All cities have multiple layers of reality, but this seems truer of Benaras than of any other, perhaps because it has existed for aeons. What is Benaras? Is it its clichéd ghats, pyres, river, alleys, sadhus, parasols, monkeys, cows? Does it belong to Ashoka, whose pillar stands in nearby Sarnath; to Tulsidas, who composed Ramcharitmanas here; to Ghalib, who wrote a loving ode to the ancient city; to the legions of foreign tourists who seek moksha on the banks of the Ganges; or to the people who live here—the householders, shopkeepers, dharamshala owners, priests, boatmen, tuktuk wallas, corpse bearers and burners? Or does it belong to the dead?
Jorge Luis Borges wrote in his poem “Benaras”
And to think that while I play with doubtful images the city I sing persists in a predestined place in the world, with its precise topography peopled like a dream.
Do the people of Benaras also feel they are living in a dream, what with the overwhelming chaos of the city, enhanced manifold these days by the hectic construction for the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor project?
This is the question that bothers me when I read about the Benaras of, say, Borges, Ginsberg, Geoff Dyer. While they presumably found what they wanted to find in Benaras, do the local people also encounter moksha in the dinghy alleys and nirvana in the polluted waters?
It is in this context that Radhika Iyengar’s Fire on the Ganges: Life among the Dead in Banaras is an unusual book, presenting the city as experienced by a sizeable and indispensable part of its demography, the Doms, who keep the funeral pyres burning and help the dead in their journey to the otherworld. For all the essential services they render, they must remain invisible, lest their presence pollute the living. It is one of the myriad ironies of Benaras that in a city where death itself is a graphic presence, the handlers of the dead must stay out of sight. Read the thoughtful review by Karan Madhok here and don’t forget to read the book too.
Iyengar’s description of the life of the Doms brought back an image I had flittingly glimpsed in a crematorium: as a corpse burnt on the open pyre, I had seen the head melting away, the fat feeding the fire. I had wondered then how the corpse handlers live with such images that must be a part of their everyday lives.
I recalled going down into the blazingly hot pit of the electric cremation chamber to collect my father’s ashes. It had felt like a journey to the underworld, with life as I had known it until then turning into smoke and ashes like a scrap of burning paper. And then, the young worker who handed me the pot of ashes, had smiled—a warm, sad, knowing smile that forced me to smile back in spite of myself. That moment of kinship brought home the truth of the searing lines from King Lear: “Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.”
In the relentless onward journey that is life, one thing keeps us going—food. It is in this sense that food is sacred, making any conflict stoked in its name—like the one on beef consumption—a desecration in itself. Anthropologist Dolly Kikon speaks of the centrality of food in Naga culture in her introduction to the book, Food Journeys: Stories from the Heart: “One can say that eating Naga food is like singing with an enchanting force. Perhaps this is the reason why we hum and sing when we make good food!” Very few books live up to their titles: this is one of the rare ones which does. I review it here. The book, co-edited by Kikon and Joel Rodrigues, is a must-read.
I will be back soon with more ramblings.
Until then,
Anusua Mukherjee
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