Adventure in India Part 3 - Varanasi

Adventures In India Part 3 - Varanasi

Varanasi is a magical city of a myriad side streets leading down to the ghats by the river. Behind all of this roars a monstrous Indian city like anywhere else but down by the river is a world in itself. There are water buffalo cooling down in the water, sadhus and Brahmins praying, bodies being burnt and the whole cycle of life and death as it always was. The River Ganges herself is the most holy of all rivers in India and it's a dream for Hindus to bathe in her waters. She starts up in the mountains and rushes down past Haradwar and virtually everywhere along her banks is sacred. By the time she gets to Benares she's hopelessly polluted and full of sewage but that doesn't stop millions of people immersing themselves. It's an exercise in faith over bacteria. In fact the water used to have a unique property that neutralized the human and toxic pollution but now it's simply too much.



Catch a boat out on the river to watch the sunrise and the ghats come to life. Dodge the carcasses of cows, holy men and children, the only groups that Hindus don't cremate here.This is the place to study Indian music and dance and you'll find a community of musicians here studying ragas and who wouldn't dream of doing anything else. If you can stand the intensity of Benares then this can be a place to stay for a few months and learn something. Watch my video diary below.

My most memorable experience in Varanasi was visiting the burning ghats. The bigger of the two is Manikarnika, the other is Harishchandra. The former hosts up to 200 cremations each day. The process is efficient and businesslike. Above the ghats are huge stacks of wood; the family of the deceased, according to their means, buys one of many funeral packages on offer, including a certain quantity of wood, sandalwood sawdust, ghee, other ritualistic paraphernalia, and a priest's services. Orderlies set up the pyre, the body is placed on it, the priest chants and performs the rituals, ghee is poured on, and the pyre is set alight, as the men of the family watch (women stay at home). If the fire doesn't catch on well, more ghee and sawdust are added. If a family can't afford enough wood, as is not uncommon, the body is burned in stages: middle part first, while the head and legs stick out, to be pushed in deftly by a pole after the middle part collapses.



A few hours later, the ashes and bits of bones are gathered by the eldest son or a senior male of the family and consigned to the waters, where "untouchables" stand with wire nettings to dredge up the ash and mud, hoping for a gold tooth or nose ring that may have survived the fire (pieces of jewelry may be left on the deceased by the family). Not all who die are cremated -- children under five, lepers, sadhus, pregnant women, and snake-bite victims are offered directly to the river.

Watching the spectacle, I felt a liberating calm visit me. Few better ways to peer into the abyss and see our common fate, laid out evocatively in the Book of Common Prayer: from earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Why, there is nothing morbid about death. It is a simple fact of life that should inform our everyday choices and opinions. Yet, the greatest wonder of all, as Yudhisthira says in the Mahabharata, is that each day death strikes, and we live as though we were immortal.