Varanasi

So far on this trip I have been dreaming about normal things: paying bills, visiting with friends and family, cooking a meal at home. Being quite a vivid dreamer, at first it was confusing to have my dreaming mind devoid of its usual nightly array of peculiar images and implausible scenarios. But now it makes complete sense- my waking life and and my dream life have basically switched places. The daytime here is a constant barrage of sights, sounds, smells, and overall experiences that before now have only appeared in my dreams (or nightmares, depending on how you look at it!).
Consider, for example, what Matt and I witnessed today in Varanasi- (and read this story at your own risk)...
Varanasi is considered the holiest and most auspicious place in India to die and to be cremated. If you die here, as a Hindu, you permanently escape the cycle of life and death. If you don't die here, it is still quite important to have your body sent here to be cremated on the Ganges, and so Hindus from all over the country strive for a send-off into the next life from Varanasi.
The city is divided into the Old and the New. The Old City is a series of narrow and winding stone pathways that are laid-out in what initially feels like a tangled mess, all of which are accessed via countless stairs starting from the eighty ghats that lie on the banks of the Ganges. A "ghat" is basically a series of stone steps leading to a large stone slab that juts out onto the bank of the river. On the top of the stairs is a wide walkway, perfect for viewing life on the ghats. Each ghat has a different purpose, and we walked along we saw people bathing in the river, washing their laundry, meditating, doing yoga, selling their goods, sleeping, and, the most famous event: burning the dead.
There are two main ghats that are used for the purpose of burning the dead. Our hotel is above the burning ghat (as they are called) that is specifically for Hindus. The other burning ghat is for people of all religions. Today Matt and I spent a portion of our afternoon at the latter burning ghat. There was a sort of miniature ghat above the river where the burning took place, and it served as a good vantage point to observe the ceremonies while maintaining a respectful distance. We were joined by other tourists and Indians while we watched.
The ceremony goes like this: when a loved one dies, the family builds a stretcher out of cloth and bamboo. There are people from a specific lower caste in India that are born into the job of preparing, carrying, and burning the bodies. The bodies are carried from the Old City where they are prepared, (and so often as we walk along the narrow pathways above the ghats, people carrying the bodies to the river pass us by), and all the while they are chanting. There are usually several men, some of them are the workers, some are family of the deceased. In the ceremony, the body is laid out on the stretcher and covered in several cloths- I was told that brightly colored cloths are for older men, red for women, and white for younger men. The body is taken off the stretcher and bathed in the Ganges while another group of workers prepares the logs for the funeral pyre. The body is then placed on the pyre and covered with more wood. Sometimes the face is covered by cloth, sometimes it is not. We saw both.
After the body is placed on the pyre, the grandson of the deceased approaches the body with the kindling that will start the fire. He circles the body five times before beginning the fire. The grandson wears white and has his head shaved- all over the ghats and in the narrow pathways above the ghats we saw men getting their heads shaved in preparation for these ceremonies.
Then, people gather and the body is set on fire. This, as you can imagine, is difficult to describe. The people that are gathered stay for a little while, but many walk away and sit or stand further up from the river, away from the body. Often the body is left on its own, with a worker occasionally tending to the fire.
As if all of this wasn't strange enough on its own, there is the surrounding atmosphere to consider. Today when we were watching this happen, (we saw two ceremonies from start to finish), there were people not more than 20 feet away bathing in the river, doing their laundry, even standing in their underwear and talking on their cell phones. Burning the dead is a very regular event, and regular life goes on all around as it happens. The body is often covered in flowers, so there are goats and dogs all around the pyre picking at the flowers for a snack. Women are not allowed at the ceremony at all, because, (as we were told), they are "too emotional", and often widows attempt to throw themselves onto the pyre to be with their husbands. Also, we were told that deceased children, pregnant women, and those who died with leprocy or smallpox are not burned because their souls are already considered pure.
After the body burns for a few hours, the remains are thrown into the river as an offering to the fish and the beginning of reincarnation.
Matt and I were equally mesmerized and nauseated at the sights we saw today. I think we both felt the same way- respecting the ceremony, the honesty of it (as Matt so eloquently framed it), but at the same time we were stunned by the whole thing. I am sure it will take a little while to process what we saw.
There's no doubt I will be having some pretty plain dreams tonight.