After the North India tour with Amma and the Ashram, I went to Varanasi as usual to learn Sitar…
Varanasi is one of the oldest, religious and most spectacular cities in the world…
Varanasi can be the hell or the heaven, it has both sides…
Huge awful traffic jam and serenity at the Ghats of the Ganges…
The greatest musicians and music schools of India are in Varanasi…
I had chosen an old Brahmani as my Sitar teacher; he is also the priest in the Sri Varahi Devi temple in the center of Varanasi… I stayed close to the Assi Ghat, in the South of Varanasi, it was just 3Km distance.
My sitar teacher was a lovely man and he has a lovely family, with 2 beautiful daughters, they were about 20 years old…
We had the 10 days Devi days with all these ceremonies, including the singing and dancing… I enjoyed that …
And then the Ramada started, … The Muslims were very aggressive and disturbed our Devi ceremony …
They killed 5 Hindus.
And then Hindus killed some Muslims…
Within 24 Hours 50.000 mixed troops, soldier and police, marched into the city. Every 50 meters checked the police or the army the people on the street…
I saw again and again the police or troops were beating the people…
And so, the killing was prevented.
I needed so much time to go to my music teacher, because every 50 m I got checked from the troops, so that my teacher invited me to live in his temple…
It was very hot, above 40 Celsius and I moved to the temple and got a room on the roof of the temple, close to the rooms of his beautiful daughters. The Brahmani lived with his wife downstairs and we lived on the roof…
Normally, it is forbidden in India, that a stranger lives so close to young girls…
I was also a Brahmachari (contact with girls was forbidden)
I just could go in the night to the daughters…
Sometimes it happened that one daughter was coming to me in the night, crying, because she had problems with her boyfriend. I was consulting her…
I exercised my sitar playing during the day, it was so hot even I could not touch the wall.
In the morning I took a bath in the Ganges, meditated, played my sitar on the roof of the temple…
Sunset I meditated…
So, I enjoyed my time during the civil war.
Still, I got huge problems with the monkeys that like to steal my fruits…
The monkeys are awesome to unlock the door or to steal my fruits through the barred windows…
If the monkeys could not get any fruit, they were protesting, torn my cloth from the line…
So, I had to share my fruits with them, then I could also live with the monkeys in peace.
Life is life and we can enjoy our life everywhere if we can adjust to the situation.
My Video: Episode 29 civil war in Varanasi https://youtu.be/aPeu94lvtEI
My Audio: https://console.aws.amazon.com/s3/object/rudizimmerer?region=ap-southeast-1&prefix=6/Episode+29+civil+war+in+Varanasi.mp3