Like the morning mist, powerful mythologies shroud the city. Story telling is one recurrent way of structuring and sustaining Banaras. The sacred fiction sustains the city and its pursuits. Mythology is the form giver of the city . Here, form undoubtedly follows immaculate fiction.
People come here to die.
It is said that even a dog can be blessed with liberation if it dies within the bounds of Panch Kroshi - the largest circumambulatory circuit that defines the city limits. Even if one has led a miserable life, death in Banaras is said to liberate one of all the agony. The invisible signs on thousands of temples, ghats and houses in Banaras tacitly declare this eternal bargain through an ingenious epistemology of space. At Banaras, death, the biggest human fear and enigma, has been tamed and domesticated by the city and its mythologies. With death, all of your sins are forgiven by virtue of your being in the city of Banaras.