Death in Banaras

Death in Banaras PDF Author: Jonathan P. Parry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521466257
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
A study of Hindu death rituals and the sacred specialists who perform them in the Indian city of Banaras.

Death in Banaras

Death in Banaras PDF Author: Jonathan P. Parry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521466257
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
A study of Hindu death rituals and the sacred specialists who perform them in the Indian city of Banaras.

The City of Good Death

The City of Good Death PDF Author: Priyanka Champaneri
Publisher: Restless Books
ISBN: 1632062542
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Priyanka Champaneri’s transcendent debut novel brings us inside India’s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go. Banaras, Varanasi, Kashi: India’s holy city on the banks of the Ganges has many names but holds one ultimate promise for Hindus. It is the place where pilgrims come for a good death, to be released from the cycle of reincarnation by purifying fire. As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Kashi, Pramesh welcomes the dying and assists families bound for the funeral pyres that burn constantly on the ghats. The soul is gone, the body is burnt, the time is past, he tells them. Detach. After ten years in the timeless city, Pramesh can nearly persuade himself that here, there is no past or future. He lives contentedly at the death hostel with his wife, Shobha, their young daughter, Rani, the hostel priests, his hapless but winning assistant, and the constant flow of families with their dying. But one day the past arrives in the lifeless form of a man pulled from the river—a man with an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh. Called “twins” in their childhood village, he and his cousin Sagar are inseparable until Pramesh leaves to see the outside world and Sagar stays to tend the land. After Pramesh marries Shobha, defying his family’s wishes, a rift opens up between the cousins that he has long since tried to forget. Do not look back. Detach. But for Shobha, Sagar’s reemergence casts a shadow over the life she’s built for her family. Soon, an unwelcome guest takes up residence in the death hostel, the dying mysteriously continue to live, and Pramesh is forced to confront his own ideas about death, rebirth, and redemption. Told in lush, vivid detail and with an unforgettable cast of characters, The City of Good Death is a remarkable debut novel of family and love, memory and ritual, and the ways in which we honor the living and the dead. PRAISE FOR THE CITY OF GOOD DEATH “In Champaneri’s ambitious, vivid debut, the dying come to the holy city of Kashi to die a good death that frees them from the burden of reincarnation…. In sharp prose, Champaneri explores the power of stories—those the characters tell themselves, those told about them, and those they believe. . . . This epic, magical story of death teems with life.” —Publishers Weekly “Brimming with characters whose lives overlap and whose stories interweave, Champaneri’s exquisite debut delves into the consequences of the past, and how stories that are told can become reality even when they contain barely a shred of truth. As Pramesh discovers, the bitterness of past wounds can bring hope for redemption and life.” —Bridget Thoreson, Booklist “Lush prose evokes the thick, close atmosphere of Kashi and the intricate religious practices upon which life and death depend. Rumor and superstition hold sway over even the most level-headed people, twisting what’s explainable into something extraordinary—with tragic consequences. . . . The City of Good Death is a breathtaking, unforgettable novel about how remembering the past is just as important as moving on.” —Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews, Starred Review "Champaneri’s Kashi is teeming and vivid . . . the book frequently charms, and it's as full of humor, warmth, and mystery as Kashi’s own marketplace." —Kirkus Reviews “The City of Good Death is the debut novel of Priyanka Champaneri but it has the confidence of a master storyteller. Drawing on the rich literary traditions of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, Champaneri’s epic saga will satisfy armchair travelers thirsty for adventure, and sick of looking out their windows.” —Chicago Review of Books "In intricate detail and with remarkable skill, Champaneri writes a powerful tale about the pull of the past and our aching need to understand the mysteries and misunderstandings that thwart our relationships. An atmospheric and immersive debut with a rich cast of characters you won’t soon forget." —Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop

Dying the Good Death

Dying the Good Death PDF Author: Christopher Justice
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791432617
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Exploring the Hindu concepts of good and bad deaths, this rich ethnography follows pilgrims who choose to travel to the holy city of Kashi to die.

The Twice-born

The Twice-born PDF Author: Aatish Taseer
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9353023890
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
When Aatish Taseer first came to Benares, he was eighteen, the Westernized child of an Indian journalist and a Pakistani politician, raised among the intellectual and cultural elite of New Delhi. Nearly two decades later, Taseer leaves his life in Manhattan to go in search of the Brahmins, wanting to understand his own estrangement from India through their ties to tradition.Known as the twice-born - first into the flesh, and again when initiated into their vocation - the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares, the holy city of death, is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity. At every turn, the seductive, homogenizing force of modernity collides with the insistent presence of the past. From the narrow streets of the temple town to a Modi rally in Delhi, among the blossoming cotton trees and the bathers and burning corpses of the Ganges, Taseer struggles to reconcile magic with reason, faith in tradition with hope for the future and the brutalities of the caste system, all the while challenging his own myths about himself, his past, and his countries old and new.The Twice-born is a deeply individual, acutely perceptive, urgently relevant book: it revolves around questions of culture and politics that are going to define our future as a nation. But beyond the inherent interest of the stories it tells, it is a wonderfully written book, characterised by the music of Aatish Taseer's prose, which will haunt the reader long after the final page has been turned.

