Wood piled up for the funeral pyers

Pots to be broken when the body is burned to symbolize seperation with the desceased

Next door to the burning ghat, young boys are playing cricket.

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2003-12-10 - Varanasi (Day 237)

"Its all much bigger then it looks on TV!" was going through my mind as I climbed into the boat on te sacred Ganges. With Discovery Channel, National Geographic channel, Adventure Channel, etc. it seems that I've seen many of the places on this trip long before I've been here, but they never quite get it right. In the case of Varanassi, it was much bigger then I had imagined. Robin Williams asked in Good Will Hunting if Will knew what it smelled like in The Sistine Chapel and like the answer, the feeling that being on the Ganges gives is something that a book or TV just can't carry across.

I came late in the day so there were few Hindu pilgrims mostly just every day people doing the every day things for people living on a river, washing clothes, brushing their teeth and washing their hair.

Not far up from the Dasaswamedh Ghat where I put in, I stopped at Manikarnika Ghat, India's most sacred place to be cremated as one is guaranteed a straight trip to Nirvana. As I stepped off the boat I could see five bodies by the riverside burning and more on the steps waiting their turn. The family members gathered around on the railings looking over the fires as the untouchables tended to the fires and stacking wood on the bodies. Only the men of a family are allowed to come as the crying of women will disturb the body's trip to Nirvana. Other workers were standing in the river with baskets sifting the ashes of that day's dead for gold and other jewelry which are sold in the markets of Varanasi.

I was taken into one of the three buildings for the dying that surround the Ghats, one for the elderly destitute waiting to die and relying on alms to provide enough money to pay for the firewood which is so carefully measured and charged. There is another building for the diseased and a rather nice one for the wealthy waiting to die. My guide told me that this was a good process for me to see as it helps the living to understand the process of life - "Dying is learning, Cremation is education," he told me.

The body is brought to the ghat where the family registers the deceased with the police and makes terms with the boss of the ghat. The family then gives the body a final bath in the holy Ganges to purify it, applies powdered sandalwood as a last perfume for the deceased and then wraps the body in colorful fabrics of gold color as a last gift to the beloved. The eldest male of the family goes to a priest to take a bit of the eternal flame from the Shiva temple and lights the funeral pyre. After the body has burned for three hours he then walks around the deceased five times to symbolize the five elements and uses a clay pot to douse the flames. Then as a last item breaks the clay pot symbolizing the breaking of ties with the dead.

Children, holy-men, pregnant women, lepers and animals are not burned but weighted down and dropped in the middle of the river. The children are viewed as still pure as are the holy-men so they are returned to "mother river." The life inside the pregnant woman is also viewed as pure and thus also returned to the river. The lepers are not burned as burning would spread the leprosy and the animals are not burned as it is too expensive a cost for an animal. The whole process of dieing is a very businesslike affair with between 200 and 300 bodies being burned in that ghat every day and thus very public.

After watching such a process I went for a long walk along one ghat after another as the sun set. This process which of course was so unusual for me was just the ordinary for these people who were playing cricket, tending their cows and brushing their teeth all along the banks of the Ganges.

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