The Burning Ghat

…the entire city of Shiva is regarded as Mahashmashana, the Great Cremation Ground for the corpse of the entire universe.
--- The Rough Guide to India

We arrive in Varanasi in the early morning, and find a nice quiet guesthouse just up the road from the cremation grounds.

After the sleepless overnight train journey, we don’t pay much attention to location. The Ganges Top Guesthouse is clean and claims to have a view of the river. Cheryl and I check in and fall into our beds. A few hours later, the sound of drumming wakes us, and we stumble out into the midday heat. A procession is going by --- men are singing and playing the drums, and are carrying a corpse wrapped in gold and red cloth on their shoulders. We follow them down towards the Ganges. Flights of steps --- the famous ghats of Varanasi --- line the water’s edge along the length of the city. Smoke is rising up from the steps that are closest to us. We sit a short distance away, and, as the drums die down, the next burning begins.

My head is going topsy-turvy as my nostrils fill with an acrid smell. Right in front of us, several funerals are happening all at once --- some not yet lit, some just smoking embers. As a middle-aged man lights the pyre of his father, a little boy watches the flames consume his mother. The bodies shrivel. A foot takes some time to catch. Burning hands reach up eerily towards the sky. And all around us, children play, cows wander, the city ripples out along the river, the countryside on the opposite bank lies deserted and still. “The relatives don’t look very sad, do they?” whines the blonde-haired tourist sitting next to us, as if this was a play put on for our benefit.

We ignore her and, thankfully, she shuts up. We are joined by the manager of our guesthouse, who offers to answer our questions. “What are those men with the big sticks doing?” asks Cheryl.

“They are poking the body so that it burns faster,” he replies. And then it’s his turn. “Are you from Hawaii?” he asks. “I hear Hawaii very nice place.”

Cheryl pauses for a moment, as she watches the flames. “No. No, we’re not from Hawaii.”

“Oh.” The manager is disappointed. His mind turns away from palm trees and blue ocean, and back to the world at hand. “That man there is Dom caste. Dom caste's work is the burning ghat.” He motions for the man to come over and meet us.


The man is dark and wiry. He's pleasant but slightly sinister, friendly but also shifty --- all at the same time. He is the lowest of the low in terms of caste, one who deals with the pollution of death on a daily basis. But he also wields power as the keeper of the burning ghat, and his bearing suggests a man who is in his element. He beams when he finds out that we are from the States: "American people, they understand us. They understand Dom people." I nod, for somehow this makes a strange sort of sense.

Or else he's just buttering us up. One beat later, our bond of brotherhood has been forgotten and he's asking us for money. He is collecting for a free-funereal-wood-for-poor-people fund. We're being given a standard Indian huckster spiel and I have a strong feeling that our donation wouldn’t be helping to light any fires. Luckily, we’ve left our bags in our room and can show him our empty hands. But the sorrow-doubting tourist isn't as lucky, and a long discussion ensues. She insists he must show her proof that this is a government-approved charity before she hands over any rupees. The Dom smiles some more and asks again. She says that if she gives him a donation, he must give her a receipt. He just smiles and asks again. She insists some more; he smiles and asks again. And, eventually, he wears her down. As every Indian scam artist knows, it is just a matter of time before the foreigner caves.

The tourist strides off in a huff, and the Dom turns his attention back to the ghat. A new funeral has processed down to the river. They bless the corpse by submerging it in the Ganges, but then the funeral party carries it off the ghat and over to the big concrete building behind us. It is a new electric crematorium and the object of the Dom’s disdain: “Some people, they don’t want the traditional way! They want modern way only!”

Our manager sighs as if he’s heard it all before and says to us quietly, “Traditional funeral is very expensive. Poor people have to have electric.”

“But you cannot see the burning with electric!” retorts the Dom. “Not right, not right. The old way is right.” The manager nods in agreement, but shrugs his shoulders at the same time. Tradition is nice, he seems to say, but sometimes it just costs too much money. Except, I guess, if you qualify for the wood-for-the-poor program.

We all sit quietly, looking at the burning pyres in front of us. “Sayonara… say-o-na-ra… sayonara…” The Dom has begun to sing a little tune. “Sayonara… say-o-na-ra…” He spots new tourists approaching, puts his smile on again, and leaves us. As he wanders off through the pyres, we can hear him singing the sayonara song. No irony is intended. It's just the chorus of a Bollywood film song.

That evening I sit on the roof of our guesthouse, sipping a Coke. The breeze off the river is cool, but the electric crematorium blocks my view. It sits there, a great grey monolith, crowned by a puffing smokestack.

Even though I know it’s a scam, I wish I had given a few rupees to the wood-for-the-poor fund. Maybe it really would have bought someone some wood. For what a cruel joke it is! To end your days in Varanasi, to have your corpse bathed in the Holy Mother Ganges, but then to have to retreat into this concrete monster, denied the final glory of a real funeral, one with wood, one where everyone can see your body burn, see your person disappear from this earth. But I suppose at that point you don’t really care. You’ve died in Shiva’s city. You’ve escaped your next life and been freed into the bliss of eternity. Little worries like wood no longer concern you.

It’s only us left behind who would be concerned. I wonder about this, as smoke blows towards me, and a little boy dances down the crematorium’s ramp, arms waving to the next funeral’s drumbeats.

Published on Triplit.com, July 2002