“There is a strange kinship between Venice and Varanasi…both cities are like portals in time; they seem to draw you into lost ways of life. And in both cities, as nowhere else in the world, you become aware of mortality.” Amitav Ghosh writes in his book Gun Island.
Banaras, or Varanasi, or Kashi evokes a sense of the eternal, a city older than history itself, as Mark Twain once observed. It is a place where opposites coexist tradition and modernity, the mundane and the divine, life and death. A well-known poet, translator and prose writer Vyomesh Shukla, in his masterful work Aag Aur Pani: Banaras Par Ekagra Gadya, includes this paradoxical essence of the city, which blends the philosophical, cultural and quotidian elements of one of the oldest living cities on Earth.
The eternal dance of the opposites
The title Aag Aur Pani reflects the inherent contradictions of Banaras, a city that thrives on the interplay of extremes. Vyomesh Shukla’s anecdotal narrative revolves around these binaries, using the metaphor of fire for the city’s spiritual intensity and water for the flowing, adaptive nature of the Ganga. Banaras is portrayed as a city that consumes and purifies, simultaneously rooted in the ancient and open to the new.
Like Ghosh’s depiction of Banaras as a city acutely aware of mortality, Shukla emphasizes its role as a liminal space – a threshold between life and the afterlife. The Ganga, central to the city’s mythology and existence, becomes both a literal and symbolic artery, representing continuity, transformation, and the eternal journey of the soul.
A significant portion of the book is devoted to exploring the contributions of Tulsi Das, whose Ramcharitmanas democratised the divine. Author Vyomesh Shukla’s portrayal of Tulsi’s decision to write in the vernacular – rejecting the dominance of Sanskrit – is remarkable. By doing so, Tulsi bridged the chasm between the scholarly elite and the common people, ensuring that the wisdom of the Ramayana could reach the masses.
The author also insightfully highlights the resistance Tulsi faced from the Sanskrit scholars of Banaras, who dismissed vernacular language as unworthy of divine narratives. This rejection underscores the revolutionary nature of Tulsi’s work, which aligned with the egalitarian ethos of the Bhakti movement. His choice to elevate the bhasha, or the language of the people, profoundly aligns with Banaras’s inclusive ethos, where the sacred and the mundane converge effortlessly, embodying a harmonious dialogue between tradition and everyday life.
We read in the book that Vyomesh Shukla’s Banaras is also a city of immense cultural wealth. The lanes of Kabirchaura come alive with the sounds of Ustad Bismillah Khan’s shehnai and Pandit Kishan Maharaj’s tabla, symbolising the city’s enduring artistic legacy. The book tells us in detail how these artists, deeply rooted in Banaras’s soul, embody its spirit of devotion, transcendence, and inclusivity.
The author’s descriptions of these cultural icons are imbued with reverence. Kabir’s teachings of unity and Pandit Chhannulal Mishra’s soulful rendition of Kaashi Kabhoo Na Chhadiye serve as reminders of the city’s message of harmony and equality. Vyomesh uses these vignettes to show how Banaras, through its music and art, continues to inspire and bridge divides, offering a shared sense of identity and belonging.
A dual-lens on Banaras
Writer Pankaj Mishra, in his famous essay “Remembering Benares” (The Yale Review), reflects on the city’s inherent tensions, describing the interplay between those disenchanted by modern civilisation and those desperately seeking relevance within it. His observation largely includes an enigma: Banaras, with its timeless aura, becomes both a refuge for those yearning for a return to simpler, spiritual values and a crucible for those grappling with the demands of modernity. This duality the city’s resistance to change and its unavoidable entanglement with it emerges vividly in Vyomesh Shukla’s Aag Aur Pani.
We also notice that Shukla’s anecdotal stories do not romanticise Banaras as a mystical relic. Instead, he confronts its contradictions with clarity and empathy, much like Mishra, who admitted to initially overlooking the ironies of Banaras while seeking “a great subject”. Shukla’s exploration of these ironies the chasm between Banaras’s spiritual ideals and its social realities is one of the most thoughtful aspects of his work.
Drawing from the legacy of figures like Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, Vyomesh Shukla critiques the failings of Banaras’s civic and religious institutions. The neglect of the Ganga, for instance, serves as a metaphor for the city’s larger struggles. Revered as a lifeline and a divine entity, the river is simultaneously subjected to pollution and mismanagement, reflecting a dissonance between belief and action. This critique echoes Pankaj Mishra’s observations of Banaras as a city caught between its lofty mythologies and the stark inequities of contemporary life.
Kedarnath Singh’s much-loved poem “Banaras” serves as a counterpoint in Shukla’s critique. Through the evocative line, “Iss shahar mein basant achanak aata hai (In this city, spring arrives suddenly)”, the poet acknowledges the city’s ability to enchant despite its flaws. Author Vyomesh Shukla embraces this sentiment, threading it through his anecdotes as a reminder of Banaras’s beauty.
Vyomesh Shukla recognises that Banaras, in all its contradictions, is not merely a city but a living metaphor for the collision of history, modernity, and spiritual yearning. The critique of Banaras is thus not an indictment but an act of love an effort to reconcile the city’s dualities and envision a path forward where its sanctity and practicality coexist.
In this interplay of critique and reverence, Aag Aur Pani emerges as a modern literary response to the problems of Banaras, standing in conversation with the reflections of thinkers like Pankaj Mishra and the poetic interludes of Kedarnath Singh. It situates Banaras not just as a city of the past but as a microcosm of India’s ongoing negotiation with tradition and modernity.
In the book the tales flow like the Ganga itself, carrying with its stories of saints, scholars, musicians, and common folk, all bound by the city’s spiritual energy. Vyomesh Shukla’s prose, with imagery and depth, invites readers to immerse themselves in Banaras, to experience its timelessness and to understand its relevance in a rapidly changing world.
Aag Aur Pani: Banaras Par Ekagra Gadya, Vyomesh Shukla, Rukh Publications.
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