Kaleidoscope City

January 15, 2015
A British travel writer's account of an extended stay in the northern Indian city of Varanasi, a 5,000-year-old "experiment in human cohabitation" on the banks of the Ganges River.Moore Ede (All Kinds of Magic: A Quest for Meaning in a Material World, 2010, etc.) first traveled to Varanasi en route to Nepal. He had very little idea of the place "other than it was supposed to be interesting." It was only after he returned to live there for a year and interview its inhabitants that he was able to appreciate Varanasi's amazing, and bewildering, complexity. Revered by Jains, Buddhists and Hindus, Varanasi was known as the "Holy City" because of the mythic promise of spiritual transcendence it offered believers. Yet its morally conservative surface belied darker realities. Drug dealing and human trafficking were serious problems, just as they were elsewhere in India. Heroine traders did brisk business in the city, as did brothels, which made use of services provided by homeless, widowed or kidnapped women. Corruption existed at every possible level. But as Moore Ede discovered, Varanasi was also a city of many delights. These included its famous sweets, which encompassed everything from "simple fudge-like creations to the most extraordinary concoctions of spice, dried fruit and cottage cheese." Music was another glory. The author learned how Varanasi was not only home to the meditative rhythms of Vedic chanting; it was also an important center of north Indian classical music. Flowing eternally through the city was the river. "Tired and over-burdened" from being used in the past as a depository for cremated bodies, waste and, in the present, industrial effluvia, the once-magnificent river reigned supreme as the most contaminated river on the planet. For Moore Ede, however, the meaning of the river went even deeper. Like Varanasi itself, the Ganges was ultimately a symbol of India's destructive "tryst" with modernity. A thoughtful and incisive memoir/travelogue.

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March 15, 2015

Often relegated to the periphery of most books on India, the holy city of Varanasi (aka Banaras or Kashi) is the main subject of this book based on a year Ede (Honey and Dust; All Kinds of Magic) spent there. Each chapter deals with a theme that defines the city. The emphasis is on the particular rather than the comprehensive. The reader ventures into crowded alleys of the inner city in which sweet confections are manufactured, visits the silk-weaving section of the city, and the palace gardens where the Ram Leela (life of Rama reenactment) is performed. We meet the locals: an Aghori ascetic dwelling in the cremation grounds, a boatman who regularly ferries the author along the Ganges, and many others. Those featured express their views on many topics, notably the ways in which the modern world collides with the traditional, and the reality of rampant corruption. VERDICT A deep sympathy and passion for the city animates the narrative. The book provides supreme background information about present-day Varanasi for those unfamiliar with India. Recommended for general collections.--Ravi Shenoy, Naperville, IL

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