Sarma, the cycle-rickshaw driver, seconded her view.

  ‘You are from Karnataka. There’s a Mysore rest house right above Harishchandra ghat. But that’ll be a problem for you because you’ll have to put up with the smell of burning bodies throughout the day. I think it is best you stay at the Marwadi’s rest house next to Manmandir ghat. It’s clean and hygenic. They allow everybody there. I know the manager, come with me.’ Sarma led them to the Marwadi rest house. Vishalakshi liked the food that was served in the hall next to it. It was cooked in the Vaishnava style and it was tasty, healthy and vegetarian.

  Evening had set in. ‘I’ll see you early tomorrow. I’ll get a panda with me. He knows all the rites really well and he’ll perform yours on priority, no matter how many others are waiting for their turn. If you’re not tired, you can visit the Vishwanath temple now. I’ll show you around,’ he said.

  He pulled his cycle rickshaw to the neighbouring Dashashwamedh ghat, turned right and entered a narrow, crowded alley which was thronged with sellers of marigold flowers, petty vendors of fruits and hawkers selling items of worship. Each hawker called out to pilgrims to buy only from him and offered them the service of depositing their footwear at his shop for free. The alley was packed to the brim with both pilgrims and locals who visited the Vishwanath temple every day, although it was evening.

  ‘Careful with your purse, gold and money,’ Sarma said and then pointed, ‘Kashi Vishwanath.’

  ‘Wha…where? Which one?’ Vishalakshi asked, looking in the direction of Sarma’s pointed finger. Subbanna looked similarly confused. And then they saw it. Nothing had prepared them to expect this fraction of a temple. It looked like it was built by a mendicant who had gone around the village begging for money and finally built something that resembled a temple from the modest sum of accumulated small change. There was no place for devotees to even circumambulate the temple.

  ‘…this is Kashi Vishwanath?’ Subbanna and Vishalakshi exclaimed together, looking at Sarma as if he was at fault. Lakshmi wasn’t surprised. She had known what to expect, but despite that her heart sank.

  ‘People worship this…canopy as the Vishwanath temple?’ Subbanna asked.

  ‘Let me show you.’ Sarma pushed his way through the throng and led them to the stone idol of Nandi.

  ‘Look. Every Shiva temple has a Nandi, which directly faces Lord Vishwanath. He meditates upon the lingam inside every Shiva temple…you know that.’ He paused, then, ‘Now look at this Nandi. Look at what he faces.’

  The three of them looked intently. It struck Lakshmi instantly. She recalled what she had seen as they were approaching Kashi from Mughal Sarai. Kashi was still about six miles. From that distance she clearly saw how the intimidating Gyanvapi mosque, standing for centuries on the grave of the Vishwanath temple, ruled over the skies of Kashi, nonchalant in its unbending arrogance. The triumph of Aurangzeb’s religious zeal. And now she saw how well-protected it was. Not even a mosquito could get inside the impregnable, twelve-feet-high fence of intestine-piercing barbed wire. The monkeys that were ubiquitious in Kashi, ruling the place with their fearless antics, snatching food and bags from people, also stayed away from this place. Army personnel stood guard around the mosque, one battle-ready solider every four feet brandishing an automatic rifle. The sight shook both Subbanna and his wife. Despite her vast reading, Lakshmi failed to grasp the message this scene conveyed.

  ‘Our government has built fences, and our soldiers are guarding the mosque that Aurangzeb built by destroying the Vishwanath temple,’ Sarma said.

  ~

  Sleep was impossible, despite the fatigue of three days of non-stop train travel that included the sleepless night from Itarsi to Mughal Sarai, which they had spent sitting as they didn’t get a sleeper berth. Both Subbanna and Vishalakshi had slept early and now were in deep sleep. Gyanvapi mosque taunted Lakshmi the moment she closed her eyes. Her mind conjured violent images of the structure. Its tentacles extended to the ends of Kashi’s horizon and beyond, gripping the city in its power. It stood there on Kashi’s heart, crushing its ribcage and strangling its breath. She felt relief when she opened her eyes, as if she had been set free from some prison. She sat up and just sat there in the dark, trying to catch the sound of the Ganga flowing about forty to fifty feet just below from where she was sitting. She heard nothing. This is a noiseless river. Actually, Ganga is a dynamic culture that accommodates and digests everything and flows on quietly. These banks are the timeless witnesses of never-ending debates in philosophy and logic. Every philosophical school has come here. One school has argued with the other and they’ve all argued with one another and written treatises and refutations. Saints have meditated here. Leaders of various sects and cults have sung praises of their cult’s central god. Atheists have thu
ndered out their atheism here. And yet, being witness to such noise over the centuries, Ganga continues to flow in contented silence. She felt like sitting by the riverside. She got up noiselessly, locked the door, taking care not to disturb the sleeping couple, crossed the alley and came to the ghat. The river looked like a long slab of mirror reflecting the clear full moon light. She looked to her left and saw the mighty Gyanvapi mosque appearing to her like a symbol of aggressive hubris while the river on whose banks it stood coursed on as if it didn’t exist.

  ‘Aurangzeb’s order to demolish the Vishwanath temple quickly reached Kashi. With it a precaution to prevent and, if necessary, quell the massive rebellion that would erupt from the Hindus. The subedaar personally stepped into every alley and posted Muslim soldiers at every corner. The priests caught the scent. They knew it was futile to mount a physical attack to save the temple. Overnight, they entered the sanctum sanctorum of the temple, performed the necessary rituals to remove the original idol of the lingam, lowered it into the neighbouring Gyanvapi well, filled the well to the brim with mud, flattened it, wiped all traces and left the place. Kashi Vishwanath temple was razed the next day but the destroyers didn’t know what had happened the previous night.’ She recalled Sarma’s words. Not just Sarma. Everybody in Kashi knew this.

  ‘Who’s there?’ She turned to look to the source of the voice that was accompanied by the rough scraping of a boot. ‘A lady. You’re alone at this hour.’ She looked around and saw that she wasn’t alone. Some people were seated on the steps. Probably meditating. Or just taking in the silence of the Ganga, trying to merge with the silence. There was an exchange between them: ‘Where are you from?’; ‘Different country?’; ‘Name of the rest house?’ The stink of bidi smoke from his mouth. ‘Why have you come here alone at this hour? Don’t go near the water.’; ‘You might get into trouble with goons.’