The Interpreters: Among the Brahmins of Benares

Aatish Taseer

‘That first sight of the city curled around the river goes through me like the breath of something old and known and familiar. The city has been destroyed many times in the last thousand years, no less by development authorities than by conquerors. And yet it is so perfect an articulation of the culture that built it that the overlay of centuries has not muffled its voice.’ Aatish Taseer revisits Varanasi.