It’s drizzling, and I’m looking at Ganga from one of the Ghats of Banaras. I love the silence of this hour, the midnight when the Ghats are almost deserted and you can listen to the sound of Ganga with very little effort. The other day, I had crossed to the other side of the river at midnight where there was nothing except absolute darkness, from there you can see cremations going on at Manikarnika Ghat, one of the holiest cremation grounds as per Hindu mythology. It is believed that the soul attains moksha if its body is cremated here. The cremation never stops, every hour, scores of dead persons keep arriving. Among the funeral pyres, you sit, meditate and feel that the death is not painful and it is entirely insignificant to be pondered upon, just like life. Once you are gone, does anything matter except your karma? The life, it’s gone, when you could have made use of it, for self and others. Nothing lives for forever then why mourn for anything that’s not going to last in the first place. We know that already, don’t we? Part of me, again, wants to go to other side but then do I really need to go - I am already here, both sides are same, opposites are merely illusions because, in the end, one is everything and everything is one. Mahadev.
Advice: It’s strictly prohibited to film or capture images at Manikarnika Ghat. People come here to be forgotten and to find meaning for life and afterlife.
- written with phone -
In recent years the Ganges River has drawn attention for its ungodly level of pollution. But the bathers are immune to all this. Nearly 2.5 million of them come each year to Banaras, this holiest of cities, on the banks of the most sacred of Indian rivers.
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