Life and death on the Ganges.

I thought I'd seen some weird stuff in India, but the last few days have been surreal. On the evening of the 14th I left Agra (without having been to the Taj, refer previous post) and arrived the next morning in Varanasie. This ancient city (the locals claim it to be the oldest living city on earth) is famous for a few different things. Among travelers it's notorious has having the worst touts in all of India. For those who haven't enjoyed/endured the backpacking experience, touts are the guys who appear out of nowhere whenever a tourist is sighted. They'll try to sell you stuff you don’t want at outrageous markups, drag you into their tuk-tuks for a ride at ten times the going rate, they’ll call themselves your guide, your friend. They know someone from where you're from (even made-up places are inhabited by their uncles) and always know that the hostel you've booked into is 'infested', 'burnt down' or full, fortunately they have another uncle who doesn’t live in an imaginary place who will put you up at a good rate because you are his 'friend'. Of course it's all bullshit, the touts are on all sorts of commissions and kickbacks, if your hostel happens to be 'full of gangsters' they deliver you somewhere else in return for a hefty kick-back from the hotel owner. You pay more for your room so the owner covers the cost of his bribe to the driver. This hidden economy of hassle is in place everywhere in Varanasie, and sometimes people can be quite aggressive trying to get you into their shop or rickshaw. If you give as good as you get and don’t take any bullshit (plenty of that on the pavement here) it's easy to avoid (unlike the pavement stuff). None the less it's a constant annoyance.

Despite all that the reason people come here is the river, and all that is associated with it. The entire riverbank as far as the city stretches is lined with 'ghats'- a sort of temple with steps down into the sacred river. Collectively, these ghats are a microcosm of life and death in India. On one will be women washing their bright saris in the putrid water, men bathe at the one next door, either dunking themselves to wash away sin or soaping up and rinsing away the grime of the city. I took a boat ride on the river at dawn and that gave me some understanding of why the locals consider it sacred, the mist and smoke, lights, alternate chanting and silence as we passed the ghats was a amazing sensory experience. The most famous are the 'burning ghats'- there are two of these where Hindus are cremated in the open on wood funeral pyres as their relatives and tourists look on. It's morbidly fascinating to watch the process, the deceased are carried in by male relatives on bamboo stretchers and taken down to the river, where they are dunked in the brown water a couple of times, short prayers are said. While this is going on there is a bussling marketplace around the river dealing with the mechanics of reducing human flesh to ash. The relative who will light the fire has his head shaved in an outdoor barber shop. Wood sellers weigh up standardised measures of timber on giant scales. Other men carry these logs down to the bank and give them to the 'firemen' who build the funeral pyres. When the bodies are brought out of the river, wrapped in bright material and dripping wet the are placed on the pyres, sometimes the bright fabric is removed leaving a human shape wrapped in wet white cotton. More timber is stacked on top of them and the shaven head relative is given a bundle of straw, burning at one end. As far as I can tell his job is to circle the body anti-clockwise as many times as he can, setting fires at the base of the pyre. Pretty soon a fire is raging, the relatives retreat to a distance but linger in the area as the smoke rises. The firemen remain nearby, stoking the fire and occasionally poking stray bodyparts back into the heat with bamboo poles. More than once I saw these bamboo poles swung down onto the remains with great force to crack scorched ribcages and skulls. To the outsider it's a crude mechanical process, raw physics- smoke, heat and ash. From my vantage it doesn’t seem there is an awful lot of ceremony involved, maybe that goes on earlier, maybe alot of fuss isn't necessary in a faith that believes in rebirth.

Retreating from the ghats you enter pans labyrinth. The 'old city' is a veritable maze of tiny alleys with shops, market stalls, guesthouses, restaurants, shrines and of course, cows. Walking away from the burning ghats I had to step aside several times as convoys of chanting relatives carried their dearly departed down towards the river. In those first few streets more of the industrial side of the cremations is present. The first minute or two is spent negotiating a route through towering piles of neatly stacked firewood, there are small shops selling the colorful robes the bodies are wrapped in, floral garnets for sale and even a store which seemed to be the office of a photographer. His wares were on display, including photographs of middle-aged men washing the faces of their dead mothers in the Ganges.

The main attraction of this part, for foreigners and locals alike, is the golden temple. Not to be confused with another temple in Amritsar, also called the golden temple. This one is a Hindu shrine, which was built of stone and gold plated as an (expensive) afterthought by the ruler of Punjab. The security around this shrine was immense in numbers of guards and firepower, not so much in actual security.

After lining up, depositing my shoes, camera and phone in a locker, being frisked twice and walking through a metal detector (it beeped, no one cared) I joined a que of pilgrims filing through the temple. It was then I realised I was the only white person in sight. Everyone else was touching the floor on certain steps, dropping offerings at certain shrines and generally looking quite devout. I was looking puzzled. I followed the flow of people being pushed along by the army folk to keep the crowd moving. At one point I was pulled aside by a priestly looking type, taken to a shrine and asked to repeat a mantra in Hindi, not wanting to offend the faith I was intruding on I repeated. I have no idea what I said but the priestly looking man asked for the names of various family members which were duly incorporated into the illegible sounds. At the end of this I received a red spot on my head and a request for 500 rupees (or 1000 rupees, more blessing for your family!). My desire to be culturally sensitive had led me to another psudeoholyconman. I gave the bastard two coins total value of about four rupees and left. Sorry Mum, Dad, Mick and Georgie - could have bought you 250 time more luck, happiness and wealth but I was a bit cheap.

I filed through with the rest of the locals and generally tried to be inconspicuous (white guy in jeans and red t-shirt blending in among the saris) and filed out another guarded gate. It was then I realised my shoes were on the other side of the temple. I tried to find my way back but instantly became completely lost in the labrynth, barefoot among the cow shit and motorbikes. I wandered round, stepping carefully for about an hour until stopped within sight of my gate by an army checkpoint which refused to let me walk 10 meters to the main alley. I don’t know why but they all had big guns and spoke limited English. Who am I, armed with nothing more a faint odor of cowshit from my feet, to argue? A teenage boy who ran a shop saw the exchange and took pity on me and offered to lead me back. Expecting another 'I be your guide' type tout arrangement I accepted his help anyway, being barefoot and lost in Varanasie isn't present. He led me around to the gate I came out of 1 hour ago, talked our way around the armed, if nonchalant, guards (ten heavily armed men defeated by two sentences in Hindi and a barefoot Australian) and led me through the metal detectors (they beeped again, none cared again) back into the temple/fortress. After negotiating a few hidden passages we emerged at the back of one of the cave-like shrines people were dropping flowers at. I paused for a moment to appreciate being worshipped before emerging into the daylight and being led back to the main gate. My self appointed guide then refused a tip. Some of them really will be your friend...

Greg
Varanasie, Uttar Pradesh, India
17 November 2008