From Topophilia to Despair. Kashinath Singh’s Banaras Trilogy
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Heinz Werner Wessler
Abstract
Kashinath Singh’s three Banaras-novels are interesting examples of the continuing occupation of a contemporary author with urban space and its social life. Beyond Banaras [1] as a physical location, the three novels emulate deeper and more symbolic layers of meaning of a cityscape with its fascinating complexity of social, cultural and religious relations between tradition and modernity. Kashinath Singh’s Banaras trilogy also represents the changing perspective of its author on his surroundings over the course of his lifetime. While the plot of Apnā morcā unfolds in the culture of political debate during the 1960s and early 1970s in the university milieu, Kāśī kā assī can be read as a kind of documentation on the author’s vivid relationship with a traditional quarter of the town and its lifestyle. Rehan par Ragghū, the third novel, somehow continues the sense of loss that is already present in the nostalgic mood of Kāśī kā assī. It deals with the growing disillusionment of the elder generation with contemporary society, its self-focused individualism and social modernity as such. The novel is about the betrayed hopes of a father in his children, the opening rift between generations and the general decline of values. The change of the central location of the plots in the three novels from the university quarter and from a traditional environment in the old town towards the “new colonies” also marks a shift from progressivism towards existentialism, and from topophilia to despair.
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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Inhaltsverzeichnis – Table des Matières – Contents
- Natural Constraints to Cultural Relativism Example: Ricci’s Pacific-Centered World Maps
- It Is Only Gazouz: Muslims and Champagne in the Colonial Maghreb
- Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817) – der Basler Orientreisende malgré lui und sein Besuch bei den Drusen im Gebiet des Mont-Liban
- Unfertige Studien 6: Der Brudermord des Kain aus theologischer Sicht
- Glocalization Narratives in Indian Literature and Cinema: An Introduction
- Becoming a Crorepati: From Glocal TV Game to Grobal Fiction
- Early ‘Glocalization’ in Indian Cinema: An Analysis of Films of Dada Saheb Phalke and Himanshu Rai
- Charulata 2011: Dramatizing the Glocal
- Seeing Kolkata: Globalization and the Changing Context of the Narrative of Bengali-ness in Two Contemporary Films
- A Queer Lack of Success. Discourses on Same-sex Love and Neoliberalism in the Hindi Novel Paṃkhvālī Nāv by Paṃkaj Biṣṭ
- Modern Durgas Fighting against the Demons of Globalization
- From Topophilia to Despair. Kashinath Singh’s Banaras Trilogy
- Book Reviews – Buchbesprechungen – Comptes Rendus
- Robyn Creswell: City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut
- Ebrey, Patricia Buckley and Huang, Shih-shan Susan: Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China
- Zaman, Muhammad Qasim: Islam in Pakistan: A History
- Ahrens, Tobias: Kampō. Einführung in die japanische Pflanzenheilkunde in 25 Fragen und Antworten
