by Tahir Shah
Shortly before noon my jinxed passage on the Farakka Express came to an end. The prospect of spending another uncertain night on the train disturbed me. Resolving instead to leave with what few possessions I had left, I climbed down at Mughal Sarai, the alighting point for Varanasi. After reporting the loss of my passport and money, I would continue to Calcutta by road.
Vatson disembarked at the same station. He claimed to be on an undercover mission for a client in Allahabad. We shared an Ambassador taxi. As the ramshackle vehicle trundled the short distance towards the holiest city in India, Vatson divulged the most private details of his assignment.
“I used to get much more interesting cases,” he began despondently. “Once I even had a murder case – I enjoyed that. But these days work is so humdrum. Most cases are involving checking if a groom’s family has any skeletons in their cupboard.”
“What if you find any?”
‘Show the boy’s side has skeletons,” said Vatson, “and the dowry gets reduced.”
Before we reached Varanasi – fabled “City of Light” – the private eye disclosed, in a deafening voice, that he was now to assume a disguise and go to ground.
* * * *
For three thousand years, and longer, Varanasi has been the center of the Hindu faith. Nestling on the western banks of the sacred River Ganges, the city attracts millions of pilgrims each year. Some stay a few days, praying and bathing in the waters of Mother Ganga. Others, once arrived, will never leave. They believe that to die within the boundaries of the ancient city – marked by the Panch Kosi Road – is to secure moksha, enlightenment. This state, of direct ascendance to Heaven, releases one from the perpetual cycle of reincarnation. Each day, thousands of pious Hindus are cremated on the banks of the Ganges at the “burning” ghats, steep stone steps which lead down to the river. As the eerie silence of dusk descends across it, the ashes of the dead are scattered upon the sacred waters.
Walking through the labyrinth of back lanes, teeming with sadhus and mendicants, mischievous children and water buffalo, I heard the sound of coins jingling on a beggar’s palm; the thumping of a funereal drum, and the cries of a cycle rickshawalla hurrying through. I smelled the sizzling puris on makeshift stalls, the heaps of turmeric, cinnamon and coriander, and the moist dung patties drying on shadowed walls.
Symbols were all around: swastikas painted above hidden doorways, ghee lamps burning at miniature shrines, and dense sandalwood smoke hanging like a thundercloud above the musty passages.
I probed forward little by little. Everyone but me understood the symbolism, everyone else knew the etiquette. Unable to grasp the inner meaning of it all, I was affected all the same. India is the most refined, well-practiced theater of life, and Varanasi is the pre-eminent act on its stage.
* * * *
I set off to the Dhobi Ghat where, I had heard, affordable accommodation could be found. After a night on the Farakka Express, lodgings at Varanasi would have to be cut-price. But the Dhobi Ghat had no guest houses at all. As the word dhobi – “laundry” – suggests, the ghat is where the washing is done. Dozens of men were kneading clothes like great balls of soda-bread dough. They hurled the lathered laundry in time with each other on the steps of the ghat. Fifty thousand Brahmins live at Varanasi. Many employ special dhobis to do their washing, as it guarantees their clothes are kept apart from those of the lower castes.
One of the dhobis saw me looking around for a hostel and came over to where I was standing. His face was flat as a shovel, his nose splayed out towards each ear, and his arms were reddened, scalded to the elbows by his trade. When I asked if he knew of a place to stay, he led me to his own one-room home.
Resembling an upturned coracle in size and shape, the gloomy wattle-and-daub dwelling was thick with steam. Once inside, the dhobi motioned to a horsehair mattress and smirked.
“Das rupia.”
“Ten rupees a night for this?”
I examined the mattress. Rotting, flea-infested, and positioned beside a kettle, in which a Brahmin’s shirt was boiling, it was the best feature of the room. A great deal of steam was generated by the constant cooking of clothes. The vapor had led to considerable rot. The decay was so extensive that I suspected it was actually holding the place up. Scrape away the rot and the walls would have caved in.
The lodgings were grim by any standards – far more basic, I mused, than those required for POWs by the Geneva Convention. But then, as the dhobi waited for an answer, I remembered that I was no prisoner of war. I might have feared my belongings would be filched, but I had very little of value left to steal.
