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Wanderlust
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[08/14/99]

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"Please, tell me how to get out of here."

"Come this way."

I followed the stranger up another staircase, this one leading up through blackened halls. We climbed more stairs and emerged onto a balcony flooded with moonlight and scattered with supine figures in white shrouds. Directly above us, wreathed in smoke, loomed the tower with the handless clock.

The man halted and undid his gamcha, revealing a majestic and angular face. Around us in a concave array stood soot-covered temples that were once the color of bone; with their glassless gaping windows and jutting, cheek-like façades, they called to mind an assembly of giant skulls. Below, on a square of charred earth and ash, 10 or 12 pyres, each 10 feet across and 4 feet high, flamed and belched smoke and sparks, the bodies burning therein, lodged between logs, hardly recognizable as such. The pyres were stoked by veiled laborers whose eyes reflected the fire, whose sweat scintillated in the fierce light. Beyond the pyres stretched the void of the Ganges, an infinity of black glass over which the moon waxed and mists gathered. It was a humbling sight.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"My name is Kasi Baba," he answered in poised English. "I am a Brahmin of the Burning Ghats."

Behind him a withered arm emerged from the folds of a white shroud. It belonged to an old woman, who sat up and beckoned to Kasi Baba. She was almost bald. Her shroud slipped down to reveal a bony sternum with no breast flesh. She did not try to hide this. She rasped out a few words and slumped back to the floor. He brought her a ladle of water and placed a plate of bhat, or cooked rice, by her head.

He adjusted his gamcha and turned back to me. "You are in the House of the Dying. I am the caretaker here. These people have come to Varanasi to die and be liberated from the cycle of birth and death and rebirth -- what we call samsara. To be cremated here means everlasting death, it means peace for tired souls, it means moksha -- enlightenment. These are the largest burning ghats of India. We cremate a hundred bodies a day here, and sometimes more. The fires never stop. They have not stopped for 3,000 years."

Tiny bats flitted about our heads. Above, from the cornice surmounting the walls, hung bats a foot long. The fires sent waves of heat and smoke our way, and sweat poured down the sides of my face. The humidity was insufferable, and I became dizzy; I had to grasp the side of the balcony to keep from falling over.

Kasi Baba pointed to another soot-darkened building. "That hostel is for those dying ill, with family. And that one farther on is for the sick who are dying alone. The people in my care are all dying healthy, they are just old."

A pop-hiss resounded from one of the pyres -- the skull of a dead man exploding. The brains boil in the fire and the heads blow up.

Kasi Baba looked toward the men stoking the fires. "Those are the Dom. The Dom are Untouchables who work the fires all their lives. They live with the eternal fire of Shiva in the temple there" -- he gestured to a glowing chamber at the inner end of the concave complex. "The Fire of Shiva liberates the elements of our body."

Clouds drifted over the moon. There was a creak of oars. The cries of boatmen rang out over the river, boatmen making the last run of the day, bringing the pilgrims back from the ghats on the far bank. But there was a rising chant from the square below. Four men were bearing a stretcher with a body enshrouded in white, singing "Ram nam sach hai! Ram nam sach hai!" -- The name of God is truth! -- making their way between the pyres and passing down the steps to the banks. There they lowered the stretcher through the mist into the water, then raised it, shouldered it and started back, resuming their chant: "Ram nam sach hai! Ram nam sach hai!"

Another skull exploded. A pyre roared in a fulsome, consuming blaze. Behind us one of the moribund let out a shrill cry.

Next page | "For 200 rupees the Dom will tie a stone to your body"