SHRINES & STORIES

LONG BEFORE TODAY'S TOURISTS, BENGALI PILGRIMS AND ROYALTY MADE THEIR WAY TO KASHI AND LEFT BEHIND A REMARKABLE TEMPLE LEGACY

- Words → SANTOSH OJHA

VARANASI IS A MYSTERIOUS city. It celebrates both death and life, the sacred and the profane. If you listen carefully, the city will whisper tales of its past: of kings and conquerors, scholars and sinners, builders and demolishers. This is the story of some of those builders: devotees from distant Bengal who sailed up the Ganges over two centuries ago, each determined to add their bit to Kashi's sacred geography.

Late one muggy August afternoon, I was returning to my hotel after meeting a friend at Banaras Hindu University. Perched on a cycle rickshaw crawling through the impossibly crowded Bhelupur-Durgakund Road, I spotted a towering ochre-painted temple shikhara. I hopped off to explore.

I entered through an intricately carved doorway into a square courtyard where a Durga Temple, built in the North Indian Nagara style, sat on a high platform at the centre. Its towering shikhara rose above the sanctum, surrounded by smaller spires. An ochre-painted sabha mandapa with gold-trimmed columns stood nearby, topped by a pyramidal roof. Beside it lay Durga Kund, a sacred pond with steps for ritual dips.

I sat on the verandah across from the mandapa, trying to absorb what I'd just seen. A quick Google search revealed something unexpected: the story of Rani Bhabani, who built this temple in 1760. It turned out that many Bengali pilgrims, some of them wealthy and influential, journeyed to Varanasi over the centuries and left their mark on this holy city's landscape.

BENGAL'S QUEEN