Varanassi

The air in Varanassi is thick with ashes of the dead. You can feel them in your lungs, in your eyes, and in your nose. It is one of the oldest inhabited parts of the world and it has been dealing in death for millennia. The dead are the defining characteristic of the city. Even the mighty Ganges River, life giver of India, dies a quiet gurgling death when it enters the 300 meter sprawl of the city. Varanassi’s sewers and crematoriums have rendered the water along its shores septic, meaning there is no oxygen in the water, meaning there is no life. Only death. Scientifically, symbolically, and practically, anyway you want to look at it Varanassi is the city of death.

Hindus believe almost anyone, regardless of past actions and decisions, whose ashes drift into the hallowed waters of the Ganges will ride its swift currents to Nirvana. The poor travel hundreds of miles to die by its shores, but not all will be accepted. Pregnant women, children under five, lepers, and snake bite victims have no shot at Nirvana. Instead of cremation, their corpses are tied to stones and sunk into the river to await their next incarnation.

More than 200 bodies are cremated at the riverside burning ghats every day of the year. The fires burn non-stop, but the dead still cannot be disposed of quickly enough. Some die in houses, others die on the streets- a spreading pestilence is their estate. The local government recently opened a few electric crematoriums along the Ganges to increase disposal rates, but when it is the last shot at Nirvana, the faithful are reluctant to embrace change.