Bopa R and Mohini walked—no, rode—on one of their long sojourns from Rishikesh to Varanasi. This time, they had chosen Royal Enfield motorcycles, steady and unhurried, made for listening to the road rather than conquering it. Their tents and small necessities were tied carefully into bags slung on either side of the bikes, swaying gently like patient companions.
They rode slowly. The road was long, but Varanasi was not in their thoughts. Somewhere along the way, they had forgotten the destination altogether. Each place became a destination in itself, complete and sufficient. They stopped without ceremony—sometimes near a ghat, sometimes simply by the roadside—drawn by a sudden opening in the trees, a glint of water, a quiet curve of the river. Again and again the Ganga appeared, serene, unhurried, neither announcing herself nor hiding.
This route is threaded with rivers. While Prayagraj is the most celebrated—with its Triveni Sangam of Ganga, Yamuna, and the unseen Saraswati—other, humbler confluences ask for no witness. Near Varanasi itself, the Varuna and Assi rivers flow into the Ganga, lending the city its name. The Yamuna, too, carries many lives within her—Betwa, Chambal, and others—each river bringing its own history, its own silt, its own memory.
So there were many bridges, and many meandering junctions whose names they never learned. Roads curved away, rejoined, hesitated. None felt mistaken. Everything that flowed into the Ganga seemed sacred in its own quiet way—not by proclamation, but by participation. No river arrived empty-handed.
Near one such unnamed ghat, they took a canopied road, the kind that narrows without warning and seems to lean inward, as if listening. The shade thickened, and soon the road was flanked by mango orchards—deep green, dense, heavy with the promise of fruit. The air smelled faintly sweet, faintly wet. Then a board appeared, sudden and oddly formal against the foliage:
BE–GAM–PURA
A tall gate followed, plain but unmistakable.
Seeing it, Bopa slowed, then stopped. He cut the engine, lit a cigarette, and waited for Mohini, who was coming at her own pace, never hurried, never obliged. When she arrived, he nodded toward the board.
“See that?” he said. “Begampura. Literally—a city without sorrow.” He tapped ash lightly, as if careful not to disturb the place. “Something’s written below. This is the city of Ravidas. Once we cross, we are no longer in India, no longer in this world. There are no tolls, no taxes. People are equal.”
He smiled, half-mocking, half-reverent. “That’s the fabled city of Guru Ravidas.”
Mohini looked past the gate, at the quiet road disappearing into green. “So death and despair,” she said lightly, “pain and anguish—they don’t loiter there?” Then, teasing: “Is it a heavenly city?”
Bopa smiled the way one does when a question lands exactly where it should. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe it’s a city that doesn’t need heaven.”
He stubbed out the cigarette and swung his leg back over the bike. “Since we’re already loitering,” he added, “and since the city is in sight—let’s check it out.”
The engines started again, softly this time. The gate stood open. And Begampura waited, asking for nothing at all.
On the gate, set into stone that had already begun to weather, was an inscription. The letters were simple, unadorned, as if ornament would have been an intrusion. Bopa read it aloud, slowly, not declaiming, just letting the words arrive one by one:
Begampura is the name of that city, a place without sorrow or fear.**
There is no tax, no tribute, no property seizure. No fear of punishment, no dread of authority.*
At last, I have found a true homeland— There, well-being always reigns, my brothers.
Its rule is steady and eternal; There is no second or third—only one humankind.
The city is forever flourishing and renowned. The wealthy and the poor live there together.
People move freely, wherever their hearts desire. No one is stopped by walls, gates, or checkpoints.
Says Ravidas, the liberated leather-worker: whoever lives with me there is my friend.
Mohini did not interrupt. She traced the edge of the stone with her fingers, as if feeling for warmth beneath it. “No gates,” she said finally, glancing up at the gate they were standing before. “And yet here we are.”
Bopa laughed softly. “Yes. A gate to tell you that gates are unnecessary.”
They linger before the open road, realizing Begampura’s normalcy and absence of trumpets symbolize a city that exists beyond the need for declarations or barriers.
“It reads like a constitution,” Mohini said, “but written by someone who never trusted paper.”
“Or power,” Bopa replied. “Only companionship.”
They pushed the bikes forward, engines off now, walking them past the stone. The gate did not close behind them. It did not even seem to notice. And as the road swallowed them again—orchards on either side, birds stirring in the canopy—it became unclear whether they had entered a city at all, or merely stepped into a way of seeing where sorrow had no administrative permission to remain.
Begampura, it seemed, did not begin at the gate. The gate was only there to tell you that.
“Let’s get local shoes made here.”
They stopped by a small cobbler’s shop set a little back from the road. Nothing announced it except the quiet order of tools and a low wooden stool polished smooth by years of use. They gave their sizes, simply, without fuss, and sat down beside the leather worker. Bopa lit a cigarette and offered one; the man accepted with a nod, the exchange so natural it hardly felt like an introduction.
The cobbler set water to boil and poured them tea—warm milk tea, sweetened not with sugar but honey. He handed the cups across as if hospitality were part of the craft. Then he bent down to his work, leather yielding under practiced hands, needle passing through hide with the calm certainty of someone who had never been in a hurry.
They drank in silence at first. Midway through the cups, something shifted. The ache of the long road—shoulders, wrists, lower back—quietly withdrew. The sweetness rose gently, not as indulgence but as ease, and for a moment it felt as if the world had been rinsed and returned lighter. The road, the dust, the bridges, the miles—all of it receded.
“What’s your name?” Mohini asked.
The man looked up and smiled. “Ravidas.”
For a second—no longer than a breath—Bopa thought he saw a faint halo around the man’s head, not light exactly, more like certainty. The cobbler continued, as if stating something obvious.
“You have entered a city without sorrow,” he said. “You can go anywhere you like. I live here.” Then, almost as an afterthought: “And now you have become my friends.”
He gestured with his chin toward the road disappearing into the orchards. “Go. Walk. See the sights. Your slippers will be ready soon.”
They rose, oddly refreshed, leaving their old shoes behind without ceremony. As they stepped away, it occurred to Bopa that nothing had been bought yet, no price discussed, no terms set. And yet something had already been exchanged—companionship, perhaps, or recognition.
Behind them, Guru Ravidas—or a cobbler who shared his name—returned to his work, the sound of needle through leather steady and untroubled, as if sorrow itself had never learned the way to that bench.