“All right,” I said to the laundry-landlord, “I’ll take it, but I’m only doing it as a self-imposed penance – like Thomas Becket’s lice-infested horsehair shirt beneath his robe. While I think of it,” I joked, “Becket would have been rather at home here.”
The dhobi had understandably lost my drift long before. He spoke no English. Grinning again, he licked his fingers and rubbed them together, indicating that payment was due in advance. I fished out a crumpled note and passed it over.
Outside the room, a few feet from the Ganges, a young sadhu was squatting. His naked body was caked in fresh ash; his hair was a mass of matted dreadlocks, his face painted with esoteric symbols. The dhobi greeted the holy man with respectful salutations. But the salutation was not returned. Instead, the godman took up his chilam, and inhaled deeply. The chilam’s embers glowed brightly for a moment, before the mystic puffed out a turbid cloud of marijuana smoke.
Later that afternoon, after being almost boiled alive when bathing in the dhobi’s great cauldron, I roamed around Varanasi.
A bank located in the foyer of a plush hotel agreed to help me have money transferred. For some inexplicable reason the funds had to be collected at their other branch, in Calcutta. After the bank, I proceeded to the police station to report the train robbery. It was a humiliating experience as thirty officers of all ranks crowded round to hear another tale of the Farakka Express.
Shortly before dusk I walked through the slender bazaars which lead down to the ghats, at the water’s margin.
Down a secluded lane, off a larger passageway, I came across a series of cramped workshops. Huddled like hunchbacks over looms, sat a number of women. Some were young – in their early twenties – yet most were elderly and frail. They were all dressed in simple white saris; none wore jewelery. Some had shaven heads. I had heard of these forgotten women: the widows of Kashi.
Considered by most as untouchable, frequently regarded as witches, widows are outcasts in Hinduism. Disaster is said to befall anyone who talks with them. Thrown out by their families, shunned by their closest friends, thousands of widows journey to Varanasi each year to live out their days. Most will not consider suicide, for self-immolation will destroy their hope of attaining their dream of enlightenment.
Strolling about the busy passageways of the city, or sitting down by the steep steps of the ghats, you see them. They are everywhere. Some with cup in hand; others too proud to beg. A few take up employment. Those who do work toil long hours in sweat-shops for a fraction of the going rate. As if laboring in such conditions were not enough, many are raped or abused by unscrupulous employers.
At one of the looms crouched a young woman. Stony-faced and timid, with hennaed fingertips, a pronounced nose, and a crescent scar on her chin, she struggled to keep up with the other weavers. Her name was Devika. Married when she was thirteen to a man twenty-two years her senior, she became a widow young. When her husband died three years ago she was chased out of the house by her mother-in-law, who said she was a witch.
Like all the other widows at Varanasi, Devika, who was now twenty-three, longed for the day when God would call her to Paradise. In a society where widows rarely remarry, she knew that Varanasi could be her home for decades to come.
Ironically, widows are a relatively new sight in India. Until 1828, when the British outlawed the practice of sati, a widow would perish on her hus
band’s funeral pyre. Although barbaric, the repulsive practice provided an immediate solution. Since sati’s abolition, widows have journeyed like lost souls to the “City of Light”. Once installed on the banks of the Ganges, they begin a new existence: a life waiting for natural death.
“My mother-in-law sold my belongings,” confided Devika, making sure her employer was not around. “She gave me a third-class ticket to Varanasi. She swore if I ever returned, she would blind me.”
Her hazel eyes staring in concentration at the floor, Devika remembered the ordeal.
“When I arrived here it was as if I was a leper. People spat at me or shouted insults. Mothers whispered to their children, ‘Don’t look at her, she is diseased!’ I thank God for providing me with a job here. Of course it’s hard work,” she added, “but it is work. Each night I pray to Him to let me die soon.”
Would Devika ever marry again? Humored by the inane question, she grinned.
“How could I wed a second time?” she asked in bewilderment. “No, that’s impossible. I am a widow.”
* * * *
Darkness falls suddenly over Varanasi. As the widows’ looms clapped away like crude printing presses in the candlelight, the back-streets bustled with new energy. It is after dusk that Kashi’s ancient magic comes alive. With the silk merchants and barber shops shuttered up for the night, an endless procession of pilgrims issues forth. Barefoot, stooped and half-blind, they hurry to the great congregation of mandirs, temples, located in the tapering trails and along the waterfront.
