Bishwanath Ghosh's new book in honour of the holy city of Benaras
CHENNAI: That Chennai is a city and Madras is an emotion is something we’ve heard often enough. In the heart of this city, a small section of Chennaiites got to hear journalist and author Bishwanath Ghosh use the same sentiment for the country’s most acclaimed holy city — Benaras. Launching the latest of his works, Aimless in Banaras: Wanderings in India’s Holiest City, Ghosh said, “It’s an emotion. When you go to Benaras...you find (that) wow, this is what life is about.”
It is a slice of this life that Ghosh provides in this book — through the people of Benaras and their everyday stories. From the barber advertising his shaving service to a foreigner to a yogi showing off the load-carrying capacity of his penis, from ghats to naths, there is plenty in store for the eager reader; all this made evident from the two excerpts that actor TM Karthik offered the audience gathered at Odyssey Book Store in Adyar on Saturday. When panellist, actor Nikhila Kesavan, asked him about the writing process that birthed this book, Ghosh offered another description of Benaras as the answer, in Hindi. “To find Benaras, you have to lose yourself in Benaras. So I lost myself in Benaras while I was there, while I was writing (about) it. And so the book just wrote itself,” he explained.
Even as it offers a glimpse of life in the holy city, Aimless in Banaras has a lot to say about death and the city’s profound acceptance of it. For Ghosh himself, it was the loss of his mother and the subsequent cremation at Benaras that seeded the idea for the book. Far from this personal lens, the writer bears witness to the city’s wisdom that is often lost on the uninitiated. “Be it Chennai or any other place, the cremation ground is tucked away in the corner of the city. When someone dies, they are taken to the cremation and forgotten. No one sees how the cremation happens. In Benaras, at Harishchandra Ghat and Manikarnika Ghat, cremation is a 24/7 process and a public spectacle. I think that makes the people of Benaras very wise. They know the facts of life — anybody who is born should die, and nobody knows when death will come knocking. People in Benaras understand this better than anybody else. The idea of the book was to tell what they have to say,” he detailed. The book is available in stores and online. Price: `327.