Vijay Rana’s Kashi: The Abode of Shiva is a loving ode to the city

The book takes us into the Kashi Vishwanath temple, replete with action shots of priests and devotees inside the temple, wideshots of the Ganges ghats and the many idols to which these devotees offer prayer. Many Hindu gods and myths are traced back to Kashi.

The Vishwanath temple is the focal point of the book and city. The Gyanvapi mosque-Kashi temple case has been at the centre of a legal battle for over three decades now. Rana details the demolitions and resurrections the temple has faced since the 12th century. A full-page photograph of a mosque in Kashi is titled, ‘Alamgir mosque at Panchaganga Ghat was built by the Mughal king Aurangzeb after the demolition of Bindu Madhav Temple’.

Beyond that, too, the book does a good job of bringing Varanasi’s allure to life. It serves as a catalogue of all that the ghat city has to offer — spirituality, worldliness, history, tradition, culture, identity. Kumar’s illustrations, however, leave much to be desired.