To Die in Benares

To Die in Benares PDF Author: K. Madavane
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1529015758
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
In seven grim, macabre and sometimes darkly comic tales, Madavane traces France’s forgotten colonial presence, playfully reinterprets Hindu myths and recounts the many ways to die in postcolonial India. Recalling the pitiless world of Maupassant and animated by ghosts, gods and holy men, these haunting stories offer a fresh perspective on India’s past and present, its many ironies and idiosyncrasies. Mourir à Bénarès was first published in French in 2010 and received high acclaim for its depiction of India’s most fabled town and the many unusual characters who populate it. Now available in English for the first time, To Die in Benares brings to a wide audience a rare and irresistible literary voice.

Death and the Regeneration of Life

Death and the Regeneration of Life PDF Author: Maurice Bloch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316582299
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
It is a classical anthropological paradox that symbols of rebirth and fertility are frequently found in funerary rituals throughout the world. The original essays collected here re-examine this phenomenon through insights from China, India, New Guinea, Latin America, and Africa. The contributors, each a specialist in one of these areas, have worked in close collaboration to produce a genuinely innovative theoretical approach to the study of the symbolism surrounding death, an outline of which is provided in an important introduction by the editors. The major concern of the volume is the way in which funerary rituals dramatically transform the image of life as a dialectic flux involving exchange and transaction, marriage and procreation, into an image of a still, transcendental order in which oppositions such as those between self and other, wife-giver and wife-taker, Brahmin and untouchable, birth and therefore death have been abolished. This transformation often involves a general devaluation of biology, and, particularly, of sexuality, which is contrasted with a more spiritual and controlled source of life. The role of women, who are frequently associated with biological processes, mourning and death pollution, is often predominant in funerary rituals, and in examining this book makes a further contribution to the understanding of the symbolism of gender. The death rituals and the symbolism of rebirth are also analysed in the context of the political processes of the different societies considered, and it is argued that social order and political organisation may be legitimated through an exploitation of the emotions and biology.

Torpedoed

Torpedoed PDF Author: Deborah Heiligman
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company (BYR)
ISBN: 1250187559
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
From award-winning author Deborah Heiligman comes Torpedoed, a true account of the attack and sinking of the passenger ship SS City of Benares, which was evacuating children from England during WWII. Amid the constant rain of German bombs and the escalating violence of World War II, British parents by the thousands chose to send their children out of the country: the wealthy, independently; the poor, through a government relocation program called CORB. In September 1940, passenger liner SS City of Benares set sail for Canada with one hundred children on board. When the war ships escorting the Benares departed, a German submarine torpedoed what became known as the Children's Ship. Out of tragedy, ordinary people became heroes. This is their story. This title has Common Core connections.

All Spell Breaks Loose

All Spell Breaks Loose PDF Author: Lisa Shearin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101580828
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
From national bestselling author Lisa Shearin comes a new chapter in "one of the best fantasy series currently on the market." (Night Owl Reviews) My name is Raine Benares—and it sucks to be me right now. I’m a seeker who found the Saghred, a soul-stealing stone that gave me unlimited powers I never wanted. Now I’ve lost the rock—and the magic it gave me—to a goblin dark mage whose main goals are my death and world domination. This is more than incentive enough for a little trip to the goblin capital of Regor with a small band of good friends, not-so-good friends, and one outright enemy. Don’t ask. All we need to do is destroy the Saghred, kill the mage, and put a renegade goblin prince on the throne. Did I mention I’ll be doing that with no magic?

Death Must Die

Death Must Die PDF Author: Atmananda
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788186569320
Category : Hindu women
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book gives an intimate first-hand account of a courageouswoman s spiritual quest in close association with several of India sgreatest modern saints. Unfolding against the back-drop of Benaresin the 1940s, where she lived as a teacher and musician, we aregiven an in-depth picture of her intense relationship with theextraordinary woman who becomes her guru 3 the great Bengalimystic, Sri Anandamayee Ma. Atmananda, as she came to be known,was also closely associated with J. Krishnamurti, but she was drawndeeper into the heart of Indian spirituality, encountering Sri RamanaMaharshi at his ashram in South India in 1942 and ultimately comingto Anandamayee Ma.Although written in a diary format, her story reads almost like anovel. A rare record of a remarkable spiritual odyssey.

Life and Death in Varanasi

Life and Death in Varanasi PDF Author: Andrei Iliescu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780464650720
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
These photos were taken in Varanasi in an unexpected trip that lasted only 3 days. Varanasi is a place I always wanted to discover, but my arrival there in October 2008 was somewhat accidental, flying from Nepal. Fortunately I managed to find a place to sleep in one of the few Guest Houses located only 100 meters from the pyres of Manikarnika Ghat. Almost without sleep or food, I wandered on the banks of the Ganges along the 7-8 km where the 84 ghats are laid - in fact the place where everything happens, the spiritual center of this city. Maybe of all India.