Thank you, India.
Thank you, terror.
Thank you, disillusionment.
Thank you frailty, thank you consequence.
Thank you, thank you, silence.
– Alanis Morissette

VARANASI, India–Something changed me here.

I can’t say that about some destinations. I am by no means a world traveler — my first trip to Europe came only two years ago. When my college friends, 25-plus years ago, were backpacking through France, or flopping in youth hostels in London, I was schlepping orders as a cocktail waitress and finishing my degree.

Years later, with an income and some freedom, I’ve traveled a bit more. Only a bit, though. I do know that when a place speaks your name, you must listen. This is what Varanasi did for me. It’s been three weeks since we returned from a long trip to Uttar Pradesch province in northern India. Still, at least every couple of days I am momentarily distracted from some mundane task by scenes or memories of that ancient city on the Ganges.

Sunrise on the Ganges, March 2007

How about unabashedly bawling your eyes out?
How about not equating death with starving?
Thank you India. Thank you, providence. …
– Morissette

Some say that Varanasi, about 400 miles southeast of New Delhi, is the oldest city in the world still functioning largely as it did centuries ago. Narrow streets snake through the neighborhoods bordering the famous ghats, a series of stairways that line the banks of the holy Ganges River. The scent of incense fills the alleys. The aroma of exotic flowers being woven into leis for burials is intoxicating. You walk through the streets, your eyes popping at the color, your ears throbbing from the rattle and hum of commerce. You watch the ground to avoid stepping in piles of fresh cow dung, even dodge a lazy cow or two tromping near you or grazing through stacks of trash.

The ghats, Varanasi

Follow the winding streets, and and all at once the Hindu Golden Temple is upon you. In keeping with the security concerns of the moment, armed Indian soldiers and city police stand guard every few feet. Visitors go through three separate searches, then enter the sacred shrine, barefoot. Inside, a brahman priest blesses each pilgrim. No photos allowed inside.

It took me a couple of hours to even begin clarifying the power of Varanasi. I’m still sorting it out. The city’s magnificent impact has everything to do with its life force–which is to say, death. This is the city of the Ganges, or in Hindi, Ganga. All devout Hindus believe that after death, their ashes must be committed to the Ganges’ sacred waters. If there is a city in the world whose very life depends on the death industry, it is Varanasi. At a traditional crematorium (there also is an electric one, farther down the river), bodies burn on pyres all day and night, often four to five at a time.

Once an elaborate burning ritual ends, the oldest male member of the surviving family walks to the banks of the river carrying a small urn of the departed’s ashes. He wades into the water, then tosses the ashes from the urn over his shoulder. He does not look back, thus signifying the finality of this relationship. Then he returns to the riverbank and joins other male family members. By tradition, women do not participate in the cremation ritual.

No pictures are allowed at the cremation site.

On the rare chance that the dead person may have reached the Hindu state of “enlightenment,” he or she will not return to Earth again. This is the greatest hope, of course. But with the Hindu belief in reincarnation, it’s quite possible the departed will return in some other life form.

People also come here in preparation for dying. Entire buildings on the river are devoted to hospice care, where dying Indians can live out their final days — in full recognition of their limited time — while only yards away from Ganga, the mother to whom they will soon return.

Just 25 yards down the river, daily life proceeds in most ordinary ways. People wash laundry in the water. Pilgrims bathe and swim. It’s expected that Hindus will make at least one pilgrimage to the Ganges in their lifetime, to partake of the holy water. Westerners have trouble with this — it’s an understatement to describe the water as “dirty.” Its headwaters are a small stream in the Himalayas, but by the time the water reaches urban India, it is a wide, churning expanse of murky water, scarcely the pristine mountain water of its origin.

I find beauty in that, too. People live on the earthy reality of this water. Raw sewage runs into it. Human remains sink to the bottom of the river (including the ritualistic commitment of the female pelvic bone and male ribs after cremation). Everything begins and ends here.

The day that we left Varanasi, as we loaded back onto the bus for the hotel, I found myself gazing out the window, my eyes puddling with tears. For a moment I found it hard to breathe. The more I fixated on what I had seen in Varanasi, the harder I cried. I bawled like a baby, with no sign of the tears drying up. Of course they did, eventually. But I learned more about myself and my own struggle with the concept of death that day than I could ever have guessed.

It’s no great revelation that Americans can’t quite grip the finality, even the glory of death with the same art that other cultures do. We fear it, run from it, do everything we can to stave it off — from multivitamin regimens to botox to dumping decent, age-appropriate spouses for trophy wives and husbands. For the first time, there on the Ganges, I had seen an entire culture face death honestly, matter-of-factly, and with love and respect. On one end of the river, bodies burn and survivors mourn publicly, then finish the ritual and go home. On another end of the river, people wash their laundry, bathe, cup the river water in their palms and drink.

The lower caste washes laundry daily in the Ganges

Laundry drying on the ghats

Freshly washed women’s saris, drying on the ghats

Varanasi. Where life meets death, and commerce goes uninterrupted. Thank you India.

The gods oversee the ghats

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 7:59 pm and is filed under All, Culture, Pretty Things, Travel, One World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.