KAASHI OR BENARAS THE ETERNAL CITY

When Babylon was struggling with Nineveh for supremacy, when Tyre was planting her colonies, when Athens was growing in strength, before Rome had become known, or Greece had contented with Persia, or Cyrus had added luster to the Persian monarchy, or Nebuchadnezzar had captured Jerusalem, and the inhabitants of Judea had been carried in to captivity, she had already risen to greatness, if not to glory . . . while many cities and nations have fallen in to the decay and perished, her sun has never gone down; on the contrary, for long ages it has shown with almost meridian splendor. It’s nothing but Kasi.
Sometimes, i feel kasi as a naturally formed architecture.
Another time a mental or spiritual asylum
Over the history of more than 4000 years,
the landscape of Kasi slowly transformed as a cultural architecture
of no comparison
Banaras lives over the craft and depth of its cultural architecture.
Here it’s very difficult to extract one substance from the other
Nothing stands beyond the divine Laya’ of Banaras.
Here we know, the union of all is possible at some space
Kasi is in front of us to show the fusion, with full of evidence Banaras is telling the tale of slowness for several millenniums. The city lives in a primeval rhythm; a combination of all, black and white, fast and slow, dread and love. Unifying opposites in a single rhythm; it’s the laya’ that kasi has been sustaining for thousands of years

BY M.K.BALAMOHAN AND M.G.ANEESH