The Heart Of Fire
My journey Through Varanasi, India
Note: This piece was originally published in Boston College’s Kaleidoscope International Journal Spring 2015 issue (Volume 6, Issue 2). This piece is published here with the publication’s permission.*
The first thing you notice is the smell. The air is thick with the smell of burning flesh that tastes like hot ash in your mouth. Your guide warns you to not inhale the air because, like the food, it can easily upset any weak stomach.
You then look closer into the fire and you see bodies burning. You and fifteen other passengers are sitting on a tiny wooden boat built for five people and you’re floating about twenty yards from one of the many ceremonial fires that burn all day and night. Yet from your distance you can still discern the body parts of the victims within the largest central flame.
A thin silhouette near the largest fire drags a corpse by its ankles out from a nearby pile of bodies, stacked like Jenga pieces one on top of the other, and it drags the body towards the river, where it will be immersed in the water before it’s thrown into the fire. Your guide explains that these were the bodies of the Indian men of the lowest caste of society, the so-called ‘Untouchables’ or Dalits. This dip in the holy river is the final step before the cremation, and it’s meant to purify the body so that it may enter paradise. Hindus believe that dying, or at least being cremated in this city, breaks the cycle of reincarnation. You can’t see it, but a large crowd surrounds the fire. Your guide informs you that they are the family members of the dead paying their final respects. They are silent and still as they watch their loved ones consumed by the flames and turned into ash.
From the buildings on the shore there are loudspeakers projecting a Hindu chant muttered by an old-sounding priest, and like the flames before you, there is little hope of understanding what it means. All you hear is the crackling of the fire: the sound of the dead leaving this world.
It’s nearly impossible to describe the extremes and sensory overload of India, a country that, depending on where you go, ranges from exotic oasis to deplorable slum, dazzling riches to disturbing poverty — one minute you’re walking past naked children playing in mountains of trash flowing into open sewers, the next you’re strolling along the pristine gardens of the Taj Mahal where you could be fined hundreds of dollars for littering. Many of the homeless find shelter in the rundown remains of old buildings, sharing their space with the cows and limp bodies of people who are either sleeping or dead. There are beggars everywhere, mostly children who latch onto the clothes of tourists, holding on desperately for a small token of goodwill. Yet for every child beggar you see, you find twice as many billboards for the newest Bollywood films, each poster more romantic and extravagant than the next.
India also has a long history of religious significance, with many cities firmly rooted in several faiths. It’s the birthplace of Buddhism and home to a wealth of sacred Hindu sites. In other countries, religious temples are not only places of worship but also tourist attractions, with gift shops and merchandise available for purchase. But in India you can’t buy your way through religion; entire cities are sacred grounds for worship, living, breathing organisms made up of millions of profoundly deep and charismatic human souls.
India is a land of contrasts — beautiful and sickening, ostentatious and destitute, thriving and desperate. India is a spicy taste, a potent smell, and a flavor that, once consumed, never really goes away. India is not a place you simply go and visit; it is a place you experience, for all its charms and horrors.
Though I usually travel independently, India was the only country where I was advised to travel with a guide. I booked a tour guide to take a small group of students from our Semester at Sea voyage from the port town of Kochi to Varanasi, Agra, and Delhi. Varanasi was described to me as the only place in the world where one’s views of life and death could forever change in just a single night on the Ganges River. I now had a specific goal for my week in India — to see for myself this whirlwind of a culture that rested along the Ganges.
Varanasi is in the northern part of India, about 500 kilometers southwest from Mt. Everest in Nepal, and it lies along the Ganges River. It’s one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and exists as India’s spiritual capital, supposedly founded by Lord Shiva himself, and a destination for religious pilgrims and curious travelers.
In his essay “Maximum India,” Pico Iyer details his time in Varanasi, describing the ancient city as “a holy crossroads, a place of transformation in a state of such advanced decay that [the city] seems to speak for the impermanence of everything.” Though the city indeed looks and feels ancient, like all the buildings are about to crumble and fall into the river, the religious fervor of its citizens keeps it alive. Iyer also cites Mark Twain who, upon his visit in 1897, described the city as “older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend.” The city has not changed much in the last hundred years.
