Varanasi is the holiest Hindu city. It’s the city you’ve seen on National Geographic — the one with all the steps leading down to the Ganges, the one where the masses go to bathe and clean their clothes and purify their souls and, if they’re lucky, be cremated upon death. One of the oldest continually-inhabited cities in the world, it’s a cacophony of sites and sounds and smells unlike anywhere we’ve been in India thus far.
This post, though, is about Space Invaders.
These were all over Varanasi: paintings on the ghats, mosaics in the passageways. With twisting alleys, crumbling stone structures, and wandering Sadhus coming at us from every direction, Varanasi feels like it hasn’t changed in two hundred years. Which made these paintings and mosaics all the more incongruous.
Hinduism is said to have 330 million gods, depending on who you ask and how deeply you want to explore the theology. The keeper of Aurangzeb’s mosque in Varansi told us that, to Hindus, “the sun is a god, the river is a God, the cow is a god, the tree is a God.” Had we found the symbols of a sect worshiping Inky and Blinky alongside Ganesh and Vishnu?
The invader above is painted on a building that is part of the Harishchandra Ghat, one of the two points in the city where bodies of the faithful are burned. We spoke to a member of the family who runs the burning ghat, an older man with glasses and betel-stained teeth, walking hand-in-hand with his young grandson. “What are these paintings?” I asked him.
“Some symbolic thing,” he replied.
“Who made them?”
“Some tourist,” is what I heard him say. Jenny heard him say, “Some Buddhist.” We’re not sure which it was.
“Do the people like these symbols?” I asked him.
“Well, nobody’s been killed. So why not?”
Of course I did some Googling when I came home. These imagers were placed here by an artist called Invader. He roams the world creating exactly these kind of installations — thirty-five cities so far.
According to Invader’s site, there are fourteen invasion points in Varanasi. Without knowing how many we were looking for, we found and photographed thirteen of them.
I look forward to returning to Varanasi; I want to find number fourteen.
11 responses so far ↓
MSK // April 14, 2008 at 8:57 pm |
Yeah invader rocks! He’s everywhere
Just wonderful things » Invaders line the walls of Varnasi // April 15, 2008 at 4:57 am |
[...] Link [...]
8-bit Varanasi | DesiPundit // April 15, 2008 at 9:00 am |
[...] and Jenny at Our Delhi Struggle discover Space Invaders in one of the least likely places – Varanasi [...]
geeknerdnanico // April 15, 2008 at 11:21 am |
That is awesome!
it made my morning less boring. thank you so much! :]
cheers!
Dave // April 15, 2008 at 5:33 pm |
At last the WordPress dashboard has sent me something worth reading! Very informative and funny. Great work! Keep it up!
Space Invader up in India : Remain Awesome! // April 15, 2008 at 6:15 pm |
[...] Link via OurDelhiStruggle [...]
Nandan // April 15, 2008 at 7:28 pm |
Great work. Mail me when you come back to Varanasi. I would help you finding the fourteenth. I was having boat ride 2 months ago and my boat rower asked me about those symbols. I couldn’t answer him. If you have more information please mail me at nandan@booti.org
Nicole // April 15, 2008 at 8:26 pm |
Weird. But think of all the Photoshopping opportunities that have been opened to you!
Varanasi: city of life and death « Inversion Layer // May 4, 2008 at 5:51 pm |
[...] another sort of ‘attack’ this time from space invaders, with a wonderful report titled 8 bit Varanasi which concludes with “I look forward to returning to Varanasi; I want to find [invader] [...]
Chris Bleill // May 11, 2008 at 11:39 pm |
Funny enough – I was in New York recently and saw one of these on a building as I was riding the bus somewhere around GCS! I had seen an art book called “Invasion: Los Angeles” that chronicled all of the Invaders in LA. No idea they were around the world!!!
vineetgupta // July 1, 2008 at 6:27 am |
An invader? That’s interesting… I’ll try to do some research of my own when I go there.
A symbol in India might mean just about anything. It may be the symbol of a political party (there are thousands of them), or one of the hundreds of symbols in every religion and its subgroups. Or a symbol depicting a cult, or an occupational group. Or (nowadays) a brand trademark.
This is my first comment. I stumbled upon your blog by accident today. Excellent content!