As dawn
breaks
over the eastern bank of the
Ganges little
candle offerings set afloat by pilgrims begin drifting past
our boat and the ghats become a hive of
activity.
The
sun`s rays pick out the
vivid saris
worn by women gathered on the steps before the ritual bathing.
Men are performing yoga, having a massage
or being shaved.
Others,
almost
naked, stand lathering themselves in the sacred water. Ablutions
over,
prayers are
offered
and smoke
spirals
upward from the first funeral pyre: another day
has begun in Varanasi
or Kashi
as
it is known to devout Hindus
- the `City of Light`.....
More than 100 bathing ghats line the Ganges in Varanasi but I had gone to the
oldest and busiest -the Dasasvamedha Ghat -
to organise my trip
on the river
and from a throng of oarsmen all
eager to work, I had selected Sandeep,
as my boatman.
“ I am a strong boy
who will take you where
ever you want to go, ” he told me,
courteously offering an arm as I stepped into his
wooden craft.
With Sandeep rowing vigorously, we headed upstream, first
passing the Munshi Ghat, where - even though the
river has no significance in Islam - Varanasi`s
Muslim population, roughly a third of the city`s two
million inhabitants, comes to
bathe .
Farther
along
we pass long lines of
dhobi allahs professional washermen standing knee-deep and slapping clothes with such force on
large flat stones that the sound echoes across the water.
I learn there
is
spiritual merit in having your
laundry done in Varanasi and that upper class Brahmins
even employ their own
dobi
wallah to avoid caste contamination.
|
Approaching the
Harischandra ghat,
one of the two most sacred cremation sites in Varanasi, I
notice two white bundles swirling past in the current.
`What
are those?`I point them out to Sandeep.`
Children sir` he replies
`we do not burn children.`I also discover that
neither are people cremated who die from a high fever - in the past it
used to be smallpox .Their bodies are simply thrown into the river, in
deference to Sitala the Hindu Goddess of Smallpox
Sandeep
rests on his oars as we watch
a
group of women washing their
brightly coloured saris, rinsing them, ringing
them thoroughly and spreading them out to dry with loving care. One woman is
washing her son, scrubbing him roughly, soaping his hair and
rinsing it with Ganges water
she pours from a silver
aluminium
kettle.
At the bottom of the steps
a young man
holding a beaker at shoulder height, lets the water fall gently while reciting a prayer
to
`Mother
Ganga`. Another man with a pot-belly like Ganesh, the
popular elephant-god of Hindu mythology holds a bowl over his
head pouring the water over himself silently and majestically.
Sandeep
turns the boat around at
the `Dom Raja`s
House,` where the numbers of dead are recorded and a payment is made
to a sort of `grim reaper`
from the `untouchable
class`.
the grieving relatives
in turn
receiving
wood for their funeral
pyres.
The cost also covers lesser
`Doms` performing those parts
of a cremation which
are
considered polluting by other HIndus.
|
Young
boys splashing around our boat bob up happily for me to photograph
them but shouts of
“ No photos ” greet our arrival at
the
Jalasayin
Ghat whose name translates as "putting the corpse
in the water" - one of the pre-cremation rituals required by Hindu
funeral obsequies.
Jalasayin is
the principal burning ghat in Varanasi where
bodies, each one wrapped in a shiny saffron shroud, are lined up to
await
cremation: during the scorching
summer
months
in Uttar Pradesh, as many as 300 cremations
may
take place
in a
single day.
Many elderly Indians journey to Varanasi to pass their final days, finding shelter
in the temples and sustained on alms from visiting pilgrims. Devout Hindus believe that anyone who dies
in the sacred city will hear Lord Shiva whisper the
Takara Mantra and thus attain instant moksha
or
enlightenment. And today,
as well as paying host to millions of
pilgrims, the ancient city is visited by thousands of tourists for
whom a morning boat-ride on the Ganges is often the closest glimpse
they will get of `living India`.
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