Death on the Ganges

In the modern crematorium, the coffined dead are carried by conveyor belt into a blazing furnace and reduced to ash, out of sight. The relatives are later presented with an urn containing all that is left of their loved one.
It is quite a different experience to stand before a pile of blazing logs to watch the body burn in the open air by the banks of the River Ganges.
That is how it is in Varanasi, the City of Light that used to be called Benares. It is the City of Lord Shiva, one the greatest of the gods and the most important pilgrimage centre for Hindu believers. Other Hindu gods have their place here but Shiva takes precedence over the rest. Temples, shrines, priests, holy men, vendors selling religious objects, all defer to his greatness.
Varanasi is a mad, crowded, chaotic city of cars, ash-smeared holy men, cows, buffalos, monkeys, rickshaws, tuktuks and throngs of people engaged in a crazy game of survival that is always difficult to win. At the banks of Mother Ganga, the city drops in a series of steps to the water’s edge where all the rituals of traditional Hindu life and death are played out in colour and squalor.
These steps – and there are about a hundred are known as ghats and each has a different purpose. Some steps to the river are for the pious who desire to bathe in the waters of the Ganges. It is not unusual to see a man bathe in the Holy River and then walk up the steps to urinate. Urinating in public is one aspect of Indian life that the foreigner has most difficulty in coming to terms with.
At others ghats, farmers bring the gentle water buffalo for a drink and a wash and it is intriguing to watch the animals make their way from the crumbling old palaces at the top down step by step to the water’s edge. Designated ghats are used for washing clothes, for Hindu puja ceremonies and two are for cremating the dead.
It’s a cool, foggy January morning as I make my way to Manikarnika, the larger of the two burning ghats. I watched the fires from a distance last night, the bodies burn all day and all night every day of the year. Three hundred bodies per day are cremated, I am told. Two thoughts occupy my mind. How will I withstand the smell of burning flesh and do corpses combust as they burn? In over 30 years of travelling, I have never been so far out of my comfort zone. There is no turning back, I have to see this.
The fires are getting closer and closer but so far so good, no smell, only the dense acrid smoke is getting in my eyes. I am taken in hand by Cheintu, a member of the low caste Dom workers who operate the cremation site. The low castes used to be known as untouchables. Handling the dead is not suitable work for higher caste Hindu Brahmins.
Cheintu is a chirpy lad, who will guide me through the site, explain the process and answer my questions. He will show me everything but I must agree not to take any photographs. The families will not tolerate photography.
As we weave our way through the rough and tumble of the cremation ghat, bodies on stretchers are dipped in the Ganges, others rest in queues by the water’s edge for a fire to be readied. Some piles of wood have a body waiting to be ignited, others are just starting to light. Some are blazing fiercely and where the work is done, there are piles of ash. The Dom workers put order on apparent chaos but, as I soon learned, every action is part of an age-old ritual and every action has a purpose.
“When a person dies, the body is massaged with mustard oil and ghee,” Cheintu begins. Ghee is a clarified butter widely used in Indian cooking.
“The family prepares a simple bamboo stretcher that can be carried by two or four men. The body is wrapped in a white shroud; white is the Hindu mourning colour and as they carry the body to the cremation ghat, they chant a holy mantra.” Cheintu is just getting into his stride but his mobile phone bleeps out the Nokia tune.
Supervision of the cremation is carried out by the head of the household. If a wife has died, the husband fills this role but often the eldest son assumes the duty here. Only the men of the family attend the cremation.
“Cremation is a happy time,” Cheintu says. “It is not a time for crying, that can be done in the house. Anyone who dies in Varanasi receives immediate moksha or enlightenment, freedom from the reproductive cycle of birth and death. That is why people come from all over India to die here.”
I thought it impolite to enquire if he thought that the presence of women at the ceremonies might generate tears.
Cremation is a costly business and there are many payments to be made as the ritual gets underway. The head of the household must have his head shaved. There’s a barber on site to remove moustache, beard and all the hair from his head.
“Then he must buy a white lungi and shawl,” says Cheintu. A lungi is a garment that covers the lower body, whilst the shawl is draped over the upper body.
“Now it is time for the family to go to the wood market to buy the wood for the fire, which is very expensive. The wood is from the banyan tree, which has three powers. The first is speed, it burns quickly. Second, it will even burn in rain and finally, it hides bad smells,” Chientu tells me all this as we watch the Dom workers sourcing logs from large stacks of very dry wood and weighing them on great scales for a waiting family.
Sandalwood is the perfect wood for cremating bodies but is unaffordable, except for the rich. I recall watching the cremation of Indira Gandhi on television following her assassination in 1984. The reporter said the pyre was of sandalwood. Sandalwood produces a beautiful aroma. Here, they can’t afford sandalwood logs so the vendors sell sachets of sandalwood powder and incense to diminish the impact on the nostrils of burning human flesh.
