February 19, 2004 A thirty-four hour train ride (scheduled for thirty only) brought me to Benaras, long a destination on the "penance tourism" trail; on most days groups from all over the country (Bengal in particular) can be found wandering the ghats (flights of stairs that lead down to the river). In the course of this week-long trip I visited as usual the shrines of the greats, including Tailang Swami, Kinaram Aghori, and Sri Vallabhacharya; and as usual I spent some time in each of the two city smashans: Manikarnika, the larger and more famous of the two, and Harischandra, quieter and so a better place to sit and meditate. Following a primordial tradition, many families prefer to cremate their loved ones at dusk, and it is not uncommon for fifteen or even twenty funeral pyres to be burning at Manikarnika as night falls.

One of my favorite Benaras pastimes is ghat-wandering, the city rising unremittingly above me on one side and the river flowing along uncompromisingly on the other. Under such conditions the "real" Benaras can often be glimpsed by those who are able to walk through it "feeling" its presence. The text known as the Kashi Kanda says about Benaras, "This place stands on the tip of Shiva's trident. It is in the sky and not on the earth. Those who are ignorant do not see it"; which makes Benaras at once a city and a state of mind. It is Avimukta, "the place that Shiva will never forsake"; Kashi, "the City of Light"; "Varanasi," "the land between the Varana and Assi Rivers."

During any Benaras visit I usually take at least one boat trip from Assi Ghat (the ghat where the Assi River enters the Ganga), the city's southern border, to Panchaganga Ghat, the fourth of Benaras's five major ghats. I take the boat for the change in perspective that the float brings, and to spend some time bobbing along in the stream's embrace. This trip I made several nautical excursions in the course of preparing to record a travelogue for Soundwalk (www.soundwalk.com), the brainchild of the tall, jovial Stephan. Soundwalk, which has thus far explored portions of Paris, Rome, and New York, combines comments, music, and city noise to produce an art form that a traveler can listen to while wandering Soundwalk's narrators try to introduce listeners to "their" city, that listeners may go beyond a town's "touristic skin" and get some flavor of the meat beneath it. Working with Stephan, soundman Dug, and advisor Eddie Stern was thoroughly enjoyable (particularly the makeshift cave created of blankets in which the recording actually occurred); I will report on the final edited result once it reaches me.

Sad to say, the pressures of flight schedules forced me to leave Benaras two days before Mahashivaratri, and had me spending the latter half of Mahashivaratri on a plane to London (singing Shiva's praises all the way).

February 6, 2004 Two days after Arun's "vrata bandha" Rose & I embarked on a driving expedition through Maharashtra, transported via the generosity of textile magnate Ashish Bagrodia in one of his vans. We were fortunate to find some quiet places that still haven't been "discovered," and shocked to see both how dramatically the population of the hinterlands of both Bombay & Pune has skyrocketed in the two decades since I lived in the area, and how relentlessly the forces of modernization are transforming formerly calm pilgrimage spots. Bhima Shankara, for example, was since long-ago times a peaceful forest shrine surrounded by the homes of a handful of priestly families, at the end of a potholed road far from the nearest town of any size. You'd arrive, dusty, and find a family to stay with, then worship at the temple, have your hosts cook a meal for you, and lie down for the night in their spare room or courtyard, possibly after a stroll through the trees to find and sit with one of the wandering anchorites who could usually be found spending a few days or weeks quietly meditating in the temple's vicinity.

Alas, Bhima Shankara was named, several centuries back, one of India's twelve "Jyotirlingas" ("pillar" or "emblem" of "light"), one of the twelve shrines to the Supreme Awareness of the Universe that shines like a spiritual beacon for the benefit of sincere seekers. This recognition, once a mark of respect, has become a misfortune as materialism and its attendant neglect for all ancient traditions have become the object of a backlash in the form of "re-traditionalization," a sincere but often misguided desire to return to the roots of India's time-honored culture. Respect for the life of the spirit being an important tenet of this revivalism, pilgrimage offering widely-reputed spiritual benefits, and rapid economic development providing the ready cash needed for touring, "pilgrimage packages" have become startlingly popular at all socio-economic levels all around the country. The popularity of the "Jyotirlingas" has lead to the institution of "Jyotirlinga" tour buses that speed their charges from shrine to shrine with celerity (time being, after all, money).

The "tour bus pilgrim" culture has given Bhima Shankara a building boom, "monetized" the local micro-economy, polluted the local air, water, and earth, and further thinned the already thinning local forest. The majority of pilgrims having become 'acquisitive" of potential spiritual "merit," they troop quickly into the temple and then out again, pausing briefly for souvenirs, then checking Bhima Shankara off their list as they roar off toward the next spiritual goldmine. Only a handful of "serious" pilgrims still remain, like the group that was staying next to us; they visit one Jyotirlinga a year, residing for a full month at each, thus taking a leisurely twelve years to complete the Jyotirlinga circuit.

Similar situations greeted us at Tryambakeshvara and Ujjain (each home to another of the Twelve Jyotirlingas), and at Shirdi (which houses the main shrine of Shirdi Sai Baba), yet another locale that has become a big, big business. Even Shani Shingnapur, which is dedicated to the worship of the planet Saturn (unique because none of the houses in the original village have any doors; fear of what Saturn might do to them keeps potential thieves at bay), has become a bustling small town under the pressure of those who come to deposit their sins there. "Penance tourism" - one more of India's many growth industries!

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