Little Altars Everywhere

Author's note: This title is borrowed from a book by the same name, by Rebecca Wells. The phrase has been looping through my head for the past ten days. It has nothing to do with the book, I but wanted to acknowledge appropriately.    

India is a country of juxtaposition. It is said that visitors are either enchanted, are beguiled and forever smitten, or that they become so weary with consternation over the day to day realities of the place that they begin to crave international airspace and arrival to a place of sterile sanity, where they can lick their wounds and safely contemplate the beyond borders nature of such a place. I think most visitors travel back and forth along the continuum of these two points on a daily basis while in country. 

The heart opens slowly, amidst so many examples of intricate beauty, wisdom, and incredible strength, grounded in history and a sense of being that began before western civilization as we know it was even sprung.  And then one attempts a walk down one of the winding, ancient lanes with cobble stones and crumbling blue mortar, crooked archways and intricately carved wooden shutter doors. You suddenly realize that your heart is now beating fast and the mind is racing amidst a high pressure march. It’s constant effort to navigate a path that avoids getting your heels clipped by rickshaws, your shoes deep in cow patties or piles of goat pellets. Watch out for the fruit carts, or food wallah vendors, ready to stop and make a sale at any moment. Be ready to change direction or to quickly cross the stream of constant human and livestock traffic. And, coordinate your breathing to avoid a deep inhale of smoke, hay bale fly-aways, or concentrated urine smell.  

A small child smiles, showing pearls for teeth, draws you in with their small waving hands  and soft voice, and suddenly you realize that despite knowing better, you are again on the receiving end of a ploy. “Come to my uncles scarf shop, free to look”, “Buy this candle, memory for your family, it will bring you luck”. Adulthood intermingles with childhood. Responsibility rises from necessity; once you can walk you can carry something. Pick up the right English words, and it’s your job to talk to the tourists, to contribute to the household income. A five year old with neat braids presenting a basket of marigold garlands is charming. She skips alongside you, banters playfully, holds your hand, tells you the stories of various Hindu gods. But always, back to the sale. There is nothing malicious in her pressing, “Please, just buy one, ten rupees…” It’s about going home at night with an empty basket, and coins tucked away safe. Every five year old has a two year old sibling to worry about.  

Continue on your path, and the food wallahs and chai wallahs entice you. Entrepreneurs of every age market their various items, or blatantly try to shake you down for some coins. An enlightened man wearing orange offers to bless you; his clear green eyes seem to radiate knowing. And the cows, comfortable in their sacredness, easily move you out of their path, nodding at your mortal status as they stroll by. Suddenly you are unsure what is real or true.

India is reportedly home to 1.2 billion people; some areas are so densely populated that an empty street corner becomes a true anomaly. You wonder if perhaps there is something karmically wrong with the space. Extended families and an array of animals fashion homes and multiple business out of the same two room dwelling. In large cities, many of these buildings are over five hundred years old. All aspects of life in the year 2011, the utilitarian events of each day, take place in buildings bearing elegant, though crumbling, architectural detail that would make art historians drool. The laced lattice work ledge of a building becomes a kitchen, with a chai pot over coals, and a wooden crate containing small drinking glasses for an endless stream of customers. The top step of a perfectly arched entry way is often outfitted with a makeshift chair, a dangling shard of mirror, and has line of men waiting for haircuts and lovely straight razor shaves. This goes on for winding blocks, and up several stories. Life expands via vertical layers in these relic buildings. An entire treatise could be written about rooftop dwelling in the cities of India.

Throughout the country, in every town center, village edge, or mid city block, there are temples. Some are the grand, multi level structures that draw thousands of tourists to India every year, and draw Indians from one state to make pilgrimages to another. Some are tiny windows built into the walls of other structures, miniature platforms behind a small grate, lined with incense, a small candle, marigolds, and coin offerings. Some are open air temples, designated by steamers of silk cloth, often red, that hang from tree limbs, honoring the Hindu gods. Ganesh, remover of obstacles, whose form appears as a gentle, well adorned elephant. Hanaman, the warrior monkey man. Krishna, a dandy in blue, often portrayed playing a flute.