Gas lamps hissing with fluorescent flames move forward on padded heads, the pungent scent of mogra flowers mingles with the shuffling of feet and the pealing of temple bells. Like a rendition of a Shakespeare play, the words and actions are known by all. Tight as a knot, the melange of pilgrims, priests and sacred cattle divide for a moment to allow a funeral cortege by. The corpse, bound in a saffron-yellow shawl, is borne on a bamboo litter down to the Jalasayin, “Burning Ghat”.
With impressive precision, the pallbearers negotiate their charge through an airport-style metal detecting frame. The haphazard contraption, decorated abundantly with orange garlands, was originally installed to deter terrorists from bombing Varanasi’s Golden Temple. Long since out of order, the metal detector has assumed an alternative, religious role. Pilgrims hustling to the Golden Temple stumble with cringing reverence through the ornamented frame – perhaps believing that the transition bestows benediction upon them.
On a platform at the water’s edge, more than a dozen funeral pyres send sparks crackling into the brisk night air. Behind them, great crests of timber – chopped into uniform lengths – lie ready for use.
Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi. But unlike elsewhere, death here is a wondrous, cheering event, so different from the Western preoccupation with hearses and tail-coated undertakers, shuffling forward in sensible shoes. There are no long faces, coffins, gravestones, cemeteries, or dramatic black veils. Instead, there’s a pragmatic acceptance of what is simply transition.
The body is carried forth. A quantity of timber is weighed out and paid for. When the pyre is constructed, the corpse is positioned. The sacred fire is applied. Only when the ashes have cooled are they gathered up and cast into the black waters of Mother Ganga.
Affected by the subtle simplicity of the Burning Ghat, I made my way, by boat, home to the dhobi’s flea-infested bed. Little bigger than a canoe, the craft was more usually hired by grieving families. In the bows a hunched figure strained at the oars, his long ivory beard tied in a granny-knot. As we cut through the sacred waters, illuminated by a thousand bobbing leaf-boat lamps, I looked back. Funeral pyres lit up the night. Ferocious with life, raging like forest fires, the mountains of flame licked upward. It was a breathtaking salutation to the dead.
The dhobi simpered through broken teeth when I tried to explain my adventure at the Jalasayin Ghat. He handed me a mug of murky gray Ganga water with which to rinse my mouth. Then he pouffed the home-made pillow; a pile of dirty clothes wrapped in a sheet.
As I reclined on the vile bed I felt virtuous. It was a fine feeling, one that was quite new to me. No wonder Thomas à Becket had so relished his lice shirt. Perhaps I would do penances more often, I thought. Then, as I closed my eyes to imagine the blazing funeral pyres … the mattress’s savage night-life began to feast.
By five a.m. the dhobi was already hard at work, boiling up another kettle of Brahmin clothes. Pulling the sheet around me like a toga, I sat up. It was still dark outside. A paraffin lamp provided a haze of platinum light. The dhobi seemed pleased I was awake. He handed me a neatly folded stack of clothes. Somehow, during the night, he had managed to wash and press my shirt, pants, socks and even my boxer shorts. They smelt of cinnamon. When I thanked him he crumpled up his nose, snorted twice, and grabbed my pillow, which was the next load of laundry.
Then, stooping over the cast-iron urn, he fished out a sock. Taking considerable care, he emptied out its contents – three very hard-boiled eggs.
As the darkness was gradually edged out by the first glimmer of light, I noticed a procession of women wending down to the water. Barefoot, and cloaked in plain white saris, they moved with slow, deliberate steps through the morning chill. Once at a secluded spot on the riverbank, they cleansed their bodies in the sacred Ganges.
With their bathing at an end, the widows seemed to pause in silent prayer. Immersed in the first rays of amber light, they stood motionless, their arms stretched towards the sun, as if supplicating God to summon them to Paradise.
* * * *
Leaving Varanasi was remarkably difficult. Millions of people in all comers of India would do anything to visit the city. No one deserts Kashi unless pressing business elsewhere forces them to do so. After less than a day in town I found myself falling victim to traveler’s inertia. My great plans of apprenticeship seemed to be ebbing away. I had been drugged, robbed, and was now holed up with a dhobi. What had happened to my dreams of studying magical science? Coming to, I remembered my priorities. Next day I would hurry on to Calcutta.
