Today was my last full day in Varanasi, thanks to my Indian visa snafu that prevented me from getting on the plane to Kathmandu yesterday, and that I will explain in another post. I'm skipping a few days to write up today's activity while it's still fresh in my mind, but I promise I'll give a full account of Khajuraho, which was amazing.
I had Alam, my driver, meet me at the hotel at 10:15 am, and we went off to the Bharat Kala Bhavan Art and Archeological Museum on the campus of Banaras Hindu University, at the southern end of the city.
The campus is huge and quite modern looking, with buildings all in the same architectural style, indicating their more or less simultaneous origin. The greenery is lush, as one would expect in this this climate, and in a completely controlled setting, gated off from the dusty bustle and poverty of the rest of the city. The Museum itself was dedicated in the early 90s and houses major collections of medieival Indian statuary, numismatics, and most stunningly of all, a collection of miniature paintings from several South Asian cultures, including Hindu, Mughal/Muslim, Persian and Buddhist. Although my Rough Guide said photography was permitted for an extra fee of 50 rs., it turned out that it was absolutely forbidden, unless one had applied for permission in advance of one's visit. I presented myself as an art journalist, and the security chief adamantly took side, but the assistant director was unmoved, and seemed to be a rather wooden-headed bureaucrat. I even made it up to the assistant curator, a scholar, who was sympathetic, but he said there was nothing he could do. I'd heard this song before in India. Though the fabric of daily life seems chaotic, there is a strong streak of rigidity in Indian culture, as exemplified by the caste system for example; but I also sense a subtext of anti-colonial self-assertion. It's mainly foreigners who would want to photograph India's treasures and take back with them pieces of India's soul. Never mind that spreading the word about the beauties contained in the museum might increase its pathetic attendance!
The stone sculpture was mainly from the 9th to 11th Centuries, that is, simultaneous with that of Khajuraho, but with little of Khajuraho's grace, and none of its eroticism. There was one piece of a solo woman, with the usual voluptuous breasts, in a highly provocative S-shaped pose, but that was it.
The miniatures were something else. Every one of them had a point to make; none were simply genre studies, as so many contemporary miniatures in historical styles tend to be. There was one face of a "Female Beauty" that looked like it could have been done by a contemporary of Picasso. There were two of Krishna "Killing Putana," in which Krishna is tiny and Putana is huge--does the word mean the same thing in Hindi that it does in Italian and Spanish? There was a large one of "Akbar's Court," the most cultivated and benevolent of the Mughal emperors. Each of the 30 odd faces was clearly a portrait, including the one Englishman. And there was another of the "Exodus of Moses," another Mughal piece, in which both the Israelites and the drowning Egyptians a the Red Sea all are wearing turbans. The detail in all the miniatures is exquisite, even if the composition is fanciful or mythological, and the colors are luminous. Some near lifesize reproductions were available in folio form at the ticket counter, but no proper catalogue. Their website is inside of the university's, bhu.ac.in.
Upstairs were a collection of rather divers galleries, including one devoted to the history of Varanasi/Banaras, a decorative arts gallery, a manuscript gallery, a prehistoric gallery, and one devoted to the life work of the Swiss artist Alice Boner (1889-1981), who took up Indian themes and styles in her painting in the 1920 and produced what we would call today visionary art based on her personal explorations into Indian philosophy and spirituality.
Next Alam my driver took me to the Vishwanath Temple, a contemporary construction on the campus, where the pious were waiting for it to reopen at 1 pm. Once open, we all proceeded through the shoe depository then via a green outdoor carpet into the Temple itself, where photography was prohibited. It is an imposing structure of smooth marble inside, that could be a state capital building in the U.S., except for the side chapels featuring effigies of Hindu gods. I exited with no photographic regrets, though the shoe depository was interesting visually, with its two shoe wallas, one of whom was a bit overly eager for his tip, so I made a grand gesture of placing it under a brick on his table rather than in his hand, to make sure his colleague received some benefit.
Once outside the Temple compound, I treated myself to a mango float (mango juice, ice and mango ice cream) for 20 rs (!), and a wonderful filled dosa--the most expensive thing on the menu at 70 rs ($1.14), which was a meal.
I rejoined my driver, and we were off to the Ghats. It was 2 pm, and I intended to walk the 4 km or so from South to North, and we planned to rendezvous between 5 and 5:30 in the street outside the Trilochan Ghat, after starting at the Assi Ghat.
It was mid-afternoon, and there was a lot less activity than there had been in the early morning last Thursday. Still, it was quite worthwhile seeing things from the side of the land. I had perfect views of the architecture, from fifty different versions of ramshackle, to imposing dames in brick and stone of bygone eras.
"Dames of bygone eras..."
