This article is published on Matador Travel and can also be viewed, in its native environment, here:
The Fine Line
There is no pencil thin enough to draw the line between life and death. No one knows where the line lies and who the artist is behind it.
What we do know, and often take for granted, is just how grand and unique our lives on this earth are. A tiny bubble of oxygen in your blood, should it find its way to your brain, could end your world as you know it. One wrong step in traffic could do the same.
Yet, most of us manage to live year after year without incident and without appreciation profound enough to do that fact justice.
In any case, visiting Varanasi, India provided one of those rare occasions when the scope of life comes a little more readily into focus.
After two days of travel in the debilitating heat of Indian summer, we arrived in Varanasi by train in the evening. We immediately checked into our hotel and fell into the uncomfortable slumber of sleep in hellish temperatures.
The alarm clock sounded at the ungodly hour of 5 o’clock, though both of us were already somewhat awake from the buzz of the mosquito swarms flanking us from all angles.
Since we had been sleeping in our clothes, getting dressed was an unnecessary evil, and we grabbed cameras and journals and sunglasses, and made our way groggily down to the “lobby” (really more of a doorway) of the hotel to meet our guide.
He was late, as seems to be the Indian fashion, by a good thirty minutes, which we spent trying to hydrate ourselves against the day’s inevitable onslaught of unrelenting sun and dust.
Outside, we began weaving our way through the already frenetic pace of the street crowds, narrowly missed countless times by rickshaws and cattle darting or meandering about in the reddish glow of early morning.
We arrived at the bank of the Ganges and were left mute at the stark beauty of the holy river. Fog drifted lazily and heavily about the buildings and overtop of the tepid, brown water, broken only every so often by the scream of native birds and the points of the make-shift boats floating aimlessly.
The smell was overwhelming (at least from what I understand, since I do not happen to have been blessed with that particular sense). Through the gasps of my girlfriend, however, I understood the stench to be something of a mixture of rot and smoke, though she couldn’t describe it exactly.
We boarded a boat that looked as if it would sink into the holy waters the minute our feet touched it, held steady by our guide who urged us in and to “be not afraid.” We sat ourselves in the front, bracing our legs against the side to keep from slipping over the edge, and waved goodbye to the gentleman who had escorted us there and handed us over to another man, who appeared to be around eighty, and pushed the boat off the edge of the shore with the worn limb of a tree.
After about ten minutes of passing through the dense fog, the sun broke the horizon and began to burn it off, unveiling sights neither of us could have fathomed in the wildest of dreams.
The shores, wildly active at such an early hour, were filled with hundreds of men in various states of undressing, splashing water on themselves, sipping it and spitting it back out, joking, laughing, scowling, and, generally, feeling alive. There were a few groups of tourists interspersed, with the shadows of the monstrous riverside buildings and temples shading them and casting odd shapes out over the water.
Smoke rose up from a dozen fires burning along the shore, stoked by skinny men heaving logs on top and blowing into the ashes.
Neither of us had anything to say, and this was appropriate, since no words could do justice to the awe the scene inspired.
As the sun rose higher, the far bank came into view and was littered with hundreds of other boats, many in disarray, and a few men casting lines into the water and hauling them back in with hopes of their ending in fish.
Seemingly out of nowhere, our boat was jolted hard from behind, almost tossing both of us into the murky water. When we regained our composure and peered over the side, we saw a mass of rags shifting shapes, but clearly swirling around something solid.
We asked our ship’s captain what it was.
“Dead” was his reply.
A dead body.
Later, we came to find out that the Ganges is the holiest of rivers in India and a source of deep-rooted religion and mysticism. Because of this, thousands of bodies are cremated at the edge of the river and even more are simply left to float downstream to find their final resting place wherever the current takes them.
At the same time, thousands more are washing themselves in the same water, drinking it in, and splashing it around, swearing that the powers of their gods will keep them safe from any disease it may harbor.
Such an idea seems absurd to those of us who have been raised in the sterile environments of the Western Tradition. To bathe in the same water as decaying bodies may seem to be a sure way to reach your own death too quickly.
But there is some macabre beauty surrounding the whole experience that makes you want to be a part of it, or at least get as close as you can.
From the water, you can see the exact line where the water meets the land. What you cannot see so easily, but what you can begin to feel is the line between life and death, here, being blurred and muddled.
The many people bathing in this water are actually washing themselves in death, letting it cover their bodies, and coat their mouths, and cleanse their souls.
And what’s more, it seems to work.
The Ganges is the lifeblood of this parched world, despite all the death that surrounds and is immersed in it. Far from the river Styx that it could be, it is hailed and loved and revered by its faithful, so much so that some Indians will make pilgrimages of hundreds and thousands of miles just to bathe in its waters once.
The Ganges is a simultaneous celebration of life and death, and bringing the two together seems to alleviate the concerns of both and to lead to a freedom and a happiness that much of the rest of the country, and the world, is devoid and in need of.
The smiles and shouts and laughter emitted from almost every participant in this bizarre and magnificent ritual vouch for this.
