Every book about the subcontinent has to reckon with Varanasi sooner or later. It is possibly the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and it feels it — not in decay, but in accumulation. Layer upon layer upon layer, each era built on top of the last rather than replacing it.
That quality is exactly what I need for Aryavartha. The novel is about deep time — about what survives, what is buried, what is rediscovered millennia later with new eyes. Varanasi is that idea made physical. The ghats have been there for so long that the city has grown around them like a tree around a fence post.
In the book, the city appears under a different name but with the same logic: a place where time pools rather than flows.