Ghatnapping in Benares 1

       


“The early Christian missionaries were not paranoid. Heathens do dabble in the irrational, and none more irrationally than Indian heathens, who have in their long evolution spent a couple of thousand years cultivating the transcendence of reason, another couple of thousand years on the denial of reason, and even more millenia of accepting reason but rejecting its authenticity. To be cast adrift in this whirlpool of differing views on the validity of simple mental activity seems a very high price to pay for cheap airfares.”
                                                                                  Gita Mehta, Karma Cola


The route, to the antithesis of reason through Mahoba, would prove to be as unreasonable, as the preceding path to divine ascent had been through erotic sculpture.
We left the creature comforts of the Jass Oberoi to encounter creature discomforts on the way back to fetch our packs. Several rickshaw wallahs were trying to rescue a baby goat from the jaws of a hungry dog. Our hotel owner brought an orphaned fawn onto the steps of the Apsara, as we waited for the bus outside.
The first destination was famous for it’s betel nut cultivation but, at ten kilometers an hour, our half-asleep driver was clearly unfamiliar with its stimulant properties. By the time we reached Mahoba, over four hours later, it was dark. The tonga ride to the train station was all the more splendid because of it. Streetlights were out, and the sound of our horse’s hooves on the cobbles, through the fireflies, was entrancing.
In the station we met Nigel, an English chef working in Berlin, who was experiencing an acute adjustment disorder, to the disorder of India. I tried to explain to him that chaos may not have actually been invented here, but it was certainly made to feel right at home.
There were 330 million gods in India, and 3300 trains. It worked out roughly to a hundred thousand gods per locomotive, a unit of what, in India, was referred to as a lakh. The only lakh that Nigel was concerned about, at ten o’clock that night in Mahoba, was a lakh of movement.
I told him about anandatandava, the cosmic dance of Shiva, the movement of every subatomic particle in the Universe, and every train on the subcontinent- and the continual cycles of creation, destruction, preservation, salvation, and illusion, common to both. Possibly because of his Teutonic timeline temperament, Nigel had been more preoccupied with seeking salvation than accepting illusion, vibrating but not quite dancing. He took on the stationmaster for tickets, without nuance. If I hadn’t intervened on his behalf, he would likely still be cultivating the transcendence of reason, in Mahoba station.
We boarded the Bundelkhand Express just after midnight. It was scheduled to arrive in Varanasi ten tedious hours later. In the midst of movement and chaos, we were supposed to keep stillness inside of us. In the midst of stillness and chaos, Nigel kept movement inside of him. As we fell behind and beyond the timetable’s prophecy, he began pointing at his watch with increasing agitation, to propel us faster. It may have worked. Nigel and his watch both pulled us into the station only seven hours late.
We had arrived in ‘the city of lights,’ ‘the city of learning,’ and ‘the oldest living city on planet earth.’ Mark Twain had called Varanasi ‘older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looking twice as old as all of them put together.’ One thing was for certain. It was old. Not quite as old as the rickshaw wallahs, that pedaled us to the Tourist Bunglow perhaps, but old.
We ate bad vegetarian. It occurred to me that Hitler was probably a vegetarian not so much because he loved animals, but because he hated plants. I fell into a sleep of sausages and sirloin.
The Bungalow boss had convinced us to sign up for a tour next morning. By now, Julie and Robyn and I were a subculture of our own and, as such, our tradition was to avoid tours. But we already felt the chaos, in the visceral Varanasi vicissitudes we had already encountered, and an ‘organized’ tour would, by definition, be well structured, well ordered, and well run. Well, no.
The minibus arrived an hour late, at 5:50 am. We asked the tour leader why.
“Winter time.” He said. It was September. “Now we must be hurrying.” Shiva danced.
We took off like a Gwalior bat, through the narrow streets of the Old City, until our crowded conveyance ran smack into a wall of cows and the rest of the human race. We disembarked into rolled fat extruded from silk saris, saffron sagging from skeletal sadhus, brass bangles and Bodhi beads, and tinkling bells and flower garlands and candles, all accompanied by the chanting. Rama nama satya hai.
An endless procession of pilgrims and tramps, hawkers and fakirs, Brahmins and Rajas, bankers and beggars, profane crones and sacred bulls and pariah dogs melted into us. Rama nama satya hai.
Above our heads flew shrouded bundles, like kayaks or surfboards, and, over them, pigeons. Rama nama satya hai.
A rainbow stream flowed down flights of steps to the cremation ghats of the Ganges, and us with it.

