April 28, 2004

Cows and Corpses

April 28, 2004

I'd never seen a dead body until I came to India. Now I've lost count. Back home, death is something to be covered up, not talked about, sealed up in coffins, and generally ignored to the best of our ability. My second day in India, we saw a black man on the pavement next to a busy street with his face in a pool of dried blood. If he wasn't dead, he's got one hell of a headache.

But it was in Varanasi that death became irrefutably right there. If you're a Hindu, Varanasi is the best place in the world to die. The burning ghats on the shores of the Ganges work 24/7 and go through about 150 bodies a day. The air is surprisingly fresh: a blessing from lord Shiva, according to one of the locals who stood beside us one night as we watched one old man's flesh turn to ash.

Walking by the great river next morning, we see a bloated corpse knocking its head against the banks, while a few metres downstream the faithful are engrossed in their ritual bathing, and a group of young boys in their game of cricket.



Mark Twain said that Varanasi (or Benares as it was known then) is "older than history, older than tradition and older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together." In fact most of the city was systematically destroyed by muslim invaders just a few few centuries ago, but Mark Twain's comments still hold true. Varanasi feels old, and it's not just the buildings.



The narrow winding alleys are the closest I've even been to being in a real labyrinth. The lanes are so twisted and narrow, and the plentiful cows so wide that one cow is all it takes to block your way and send you ducking into an ornately carved doorway to let the holy beast pass, and continue its garbage grazing further down the road.



Varanasi is like the rest of India on steroids. While probably one of the most interesting places in the world, it can also put your head in a spin. Every month at least one tourist is reported to go missing in this sacred, though somehow seedy city. Perhaps abducted, perhaps just lying dizzy in a corner, perhaps they went down to join the corpses floating in the current, or more likely just lost in the labyrinthine alley ways, still looking for their hotel.

Posted by Andrew Wallace @ 7:30 PM