Lok Sabha Polls 2014: Will Narendra Modi's imagination take flight after he wins from Banaras?

Just outside Ghazipur, Lord Cornwallis lies buried in a grand mausoleum, the best structure in an otherwise decrepit and impoverished town, where the ravages of time have wrought their devastation.
But Cornwallis’ tomb stands pillared and imposing, a lofty monument to the man and his grand ambition for India. Thirty miles east of Ghazipur, which is now famous for its dreadful poverty and Mukhtar Ansari, the minatory don with a handlebar moustache, is Banaras, where another man with grand ambition prepares to become the ruler of India. Narendra Modi should take the road from Ghazipur to Banaras to understand how deep and dark a hole the infrastructure of the world’s oldest living city is in.

The road, filled with craters, some of which will even put the ones on the moon to shame, is a running, bone-rattling hell. Modi has talked of a 56-inch chest and strong spine. Perhaps he can endure the journey, but not many Indians, who already have the back-bending and bothersome load of their blighted lives on their shoulders.

Yes, if one ingests a bit of opium from the old factory in Ghazipur, it becomes easier. But Modi is a teetotaller and stays as far away from narcotics as Kashmir is from Kanyakumari. Banaras comes to you, after the ordeal of the road is over, like Harappa mixed with Hoshangabad. Dusty roads, ageing and sooty houses and a traffic that is the mother of all nightmares. Modernity, in the form of an advanced Japanese car, bumps into ancientness, represented by a sickly Indian cow, whose belief in zen-like languor is as strong as the Japanese in making fuelefficient and sleek cars.

Cows are holy, so they don’t move. The car finds itself entangled in an unholy and polluted alliance of vegetable carts, a posse of paunchy policemen trying to get their boss through the still traffic, and a screaming ambulance with its prayer -wheel-like blue flasher. The screams sound more like wails as the traffic gets frozen in a Matrix-like frame.

Will Modi find himself stuck here or will he enjoy the immunity netas have from almost-rear-ending traffic? Death comes easily to Banaras; the city has seen innumerable deaths since millennia and still survived to tell the tale. Bengali widows come here to take their last breath, bodies of rich and poor have been subjected to fire 24x7 at the ghats before the world started living 24x7 lives. The burning pyres give warmth to animals, stray and stricken with cold.

Banaras knows death is just another step to life. The city has always offered ready redemption and quick salvation. Sins of the past can be washed away, sent away to float with effluents on the river, which has for aeons carried more sin than fish. History gets erased fast in Banaras.

Many houses, fearing obliteration, have their year of construction embossed in concrete at their entrances. Godowlia, Kammachha, Sigra. The quaintness of names in Banaras has a captivating history that can’t be captured through the social media zeitgeist, no matter how hard you facebook or tweet. It’s difficult to describe in 140 characters what the city has seen through many characters over many millennia.

When pigeons take off in stark black and white in Aparajito after the death of Apu’s father, one of the most potent images of Banaras, they signify death. But flight — be it of the pigeons or of the imagination — also stands for freedom, a total release, an enrapturement with life, bust or booming it may be. Will Modi’s imagination take flight after he wins from Banaras? The hubbub at the ghats, the helter-skelter melange of humans and animals, the silly misstep of landing your feet in fresh cowpats, the kathak at the Dashashwamedh Ghat, the lazy priests with hieroglyphs on their heads, the dishevelled skippers of many still boats and the river, the mighty river, on which, in the distance, ply two boats with lanterns, like light in darkness, like hope in hell, the Bengali alphabet in red ornamenting the shops near the ghats, the misshapen devotee from Andhra chanting his way to the temple, a beautiful Punjabi woman in her marriage bangles, a robust cow languidly climbing the stone steps at the ghats, the whole of India, in microcosm, stepping up from the ghats into Banaras.

Murli Manohar Joshi did nothing for the city. It’s difficult to change Banaras, difficult to change its rhythms, difficult to change its pace, difficult to change its philosophy. Modi should not even attempt it; he can change a few limbs where the body has turned rotten, but the soul of Banaras will stay intact. And if Modi wants deliverance from past, he can go to Sarnath, where, in a Buddhist temple, sit Sri Lankans in white chanting Buddhist sermons in Sinhalese. Modi would prefer saffron, but white is the Buddhist colour.

Banarasis love their rabdi, and their lassi, and their paan, and their lazy ways. Nothing would make them give these up. Certainly not a government diktat. Certainly not a Modi tweet. These little things stand for Banaras and Banarasis stand up for them. The city can account for its millennial changes, but not everyday’s. It was Cornwallis’ fortune that he died in Ghazipur and had a formidable monument dedicated to him that still stands after it was erected by the British of Calcutta more than 200 years ago. In Banaras, the edifice would stand but as a forgotten footnote in the city’s hoary history.

In Ghazipur it’s a landmark; in Banaras it would be overlooked. For Banaras is interested only in life, not in its leftovers. Its history has a grand sweep, many civilisations embedded in it. It may send Modi to Parliament, but will continue to live life on its own terms.