Mother Ganges at Varanasi

I went to India nearly 20 years ago to travel across the northern states from Delhi to Varanasi and then further north to Kathmandu in Nepal. Varanasi is also called Benares but I prefer Varanasi, a city of many souls, of many temples and markets, of colour and noise and smells and traffic and worship and magic. Varanasi is home of the burning ghats at the side of the Ganges, a sacred river for millennia, a river that can cleanse the soul of a lifetime of sins if you bathe in her.

Varanasi was my last stop in India before flying up to Nepal and I chose to stay in a nice, posh hotel in the suburbs, away from the crowds so I could relax after my trek across India. I didn't take advantage of it much since I headed out into the amazing city straight away and met sadhus and pilgrims, beggars and saints. I went to a madly colourful and crowded Hindu temple and to a quiet Jain temple where I was blessed by the priest. I visited Sarnath, the deer park outside the city at which Lord Buddha first preached the Dhamma and the sanga was born. I saw the ruins of the first Buddhist monastery there and had a quiet moment.

I also did shopping at Varanasi. Not just in the markets but in real shops where you're sat down at a table and offered tea while the owners show you their wares. I wanted to get a Buddha image, a nice one, not mass produced or plastic, but carved and, in one small shop I found the one I wanted. A small image, maybe 8" tall and carved from sandalwood of Gautama Buddha sitting cross legged in the teaching position. The statue didn't come cheap and cost real money but I didn't mind, the intricacy of the carving deserved it. A Buddha image mere miles from where he preached his first sermon 3000 years ago.

A memory that sticks with me was getting up before dawn to meet my guide who took me by car to the ghats that lined the Ganges. I put my hands together to greet the various half naked sadhus sitting cross legged with matted hair and beards on the route to the river and then there she was, still dark in the pre-dawn morning. I was invited to make an offering of candles in what looked like little cake tins - light a candle and set it to float away on the river. So I did.

I then got into a small boat to be rowed out into the Ganges as the sun rose, orange and pink and turned the river the colour of the sun as we rowed out surrounded by little candles in cake tins and then further out. That's when my guide explained that one drop of Ganges water would clear away a lifetime of sin. I dipped the little finger of my left hand into the river to be purified - I have the purest little finger in London. I wasn't about to dip any more into the river at that point since half cremated bodies were regularly pushed into the river from the burning ghats. But it was a special moment, obviously so since I still remember it.

I have fond memories of Varansi, a city of millions of souls. I have fond memories of my guide who was a young Hindu woman and, rather than ignoring the beggars and pests that any tourist attracts, came prepared with small coins for them. As well as taking me on the Ganges and to Sarnath, as well as shopping, she took me to a Hindu temple to Shiva and took me to the lingum shrine to make an offering (important for any man). I wonder whatever she did next? Is she still a guide or did she become a teacher or. perhaps, did she move to London at some point in the last 20 years.

I would like to go back to Varanasi again one day. In the manic crowds of shouts and chatter, of selling and begging, there's a spiritual core and it's that that's at the heart of the ancient city. Varanasi was thriving before London was born, before Rome and before Athens and it's still there. Mother Ganges looks after it. 

'Bronze' at The Royal Academy

I went to see the 'Bronze' exhibition of, um, bronzes, at The Royal Academy last week and it's well worth a visit. The blurb on the RA website says:

Arranged thematically, Bronze brings together outstanding works from antiquity to the present. Different sections focus on the Human Figure, Animals, Groups, Objects, Reliefs, Gods, Heads and Busts. The exhibition features stunning Ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan bronzes, through to rare survivals from the Medieval period. The Renaissance is represented by the works of artists such as Ghiberti, Donatello, Cellini, and later Giambologna, De Vries and others. Bronzes by Rodin, Boccioni, Picasso, Jasper Johns, Moore, Beuys and Bourgeois are representative of the best from the 19th century to today.

Bronze has been employed as an artistic medium for over five millennia. It is an alloy consisting mainly of copper, with lesser amounts of tin, zinc and lead. Due to its inherent toughness and resistance, the material’s uses over the centuries have been remarkably varied. A section of the exhibition has been devoted to the complex processes involved in making bronze, enabling visitors to explore how models are made, cast and finished by a variety of different techniques. The exhibition offers a unique exploration of artistic practice, an understanding of the physical properties and distinctive qualities of bronze, and the rare opportunity to see the very best examples in one place.

So there you have it from the horse's mouth. Personally, I prefer to gawp at the art rather than get too precious about it (unless it's worth getting precious about, of course).

The first thing you see on going into the exhibition is the huge 'Dancing Satyr' on a plinth in the middle of the first room. He was pulled out of the sea by fishermen a few years ago and rose head-first, like he was rising from the seabed to revisit the world he last knew a couple of millennia ago. He really is quite impressive and a fitting start to the exhibition.

We then move into a room full of figures, of people cast in bronze from across the centuries and continents, all clustered together in one room. There was something there to suit everyone but I picked out a monumental copy of Cellini's 'Perseus and Medusa' re-cast by Clemente Papi in 1844 for big wows and a tiny figure in a glass case of a naked acrobat performing a handstand by Prieur from around 1600 for the sheer fun and joy of it.

The exhibition then moves on to animals and the first one we see is a chimera from about 400BCE with a lion's head and paws, a snake for a tail, and antelope growing out of his back and all sorts of other weirdness melded together as one animal. The star of this section, though, was the magnificent 'Il Porcellino' from Florence, better known to me as Piggy! A lovely statue of a bronze pig used as a fountain with water dripping from his mouth and surrounded by pond creatures. This is the original that now lives in a museum but I've stroked the snout of his counterpart outside the market in Florence and that means I will go back one day.

In other rooms there was a rather large statue of Shiva Nataraja dancing in his wheel of cosmic fire, Lord of the Dance as he destroys and creates the world, destroying ignorance and welcoming the flame of wisdom. In this room of 'gods' there's also a life-sized statue of Jesus, a pot-bellied Ganesha and one statue of Buddha. Elsewhere there's a small statue of 'Yashoda Nursing the Infant Krishna' which is quite a domestic scene until you notice the baby Krishna has his lips to one nipple and his fingers to the other, tweaking his foster-mothe's nipple.  Well, he is Krishna after all.

Two of my favourite pieces were 'Untitled' by Anish Kapoor from 2012, a big, polished bronze dish hung on the wall in which you can see yourself upside-down as you approach and leave and a bust of Catherine d'Medici from about 1590, an imperious and scary lady. While I loved the Anish Kapoor for its simplicity and fun and kept going back to move around in front of it to see what might happen, I wouldn't want to go to visit Catherine.

So there you go. There's something for everyone at the exhibition and it's a good way of spending a couple of hours out of the rain (and it was pouring down when I went).