I saw bathers, women washing their children, a group of pilgrims from Malaysia (I was informed), some with shaved heads, a group repairing a tour boat, whom I visited and talked with, two herds of water buffalo in the water, and of course the two burning ghats.
At the first one I was informed that it offered cremation service to all religions, including Buddhists and Jains, and my guide gave me an account of the procedure: how the body is prepared by smearing it with ghee at home, then brought to the ghat and dunked in the Ganges. The each family member takes some Ganges water and puts it in the deceased's mouth. Men are wrapped in white and women in "red" (really orange). Four hundred kilos of wood must be purchased, and there was a fund for poor families, to which I contribued 100 rs. My informant also mentioned the practice of sati, where a wife is burned alive along with her dead husband, which we both agreed was odious. I mentioned Anand Patwardan's film about women in India, where he interviews the men who encouraged the last recorded sati, in 1984. He knew of the film. I mentioned that he had captured the men saying that they would construct a temple in the woman's honor--cold comfort for the victim--and then my guide proceeded to show me the very temple the men in the film were referring to! It was a small construction, like an oven, with an inner chamber measuring perhaps 2.5 feet square. Inside was a relief carving of a stylized husband and wife, painted in red ochre with staring black and white eyes.
A few ghats later I reached the main burning ghat, Manikaranika Ghat, which I had seen and photographed twice from a boat. Before I reached it, a young man appointed himself my guide and said he could secure permission from the boss of the ghat for me to photograph the proceedigs, even though it was normally forbidden. How much, I wondered, 15,000 rs for 15 minutes, he said. I declined the offer. He led me to the threshold of the ghat, where painted on the wall was a the injunction not to photograph, with an arrow pointing towards the ghat. I said, but on the other side of the arrow, one could do it, and I proceeded to take a picture. He said, no I shouldn't, but he'd talk to the boss for me.
We found the short rather portly fellow almost immediately, and my guide quickly ratted on me. Now I was in trouble, he said. I'd have to pay a $100 fine, or else $100 for 15 minutes photography privilege. I offered to delete the photo, and they both said, no, no, no. They were now bearing down threateningly on me, and I reconsidered: it really would be a fantastic photo, and I would have a kind of exclusive on it. This is, after all, what I had my emergency fund for, and I was carrying it in a money belt. So I agreed. We went up to the boss's "office," and I took out two sweaty fifties and handed them to him. They both accompanied me, but now it was only five minutes! I snapped away and really liked what I got, but objected that they had said 15 minutes a few minutes ago. The boss agreed to give me another five and took out his cell phone to time me. I took a few more shots, and was satisfied. I had not walked among the crowd, but my wide angle views really did capture the scene. Then my guide insisted on taking me to his fabric shop to show me his shawls. I was adamant about not buying anything, and after seeing a few--they were quite luxurious and mostly solid colors, I walked out. He came after me , told me I must NOT share or publish the photos I had just paid $100 for the privilege of taking (yeah, right), and asked for a tip. I was flabbergasted. First he betrayed me to the burning ghat boss, and now he wants a commission? I told him to take his cut from the $100 fee. He said, no, that that all went to buying wood for the poor, and that I should give him a modest tip of $20 or $30. I told him he was out of his mind and turned and walked off. He did not pursue me.
I ran into several groups of people, young and old, who asked me to photograph them, and I was happy to oblige. One group of pilgrims from other parts of India was so delightful that I gave them my last three good-will cards. I captured a group of boys somersaulting over a boat, three of them in the air at one time. Every so often I'd run into an old bearded man in robes, the sadu or holy man get-up. They inevitably expected money if I photographed them. It now felt like a racket. One of them was so insistent that I decided to tell him I would charge him, since I was a professional. He declined, of course, and when child nearby asked to be photographed I made a point of being generous and offering it for free.
I finally reached the Trilochan Ghat, where I had agreed to met Alam, my driver in the nearby road. There was only one problem: the narrow passage was filled with monkeys! Barbara had warned me about them in Khajuraho--that they would jump me, take my equipment and I wouldn't get it back (her words). I asked someone nearby if it was OK to walk into the crowd of them, and he said there was not problem. So I did, and the scattered, two of them carrying nursing babies, clinging to their underside, and not impeding their movement at all.
I found my way out of the winding allyways, but once on the road could not locate Alam.i walked back and forth for about half an hour. Finally, I picked an identifiable location, the entry to a spiffy polychrome temple, and asked to borrow a passerby's cell phone to call him. He had thought I was to meet him farther along. Meanwhile, I drew another crowd of mostly old me, whom I had fun photographing as two of them teased each other.
