Banaras: Walking the lanes

Title: Varsha’s Varanasi

Written by: Chitra Soundar

Photography and design: Soumitra Ranade

First Print: 2018

ISBN: 978-81-8190-348-8

Published by: Karadi Tales Company Pvt. Ltd.

MRP: 699/-

 This book caught my eye in the richly stocked section for children at a book-store in Delhi. From a distance I saw a colourful, hardbound cover depicting Banaras. It stood out amidst others on the rack!

The central character moves around the town with a purpose – searching for her father. Locales, smells, and character of the town are woven around the story. The premise appeared promising. The story moves ahead with images – each page is in full colour - and towards the end smaller version of these images appears again with information on what is depicted. From Kachori Gali to Alamgiri Mosque all find space here.The approach is interesting but repeats could have been avoided; the evening arathi (as spelt in the book) for example.

The images capture the lanes of Banaras with their cows, crafts, food, hand-pumps and wall paintings. However, like a friend pointed out, other than for a couple of plastic wrappers, they present a sanitized version of the lanes. They depict a Banaras without dung and else that is unpleasant but ever present in the lanes. Images of the protagonist – on some pages – appear copy-pasted or photo-shopped; in other words out of place. And the font choice on the cover is strange.  

Moving beyond the images now. The paan seller is Bhairav kaka while the rickshaw puller is Rafiq. Rafiq without a suffix. Both of them appear to be in the same age range and significantly elder to the protagonist – given that age is one of the drivers of the suffixes we add. Is this a cliché at work or reflective of the society today?

For a book with limited text the editing could have been better:

v ‘That night, Varsha went with papa to watch the evening arathi’

v ‘The city has 4 main universities’

The final pages appear hurriedly done and are disappointing:

v If one is stating ‘facts’ under ‘Benaras Silk’ hand loom and machine loom warrant a line or two. Also I was left wondering how this came up, ‘There are over 10,000 shops in Varanasi that sell Benarasi Silk sarees’

v Why does a book, and one primarily meant for children at that, encourage, ‘taking picture with monkeys in temples’?

The book is over-priced for what it offers!

Note: I have scanned the covers but my scanner size did not do justice to the book's size. The sides have been cut-off.