I flew from Paris through Bahrain with only a carry on, with a jar of EJ’s ashes. In the airport I met two guys who were working the oil fields and heading home for a week. We drank and they spoke of the middle east and woking there. I told them that I was bringing EJ to India, they were part inspired part worried, do I have him on me? We are in the middle east, I don’t know if your are supposed to be doing this. They felt like his people and I knew my passage was already secured.
At the border control I was worried carrying a jar of white powder. They looked at my visa and acted like they should apologize for making me wait. It was weird. At some hotel days later the clerk asked me where/ how I got this visa because he has never seen one with this level of entry. I say, I must have had a friend looking after me.
Varanasi is a city on the Ganges in the Uttar Pradesh, provenance of India. It is the city where Buddha is said to have started Buddhism, or at least found enlightenment. It is a city since BC so it has this super old city feel, with the spiritual vibe (people going to all the cities temples) and the spiritual nature of the Ganges.
The Ganges is the most important river. There are folk histories, religious histories, myths and legends, religion and medicine. My friend explained it like this, the Ganges flows everywhere. When it over flows it spreads across the land touching all. All things that are used to make medicine. Conversely vaccines are made from a small amount of bad intentionally put into your body. So when the Ganges touches all things that make you sick, with all of the medicines with all of it watered down, it is a cure and a vaccine. That being said, Varanasi is kind of a river town, where the cool locals have all the good spots on the river and they yell at the passers by for not respecting their local culture. Which in India translates to watch your face and clothes here, pee there, shave there, fill up your canteen there. And address The Mother Ganga (River Ganges), don’t just walk up and step your shoe into her, say hello and ask for her to look after you while you do what ever you came here to do. Now all the medicine and vaccine talk made sense to me till the guy peeing and the guy filling his canteen being able to see each other. My friend believes that if you believe you will be healed by it. If you do not believe it may make you sick.
I went to Varanasi for the burning gat… even though I didn’t know much about it, but this is where you go to bring your friend to the Ganges. I got in late, checked in and in the morning went for a walk about. Moments in, this local sees me and wants to chat me up. I tell him I have no real interest and he says, ‘look man, I get like your cool. I’ll introduce you, my friend, he show you the burning gat, no money.’ Still weary of a scam I decline. He says, ‘really no money, I can tell you cool, you like my friend.’ We walk around a corner or two and he waves down a twenty something year old guy. We’re introduced and he offers me a tour of the burring gat.
‘This is our culture. You may not know about this so I am here to explain these things to you so we can have a better understanding. Dying is a part of the human experience. You have it in your existence, but it is not in your culture.’
On the right there is a three story, small foot print building. It has open windows, like glass was never intended but still over all looking incomplete. On the left a small India “road” heading down the hill toward the Ganges. This time of year she is high, about ten blocks high. As in at the current waters edge you can see the building across the street submerged and the roof of the building across the street from them is poking out of the the water but the blocks past that are completely under water. Across from the open window building is a pile of wood leading to the piles of wood on the roof of the building the street stack is up against. Behind the windowless building is a flume of smoke, I can’t see where the smoke is coming from but I can see the smoke.
We head into the windowless building. He explains that when someone dies, the closest male makes the arrangements. They carry the body to the river, the closest male gets in with the body and their sins are washed away. Then they lay the body to dry in the sun, veiled in white. The closest male shaves his entire face and head hair except a small piece in the back, so he can feel this section of hair and remember where he was this day. Then washed and shaved the man wears white and the carrying party from before bring the body to the burring gat. The fire here has be burring since 1100 BC. In the rain they give it a small hood, in the flood they build a tower to keep it on top and dry but the same continuous flame since BC. Near this flame they have a large stone area where they build a small fire and lay the body on top. They say it takes about three hours for the body to burn. However two parts never burn. A man’s sternum, because he is strong willed, and the woman’s pelvis because she is the giver of life. It is broken down by class (very Indian). It takes 3 men, 3 hours and 12 KG of wood (good wood is so expensive poor people may by as little as 5 grams of good saw dust and the rest cheep wood) and the space to do it. So if you can afford it, you and your party carry the body to the flames then walk away. The three men are paid to stay, tend the fire, apply oils or specialty woods and clear up for the next person. Then the more poor you are the more of those services you do. The 3 men weren’t really paid what you paid the owners either but, any jewelry someone did not specifically leave to someone else must be worn so the guys who worked as the 3 men would then sift for gold and silver and the shores of the burring gat every morning. This was an centuries old operation. All day, all night, 6-10 bodies at a time. In the week I was there I spent most of my time near the burring gat, I probably saw 200 cremations. I listened to all of the working specifics as we climb the stairs of the windowless building. Along the way I see piles of hair where someone clearly started their ceremony there. I also catch my first glimpse or two of the actual burring causing the smoke. Turning in a stairwell there was an opening and right then, with no real warning there was an entire rooftop covered in burring bodies. I tried not to react while listening to how their system works. Then at the top of the stair we stood looking out on the neighboring roof at ten different bodies in different states of the the process.
