Burning Bodies, Kathmandu
03/15/10
My eyes must be playing a trick on me, I thought, paused mid-step, asleep in my own thoughts, inside myself fully awake, at this place by a river in what seemed to exist within a dream. Before me, smoke floated with black shining feathers, seizing each of my sense one by one, surrounding me like echoing expressions: The faces amongst the smoke, where like apparitions, these men walked, appearing pulled forward by the sweeping wings of death. The smoke. In this strange nocturnal world, there were a hundred variations of shadow, a calming, inconsistent wave of smoke, where through the incoming heat and smouldering flames, six men, six different expressions, carried a recognizable image through the fog, dark and dense, moving past me without eye contact; their shoulders holding the shape of a human body, wrapped tightly in a yellow blanket. This cannot be, I thought, the pulse in my wrist jumping, while the ash landed against my skin.
The air became thicker with smoke as we entered a bridge overlooking the Bagmati River, where along the shorelines covered in garbage, more bodies wrapped in yellow sheets were spotted, some carried by men casually smoking cigarettes. There, ricocheting down this fiery corridor of stacked blazing wood, the sleepless blood – heated by erupting flames – lugged through the veins of the dead one last time, boiling, while the pungent hellish stink of smoke resided and my understanding of death crumbled. I looked at the transition we will all face, naked and open, where bodies burned, children played and mothers scrubbed clothing on the shoreline opposite, all of them smiling obliviously to burning of human flesh nearby. Feeling as though we, the three foreigners, were the only ones to react to the blazing bodies, left me feeling out of place, as if we were unseen ghosts hallucinating amongst the living.
It is along these shorelines of the Bagmati River near the Pashupatinath Temple where “Ara Ghat” resides, the most widely used place of cremation in Nepal. It was a scene set with maddening fire and amused conversations, like looking into the smoking end of a smiling gun, where by the river bodies turned blackened by burning smoke, making the combusting flames appear bone-white on top of the corpse, as if witnessing the departure of a soul. I thought of what is left behind, the dreams and aspirations, and I sensed those solid words and hollow memories, a feeling as though I was eavesdropping on a person’s last thoughts: The secrets heard by lonesome church pew. The prayers of a sleepless night. The words of drawn-out tears.
We stopped on the bridge, listening to locals casually chat nearby. I waited for a silence that never came.
The dead encroached on the living, circle after circle in passing smoulder, creating a wall of smoke almost too dense to breathe in. There was a strange richness in the air I had never experienced before by knowing my body was breathing in the remains of another: Darkened flesh, the boiled and evaporated blood, entered my lungs.
Looking over at Boxie-boo, her eyes hardened wide open, silver and blank, reflecting the smoke. In them, she tackled across each body scorched by the fire and the hot, Nepali sun. She bravely looked on, one by one, at each body lined together in a singular fate, appearing to care for them. There was something that was left unsaid about this setting, where death was faint as dust. Our mutual gestures, her blinking, my blinking, were becoming hypnotic to us both, as if we were dismantling our own understanding of death. There, publically, all the pains of the world were cleansed, all that was known and forgotten felt unlocked and set free, and as her eyes strolled towards the crackling and snapping, we bid them farewell – burn on, burn on – and the pulse in my wrist cooled to a pray-like whisper. Liam, Boxie-boo and I said nothing on the bridge.
A Nepali man tapped my wrist and pointed towards a small building, and I came back, suddenly, back with the living. As we crossed the river with him - a salesmen keen to sell wooden flutes - I looked towards the darkened room he had pointed my direction towards. He explained it was a place where people were waiting to die. I thought about this, trying to somehow rationalize my culture shock. On one hand, I felt sorry for these people, dieing beside one of the most disgusting and garbage-polluted rivers I had ever seen, knowing full well they will burn beside piles of trash. On the other hand, I realized these people would die amongst religious leaders, feeling comforted by their beliefs made stronger in the shade of the Pashupatinath Temple. In the West, people often spend their remaining days in cold, unwelcoming hospitals alone, away from their loved ones. My Great Great Uncle was no different. Maybe, for them, this was a beautiful way to die.
