Varanasi Memoir

'Its a damn fun city and you must visit this place for sure' was the review I got from one of my friends when I had asked her about the trip. From then on the phrase stuck in my head and flashed every time I heard or read news of the events happening there. Though I was very curious, not once had I searched or bothered to look up for information, except that I knew it was a place where Kumbhmela and Ganga Arti was in action as I read in the newspapers.

Days passed and years later, while I was at the National Institute of Design working for the project
E-Kalpa, we were informed that the team will have to visit Varanasi to document handicrafts. Smitha, managed accounts and helped us to list places, contact artists and people we were supposed to meet so we could save more time during the tour.

Varanasi – ‘the fun city?’ flashed in my head and I continued to note some of the handicrafts along with Smitha. I had no idea of how the streets or people were, the images of the river Ganga and the structures that stood beside was something that caught me, they are addressed as Ghats. One among those buildings with shades of turquoise took me and I wished to see all of it in real.

Our journey began on Monday, eight of us all set with our luggage under our seats in the train, sharp at 9:55 am the train gave a jerk. We bid our byes to our head person who had come to drop us off. It was a plain start, spent an hour or so seeing out of the window, since ours was Air conditioned coach the scenery was not so clear.

I spent time talking and looking out of the window mostly. By 12 pm we were at the Tamil Nadu border. After few quick stops the train had stopped for a short period of time in one of the stations. We had our lunch, Chapattis that we had packed from home, Curd rice and a pack of Biryani from the station. At 4 pm we all spent time chit chatting about random topics and were together in one compartment.
After a good sleep for an hour or so at 5:37 pm I woke up and train had stopped, we had entered Andhra Pradesh via Tamil Nadu, the train had changed routes because of heavy rains. It was 8 pm when we got off the train to relieve ourselves from jet lag and the weather was chilly. We ate Chapattis for dinner (packed food from our homes) and bought some from the station. Harsha, my college friend then and colleague now at NID liked egg rice very much. He loved the dish and seemed to not bother about anything else. It was 10:30 pm when we wrapped our dinner session and prepared ourselves to sleep. At 11:00 pm I kept my cellphone for charging and felt the day to be longer than usual as I lay on the bed and dozed off. I woke up at 3:16 am to notice the train at halt again. When I woke up at 7: 01 am the train was at Pullampet.