Life has a gnawing inclination for self-preservation, and yet we have a cause to believe that one can escape life, its cycles, its shackles, and transcend death itself by not being reborn. The city of Varanasi has had people travelling at the end of their lives, in the pursuit of this salvation, a spiritual reward, Moksha. How can a physical space reward an exit from life and death? Through ‘social action’, which is produced as a result of the interaction of animate and inanimate bodies, the city is perceived, believed and experienced to afford Moksha. The inhabitants with their respective props convincingly adopt their roles in the delivery of this spiritual reward, forming a granular theatre.

Thus, as a historical cultural landscape, the city of Varanasi manifests as evolving ‘situated events’, collectively forming a cultural performance. This presentation, coupled with the short film Semicolon investigates the performativity of the city, and enquires the inherent democratic nature of this performance in hosting the various identities of its performers, and the multitude of modalities it can inherit. Varanasi can even invite one to bear witness to a tourist cruise in front of a cremation Ghat, compelling one to question their own ethical constructs and biases, social aesthetics and philosophical hygiene.