                 “I come to you as a child to his mother,
                  I come as an orphan to you, moist with love.
                  I come without refuge to you, giver of sacred rest.

                  I come a fallen man to you, uplifter of all.
                  I come undone by disease to you, the perfect physician.

                  I come, my heart dry with thirst, to you, ocean of sweet wine.
                  Do with me whatever you will.”
                                                                                                Ganga Lahiri

At the bottom of the stairs was a metaphysical metaphorical metamorphic metastatic metabolic molten multitude, massed along the river’s edge. The oily emulsion flowed downstream almost reluctantly, desperate to keep up with demand, washing clothes, brushing teeth, bathing bodies, performing ablutions, receiving half-burned human remains and hundreds of millions of liters of untreated human sewage each day, and providing three long sips for each pilgrim. This was supposed to confer immortality. The way I figured it, if you could drink three sips from the Ganges and not immediately die an agonizing death, you were already immortal.
The poor few remaining Ganges river dolphins couldn’t even rub their eyes.
At the bottom of the stairs was an escarpment of ascending congealed masonry, encrusted from waterline to skyline with vertical red and white striped sculptured temples and brown stone palaces, softening into the transcendence of reason and distance.
At the bottom of the stairs was a disheveled, plump, unshaven rogue, with a white dhoti between his legs, and a red dot between his eyes. He spoke no English, but motioned for us to follow him. I asked the guide who he was.
“He is the captain of your boat.” He said. Julie let out a long low whistle.
We followed him down into the mud squish that led to an exposed flat-bottomed wreck, rowed by two oarsmen who could have been similarly described. One of them was designated to provide commentary, as we headed out into the river, along the mud-colored sunrise.
“What is the difference between a university and a ghat?” He asked. We were sure we didn’t know.
“One is to learn, the other is to burn.” He laughed. Well, no.
He explained that only lepers, sadhus, those with smallpox, and babies go into the river unburned.
“Why babies?” asked a middle-aged Brit.
“Too much heat.” Replied the oarsman. Well, no.
Small children are not cremated because their souls don’t need purifying. Holy men are preserved with salt and buried vertically, like kippers. Victims of murder, suicide, snakebite, or other violence are also buried, because their souls will never rest, no matter what. Families who can’t afford the wood for cremation sometimes throw unburned corpses in the Ganges. One floated by, bloated. We were out where the current was strong, and the rowing commentary began to be delivered between breaths and strokes. Hordes of other tourists in other boats bounced around us, vying for position. As we approached one of the shmashana cremation grounds, divers shot over our bow, and into the water. This was where every other caste in India got to meet the Dom untouchables that burned their relatives.
Funeral parties waited for their turns on the steps of the ghats. The eldest son led the procession, and carried out the rites. The body was immersed once in the Ganges and then anointed with clarified butter, lashed to a platform and wrapped in bright yellow fabric. Wood was piled on the pyre, until only the head was visible. Mantras were recited, to purify the cremation grounds and scare away ghosts. Sometimes a wife climbed on the pyre and climbed off again before the fire was lit, in a kind of suttee-tease.
The son had to get ignition from the Dom keeper of the sacred temple fire, an eternal flame, some of which had been kept burning for over two thousand years. The son placed a burning stick in the mouth of the deceased, before lighting the main pyre. The funeral pyre of corkwood, with offerings of camphor, sandalwood and mango leaves, weighed almost three hundred kilos. A hundred thousand cremated bodies were thrown in the Ganges every year, and required thirty thousand tons of wood to burn. Rich families sometimes paid for the entire pyre to be made of sandalwood. Men were cremated face up, women face down.
The fee the eldest son paid the Doms depended on the wealth of the family. If he couldn’t pay the full price they held back on the wood, and their loved ones end up half-burned. Dom boys poked the embers with six-foot poles continuously, keeping the home fires burning. It took about three hours to incinerate the corpse. After the family of the deceased left, Dom children descended on the on the ashes, looking for coins, rings, nose studs and gold teeth. So terrible was the work that the Doms were expected to weep when their children were born, and party when death finally released them from their macabre duties.
Through putrid water, thick with froth and decomposing flowers, and shallow oil-filled clay dishes lit with wicks, we drifted towards the burning ghats, and docked.
The sight was sickening, even for me. Dogs groveled through the smoking charred remains of bones and ashes. A cow warmed itself by the residue, munching on a marigold wreath. It was here the oarsman told me of the snapping turtles, weighing up to seventy pounds, bred and released into the river to scavenge those partly burned body parts not completely consumed by the fire.
Robyn handed me her Limca. Before I gave it back, I had taken three long sips.