The old Colonial name was Benares, (similar root I was told to Buenos Aires.) The new name is Varanasi, ( a porte-manteaux of the names of the ghats at each end,) but before either it was Kashi (City of Life) and is one of the worlds oldest continually inhabited cities (Guidebook info.)
Just wandering the streets, ghats and galis, and I could feel the paint stripper applied on arrival some weeks ago really working... Peeling and scraping through my layers of gloss and undercoat down to the primer and bare wood.
It soon started to feel inappropriate to point my camera at the intimate details of people's lives, as they soaped themselves in the river, set up intense card schools, slept at night hunched in the hand barrow by which they made a living by day, or stretchered the corpses of beggars in noisy processions through the narrow alleys for cremation. So I didn't. This was their life. Dignified, but in full public gaze, and not just a show for tourists.
I shalln't forget Varanasi.
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