Alam showed up in about 15 minutes and took me to a second excellent vegetarian restaurant, where we both had sumptuous dinners for a total of 510 rs., including tip. My hotel turned out to be five minutes away--a blessing--and I set my camera up on its rooftop to capture the night, dawn and day in the same framing.
I had Alam, my driver, meet me at the hotel at 10:15 am, and we went off to the Bharat Kala Bhavan Art and Archeological Museum on the campus of Banaras Hindu University, at the southern end of the city.
The campus is huge and quite modern looking, with buildings all in the same architectural style, indicating their more or less simultaneous origin. The greenery is lush, as one would expect in this this climate, and in a completely controlled setting, gated off from the dusty bustle and poverty of the rest of the city. The Museum itself was dedicated in the early 90s and houses major collections of medieival Indian statuary, numismatics, and most stunningly of all, a collection of miniature paintings from several South Asian cultures, including Hindu, Mughal/Muslim, Persian and Buddhist. Although my Rough Guide said photography was permitted for an extra fee of 50 rs., it turned out that it was absolutely forbidden, unless one had applied for permission in advance of one's visit. I presented myself as an art journalist, and the security chief adamantly took side, but the assistant director was unmoved, and seemed to be a rather wooden-headed bureaucrat. I even made it up to the assistant curator, a scholar, who was sympathetic, but he said there was nothing he could do. I'd heard this song before in India. Though the fabric of daily life seems chaotic, there is a strong streak of rigidity in Indian culture, as exemplified by the caste system for example; but I also sense a subtext of anti-colonial self-assertion. It's mainly foreigners who would want to photograph India's treasures and take back with them pieces of India's soul. Never mind that spreading the word about the beauties contained in the museum might increase its pathetic attendance!
The stone sculpture was mainly from the 9th to 11th Centuries, that is, simultaneous with that of Khajuraho, but with little of Khajuraho's grace, and none of its eroticism. There was one piece of a solo woman, with the usual voluptuous breasts, in a highly provocative S-shaped pose, but that was it.
The miniatures were something else. Every one of them had a point to make; none were simply genre studies, as so many contemporary miniatures in historical styles tend to be. There was one face of a "Female Beauty" that looked like it could have been done by a contemporary of Picasso. There were two of Krishna "Killing Putana," in which Krishna is tiny and Putana is huge--does the word mean the same thing in Hindi that it does in Italian and Spanish? There was a large one of "Akbar's Court," the most cultivated and benevolent of the Mughal emperors. Each of the 30 odd faces was clearly a portrait, including the one Englishman. And there was another of the "Exodus of Moses," another Mughal piece, in which both the Israelites and the drowning Egyptians a the Red Sea all are wearing turbans. The detail in all the miniatures is exquisite, even if the composition is fanciful or mythological, and the colors are luminous. Some near lifesize reproductions were available in folio form at the ticket counter, but no proper catalogue. Their website is inside of the university's, bhu.ac.in.
Upstairs were a collection of rather divers galleries, including one devoted to the history of Varanasi/Banaras, a decorative arts gallery, a manuscript gallery, a prehistoric gallery, and one devoted to the life work of the Swiss artist Alice Boner (1889-1981), who took up Indian themes and styles in her painting in the 1920 and produced what we would call today visionary art based on her personal explorations into Indian philosophy and spirituality.
Next Alam my driver took me to the Vishwanath Temple, a contemporary construction on the campus, where the pious were waiting for it to reopen at 1 pm. Once open, we all proceeded through the shoe depository then via a green outdoor carpet into the Temple itself, where photography was prohibited. It is an imposing structure of smooth marble inside, that could be a state capital building in the U.S., except for the side chapels featuring effigies of Hindu gods. I exited with no photographic regrets, though the shoe depository was interesting visually, with its two shoe wallas, one of whom was a bit overly eager for his tip, so I made a grand gesture of placing it under a brick on his table rather than in his hand, to make sure his colleague received some benefit.
Once outside the Temple compound, I treated myself to a mango float (mango juice, ice and mango ice cream) for 20 rs (!), and a wonderful filled dosa--the most expensive thing on the menu at 70 rs ($1.14), which was a meal.
I rejoined my driver, and we were off to the Ghats. It was 2 pm, and I intended to walk the 4 km or so from South to North, and we planned to rendezvous between 5 and 5:30 in the street outside the Trilochan Ghat, after starting at the Assi Ghat.
It was mid-afternoon, and there was a lot less activity than there had been in the early morning last Thursday. Still, it was quite worthwhile seeing things from the side of the land. I had perfect views of the architecture, from fifty different versions of ramshackle, to imposing dames in brick and stone of bygone eras.
"Dames of bygone eras..."
I saw bathers, women washing their children, a group of pilgrims from Malaysia (I was informed), some with shaved heads, a group repairing a tour boat, whom I visited and talked with, two herds of water buffalo in the water, and of course the two burning ghats.
