Wild Death

The Buddhist’s Kashi. The Hindu’s Holy City. The citizen’s Banaras. Varanasi: the oldest city in the world, from the first millennium BCE. Named for the confluence of the Ganges with the old rivers, Varana and Assi, now the ghats known as the beginning and the end.

At midnight we are led from the airport to our hotel, Palace on Ganges, at Assi ghat, one of the main spiritual sites of the city, the place where one bath can eliminate 100,000 births, according to Hindu belief. Patrons and pilgrims, religious thinkers of all kinds flock here still, as they have for centuries.

We wake before dawn with smoke already filling our throats in the Himalaya-inspired room, tucked into the earth near the banks of the river. My beloved selected this room with a double bed (over the river-view twin) because he draws sustenance through touch. In the night I have dreamed of a baby newly walking who beckons me to leave the room, and I wake with a moan, the baby’s childlike fierceness as real as my own skin.

Before light our guide ushers us through the weave of tuk tuk drivers and beggars, and leads us through narrow alleyways to a waiting boatman, stopping to buy two lamps, candles nestled in leaves, marigolds around the wicks. We will light these as the sun comes up, and place them in the water, making our secret wishes for our loved ones.

We enter the long, wooden boat, and we are taken further into the fog, the lights from the distant ghats a misty gold, the ring of bells and throaty chants and the dip of the oars in the water both strange and familiar. In a few moments tourists will descend upon the river, along with boatmen hawking every manner of souvenirs, as they grab the sides of boats to place brass bracelets and rough-carved figurines in front of faces. For now, as we stream toward the Shiva side of the city (the other being the ‘karn’ or bardo side) we’re greeted by a sadhu on the shore, naked except for a loin cloth and gold-rimmed glasses. He raises a stream of smoke to the sky. Upon the platform that the sadhu stands, a street dog is humping a bitch whose teats haven’t yet receded. Nearby at a table, a couple prepares the flame for morning puja, and then with a stick broom, sweeps the dogs from their perch, but the pack barks and growls, their tantric practice a different sort.

Less than a hundred steps away a body is burning in a funeral pyre and the mourners move through the smoke -- talking, touching, singing. We find it difficult to offer them their privacy, for it is so unusual to witness the death of the body in this direct and oddly gentle manner. I think of my father cremated sixteen months ago, and I wonder what it would have been like to watch his body burn, to smell his flesh in the flames, to stand watch until the bones could be collected and taken to the Mother River.

When we’re back in the boat, rowing toward Manikarnika, the ghat that cremates 270 people each day, our guide tells us that some souls are considered so pure they are taken to the water directly – pregnant women, children, sadhus, and those who have died through snake bite, the mark of Lord Shiva. He looks in my eyes to ensure that I understand – a body or a limb can float by if the fishes haven’t consumed it completely.

On the excruciating twenty-two hour train trip to Varanasi (another story entirely) we have read the extraordinary contemporary novelist Geoff Dyer’s, “Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi,” and so we are somewhat prepared for the insanity of the driving conditions, the seeming chaos of the alleys, the ever presence of death through all the senses. Still, we do not know the ferocity of Varanasi’s grip, we are not aware of what is ingested with the taste of ashes. We are not familiar with the devotion that will cause pilgrims to run to 98 temples (56 of Ganesha!) within twenty-four hours, to run from the first ghat to the Assi ghat, to run in the knowing that the soul is being released from 8.4 million rebirths (the math counts layers of atmosphere multiplied by a ghat’s particular power.)

When we leave our boatman and head toward the old city, we’re greeted by masala merchants, bony cows, armed soldiers. Near the Hindu Golden temple, is a Muslim mosque, and since this is a site of violence, before we enter we must deposit everything in a keyed locker, and then be searched. A woman soldier reaches under my bra, feels along my pubis. Later, I ask the guide if there have been terrorist threats in the news. “This is the way we do things since 9-11,” he says, “If they can do that to your people, what can they do to us?”

I don’t have time to follow his thought because we are soon pressed against the stone wall, chanting in the distance becoming louder as men move toward the Mother Ganga. “Ram nom seta he,” the voices chant, and I ask what these words mean.

“The name of God is the last truth,” our guide speaks.

Then the men are beside us, holding a body on a palanquin, a dead body covered in a gold cloth, with gold ribbons tied around the head and feet. After the mourners pass, an old man with a plastic box of cards thrusts a picture in front of my face. “Want memory card?” he asks, and I shake my head, a habit already, to decline the offering of things placed in front of us at every moment we are in the street.

“Want memory card? Want memory card? Want memory card? Want memory card?” he says over and over, his chant cutting into my consciousness. Every cell of my body is a memory card, a body whose remembering I can scarcely realize at times, for whose is this body, remembering? This body is the vehicle, the Varana and the Assi, my self, and yet not mine at all.