By Meera Vohra Recently the famed Banarasi paan was given the Geographical Indication or GI tag because of its uniqueness, what also deserves nothing less than this recognition is the relationship between a Banarasi and his paan, which is also unique and special. You can separate a man from his alter ego but not a paan from a typical Banarasi. What is really intriguing or rather difficult to communicate with a Banarasi is when he is savouring his daily dose of the famed paan. Don’t be aghast when he merely nods his head to answer to your trillions of queries as you are asking too much, while he is on a different journey with his delectable paan.   A true Banarasi hates to spit his paan , when he is just about to enjoy it, that too for the sake of some mundane conversation. He will try his hardest not to forsake it, while taking the communication literally to a different level. With his mouth stuffed, you need to decipher the sounds he creates. If you are a novice or pe...

Varanasi or Banaras has been interpreted variedly, this is an outsider's attempt to understand the city   By Meera Vohra The most clichéd description of a Banarasi, being fun loving with a damn care attitude, could be a shocker to a newcomer who takes things on the face value. The fun is certainly not writ large on their face, as a gullible outsider, I realised when I came to the city more than a decade ago. The fun that I was expecting to drip like the paan from the corner of their mouth was expecting too much from a Banarasi. For an outsider like me the city overwhelmed me, both the sacred and profane that coexisted, certainly pulled the thinking process in opposite directions, proving too exhausting for my mind. It was much years later, I realised the city thrived on metaphors. You really had to go deep to understand both the philosophy and even the humour. 'Subtle' is the word to describe Banarasi humour.   I often wondered if the bull on the road or the man...