Overview

A cascading effect of events unravels in Banaras: on its ghats and in its lanes. Myriad lanes emerge like an umbilical cord out of the ghats to the womb of the sacred geography, to the infinite spots where the believers pause to experience the divine. Its waterfront, a grid of staircase leads one’s vision up and the eye meets a world that is frantic of the mundane and magnum opus, a scene that appears chaotic yet in sync. In Banaras: Of Gods, Humans and Stories, Nilosree and Irfan discern the engaging narrative of a unique chromosome that makes Banaras. Traversing within the maze, its sacred topography, craft traditions, and gastronomic plethora, the book examines the tenets of its weave. There is a singular, unified, and unstoppable momentum to all this—akin to the unfolding of a scroll of a painting.

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9789389136777

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Reviews

‘A lovingly-written and profoundly personal meditation on the City of Light in all its different dimensions and avatars. Vaulting from mythology to history and back through the ancient scriptures and epics to the living landscape, this is a warmly affectionate love-letter to the holiest of all Indian cities.’ -William Dalrymple, historian, art historian, author, and curator.

Author Information

Nilosree Biswas is an author, filmmaker who was trained in Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and later in cinema. Her interests include, history, cultural studies of pre modern, colonial South Asia and early Hindi cinema. Her works both film and writing have appeared in various print media, screened worldwide including at Cannes Film Festival. Broken Memory, Shining Dust, her prominent documentary had been archived by Oscar Library, acquired by Harvard University, US and School of Oriental, African Studies (SOAS), UK among many. The earlier book, which she co-wrote with Irfan Nabi, Alluring Kashmir: The Inner Spirit, has found home in Library of Congress and New York Public Library. Irfan Nabi photographs often and writes intermittently; his images have been part of major exhibitions in Amsterdam, Washington, Kolkata and New Delhi among many other cities around the globe. He has shot and traveled solo across various terrains. Indulgence in food and music is what keeps him going in his spare time. A book on Ladakh is work in progress. Culturally nuanced photo elements are what his lens seek. In his earlier years he studied in the prestigious Irish Catholic Burn Hall School in Kashmir and later trained in medicine.

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