Banaras – Down the memory lane

Yesterday after ages I saw two movies back to back, one of them was ‘Banaras’ and the other is not even worth mentioning. Was reading the review of Banaras in TOI and was tempted to write my own experience.
For me, movie Banaras brought back all the memories back of the time that I had spent there, and a longing to go back to Banaras. As far as story of the film is concerned it was a confused story and no message came out of the whole story. At one level it is a usual story with a high caste girl falling in love with a low caste guy, who is not openly opposed by her parents, but they get him murdered before the marriage can happen. The good part of the movie is when they show how the protagonist deals with the pain and loss of her love, and more than that the betrayal of her own parents. The whole setting looks quite authentic, but the two women looked just too western and out of place for Banaras. The best part of the movie was the photography, which made Banaras look beautiful, the panorama shots of ghats on Ganga were breath taking; some of the shots with Ganga in backdrop were awesome. Not only does the cinematography bring out the beauty of Banaras, it also managed to capture the essence and spirit of Banaras both in terms of spirituality and orthodox society. You can watch this movie if you want to see and feel Banaras, otherwise there is not much to see. Music is good; I particularly liked the Holi song, which was sung with a ‘thehraav’ that the traditional holi singers have, unlike the film songs which are more about the beats.
Banaras holds a special place for me, as I have spent one year of my childhood in this historic city. I was about 6 years old when I was in Banaras, and probably the time when I started understanding myself. I still vividly remember our trips to Ramnagar palace across the Ganga, we used to take the long boats to cross the boat, reach Ramnagar and spend the day in the palace, and what fascinated me most in that palace was the old royal clothes of the queens and at that age I used to try hard and visualize how would a queen look in those exquisite ghaghras and dupattas, and how they would move around with so much weight around their waists. Another place that we frequently visited was Sarnath, and at that age too, it used to look mysterious to me, as if there are stories hidden inside those stupas, which I thought I will understand one day. There was this small village where we used to go and eat Dal Baati, see the famous Banarasi saris being woven, don’t remember anything other than this about the village. There used to be lots of monkeys in Kashi Vishwanath temple or was it Hanuman temple, don’t remember properly. Then there was walking around in the BHU, eating a tri-colored barfi, listening to my music teacher on AIR and my first birthday party that I remember.
I want to go back to Banaras…