I took a moment to take it in. At first I was horrified. This seams wrong. I want fire, so it was especially odd for me to feel. I think it was that is was all so open, and mixed, there was no real separation, one pyre touched another. Then, as I got over my initial shock it became very peaceful and serine. Then he pointed out something so obvious that I couldn’t believe. He said there is no smell because of the power of this place, and this fire and the belief of the people. He could tell I was skeptical and asked a few things, I imagine, other skeptics have said, till wind, that honestly sounded like a clear solution to me. He saw a lock of someones hair on the floor, picked it up and pulled out a match. As soon as the match lit I didn’t even need to smell the hair, the match stunk of sulfur, but then the hair was almost over whelming. Then the smell of burring hair, with the visual, it became over whelming again. But again, it calmed and this time much deeper and more serine. He also pointed out how in these last moments you can see the people and their entire relationship in just a flash. I didn’t understand at that moment but in my subsequent time there I saw it. A group would walk into the flame, slowly, calmly and lovingly place their loved one on the pyre. A different would walk up, close-ish to the flames and kind of toss the body and then the 3 men would have to come and move it on the the fire better. That last touch; in inconvenience, a duty, a last chance at a loving embrace?
I spent most of that week with my friend near the burring gat. Watching the groups come with the body, watch what the group does while the closest man does his part, watch the last touch, it’s all so personal but that’s part of the joy the sharing it, that I was able to see them and their experience and feel it, and learn from it.
After a week there I felt I understood it well enough that I actually could do this from my friend. I mean I could have just walked up and emptied the jar in the rivers edge. He wasn’t Hindu but if I am going to go to India and participate in an Indian ceremony for my buddy, I want to do it right.
My friend organized the brahman who presided over he’s fathers ceremony. We met at the main city center gat. This is where all of the people who can’t afford the burring gat bring their loved ones ashes for a Ganges internment ceremony. There were whole families who traveled far across India to inter their loved one making their ceremony on the step next to mine. It felt so deeply spiritual in a overly packed kind of a way, it is just so crowded and everyone thinks everyone has a right to be there and then so, make it work. But there were time in the ceremony where I could hear the brahman behind me much better then I could hear the brahman I was making the ceremony with.
In the ceremony I was given flour, salt and water. The brahman said your friend is with you now. Feel him, know that he is hear and he knows that are doing this for him. Now make this into dough. As I made a mess I could hear him, like he was right behind me, ‘What are doing? Your over working the dough!’ I started to cry. The brahman said he’d help me with the dough but I shouldn’t cry cause I friend is here and I am freeing him to be in a better place. This is a happy day. From now till the end of time you are helping his transition from one to the next with the gods, where they will be with him and look after him and guide him to the next levels in their grace.
Not one person in India that I spoke to about EJ said “I’m sorry”. American’s can’t hear death with out the knee jerk “I’m sorry”. Every person I spoke to either exclaimed; what a lucky person my friend must have been to have me do this for him, or how lucky I am to have a friend to allow me this rare opportunity, I could have seen the Taj and went home, where now I will have this experience. No one said sorry, no one felt bad for me or my friend. Not that they were mean, just not sorry that a natural part of life happened. It really made me relook at the way we think and deal with death in the west.
I, with help from the brahman, and EJ, made the bread balls for the gods. We than got in a boat and motored out to the middle of the Ganges. There I told the gods that I made this offering for them in the name of EJ. I placed the offering into the river and said the prescribed incantations and we headed back to shore.
Again we made bread balls but this time with EJ’s ashes. This way when the gods eat their offering they will take him inside of them and he can actually become part of the the gods. Again I needed help to not over work the dough. And again we took the boat out to the middle of the Ganges. This time a few locals saw me heading to the boat wanted me to take their offerings with me. It was all so beautiful but also sad and degrading that your offering will be smattered on the steps while people bath onto because you can’t afford the boat to the middle of the river.
I know he wasn’t Hindu but I’m not either and when I took my first bath in the Ganges I knew something was special, I changed. I hope he feels the positive energies that me and the brahman worked to bring to him.
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