We were dead tired after we finished our travel to reach our destination, the very large, the stunning Banares Hindu University. We entered the campus through The Lanka Gate, I was aware of this only as we started using the gate over the next few days, as we were all out with exhaustion while we passed through it in our vans the first time. The roads were wide and covered in green on either side. even the divider had an array of plants all along the campus.
Throughout the trip, B.H.U often called for sighs of relief from us. We'd come exhausted after our long journeys and unwind and carry on with end of day work here.
It was home for me in this unknown, characterful, distinct and lively city that I was going to spend the next eight days in. It had a calmness about it. I found the silence to have a constant buzz, which I think came from the students whom I spotted frequently on their cycles or just walking around the pretty streets. Kashi gave me a different sort of feeling as compared to any other educational university I've been around. I actually felt the old charm of it being an educational center. Not in the sense of the stories I heard once there about the founder Mahamana Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya still residing in the area, but I could sniff what he wanted to achieve. I got a sense once there of how it would've been in his times when he started off his process of getting the country to gain strength and to develop itself through different communities coming together in mutual goodwill and harmony. It was his hope and prayer that his center would produce students who could lead noble lives and love their country, besides being intellectually equal to the the best of their fellow students in other parts of the world. ( Words played with from Mohan Malaviyas own words).
All in all, The B.H.U guesthouse provided the group and myself a lovely resting retreat. The peace and large expanse of the place definitely got me to reflect and ideate more, a process that was very needful for my project. It's location, I felt couldn't have gotten better. The cycle rickshaws as well as the ones with five people in them added to our experience. No, I wont add grandeur to the previous line, making it sound poetic, but it was definitely part of the experience and something I think that deserves to be mentioned. Things were easily accessible once at the Lanka gate. There were the Ghats around fifteen minutes away, where I spent most of my time due to the nature of my project in the Gallis; it provided us quick access to the market, giving us a short insight to city life; there was food, the shops, the ghats, the Ganga... I think we got the best after missing out on our first few deals we had made with three hotels. Living in hotels would just take away the charm for me. Coming from the bustling city of Bombay, this experience is always something I look forward to.
Our visit to the Fine Arts part of the campus provided me with encouragement. I got to meet new people, students interested and working passionately even on a holiday. I have been to Art Schools like the J.J School of art in Bombay and the B.S University in Baroda, but of course these set of students were different from the other ones and had different things to tell us about art and what they felt of it. The time we spent here wasn't sufficient for me to talk more about it further. It basically gave me a sense of sculptures and a few artists working in other fields, all very proud to be studying in B.H.U. It did add to the experience, and acted as a form of satisfaction after reflecting by myself if I had made a mistake by joining Design School and not a School of only fine art. It came in as a form of assurance that I had made the right decision to join the Design and Art School I am in rather than a school that provided for only fine art, like I thought I might join earlier.
A great stay got our visit higher by several notches.
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