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Manikarnika Ghat

(Jalsain Ghat the burning Ghat, Jalsain is derived from Vishnu in his manifestation of Jalsai "the sleeper on the ocean")

Night cremation:

The Bosch cliche, the burning vision of hell, dark figures silhouetted against intense flames. A background of temples, shapes, ashrams, Benares curving on the ganga, diminishing points of light, the sacred river, blacker by contrast with the fires, boats hovered to the shore, splattered flash reflections on water. Figures illuminated in the heat of burning dead, with long poles tending fires, pushing unburnt parts of legs to the center flame spearing the jaw bone, swung airborn it in an ark shallow water by the bank to cool. Gold fillings in teeth. Men scavenging men. Just a business. The polluted caste of Roma, made rich by a monopoly on death. Periodic sparks born upward with the water. Groups of relatives squatting on the multiple levels of the slope, their voices faint against the sound of burning. A man leaning forward on his staff by the thrust of weight balanced on one leg. Two boatmen on the deck of their house boat one fixing supper a few feet from where a priest is touching a flame to a pyre. Circle the body counter-clockwise, the torch in hand, indistinguishable words, given to the air. Down the steps to the river a body on their shoulders "Ram nam, satya hai." Immersed in the holy delivering

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water, the wet covering cloth now molded to a more reasonable human form, the feet clearly outlined, arms, head. The body removed from its bamboo stretcher, and placed on a pile of criss-crossed logs - more wood piled on top, corpse hidden from view in the darkness. A white-grey cow wanders among the separate fires. A scene too perfect visually, a well-designed stage set, lit sinister. For the ceremony of death bodies left exposed to elements, buried under earth, dumped into water, burned. They clutter the living with their decaying shells, the consumable substance of flesh and bone.

Turn your back on the dead and look in the opposite direction. The dark stone Ghats, tilted woven bamboo umbrellas, slabs of wooden platforms sprawled with sleeping people. Unevenly lit rectangular areas, descending to the river, stretching feet and quiet in the summer night. Fragile human forms, lightly draped sleeping on wood, the supporter of bodies.

May 29, 70

Forms of living and dead

Sleepers, still as death, lying in groups of singularly on slightly raised wooden platforms. Weathered planks that in daytime support pujaries and bathers. Rectangular islands scattered on different levels of the stone Ghat. Unmoving humans even in sleep one senses life, the gestures some graceful others tortured, belong to the living. And if one of them had