doors of the past...

Walking on the streets of Banaras is never a dull moment. A lot of chaos ... all kinds of people belonging to different centuries brush shoulders with each other and talk in different languages. Still understanding each other. Some quadrupeds pushing through the human types or chasing them. We were walking towards pizzeria one day when we saw a foreigner running with his fancy running shoes on , with a steady speed meandering through the maze of all the centuries walking on the narrow lane. A dog got curious and started following him with a warning bark. That guy who was wearing smart looking running gear, stopped , bent down, picked up a stone and gestured to hit the dog ....The dog stopped , stepped back and the foreigner resumed his run.

Both of us( Arvind and me) were smiling seeing this how each one on the road is conditioned to this kind of chaos and  everything goes on with a smooth precision.

I found this door on the same street which leads to Assi ghat starting from Nagwa , where we saw the dog chase ...there is something to stop and gaze every few steps .... or I am an eternal romantic....who knows better :-)

Many foreigners live in this side of the town as they come and settle down for studies and for spiritual reasons too. My favorite authors Robert Pirsig and Inez Baraney have lived and walked in these streets of Banaras and i feel a connect when i read their stories. Many of the Hindi laureates have lived in this city and their stories are full of life, a timelessness is what i witness in their works. This city and it's streets are timeless. Modern and ancient exist together and meld together like they were born here... together.

This interesting door was closed and looked like as if the building is abandoned. But i saw one of the doors ajar when we were walking back from pizzeria . Someone certainly lives inside this historical looking home.

There was a sliding iron gate inside this frail damaged yet strong old wooden door to indicate someone has made it habitable for a modern life. Or a life hung between centuries.

Or a timeless life.

This is the feeling i always get whenever i visit the areas around the ghats... there is a certain rhythm in the life in this place which cannot be explained in words. You have to spend an evening on the ghats of Ganges to experience that.

Doors is the topic of today's Thursday challenge and when i saw it on Bikram's blog i was just reminded of this old wooden door from a timeless street in Banaras.

I really want to visit many more old cities of India as the few i have visited till now seem to be having the same kind of soul. A sense of belonging , a sense of being connected and a sense of walking through the same doors we get in such cities...