Varanasi

We sat at the top of the ghats having a calm conversation over the smell of burning bodies.

 I don't know if I could ever get used to it, but at Harishchandra Ghat it was Maru's job, and all the generations before him, to burn bodies.

We sat and watched the body burn.

This time it was Maru's grandson, perhaps two years younger than me, piling the wood onto the body of a woman wrapped in gold cloth. All the while, the men of the family sat to the right and would continue to watch for the three hours that it would take for her body to burn. Her son shaved his beard and head except for several strands at the crown to symbolize Hare Krishna. It was a part of the ritual.

I asked why none of the women in the family were present.

"Women cry too much. They're too emotional. This isn't a time to cry, because we believe in reincarnation.
Also because of the sati, but now of course its illegal."

The sati is an old tradition that required a woman to burn herself on a pyre at her husband's funeral. If she did not do it voluntarily, she was often pushed by her husband's family.

"Her hips will not burn, and a man's chest will not burn, so we will throw them into the Ganges for the fish to eat and that is the circle of life."

Her body was burning over the sandy section reserved for the middle class and to the left was the elevated, white, circular, stone reserved for the Brahmins.

"Some people don't need to be cremated because they are already pure: children, sadus (monks), pregnant woman, those who die from a snake bite (since snakes are a symbol for Shiva), and the leperous. They will be thrown into the Ganges attached to a heavy stone.

"We burn bodies all day, every day of the year. During the monsoon, the water rises too high, so we burn bodies in the temple," he pointed upwards, past about 30 meters of staircase.

Behind there I was told that there were hospices, where the old and sick, many of whom traveled hundreds of miles, waited to die in this holy city where Shiva laid his hands thousands of years ago.

It felt strange to sit in that area where death was so palpable, and a mere 50 feet away from where men and women bathed, washed their clothes, prayed, and drank the water that was home to so many bodies.

It was both beautiful and disarming, to be in a place where life and death were so inextricably intertwined.