Book: VARANASI: A FILMMAKER’S MUSINGS ALONG THE GHATS

Author: Sarthak Dasgupta

Published by: Hawakal

Price: Rs 6,500

There would nary be a corner of Varanasi that has not been photographed already — from Raghu Rai and Dayanita Singh to Ishikawa Takeshi, intrepid photographers have been drawn in by the allure of this ancient city. The film-maker, Sarthak Dasgupta, is another such visitor. Armed with a “film idea” and a camera with a 50mm lens, Dasgupta spent three days in Varanasi, resulting in the book, VARANASI: A FILMMAKER’S MUSINGS ALONG THE GHATS (Hawakal, Rs 6,500). Some of the photographs reveal Dasgupta’s cinematographic vision. However, a lot of this vision gets lost in the gutter — the space down the centre of a book where it is bound.

In image after image, the focal point is eaten up by the gutter, resulting in an almost headless dog, seemingly disembodied limbs of a man sitting at the edge of a ghat and a temple with the goddess lost inside the crevice of the binding, among other unfortunate instances. In a book that is expensive and almost entirely made up of images, surely more thought could have been put into the design.