Business men in old Delhi pause briefly on their lunch breaks to quickly duck into the entryway of a temple shrine. Eyes closed, lips moving with familiar mantras, they reach up to ring a brass bell, and then hurry on, whip out a cell phone, heading towards the metro subway. Women conducting the daily market shopping wheel young children in expensive western strollers. Their little eyes are rimmed with khol chalk, which gives them a clown like, stage make up appearance. The motivation for this is part protection, part reverence, an acceptance of the unsure nature of our worldly fate. I’m not sure which god or goddess is responsible for the health of children, but I know that each mother and father appeals to them, perhaps as they are iron pressing laundry, or on the way to the water pump.

The divine are honored and idolized, dispersed among earthly reality, harsh as it may be, and the mundane. As my time in India progressed, I became increasingly conscious of this intertwining. I began to slowly accept that here, the sacred and profane exist alongside each other, and perhaps even as equal pieces to an immortal whole. Nowhere was this more clear to me than in the city of Varanasi.

Crouched at the bank of the Ganges river, Varanasi is like other ancient Indian cities that constantly adapt to incorporate modern life with what persists. High rise buildings with new construction exist on the outskirts. Wifi is everywhere, though rarely free. An old man wheeling a wooden cart with unstable wheels, that has clearly been in use since before your grandfather was born, will ask you if you want to be friends on Facebook. However, Varanasi retains a special place in Hindu culture. It remains a pillar in India, as the place known for giving life, and for consecrating death.

The water of the Ganges is said to be holy. It has to do with the goddess Puja, and her tears which ran into the river. Indians travel from every corner of the country to visit Varanasi, to bathe in the Ganges. Early in the morning, even before the sun breaks, you see people wading in. Old women lift their saris to allow the healing, life giving water to reach their skin. Children are carried in, gently anointed. The wandering saints, men who have given up earthly pursuits, who have long beards and orange robes, bob gently off shore, grinning at the sky. Tour boats full of Indian pilgrims line the river during mid day. Every evening, there are Hindu worship ceremonies at the various ghats, huge stone steps that connect the river bank to temples, that expand back into the maze of Varanasi’s crowded, ancient streets. Young priests wave silk feathers, and lift blazing candelabras high into the night air. The flames streak and swirl, mesmerizing amidst a background of steady drumming, chanting, and ringing of brass bells.

The main ghat is connected to what is known as “burning ghat”. This is where Hindus come, at the end of life, to close the loop. Bodies, wrapped in white cloth, are transported to Varanasi, and carried through the streets by male family members. There are wooden, ladder like stretchers, that are adorned with gold and pink ribbon, and flower garlands, upon which these wrapped bodies are carried. The family processes to the burning ghat, where the bodies are immersed in the holy water one last time, then burned atop large fire pits, for purification. This is done to release the soul, and allow it to pass on to the next lifetime.

Non Hindu visitors to Varanasi are accepted at the burning ghat, as long as they are respectful and abide by custom. No photographs of the ritualistic burning are sanctioned. Tourists are gently instructed to stand out of the way, as certain places along the ghat steps are reserved for the families of those being released, their bones dissolving amid huge, leaping flames.

My first view of the scene along the banks of the burning ghat happened before I realized where I was. We had been deep within old Varansi, circling along the narrow streets in single file, keeping up with the demands of street walking. At one corner we turned left and up another set of stone steps, and stepped out onto a stone platform, overlooking the river. The atmosphere was quieter here. Goats milled around me, and I noticed that there were no other women nearby. The air seemed unusually smoky.

Looking down from the balcony where we stood, I encountered a sea of men, all engaged in one task or another, with the overall effect of a carefully choreographed operation. There were three massive fires roaring. A constant supply of wood was passed down a line of men, feeding the flames. Periodically, someone reached in to rake the embers, and to realign the cross hatched pile of wooden planks. Blinking my eyes against the thick smoke, I identified the outlines human forms atop each blazing fire. I realized all at once, felt silly for being startled.

