Varanasi: City of Ashes
Exiting the train station, I walk into a wide plaza that stretches out to the main road. I weave my way through traveling families squatting on the ground, dirty faced street kids asking for “baksheesh” or ‘kindness,’ vendors selling crispy rice and chai. Like a sudden gust of wind, a group of moto-rickshaw drivers approach and greet me, following me along as I walk. Most of them represent touts, overpriced arrangements for rickshaw rides/guesthouse/tour guide that snag most Western tourists, so I smile and thank them without accepting any offers. I keep moving, spurred on by their persistence, trying hard to suppress my frustration and escape their attentions. Reaching the dirt road pull-around, I lock eyes with a rickshaw puller, an ancient faced, lungi clad man, who motions me over to his seat. In a moment, I slip the crowd around me and my driver pedals us out into the madness of the Varanasi streets.
A ruckus of horns, bells, and shouts. A river of vehicles: trucks, scooters, moto-rickshaws, bikes, cows, pedestrians. A ride in India is an experience. Somehow you get where you’re going âÂ?¦ eventually âÂ?¦ usually. The rickshaw pullers are men with nothing, pulling people around for less than a penny so that they can feed their family. Living out of their rickshaws, they are preyed upon by gangsters and moto drivers and disrespected by the rest of Indian society. Their lifespan is severely shortened by their brutal occupation, but I am of the mind that it is better to help one of them eat than succumb to the touts.
My head is spinning from the overwhelming surroundings; everywhere I look is something or someone entirely different from Western culture. A sari shop explodes in brilliant colors, a stark contrast to the dirty, dusty tones of everything else. A young man who is missing his legs struts around on his arms, sweeping up street debris into mounds. A filthy 6 year old girl in a tattered dress pads around on her own looking for Westerners with wallet bulges or open pockets. After a lengthy ride through these crowded, dusty streets, we reach the river. My senses are reeling, and the feel of the place has me mystified.
After wandering off the main street back into the labyrinth of alleyways, I happen upon a nice guesthouse to stash my bag for a while. The alleys are a maze of walkways that connect markets, houses, and temples, eventually leading down to the river and the ghats. They are cobblestone paved and a gauntlet of dark corners, urine, cow dung, mounds of trash, people, and an occasional honking scooter. I wander through taking in everything, every now and then stopping to ask a shopkeeper which way the Ganga is.
I begin passing cubbyhole shops with flower wreaths and incense. There’s a smell of smoke in the air, incense and wood. The alley turns darker, less crowded, people’s faces grow hard and stern eyes follow me wherever I go. I begin to wonder where I’ve led myself when I see the scales. Big weighing scales next to huge walls of stacked logs. Men with shaved heads and white linen sarongs. Behind me, the alley fills with eerie chanting as a procession approaches. A group of men appear from around the corner, a stretcher lifted among them. On the stretcher is the body of a loved one, cloaked in gold and crimson robes and adorned with wreaths of flowers. Some people are comfortable with the sight of lifeless bodies. I, for one, am not. As I backed up against a wall to let the procession pass, the sight of the recently deceased gave me chills. One gets used to it quickly in Varanasi, a city that is permeated by death. I realize quickly where I’d wandered. Mir ghat, the burning ghat. A proper introduction to Hinduism and the Ganges.
Hindu myth has the Lord Shiva building Varanasi along the Ganges River, making it the holiest place in the Hindu religion. To bathe in the Ganges is to cleanse oneself of sin. To die there, to be cremated on the banks of the river, ashes dumped into its waters, is to be reborn. Millions of Hindus make a pilgrimage to Varanasi every year to bathe in the river at dawn. Thousands of others come to the city to live out their last days, to prepare themselves for death. Funeral pyres burn all day and all night, a continuous practice of ritual and the science of properly cremating a body. As I descend onto the ghat platforms, the place begins to take hold. Up above the buildings a huge plume of smoke billows into the evening sky. This will hopefully be the only time I seek out and witness the burning of dead bodies, but one I will never forget.
After slipping through the doorway of what’s left of a crumbled building, I walk out onto a platform overlooking the river. Soon the ghat comes into view to my right, a tiered area next to the water with 4 fires burning and several others being prepared. Westerners are not allowed down into the ghat but are relegated to a viewing space above where the grieving families gather. My platform is removed from the rest, a separate tier in full view of everything and directly beneath the huge plume of smoke dissipating into the sky.
I can’t speak. Can’t move. Another body is brought down from the alleys and dipped into the river. The bearers remove its golden cloak to reveal a white linen shroud beneath. They situate the body on a tier and construct the pyre around it. The first born child of the deceased, identifiable by their white linen sarong and freshly shaved head, carries a torch down from a flame said to have been burning for thousands of years. The fire is lit. The flames take hold.
In a few minutes, the neatly stacked wood is consumed by the blaze, the body barely visible amongst the flames. Squinting, I perceive too much detail. The shroud disintegrates. Limbs become visible between the logs, the thin branches of the arms and legs, the unmistakable roundness of the skull, the human form somehow taking shape within the fire. I am horrified and yet enraptured. There is no looking away. In India, there are few things more apparent than suffering and overpopulation. In Varanasi, it is death that is undeniable as the pyres never stop burning.
A couple hours later, the body and logs have burned down to a pile of smoldering ashes. The first born comes down again to complete the ceremony, circling the ashes with a pitcher of river water while reciting prayers. Coming to a stop with their back turned, they chant softly and throw the pitcher over their shoulder. As the ashes smoke and sizzle, the first born walks away from the site without looking back. This is how peace is made with the deceased and the extent of the grieving process. When the ashes dry, they get dumped into the Ganges and the site is prepared for another body. The burning ghat never stops, an endless procession of bodies, cremations, and rituals.
Walking away from there, I try to make some sense of what I just witnessed. Such an experience in such a place does not absorb lightly. Over the next two weeks, I was challenged, incorporated, and enriched by my time along the Ganga. Varanasi is ancient, its buildings crumbling into the river, its people clinging to life. But the city exudes its characteristics. Hinduism is in the air for you to breathe in. The burning ghat was only just the beginning of my time in Varanasi and in India. The world has taken on an altogether different tint since I left there. I have traveled to many places and been affected by many things. But Varanasi showed me things I never imagined and there is no other place like it on earth.