The body on the stretcher is often covered with a brightly covered cloth and sometimes smaller, coloured cloths are tied to the bamboo poles. In other cases, garlands of yellow or saffron marigolds are placed on the body. There are vendors to supply all these services.
“Now the body will get bathed in Mother Ganga,” says Cheintu. Family members carry the stretcher a short distance into the water and gently dip the body in the Holy River. It is then placed at the water’s edge, with several others, until the Dom workers are ready. When the time comes, the head of the household, in his new white clothes and shaved head, will go to the “eternal flame” which burns in the niche of a building overlooking the site. With the aid of some dried grasses, he then sets fire to the body.
Cheintu assures me that the “eternal flame” has been burning non-stop for 3,500 years. As I stand in the niche by the fire, a young man comes to light his torch. Neither happy nor sad, but purposeful, he takes the lighted torch to his relative’s body. The fire crackles almost instantly and is soon blazing. “No petrol is used, no kerosene, only natural fire,” says Cheintu.
As I look down, I count 13 bodies burning and seven more are waiting for the fires. “Can you get bad smell?” Cheintu asks cheerfully. Incredibly, I can’t and he smiles with satisfaction. Neither did I experience any evidence of my second big fear, bodies combusting in the flames before my eyes. The only problem with my eyes is that they are running with tears from the smoke but nothing to really worry about. To my left there are five or six men squatting in a corner counting rupees. “Dom bosses,” says Cheintu. They also have to be paid for their labours by the family.
Cremation is an act of purification in Hindu belief but it is not necessary to cremate everybody. There are a number of exceptions. A child under 12 has no need for purification. Neither has a pregnant woman because the child she carries need not be purified. The priest caste and holy men are already pure. Lepers are not burned in the belief that burning the body would spread the disease.
An animal is never cremated, nor is a person who has been bitten by a snake. I didn’t quite figure out the reason for the latter but was assured that it was very rare. The bodies of those who need not be cremated are taken out into the massive river and consigned to the Holy Waters. One should worry more about chemical pollution from upriver factories than bio-degradable bodies, somebody told me later.
There’s a “hospice” attached to the Manikarnika Ghat, where 74 old people, many of them widows, are now waiting to die. “Some have no money for the wood, so we ask visitors for a wood donation,” says Cheintu. I make my donation and was half hoping I might get an invitation to visit the old people but none was forthcoming.
It takes about three hours to burn a body. Then the family head, with the aid of the Dom workers, will draw water from the Ganges in a clay pot to quench the fire. “Not all the bones will burn fully,” Cheintu explains. “A man has very strong chest bone and a woman, especially if she has many children, will have a very strong pelvis.”
The pre-ordained ritual is nearing its end. The head of the family grabs a tongs and picks up the unburnt bone from the ashes and flings it into the Ganges. Then the final act of the drama. He takes a clay pot of water from the river, places it on his left shoulder, pushes the pot from his shoulder with his right hand. It smashes in smithereens on the ground.
Immediately, he leads his family from the cremation ground. In the act of breaking the pot, he has symbolically broken the relationship with his dead relative. It is over and in seconds they are gone from the scene. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Nowhere is the reality illustrated as vividly and as brutally as in Varanasi.
On my way back to base with my mind in a whirl, I wait for the puja evening ceremony at Dashaswamedh Ghat, which is the main ghat of the city. Puja is an offering to the various deities of various fruits and flowers. Resplendent Hindu priests, known as pandas, sit at the water’s edge on wooden platforms under umbrellas and meditate in complete silence.
Later they abandon their individual platforms, come together to dance and chant. Indian and some foreign devotees join in the clapping and the chanting with enthusiasm. The young priests distribute flower petals to the devotees who flock around them offering small baskets of bananas, coconuts and other fruits. Vendors sell posies of roses and marigolds with lights to pilgrims who like to float them on the Ganges. It’s a very happy and colourful event.
But in Varanasi, the surprise and the shock is never far away. I am startled by a holy man, a Sadhu, who squats beneath the walls of an old palace nearby. He holds a three-pronged fork in his right hand, the trident represents the sovereignty of Lord Shiva. Incense burns in front of him. His face, arms and legs are smeared with ash. There’s a small pile of rupee notes left by devotees.
The startling thing about him is his face, only one half of which is visible. The other half is concealed by a bag of skin that distends from his forehead to his chest. An image of John Hurt in The Elephant Man immediately rushed into my mind. I suggested to the hotel receptionist that the Sadhu must have a tumour or is suffering from a terrible skin condition. “It is a gift from the God,” he corrected me.