Enlivened by the decision, I trekked over to the Panchganga Ghat to dangle my feet in its water. With the ashes of countless dead flung into it – not to mention the half-charred bodies – you’d expect the Ganges to be filthy. Pilgrims and locals bathe in the river every day. They even drink Ganga water, considering it to be less tainted than the purest mountain stream. But given the abounding pollution, why aren’t its devotees dropping like flies? Scientists may have discovered the reason. They say the Ganges has the ability to re-oxygenate and cleanse itself. When cholera microbes were put in a sample of Ganga water, they died within three hours. Put in a sample of distilled water, the same microbes lived for twenty-four hours. Sailors have long recognized the water’s ability to stay fresh. Until recently, ships setting sail from Calcutta would stock up with as much Ganga water as they could carry.
When Jaipur’s Maharajah Sawai Madho Singh II traveled to England in 1902, he commissioned two colossal silver amphora to be built. Considered to be the largest single silver objects in the world – holding almost two thousand gallons each – they were filled with the river’s sacred waters and taken along.
At Panchganga Ghat I splashed about up to my shins in the hope of drowning some of the fleas. But the sense of sheer pleasure quickly turned to horror. A severed, badly charred human hand was floating my way. I tried to calm myself. As I did so, there was a tap on my shoulder. A plump robed figure held up a bottle of cloudy water and, in a thick accent, exclaimed:
“Saheeb, neyes Gaangaa varter … gut foor drinking. Fifteen rupee onlee.”
“No.” I recoiled. “Leave me alone, I’ve just had a nasty shock.”
I looked away, but the tap came again.
This time, ready to berate the salesman, I turned round to face him. Pulling off his robe, I realized he was no salesman. It was Vatson Private Eye. He was in deep disguise.
&nbs
p; “How did you know I was here?”
“What do you expect? I’m a detective!”
Vatson told me to lace up my shoes. A strange performance was about to begin. Still shaken by the experience with the severed hand, I was slower than usual on my feet.
“What’s this all about, Vatson?” I asked, as we made haste through the endless maze of back lanes.
“You’ll be seeing soon enough.”
“Did you dig up any skeletons in that family’s closet?”
“Not an entire skeleton,” said Vatson, smiling. “A skull, a few ribs … but not the whole thing yet. It will be needing a little more time.”
We scrambled aboard a bicycle rickshaw. Vatson directed the driver to the Rani Ghat. As the rickshaw rattled ahead, Vatson reported on the case at hand.
“Research is going well,” he began. “This stakeout is going to take about two months. We've been busy checking all sorts of things.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, the usual,” retorted the sleuth casually. “Whether the groom’s school diplomas are the real McCoy; if he’s seeing any other girls, or if he has any repulsive moles, warts, genital growths. You know …”
“Well, I’m not sure that I do.”
“Then we have to check for family feuds, criminal records, secret debts, drug addictions, hereditary abnormalities, unwanted half brothers …”
Vatson broke off abruptly, and commanded the driver to stop. He led me to a deserted area behind the Rani Ghat. It seemed as if a building had recently been cleared from the land. A family of rag-pickers was recovering any odds and ends hidden under the stray bricks.
Sitting at the center of the ground was a sadhu. He was in deep meditation.
His face was haggard, probably before its time. His beard was tangled and oyster-gray; his hands were weathered with ridges; his costume was nothing more than a lungi and a string of coral beads. Beside his right foot was the cranium of a human skull.
The object explained a great deal. The man was an Aghori sadhu. My interest in the trophy heads of the Naga head-hunters had led me to the Aghoris. Their beliefs are close to those of traditional shamans. The Aghoris, said to have the power to overcome evil spirits, were traditionally confirmed cannibals. Their libations, which once included human blood, are drunk from the bowl of a human skull. But to an Aghori, the skull is far more than a simple drinking vessel. It contains the spirit of the deceased. The soul remains the Aghori’s prisoner until the skull is cremated. Such jinns, spirits, are tamed and put to work by the sadhu in his world of shadows.