David Scheinbaum, Varanasi: City Immersed in Prayer

This will be an in-store presentation and we will also live stream the evening on Zoom, please register to watch here.

Varanasi, also known as Kashi and Banaras, is a city in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh dating to the 11th century B.C.E. Regarded as the spiritual capital of India, the "City of Light" draws Hindu pilgrims who bathe in the Ganges River's sacred waters for prayer and ritual. In Varanasi, one is in some sort of time warp where one is living in history as if time has never stopped, where both residents and pilgrims, continue their daily practices and worship in ways relatively unchanged for millennia, a continuum of thousands of years. Being in Varanasi is like being on a thread pulled from a cloth that dates back to the beginning of time. Here, one doesn't "see" a ruin, as one does in other ancient civilizations,…