At the first one I was informed that it offered cremation service to all religions, including Buddhists and Jains, and my guide gave me an account of the procedure: how the body is prepared by smearing it with ghee at home, then brought to the ghat and dunked in the Ganges. The each family member takes some Ganges water and puts it in the deceased's mouth. Men are wrapped in white and women in "red" (really orange). Four hundred kilos of wood must be purchased, and there was a fund for poor families, to which I contribued 100 rs. My informant also mentioned the practice of sati, where a wife is burned alive along with her dead husband, which we both agreed was odious. I mentioned Anand Patwardan's film about women in India, where he interviews the men who encouraged the last recorded sati, in 1984. He knew of the film. I mentioned that he had captured the men saying that they would construct a temple in the woman's honor--cold comfort for the victim--and then my guide proceeded to show me the very temple the men in the film were referring to! It was a small construction, like an oven, with an inner chamber measuring perhaps 2.5 feet square. Inside was a relief carving of a stylized husband and wife, painted in red ochre with staring black and white eyes.
A few ghats later I reached the main burning ghat, Manikaranika Ghat, which I had seen and photographed twice from a boat. Before I reached it, a young man appointed himself my guide and said he could secure permission from the boss of the ghat for me to photograph the proceedigs, even though it was normally forbidden. How much, I wondered, 15,000 rs for 15 minutes, he said. I declined the offer. He led me to the threshold of the ghat, where painted on the wall was a the injunction not to photograph, with an arrow pointing towards the ghat. I said, but on the other side of the arrow, one could do it, and I proceeded to take a picture. He said, no I shouldn't, but he'd talk to the boss for me.
We found the short rather portly fellow almost immediately, and my guide quickly ratted on me. Now I was in trouble, he said. I'd have to pay a $100 fine, or else $100 for 15 minutes photography privilege. I offered to delete the photo, and they both said, no, no, no. They were now bearing down threateningly on me, and I reconsidered: it really would be a fantastic photo, and I would have a kind of exclusive on it. This is, after all, what I had my emergency fund for, and I was carrying it in a money belt. So I agreed. We went up to the boss's "office," and I took out two sweaty fifties and handed them to him. They both accompanied me, but now it was only five minutes! I snapped away and really liked what I got, but objected that they had said 15 minutes a few minutes ago. The boss agreed to give me another five and took out his cell phone to time me. I took a few more shots, and was satisfied. I had not walked among the crowd, but my wide angle views really did capture the scene. Then my guide insisted on taking me to his fabric shop to show me his shawls. I was adamant about not buying anything, and after seeing a few--they were quite luxurious and mostly solid colors, I walked out. He came after me , told me I must NOT share or publish the photos I had just paid $100 for the privilege of taking (yeah, right), and asked for a tip. I was flabbergasted. First he betrayed me to the burning ghat boss, and now he wants a commission? I told him to take his cut from the $100 fee. He said, no, that that all went to buying wood for the poor, and that I should give him a modest tip of $20 or $30. I told him he was out of his mind and turned and walked off. He did not pursue me.
I ran into several groups of people, young and old, who asked me to photograph them, and I was happy to oblige. One group of pilgrims from other parts of India was so delightful that I gave them my last three good-will cards. I captured a group of boys somersaulting over a boat, three of them in the air at one time. Every so often I'd run into an old bearded man in robes, the sadu or holy man get-up. They inevitably expected money if I photographed them. It now felt like a racket. One of them was so insistent that I decided to tell him I would charge him, since I was a professional. He declined, of course, and when child nearby asked to be photographed I made a point of being generous and offering it for free.
I finally reached the Trilochan Ghat, where I had agreed to met Alam, my driver in the nearby road. There was only one problem: the narrow passage was filled with monkeys! Barbara had warned me about them in Khajuraho--that they would jump me, take my equipment and I wouldn't get it back (her words). I asked someone nearby if it was OK to walk into the crowd of them, and he said there was not problem. So I did, and the scattered, two of them carrying nursing babies, clinging to their underside, and not impeding their movement at all.
I found my way out of the winding allyways, but once on the road could not locate Alam.i walked back and forth for about half an hour. Finally, I picked an identifiable location, the entry to a spiffy polychrome temple, and asked to borrow a passerby's cell phone to call him. He had thought I was to meet him farther along. Meanwhile, I drew another crowd of mostly old me, whom I had fun photographing as two of them teased each other.
Alam showed up in about 15 minutes and took me to a second excellent vegetarian restaurant, where we both had sumptuous dinners for a total of 510 rs., including tip. My hotel turned out to be five minutes away--a blessing--and I set my camera up on its rooftop to capture the night, dawn and day in the same framing.
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