There where lines, each ending at the mouth of each fire. I realized, my field of vision panning back a bit, that this was the end point in the street processions I had seen all morning. The chanting that I had heard as they walked past me at the market stalls, bearing their dead, had stopped. Now, the clusters of families stood still, with stretchers and shrouded corpses balanced on their shoulders. They moved in turn to the river bank, lowered their stretcher to dose the shrouded forms, and then proceeded to one of the burning platforms. Burning attendants assisted to lift bodies off the stretchers in one fluid motion, transitioning them flat atop the flames. The white fabric burned away quickly. The forms underneath immediately charred, and slowly twisted, turned, and sunk into themselves. Ashes, and dust.  

The riverbank behind the fires was dotted with flat bottom boats, piled high with cut wood. They are brought down the river, every night and day. The burning is a twenty four hour operation. In between the boats, men and young children waded in the knee high green water. They walked a methodical path paralleling the riverbank, slowly dragging a grated pan along the river bottom, and periodically bringing it up to sift through the mud and garbage. They were looking for precious metal: jewelry, tooth fillings, remnants of worldly possessions that the corpses, flesh and clothes now incinerated, whose spirits had moved on, no longer had need for.

The river bank at the burning ghat is black, because of all the ash. Ashes, to ashes. And dust. My eyes continued to burn with the smoke, and it struck me that this smoke that we were breathing was full of those ashes, that it contained particles of someone else’s life. I looked down at the stone ghat steps bellow me, at the seated family members waiting to see their own make it to the fires. One of the bodies twisting on the burning platform began to splinter apart. I made out the out line of a large fragment of arm bone, turned straight up towards the sky. Humerus…the name for that bone. In my ER work, I’d seen many broken bones, have helped hold traction to keep those live bones in alignment until the orthopedic surgeon arrived. I’d never considered them burning before. I blinked and blinked and became aware that instead of the watering eyes that I had become accustomed to here, that I was now dealing with actual tears. A warm arm gently wrapped around my shoulder. I leaned close.

We may cremate our dead in the western world, or we may embalm and bury them. But someone else does it. We don’t see it happening. It’s as if death passes us by. We might scatter the ashes of our loved ones, perhaps place them in the ground, underneath a tree. But we don’t see the concrete, definitive nature of their leaving. We don’t see their physical bodies disappear before our eyes, and note the moment that they cross over to the after life. We also don’t carry our dead through the streets, chanting publically, gently nudging the child selling temple candy out of the way. Our funeral processions involve enclosed cars. If we kneel to pray, it’s private, often inside.

Days later, I am lying flat on a mat covered floor, eyes closed, waiting patiently while the little old man giving me yoga classes checked the quality of my pulse. The sunlight streamed through the open shutters, felt warm on my face. I heard a rustling in the tree branches and knew immediately that there were monkeys passing through. I stretched down through my toes, and was startled by Sonkar Babbah jumping to his feet. “Up, Up!” he instructed. “Must move, move the body. Body not good, too much cold”. He was talking about my doshas. My dominant dosha was one of cold. We began to stretch, hands on hips, leaning side to side, smiling at each other, communicating freely without language. I felt warmth begin to build, my muscles lengthening, my smile broadening, from inside out.

That night, on the bank of the Ganges, in the quieter area of assi ghat, I bought two floating candles from a six year old girl, who looked me straight in the eye and declared, “You buy candle, for happy life”. Without resentment or concern, I handed her forty rupees, twenty each, instead of the going rate of ten (the equivalent of less than a dollar). She and another child, a boy wearing a pale yellow, woolen vest, led me through the dark to the rivers edge. “Puja’s river”, “Mother Puja” “River of life”. My two companions competed to explain to me why this murky water was so special. We lit both candles, and placed them in the pressed banana leaves, surrounded by lotus and marigold petals. They showed me what to do. I held one in each palm, and made small circles. “Puja Puja, mother river, river of life”.

 Offering up a small prayers to my God, blessings for my dead, those souls gone from me, those still present, and those yet to come join me in this life, I laid the candle boats atop the liquid altar. My little friends moved on; there were more candle boats to be sold. But I stayed still, my eyes on the river. I watched for a long time, as my lights drifted off, moving freely through the darkness.