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By Jeffrey Tayler

August 21, 1999 | The last breeze of the day was stirring the Ganges, rippling the steepled reflections of the temples in its torpid waters, wobbling the stately images of the peepul trees. Since morning, the river had teemed with bathers performing ablutions on the landings, or ghats; now, with the sun expiring, sending molten feelers out into a mackerel sky, bathers were few, and the ghats were reacquiring a serene, timeless air.

Life in Varanasi, the holiest city of Hinduism, and one of the oldest living cities on Earth, centered around the ghats. Each ghat was distinct: Dashashwamedha Ghat was lined with crooked umbrellas, under which usually sat facial masseurs and officious priests; Bhonsale Ghat had its sandstone tenements and terraced hostels; Scindia Ghat was marked by the leaning and half-submerged Temple of Shiva. As the breeze died, the bluing dusk subsumed them all.

Having just alighted from a skiff tour, I stood regaining my land legs in the glow of lanterns at Dashashwamedha Ghat, under a giant, many-armed depiction of Lord Shiva painted on a water tank. From the skiff I had caught a glimpse of the Mosque of Alamgir, high above the river. The moon was out; the Mosque of Alamgir would afford me a sweeping view of Varanasi in the moonlight, so I decided to hike there, walking from ghat to ghat along the bank until I reached a point from where I could make an ascent to it via the narrow lanes of the riverside Old City.

I set out. Away from the lanterns my progress slowed. I stumbled half-blind in the shadows; I moved cautiously around the corners of temples, coming now upon a recumbent cow, now upon a column bathed in moonbeams. When, hoping to make better time, I stepped away from the river into the Old City, I was met by heat and a fetor of urine and jasmine petals and buffalo dung; the Old City was a maze of yard-wide alleys choked with surging throngs of animals and people. Stymied by the labyrinth, unable to breathe, with sweat drenching my shirt, I retraced my steps and resolved to keep to the bank until I could make a direct climb to my destination.

A short distance on, the air turned acrid. I made my way around another corner, jumped across a minor divide between ghats, and found myself looking onto great fires flaring behind a railing. Above the fires rose an edifice resembling a Gothic castle, soot-blackened and many-storied, culminating in a high tower topped with a handless clock. Men enrobed in white lingering by the railing turned and glared at me, as though I had stumbled into a private affair. I looked back -- there was no other path save the one by which I had arrived, and the way ahead was blocked by the fires.

A hand grabbed my wrist. "De dead -- de dead is boorning in dere. You want to see de dead?"

A runtish youth with a soot-blackened face and jaundiced eyes started pulling me toward the fires. "Come see de dead. I am working here boorning de dead."

I yanked my arm loose. "What is this place?"

"De Boorning Ghats!"

The Burning Ghats of Jalasi, the largest, and most sacred, crematorium of India! I had read about them in my guidebook, but I wanted to avoid them -- it seemed obscene to tour the grief of strangers, and I couldn't help fearing the sight of corpses, of what fire might do to flesh.

The runt grabbed my arm again. "For 50 rupees I show you de bodies and de fires. Dat is a lady boorning in fire. See?"

Looking away, I pulled free of him, and, not wanting to retrace my steps, headed up into a dark airless lane, in what I hoped to be the direction of the mosque. Lurching from wall to wall in the black, feeling my way ahead with my arms outstretched, gasping for breath, I found a staircase and mounted it. The staircase took me up to a landing. There I was confronted by a face half-covered in a checkered silk gamcha, or scarf.

Next page | "I am a Brahmin of the Burning Ghats"