Unmappable, Unforgettable Places

This collection of essays is a testimony to cities that devolve, disappear, and reappear as altered landscapes, haunted by the histories they can no longer hold

- By Sreemanti Sengupta

AT Tulsi Ghat, Varanasi, she holds on to her mother's ashes and stares at the river shimmering before her. Memories of their previous family visit wash over her. She finds herself standing still, absorbing the choreography of chaos that is modern-day Varanasi. The smoke, the dogs, the rotten flowers, the floating diyas, the many shades of animal excreta. She remembers her mother encouraging her father, a poet, to relocate to Banaras, where he could write his poetry by the banks of Ganga like Tulsidas. Six years later, she returns to the same cacophony with octogenarian historian and researcher Linda Hess. Too much had changed by then. It's no longer the old Varanasi, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has represented in Parliament since 2014. Humble temples have been replaced by huge concrete structures. Security guards and blazing lights are everywhere. Serene morning prayers have been turned into public performances and aartis into cheap spectacles.

“The city, known by its formal name, Varanasi, is literally not even Banaras when seen in its avatar as Modi's seat in Parliament,” writes Ananya Vajpeyi in her new book, Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities. “Typically (for him), he has built a ghat at a far end of the river from Assi called NaMo Ghat, after his own initials.”

The redevelopment that has since taken place under the project named 'Kashi Vishwanath Corridor' is being perceived as decisive in changing the city's historical geography. The entire area consisting of lanes, houses, ghats and shops around the Vishwanath temple complex and the Gyanvapi mosque that abutts its boundary wall is being redone.