City of Life

Dusk in Varanasi

Praying, bathing and washing

Garland vendors


The water bufalo cool off

Smoke from the funeral pyres at one of the burning ghats

a holy man

Drying a sari

Setting their candles adrift

Sweeping the steps of a ghat

Pilgrims arrive

In an alley

Varanasi, Joe said, is where you go to have your life flash before you. Other people's, too. Hindus believe that by having your remains placed in the purifying waters of the holy Ganges you might achieve moksha, breaking the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Two of the stone ghats (steps) that line the Ganges for seven kilometers are "burning ghats." Families bring shrouded corpses, which are placed by funerary workers in wood piles, doused with ghee, and the eldest son lights the pyre. Untouchables carry the ashes to the water's edge. The ashes are sifted for jewelery, which is salvaged to help pay for the cremations of the poor. Unincinerated bits of bodies are set adrift in the river, too---food for the fish that contributes to the cycle of life.

From a respectful distance, Joe and I sat on a wall and watched a funeral. The setting is like nothing you've ever seen: the crumbling 18th-century palaces that line the river; the crowds of mourners; the rising smoke and flames; the sizzle and pop. It's Dante, except fo Hindus this is heaven. It's like the City on Fire sequence in Sweeney Todd (dropped from the movie, I've read). It's like some odd end-of-days ritual being enacted around the slag heaps in Nanticoke, PA. Included in this sober, unhurried scene, too, are the thousands of pilgrims who come each day from across India---the variety of colorful costumes is dazzling---to have their souls cleansed by Mother Ganges. Tens of thousands of local people also bathe in the river, adroitly cleansing themselves while maintaining a modest covering. They also brush their teeth in the river using medicinal sticks.

Oh, did I mention that 45,000 whole human corpses are also dumped into the Ganges each year at Varanasi? Plus cows? And tons of raw sewage? The miracle is that anybody in the vicinity is still standing at the end of the month. But they are, somehow. A foundation is working on ways to improve Varanasi's public-health situation.

The best way to view Varanasi is from out on the river in a rowboat at sunrise. A quiet-spoken young boatman named Babu swindled us, we later learned, overcharging us by a factor of four. We had learned to haggle with the aggressive entrepeneurs but not the nice, polite ones.

In the darkness, the river downstream seems to be aswarm with fireflies. As you get closer, you see hundreds of lighted candles, each representing a pilgrim's prayer, afloat in tiny leaf boats. A kid in a reed boat drifted by and we bought and lit two candles and set them afloat. The first light in the sky is dim and grey in the haze but soon turns platinum and rose. Joe said, "Ingres." The sun appears suddenly out of the mist and within minutes acts like it means business. We started out in sweaters and windbreakers and were soon down to T-shirts.

Indians who go to Varanasi say it changes their lives. This reminds me of a friend, now gone, sadly, who used to say that every time he saw a Chekhov play it changed his life. Execpt, his life never changed. And that was so Chekhovian. I think Varanasi is something like that.