Ashes to ashes

At the burning ghats in Varanasi, among the world's oldest living cities, Hindu families convey corpses to the barber to be sheared, into the Ganges to be purified, and into the flames to end the cycle of rebirth. They carry them wrapped in white cloth on stretchers draped with gilded fabric and garlands of marigold. They light the wood pyre with long dry grass lit by a flame started by the god Shiva, the creator of life and the destroyer, some 7,000 years ago. The ghats are open funerals for all except pregnant women, children under 12, sadhus--Hindu ascetics--lepers and anyone with a cobra bite. Cows mill about as the sickly sweet smell of fire breaking down bodies fills the air, along with sandalwood, flowers and cow dung. For many minutes I watched the body consumed. I did not wait to hear the head pop, as it is said to do. Downriver at a different ghat, thousands of live bodies press together in the smoky heat as seven identically dressed men perform a nightly ritual for Mother Ganga, moving brass instruments and lanterns in a rhythm perhaps as old as Shiva's flame, seemingly impervious to the gusts of bugs flying around them. Naga, or naked, sadhus sitting Indian-style beg with outstretched hands or brass plates among the brass accoutrements of Shiva idolatry, including a brass bowl full of lightly-perfumed ash reapplied on the bare face and body every so often. Amid the clanging of bells, the mellifluous chants, the timpani drums, the terrible swarms of gnats and smoke, I have the overarching impression of life teeming among the ashes.