Where death is normal
India is a timeless and an exotic place- full of wonder, chaos, with cities packed like sardines, swarming with people. There is noise, gazes, underlying whispers and commotion, particularly in the cities while a contrasting painting exists in its countryside.
Amongst all of this there is culture, color and food. Distinct in direction.
And then there is culture of Varanasi. On the western banks of the Ganga are two famous burning ghats- Manikarnika and Harishchandra ghat, famous as ‘the burning ghats’ and marketed in the nooks of the city in pigmented posters to lure the tourists through packages- ‘…book full day Benaras tour- 30 Ghats/Vishwanath Mandir/Drowning Temple/ Kaal Bhairav Darshan/Ganga Aarti and Burning Ghats…’
I felt weird when I first saw one of those posters and then there were tons of them. Who would want to see those- Is death now a show? Where one cries and the others pay to view the scene from a distance and talk about it to their western friends. A lot of us have had a privileged life in different terms, esp. if we are here on this platform or (if)wherever you are reading this. The life problems that we face are not small but very different from the masses that exist in smaller cities of the country.
Soaked in the city lights, aarti smells and street food I forgot about how I felt while glancing through the poster until I was posing under the lights on the streets outside a chaat shop and heard ‘…Ram naam satya hai..’ (Commonly chanted in some of the Hindu cultures while carrying a dead body to be cremated. It implies that the dead body no longer sustains the truth (breath) which is Ram Naam. For a moment I was shook and I immediately went and deleted the picture as something was in the background.
There were lights, street studded like a Diwali night, market bustling with women buying silks and brocades, men walking with their children and buying them sweet meats, people laughing and eating Paan, Instagram fanatics trying to get content from the street food stalls, constant chanting in the background in the abode of the lord shiva and then there was a dead human body being carried on the shoulders to meet its final abode. The air felt weird during that time. As I moved forward on the road, I realized it’s a constant thing. To read or hear about something, is a separate thing and see that, is completely a whole different experience. Such is the tryst with the burning ghats of the city that 24X7, they’ll keep on burning, the bodies will keep crossing the same streets every day and the same street will have the bustling noise of people every day. Houses overlooking those ghats and streets- it’s so normal and imbibed the niche culture of the city- it’s difficult to think otherwise. Come to think of tit- it’s not dreadful. It’s the acceptance of the deceased by the God. But again as it’s human nature to create classes, there are heaps of wood lying around to choose for their dead- sandalwood/mango. We cannot improve.
We would never know the cause of those deaths- but it felt like the city had accepted this a part of it’s own niche culture/ritual and celebrates it. The air is always, always charged with incense and spirituality, of course there are thugs- too difficult to tell apart who are the genuine people.
It’s an occupation for some. Doms or caretakers widely accepted only because of their importance during a death. A cremation doesn’t take place without the presence of a dom. It seems like its way of the nature taking care of these people by means of death. Making a living, around the dead. Why would they fear it? But what if they want to live another way or forget the type of work they have to do?
Questions to think about (harder to actually live with them).
How does a gender/status or a caste matter on the burning grounds?
I will take this as a lesson- what has to come, has to go one day and we cannot control how and when. Coming back, I did not feel as weird on seeing people being carried away for their final abode. Guess, the nature had done its work.
