Terin Tashi Miller

MANIKARNAKA GHAT, BENARES

“From Where the Rivers Come” is available for purchase on Amazon.com and CreateSpace.com.

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This book has been a labor of love.

From its origins until now, I have done many things, seen many things, reported on many things, and been many places. But always, always, this story has pushed its way forward.

Part of that I attribute to the fact India, like me, has been through much change since I first saw it as a toddler. But no matter where I go, how I change, or what I do, Benares ~ now called officially Varanasi, though it has many other names ~ remains for me the nation’s heart, the Ganges River its main artery, and the people its life blood.

What flows from Benares spreads throughout the nation, and what affects the nation winds up affecting Benarsis.

To me, this book is a tragedy ~ like life. The tragedy of life takes many forms but ultimately, for westerners, the fact it ends is the reason it is so tragic.

But that thinking belies our ultimate prejudice: the belief that what we believe, what we think we know of our world, is the correct answer.

The book opens quoting Ecclesiastes for a host of reasons, not least of which is the fact that my parents often argued “civilization” didn't originate in the Judeo-Christian biased fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, but along the Indus River valley.

It also quotes T.S. Elliott’s “The Waste Land.” The question he posed in his stanzas on what the thunder said could be said to be the true origins of this novel: “What have we given?”

~ Terin Tashi Miller

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