Purpose

Via Within the Frame(David duChemin)

VARANASI, INDIA. Varanasi is one of the holiest cities in India. It sits on the banks of the river Ganges, a holy river choked with pollution, decay, the remains of the dead, and the rotting offerings of marigolds placed in the river every morning and night by the faithful. Along her banks run the ghats, stone steps that descend into the
river and form the meeting place between the Ganga and her devotees. It is a chaotic, noisy, colorful place crowded with people who come to pray, wash, sell, buy, teach, and be taught. It is all at once a beautiful and an ugly place, a place of serenity and cacophony. I spent my time in Varanasi walking up and down the ghats at all
hours. Early morning, late evening, high noon. Trying to get a feel for the place, and to get an image or two that summed up not only the spirit of the place but how my spirit felt and thought about the place. And then I saw this boy. He was leaping from one boat to another, as a paper kite fell from the sky (the sky was full of them). He was trying to gauge the trajectory of the kite, to catch it.

My last frame was this one. He’d stopped and raised his hands as if in supplication, and he waited, motionless, for the kite to fall. It fell slowly, like a leaf on the wind. It missed his hands, fell into the water, and dissolved. It was both a beautiful and sad moment, one that defined the city of Varanasi for me. I sat there a while and
thought about it, about how sad it was that he’d waited and waited and jumped from boat to boat, only to have the kite fall out of his  grasp and dissolve. But the boy went back to jumping and waiting and jumping some more, and something told me that it was the running and the jumping that mattered to him, that I was wrong to think the purpose was the kite itself. Much like life, I suspect.