As our tour group pulled into the hotel, a white marble building surrounded by dirt roads and piles of trash, we saw the crumbling remains of the ancient buildings Twain described over a century ago. With the faint remains of bright red and sea green paint, it was clear these buildings were once vibrant until time and negligence did their damage to its colors. Nevertheless, I was sure that a truly religious city did not concern itself with appearances.
After a dinner of spicy red chicken and naan at the hotel, our tour guide, a man named Chaman, instructed us to come outside to meet a group of rickshaw drivers who would take us to the Ganges River, to see the ‘real’ Varanasi, referring to the Old City, where all the religious ceremonies took place.
After only a few minutes of riding our rickshaws to the river, the tame four-lane road narrowed into a single dirt road completely packed with cars, mopeds, and pedestrians; the traffic was enormous, but nothing out of the ordinary from what we had already seen in India thus far. But as we came closer to the river, the street continued to get smaller and more crowded, except now there were groups of large animals, particularly cows, roaming around. No vehicle dared to challenge the sacred cow for right-of-way.
The only police we saw were a handful of military men directing traffic with AK-47s. Traffic collisions were abundant, including one of our own rickshaws. The policemen near our crash site didn’t come to our aid but instead waved their guns in the air motioning for us to get off the road. To them, our safety was not as important as maintaining the flow of traffic.
It soon became so crowded that we had to leave our rickshaws and walk the remaining half mile to the river. This was fortunate for the beggars we encountered, who now tried to sell us their hand-made necklaces while their children tried to steal our wallets out of our back pockets.
This ride was turning into a surreal excursion that, in a small way, mirrored Joseph Conrad’s journey down the Congo River in Heart of Darkness, the Ganges River as our Kurtz. The closer we got to the river, the more restless the people acted, the more urgent the beggars pried for money, and the more heated the already humid air became. We did not know what we would find down at the river — if we would find anything at all — but it was I could think about.
After our half-mile walk, we finally reached the river where Chaman led us to Dashashwamedh ghat, the central attraction of Varanasi. A ghat is an embankment made of stone steps that lead into the Ganges, where people bathe regularly in order to earn favor and blessings from God. There are over eighty ghats along the Ganges in Varanasi, and the Dashashwamedh ghat is the busiest and most famous ghat. Our group was led into a wooden boat and we all settled in for the Aarti, the nightly Hindu worship ceremony. The Aarti was led by a group of young priests, who lit incense and danced to honor Lord Shiva, the Ganges, the sun, fire, and the universe as a whole. The incense was placed in golden candles and the priests carried them in their hands while they slowly danced to the sound of chants and chiming bells.
The sun was just beginning to set and the ceremony had just started, but I was already falling into some kind of trance. I could not keep my eyes off the priests, and I hopelessly tried to interpret the mumbling of the Hindu prayer. Every now and then little children would jump into our boat and try to sell us postcards and key chains. I remembered that, though Varanasi is a holy city, the ghats are still a popular tourist destination.
Chaman decided that we had enough time to explore the river before the “real” ceremony began, so our boat slowly pulled out from the ghat and sailed with the current. The sun had just set, and the only light we could see on the river came from the several prayer candles floating along the embankment. Chaman led us to a smaller, less busy ghat about fifty yards from the Dashashwamedh ghat. Along that shore, I began to see fire. We sailed closer to the ghat until Chaman stopped the boat and pointed at a massive fire, the central one among five other fires burning along the shore. He asked us what we saw inside the flames. We were just close enough to smell something burning, but all I could see in the fire was a horizontal black figure that looked like a long wooden log. As I looked closer, it slowly dawned on me that I was looking at a body. This was a cremation.
