On Sunday we were nearly trampled by a giant silver goddess Durga, radiating out silver doilies from her many bloodied palms, and carried on a litter of bamboo poles. Before her went two bicycle carts--one for a wall of speakers, and the other for the massive diesel generator needed to power the speakers and light the silver giantess appropriately. The speakers in turn powered crowds of throbbing teenage boys.
We walked to the river. Other gods set in plaster stood looking out over the water: Ganesh, Shiva, Kali. Men were preparing a way through the boats to the open river, into which the bloody-palmed, silver goddess would plunge.
We walked North to the burning ghat. One month here and I hadn't been there yet--we watched as two bodies were unwrapped of their plastic-golden fineries, reduced to bundles of white cotton. And then the wood was piled, one stack big and one small, both over bright embers left from the last cremations. The families lifted the dead, and placed each on its pyre--knees together hidden inside white cotton, they might have been as big around as my elbows together. That small bundle, she must have been a tiny little lady. More wood is laid on top, and then straw is pushed under; it touches the coals; fires smolder, sputter, take. The smell is woodsmoke, simple. The wind blew it straight into my shawl and mouth and eyes.
We left then, to gaze at the stars (Orion with its flickering-red Beteljuice, Caseopeia, the Seven Sisters) all cupped in an off-center circle of sky, ringed around by haze and light of our city. A temple listed quietly into the Ganga in a pool of flowered malas. In small clusters, men returned from the festivities and all descended to the water. We could hear splashes of them jumping in, swimming a few feet out to the boats, and coming back in, newly absolved of sin.
The bodies were burning when we walked South again to Manikarnika Ghat. The families had left, and the fire tenders were there alone, anonymous with rags wrapped about their heads with only a slit left for their eyes. Flora, narrating--"Oh, see how he is lifting the body--oh, they break the body! See how they break the body! But they must do it; they know how. Now we will see the head...." Flames came, and the cotton that had been untouched now burned, and there was a human head engulfed in flame. "It is our hell," said John. And you could pretend that the figure was wax. But the smell was of flesh, of burning flesh--and the sound was not the sound of wood burning. We stood and watched the shine of the man's face (calm) turn to black and the smell was too much and we wended our way back to the main street and caught rickshaws home to bed.
