Ram Kumar obsessively painted the dense and dilapidating city of Benares across decades. Views from the riverbank overlooking the boats or capturing the crammed human habitation were rendered in expressionist brushwork. Often, his paintings had remained bereft of any humans, but their spectral presences were captured through telling details.

The sense of hope and despair, faith and fate add unusual shades to the city’s character that has survived the onslaught of time and the deficient spaces.