FIRST GLANCE

2009, a year of glutinous lifestyle for me, brought an opportunity to visit one of the oldest place of our country.

Sunday morning, 21st Nov, foggy ambience welcomed us. The stretch of whitish cloud shut out the sky as a tent which had the whole route as its floor. We rode through the fog tunnel all the way from Mughalsarai to our destination.

The time of dawn was approaching and the vast tract of ancient Indian culture known VARANASI revealed itself moment by moment.
The heaven being spread with ruddy-pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting line at the horizon was clearly marked with temple heads acting as the only disrupter.

Our motion undraped the gigantic pious dale formed by the Ganges. Civilization always being its acquaintance showed up through the banks of the river till our vision could loose their perception. It seemed as if a brown veil has been decorated with some vibrant embroidery with sun rays adding shimmer to it. The moment exhibited: ‘Colour and beauty was the birthright of this place’.
Even the most through-going ascetic could feel that he had a natural right to wander on this land; he was keeping within the line of legal indulgence when he laid himself open to such influential scenic beauties.


With the fading of opacity my eyes could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of the land which filled the whole circumference of its glance. To know that every thing around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered, gave ballast to the mind drifting on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New.

Dawn combined with the scenery of the place evolved a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showing emphatic admonitions and grand in its simplicity.
Months later ‘m describing my first glance of the place, but the effect still remains afresh in me.