'Older than History . . . '

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Without doubt, Varanasi is the holiest place to die in India. Should you be lucky enough to expire here, Hindus believe you transcend the normal cycle of birth and rebirth and attain instant enlightenment. Breathing your last breath on this precious soil is the celestial golden ticket, an instant get out of rebirth free card.

We arrived here hot and dusty after a long train ride from Agra. The novels of Salman Rushdie and John Irving who write so vividly about the city of light, had stoked my imagination and I was determined that our stay in India would not end before we had seen Varanasi.

The river Ganges represents the elixir of life to Hindus - and it is deeply woven into their daily ritual ablutions. Therefore the only way to really understand Varanasi is to get down to the waterfront. All manner of living and dying happens on the Ghats (the steps down to the river). We dutifully take the boat ride one early morning, alongside countless other tourists.

It strikes you immediately how very intimate this experience will be. Even before sunrise the ghats are full of locals doing what they do every day, a non stop show performed with the vigour and passion of west end actors in the first week of a hit show. We watch from what I would like to call a respectful difference - we watch the daily rituals that for us take place behind closed doors. People washing themselves, their clothes, their teeth, saying their prayers and in this very public arena the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Some tourists seem to have no qualms about getting right up close and personal to their subject matter. One guy thrusts a nikon in the face of a man lost deep in meditative thought. But we are like ghosts, they look straight through us, lost in the ablutions that begin another day.

As a westerner I struggle to go beyond the symbolism of the holiness of the Ganges - its power to purify and cleanse. The content of the water is hard to ignore, there is rubbish and debris everywhere, knocking against the side of the boat, against the bathers and what you can't see you can smell. The water is heavily polluted by chemical waste from nearby factories, and the dead that aren't burnt on the funeral pyres* are placed directly into the Ganges as their final resting place. To watch the devout submerge themselves under water and rise proudly spitting the petrid foul water from their lips is to truly witness an act of deep devotion. Puts Teddy Taylor and that glass of Southend-on-Sea water into context. It strikes me that the night before I had put some laundry in to be cleaned by our hotel. In Varanasi! What was I thinking?! We pass countless dhobi-wallahs bashing the life and soul out of clothes, plunging them into the water and whipping them against stones on the steps. One stops mid thrash until a rotting box spilling food waste and old marigold garlands has floated by.

We are taken past the Cremation Ghats where the smoke from the funeral pyres and the attendants stoking the fires are constant observers to those souls moving from this world to the next. There are two main places for burning the dead - if you or your relatives can afford it, the fires are kept burning for 24 hours - long after all earthly trace of you has taken to the air. More commonly, the average man has to settle for a speedier (and therefore cheaper) send off - a couples of hours worth of firewood. Dying is big business here - our boat guide pointed out the sizeable abode of the Indian who owns one of the burning ghats - resplendent with ceramic painted tigers - a rib eye steak of prime real estate right on the Ganges.

The proximity of so much death sends a shiver down my spine. A small lad joins our boat and offers me a small paper boat with a candle set in the middle. We set a candle floating off down the river with a whispered prayer of safe keeping for our loved ones.

Our clothes are returned the next day, crisply folded and smelling of Comfort!



* Death by snakebite, pregnant women, babies, holy men and lepers escape the flames and are placed directly in the Ganges.

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Comments

[helen lord]

hello... me again
It makes you appreciate the Thames!