The burning bodies of Varanasi
So here’s another story from the dire pits of “western guy indulging himself in another culture”.
I was walking along the River Ganges in Varanasi and was approached by a linford no more than 5 foot 2, with terrible teeth and excellent pronunciation. He said his name was Roy, and he said he wanted to talk to me as a way of practicing his English and me being the tomato headed short shorts wearer that I am, decided to indulge him even though the term “indulge” is crippling in how patronising it is.
We talked along the many Ghats (a Ghat being an individual district in the old town of Varanasi), each with their own turbulent, striking architecture and paint schemes, punctuated by multiple dudes yelling “Hey man, you want hashish? You smoke weed, opium?”
Then we reached the sacred Manikarnika ghat, the most holy place in India. Roy solemnly handed me over to a wizened man with grey hair peeping out his plaid shirt and and a barnet tinted orange at the tips, that matched the cloth the dead bodies were wrapped in.
Because in Manikarnika ghat they dip the bodies, draped in orange cloth and sequined rags, into the river Ganges before they burn them on piles of sandalwood, to purify their souls.
I saw heads and toes and hips and fingers of dead people flickering amber in the heaps of ash. The bodies are only 24 hours old, outside this frame of time the holy ceremony has no baring on cosmic fate.
The orange hair tipped guy took me to a nearby fire that had been burning for 3500 years, in a small temple. He blessed me by reciting a prayer and rubbing red chalk into my forehead, under the malicious view of a black Shiva mural, with it’s eyes bulging and it’s proud necklace full of skulls.
The heat was swarming all over my face and body, confronting me. I felt helpless, lost, alone.
All in all, I was shook. Death was all around, filling my lungs, settling down on my personal freedom and announcing it’s stay with an insidious smirk.
I thought, maybe this is it. Maybe it’s time to do away with the sneering irony, this hollow cynicism about the world. I’m too old for that, I’ve seen death here, and now, it’s infinite obsidian face glaring at me from a place I could only ever feel and never understand.
Then Roy and the orange hair tipped guy turned around and said: “Yeah cool so that’s gunna be 600 rupees please” and all I could hear in my head was:
