After spending nearly seven weeks in Nepal, we headed back to India. Our first real destination was Varanasi. Varanasi is a holy city for Hindus, Buddhists and Jains and, at any given time, hundreds of pilgrims line the bank of the Ganges.
Below, is a journal entry I wrote during the time we spent in Varanasi.
04/09/1975
Today was my birthday. Sometime after turning 21, birthdays for me became a lot less about celebrating milestones and a lot more about reflecting on passing time and my own mortality. So how fitting was it that here, in India, I spent the morning of my birthday watching corpses burn next to the Ganges river. I hesitated as to whether I wanted to even visit what the guidebooks tout as ‘the biggest cremation ghat in India.’ Sometimes, the line between voyeurism and polite reflection is hard to draw. In the end, however, I found myself sitting on the steps of the ghat at a respectful distance away from the funeral pyres, quietly observing and reflecting on my own birthday (and eventual deathday).
As far as I could gather, the funeral ceremony usually begins at the home of a family member of the deceased. The body is placed on a bamboo platform that looks much like a horizontal ladder, wrapped in a shroud, and covered with marigolds. The grown men of the family then carry the body through the streets of old Varanasi to the bank of the Ganges where the body is completely immersed in the river (stilled shrouded and covered in marigolds). The male members of the family then wait while the funeral pyre is prepared, which includes a ceremony and blessing (puja). The body is then placed on the fire and the family leaves.
What occurs after the family is gone, appears to be all business. The morticians (for lack of a better term) all belong to the Dalit, or untouchable, caste. One member of this group unceremoniously pokes and prods the fire, body and all. At some point, the body starts falling apart and bits and pieces are visible through the burning embers. [While I was watching one fire a dismembered foot fell out rolled a slight distance away; the fire handler picked it up with his giant tongs and gave it a toss back into the fire without flinching]. Once the body is completely burned, the ashes are picked up into a bucket and thrown into the river. Another group of people are in the river, sifting through the ashes in hopes of finding jewelry.
India is an extremely populated country. Perhaps because of a lack of space, things that are separated at home (in this case, death and economics) are blurred here. As three separate funeral pyres raged, men were hauling stacks of wood and weighing them on scales. Different types of wood will cost the family different amounts and one must choose carefully on how much wood is needed to completely burn the body.
The whole process, out there in the open for the world to see, is so real, so very personal. Of course, when confronted by something so different from what we are used to, my thoughts always return to my own customs and beliefs. At home, we inject a corpse with strange fluids, dress up the body in a nice suit, and cake the face of the deceased with makeup. How many times have I been at a funeral and heard whispers of “Oh, he looks so peaceful,” as if the plasticene doll that we are looking at in any way looks like our loved one at their death. If you were a complete outsider, which funeral custom would seem more strange or disturbing–ours or India’s?
At the same time, I would not want to think of my own body being churned in a fire at the side of the Ganges. I wonder, though, Is that just because I don’t want to think of myself as dead?
As I reflect on another year gone by, I am grateful that this birthday I was here, sitting on the steps of the Manikarnika Ghat. Death is sure to come us all and maybe it’s high time that I acknowledge that reality and live each day like I mean it.
I’ve got to agree with you; modern American funerary rites are deeply bizarre. Maybe the makeup and embalming is a symptom of a widespread desire in our culture to pretend that death is not real.
Thanks for providing this moving and insightful reflection.