2 PM. Sultanganj, Bihar. I arive at the sultanganj ganga ghat. The river ganga is flowing with its head lifted up in glory of purifying the land since centuries. Sun is shining with all its armor, and on the sand, there stand various bamboo huts providing relief from the punishing Sun. Wind blows providing momentary solace.
The scene looks beautiful doesn’t it? Wait till I describe more.
Along the lines of the river, there are various piles of burnt wood at some distances. Crows fly over them. Wood turned into ashes. There are some piles which are still burning, some people sitting around it, look vexed, some eyes red, some indifferent to what is happening. You can find a few men near the burning piles, two holding a large sheet of cloth against the wind, so that the fire doesn’t burn out, one man stroking the pile with all his might, and two or three men constantly putting water over the fire so that the wood doesn’t burn soon, but the body lying inside it does.
Yes, I am in a shamshan ghat, the final abode for all Hindus. I am not here alone, I am here with thirty more alive people and a dead person. As the sound of “Ram naam satya hai” echoes in the air, there is another family bargaining with the laborers. The bargain started with eleven thousand, one hundred, and eleven rupees, and ended at one thousand rupees. That is the cost of putting someone at peace.
How funny it is to note that everything is priced in this world, even death, but it is their job, to burn (or rather say, buy) the ‘bodies’.
3 PM. Since the time we came here, there have been a few more families here with their beloved lying on a bed of bamboo sticks. Some were just plainly covered with a red clothe, some were decorated as beautifully as a royal caravan. Yes, the devil of poverty doesn’t miss to mark you even after death. Yes, you are poor so you don’t deserve a lavish goodbye as the rich ones do. You have to live with the fact that you are poverty stricken, and now you have to die with it too. Again, money won over death.
In the one hour since I’ve been here, the women in our family dressed the old dead woman in a red saree, painted her nails red, applied sindoor and bindi on her forehead, decorated her as a bride, and made her take a dip in the holy river. The last time she was dressed as such is such a distant memory that no one could even remember. After all this, they handed the old woman to the unknown men who were assigned to set her body on fire. It was because the family members are too high of a caste to put their own to rest in peace forever.
You can’t touch a lower caste person all your life, you don’t eat anything made by them, you don’t drink water from their wells, but ultimately you fall beneath them after death. Because an upper caste Hindu in his alive form is an epitome of purity but the same person in his dead form is so impure that we need to take a bath even after just visiting them.
Here’s a question. If they are so impure, why take them to the Ganga, holiest of all places, to turn them into ashes? Moreover, why flow their ashes in the Ganga? It is the same river in which numerous people take a ‘holy dip’.
4 PM. They have laid down the body in the funeral pier, half of it seems to be burnt by now. The laborers are stroking the fire with a stick on the body. The family members are twisting their face in disgust, one says “They are hurting her”. Hitting with a stick hurts her body, being burnt in fire doesn’t.
The atmosphere has started to relax a bit. There is no one crying anymore. There are few sad faces, but the tears have dried up. A few people joking around. One orders a driver to bring some pan (tobacco). Now the atmosphere looks more like a picnic. The bodies which were burning when we came have now turned into ashes. Their families ready to leave. It is said when you leave a shamshan ghat, you shouldn’t turn back to look. They don’t turn back to look the crows surveying the area for some unburnt body part that might become their food.
Children who came along with us are now tired and hungry, one asks me “How long didi?”. I begin to explain the little innocent child that we’re here for a very sensitive issue, and she mustn’t ask this question, but then I question myself “Really, a sensitive issue?” There are people chewing pan, making jokes, uttering swear words to the laborers for their mistreatment of the body, crows eating human leftover (and no one seems to care). A sensitive issue this is. Our hearts are trained to be sensitive towards death, our minds aren’t.
Suddenly, my chain of thoughts is broken. There is no electric cremation machine here in this ghat, what use is it anyway? We are human beings, born with the sole purpose of ruining nature. Even as one dies, the smoke from their pier pollutes the air, and their ashes spoil the soil and water. I wonder how picturesque this location would have been if it was not a cremation site. The wind would not bring any smoke to our face, we would run bare feet on the wet sand without any hesitation, and we could run into the water without the thought that dead people’s remain form the river bed here.
5 PM. The pier is almost burnt out. The body is almost finished. We can’t really differentiate the body remains from the burnt wood. No one notices the ‘almost’ and even if they do, they replace it with ‘completely’. People have started to order one another that her body is over now, we can leave. No one’s sure of what they are saying though. So they now leave her in an uncertain state, to take bath in Ganga to ‘purify’ themselves. Yes, the same river, just 50 meters away from the place where they turned her into ashes.
Lessons learnt:
- The cost of a dead body is eleven thousand, one hundred and eleven rupees for poor laborers, and one thousand for a rich person.
- You cannot touch a lower caste person while you’re alive, but the same person will cremate you.
- To a dead person, sticks hurt, fire doesn’t.
- 50 meters can purify water.
Death killed her, and all of us killed logic and humanity.