The Pashupatinath Temple is one of the biggest Hindu temples of Lord Shiva - the Hindu destroyer god - in the world and is known as Nepal’s most important Hindu temple. Believers in Pashupatinath are allowed to enter free of charge, while we paid a staggering 500 Rupees each ($6 U.S./Canadian). We did not complain about the price, as many Hindu temples in Nepal were closed to non-believers.
Sitting on the elevated walkway above the river, locals watched the bodies’ burn, seemingly unaffected. Multiple bodies are cremated here every day, and I supposed, this sight was as common for the Nepalese as scooters. In the water, men with what appeared to use rakes moved the garbage around the gentle currents. Above them, monkeys walked along the steps leading to the water’s edge. By the bridge, the monkeys walked amongst the onlookers, sneaking up behind and sometimes successfully stealing their food. As the smoke rose, we decided to hike up the man-made funnel towards more temples; the walkway of white concrete looked as if we walked in the middle of frozen ocean waves that had turned tos tone.
Well above the river, we continued through smaller temples, looking like large tombstones. Religious followers walked by ringing the large bells attached to the stone structures. To combat the monkey population, poles were covered in jagged glass to keep them from climbing. Monkeys seemed to run this section of the city, especially one alpha male, which walked towards me as I attempted to take a closer picture of his temple, before showing me his teeth. I thought of showing him mine as well, but instead, I backed off.
A closer look at these temples revealed small carvings of deities. Some held blankets inside, which we were told we often for final prayers of the sick and dieing. On the outside of other temples, metal bars were positioned to allow followers to hold on while they bowed to their gods. Around the corner, young couples listened to romantic songs on their cellphones, resting their backs against the stone, flirting. This is a strange place for romance, I thought, so close to the river. But this confusion was caused by the mindset of my western upbringing. Death, back home, is behind closed doors. I think this may be one of the reasons it is so feared in our culture. Maybe the Nepalese were onto something, sharing the end of life in public.
After all, many people were happy to relax beside the river, casually watching the bodies’ burn, smiling with their faces in the sun. Businessmen were busy trying to sell souvenirs to tourists; Hindu’s dressed in traditional gowns chatted away, their facial expressions exaggerated by the paint on their faces; children giggled and played tag, couples fell deeper in love; all of them, smiling.
And below them, a smoke-choked river reached up towards the light of the sun. The fire gave nothing for the circling birds to feast on, where the bodies burned without wind in a be-stilled fire, the way stars appear motionless, while they travel at the speed of light. There, grown bright, almost whitened, like the bodies of angels, they departed from the hollowness of shadows, into faltering yellows, orbed into pearls of red glow. The flames alit low with indigo blues, lighting up the happy faces of onlookers. Unseen to us all, was the mistress of music, the nightingale of our last sleep, the widow to our thoughts, amongst the cacophony of crackling fire, above it, beyond, below and through the center, watched by our neon-lit eyes, engulfed in her dancing flames: Death was there, the oldest of the old, and she was a welcomed visitor.
Yet still, something more was happening along these glazed waters - the drifting of the gold-pieced light - where looking at the bodies, I felt I existed within the thin boundary between sleep and waking, between life and what is beyond. I had become a part of the process, sharing a stony grin, bidding my own farewell to them, burn on, burn on.
All those that were cremated that day had likely watched the cremations of others. They had come here, by their own choice, to die, one in the same as those before them and those after, unmasked by the fire, this grinding of stars, to hover in smoke one last time, breathed in to the grinning lungs of the living. Maybe this was the peace here; maybe the crowds sucked away their last tears with their smiles, before turning them away, breathing them outwards to what exists beyond our world here on Earth. I, too, came to realize I would rather die amongst laughing children, romantic lovers and caring mothers, then alone in a hospital bed, before being cremated in the dark of some trapped basement room, cradled by cold rock and a concrete-framed building.
Death was all around them, and by this river, the people were full of life.
That’s all for now.
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