Kaleidoscope City: A Year in Varanasi
Piers Moore Ede
Bloomsbury
Pp 186
Rs 399

THIS SLIM book packs a punch, touching on all aspects of that fascinating old city, Varanasi or Banaras or Kashi, as we like to call her. There is, of course, the river Ganga in all its glory and gore, complete with an eye on the funeral pyres, which smoulder on the banks; the spectacular Ramlila performances; the chaotic life on the streets; the widows who live on the margins; the chants of young priests and thumri singers; sweets sellers and sadhus; and the Muslim and Hindu weavers.

The author also turns the spotlight on the seamier side of this famed ‘city of lights’: widespread corruption, a flourishing sex trade, an inept administration and police, and so forth. Piers Moore Ede is the outsider looking in, taking us along a ride and showing us sights and sounds, which we sometimes pretend not to see.

“I will never forget my first sight of the river in Varanasi,” writes Ede, “from the narrowness and constriction of the alleys, thronged with activity, to the sudden release of the waterfront, the labyrinth’s end”. For him, if a city could be condensed into a single phrase, the one that might well stand for Varanasi is “the Great Cremation Ground, a place provided by the gods for humankind to end their days in. Within this microcosm, the river itself as it meets the holy city may be the most powerful symbol of them all”.

But the Ganga is old, “tired, overburdened; her pollution is a terrible sight”. Ede reminds us that the Ganga is now the most contaminated river in the world, and that the faecal coliform bacteria levels here are 60,000 parts per 100 ml, or 120 times the official safe bathing limit.

The state of the Ganga leads Ede to ask a lot of questions: “How had things become so bad? Were the Hindu leaders, whose faith sanctifies its every drop, involved in cleaning the river? Surely, with so many millions depending on the river for their lives and livelihoods, the health of the Ganga should be a national priority?”

Alas, Ede didn’t get answers to these important questions. His research led him to Veer Bhadra Mishra, a former professor of hydraulic engineering at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), also the head priest of Sankat Lochan temple at Tulsi Ghat. Since the early 80s, he had championed the issue of pollution in the Ganga. But when Ede manages to meet Mishra, he is weary, old, sick and tired. “Time is running out,” he tells Ede, “Just write about the river. My voice has been heard too many times. Perhaps the Ganga herself will speak to you. Let us pray her plight is heard by someone before it is too late.”

And yet so much is at stake to save the Ganga. As a stranger tells Ede, as they sat on Dashashwamedh, the main ghat, “When the world becomes too much there is always Banaras.” Ede noticed the number of old and frail women, widows all, who “populate the verges”. He also noticed that these women, wearing widow’s white, “rarely speak, lost in grief perhaps, or surrendering to the will of God”. A PhD student of BHU tells Ede that traditionally widows have three choices—to marry their husband’s younger brother, to commit sati or to commit to a life of sexual renunciation on the margins of society.

By the time you reach the end of this thin book, along with Ede, who spent a year in Varanasi, you have had an opportunity to “witness the continuing evolution of an ancient city in real time”. And as everything keeps on flowing like the Ganga herself, you chuckle at some of the stories you have read, not least the mithai-maker saying he had gone off gulab jamuns because it had become the favourite method of torture for the police. “Victim is obliged to eat plate after plate of gulab jamuns without a single drop of water,” he tells Ede. “Soon, his mouth is like the Thar desert, and he will sign whatever confession is required!”

Sudipta Datta is a freelancer