The city of Varanasi celebrates both life and death, so cremations and festivities like dancing and singing often occur together. As the music and chiming bells from the Dashashwamedh ghat were carried over the river through the loudspeakers, my mind could only focus on the fire. Surrounding the flames were large piles of wooden logs that held hundreds of dead bodies in place. It was the responsibility of one particular man to slowly take apart this pile, body by body, and dip each body into the holy river before placing it into the fire. When the pile was emptied, another one was built.
Our boat came back to the Aarti, which was now completely full of people, Hindus and tourists alike. Five priests had already lit their candles and were dancing to a faster, livelier Hindu chant projected by the speakers. Coming from the cremation ghat, the prayer ghat was overwhelming. We had just witnessed a palpable, emotional scene of death, but immediately we were thrust back into life with feverish Hindu chants amidst a sea of people on the ghat.
When the festival was over, our rickshaws took us back to our hotel and we took a bus out of the Old City to another hotel whose owner held a rooftop dinner for our group. It felt strange, even inappropriate, to try and do anything normal like eating dinner after what we had just seen, but I tried my best to focus on the meal. That night, I dreamed of fire.
The next morning we were up before sunrise and took rickshaws back to the river. This time, the streets were completely empty, which was shocking considering how chaotic they were just a few hours ago.
We got back onto a boat and Chaman gave us a tour of the city as we glided along the river, the sun rising on one side, the city drifting past on the other. Chaman pointed out the different ghats along the river where we saw many people undressing and bathing themselves in the holy water. In the morning light, we were able to see how polluted the river actually was by its dark, murky, and unnatural appearance. When I asked Chaman if he ever bathed in the Ganges himself, he laughed and told me that I couldn’t pay him to touch that water.
Our boat tour ended at Monkey Temple, a massive abandoned shrine on the river that was overrun by unfriendly monkeys and known to be one of the most dangerous temples in the city. Our bus was stationed behind the temple, so I said farewell to the Ganges with one last look out into the river and the city built along its shore. With the morning sun casting a calming light onto the city, I saw a beautiful and colorful place that, if restored, might have been a paradise comparable to Venice. But I left knowing that Shiva would keep his city just like it was, alive yet broken.
Though our time on the Ganges was over, there was still more to see in Varanasi. Chaman took us twenty miles out from the Old City to Sarnath, a large green park where Buddha gave his first sermon. This park is considered to be the birthplace of Buddhism and serves as a safe haven for the few Buddhists who still live in India. A large stupa loomed over the park to commemorate the specific spot where Buddha taught his first followers the Four Noble Truths. Surrounding the stupa were open green patches and stone benches used for all people to come and meditate in silence.
Compared to the extremes of the Ganges, Sarnath had a calm, almost surreal atmosphere. Back on the river, you couldn’t hear yourself think, but in this park all you could hear were your thoughts, along with the occasional chirping of birds. The serene greenery stood in stark contrast to the dark, muddy waves of the river.
It was strange to think that two sacred spots, a Hindu river and a Buddhist park, could be in the same city and yet be so different. I was learning that India is a study in coexisting contrasts. As I laid on the grass I looked up at the cloudless blue sky, thinking about how this blue sky in Varanasi was the same blue sky that I saw back home in the Midwest. Still under the country’s magic spell, so to speak, I could see the spectrum of Indian diversity before me — shades of fire red and sky blue.
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Everything after Varanasi was a giant blur of markets and tourist attractions. The Taj Mahal, a spectacular marvel of human achievement, is nothing compared to Varanasi, a city that lives, breathes, and communicates with you. You can search the Taj Mahal online and get a sense of its beauty, but there is no way to capture the essence of a city whose main attraction is in its people and its fires.
Perhaps this is why Varanasi was so special to me — it was the first time that a city reached out, grabbed me by my collar, and forced me to see something of the world that I never wanted to see before. It was an unsettling experience, but it was a moment that every traveler needs to go through.
Every traveler needs to have a Varanasi, a part of themselves that stays alive for many years and reminds them of a time of profound revelation. When I came to Varanasi I encountered death, and death is a fire that never goes out.