Kaleidoscope city : a year in Varanasi
- Author/Creator:
- Moore Ede, Piers
- Publication/Creation:
- London ; New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015
- Resource Type:
- Book
More Details
Additional/Related Title Information
- Full Title:
- Kaleidoscope city : a year in Varanasi / Piers Moore Ede
Subjects/Genre
- Subjects:
- Vārānasi (Uttar Pradesh, India)
Vārānasi (Uttar Pradesh, India)--Description and travel
India--Description and travel
Description/Summary
- Summary:
- 'I will never forget my first sight of the river in Varanasi, from the narrowness and constriction of the alleys, thronged with activity, to the sudden release of the waterfront, the labyrinth's end ...It seems that all of life has its assigned place on the stone steps leading down to the Ganges. Some are used for bathing, others for laundry, washing buffalo, puja (worship, ceremonial offering), and this one for the business of death. The smells are of wood smoke, buffalo dung, urine and jasmine flowers. The sounds are of rustling kites and lowing cattle, crackling wood and prayer...' Piers Moore Ede first fell in love with Varanasi when he passed through it on his way to Nepal in search of wild honey hunters. In the decade that followed it continued to exert its pull on him, and so he returned to live there, to press his ear to its heartbeat and to discover what it is that makes the spiritual capital of India so unique. In this intoxicating 'city of 10,000 widows', where funeral pyres smoulder beside the river in which thousands of pilgrims bathe, and holiness and corruption walk side by side, Piers encounters sweet-makers and sadhus, mischievous boatmen and weary bureaucrats, silk weavers and musicians and discovers a remarkable interplay between death and life, light and dark.
- Language:
- English
- Physical Type/Description:
- 209 pages ; 22 cm
Additional Identifiers
- Catalog ID (MMSID):
- 990036044200302486
- ISBN:
- 1408818493
9781408818497 - OCLC Number:
- 904080339
- Barcode:
- 010002764016
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