What’s That Smell?
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re in southern India, spending the weekend on a houseboat in the backwaters of Kerala, aka God’s Own Country.
What’s That Smell?
We went on a tour of the most important Nepalese Hindu temple complex on a Tuesday evening. We saw the big Shiva temple (just from the outside; non-Hindus can’t enter). We saw many beautiful smaller shrines and temples.
Our guide told us stories about the history of Nepalese Hinduism, about its relationship with Indian Hinduism, as well as with Tibetan Buddhism. He told us all about the funerary customs, and we watched a bunch of bodies being washed and then burned. We saw lots of sacred monkeys dancing across the rooftops, and sacred bulls wandering among the crowds.
We sat on the steps by the sacred river and watched the evening prayer ceremony, along with a thousand other people, all cheering and singing and waving their arms at appropriate moments. We namaste-ed the Saddhus and fortune tellers and chai sellers and tiny old women hawking mandala necklaces, but we didn’t buy anything.
Did you see the way I buried the lede there? Feel free to go back and look, if you missed it. I’ll wait right here.
Cremation is an essential component of Hinduism. This is the Nepalese ritual, as told to us by Sumit, our guide:
—First of all, the funeral must begin as quickly as possible after death—preferably within 20-40 minutes.
The body is wrapped in white and orange cloths, and placed on a sacred stone at the edge of the river.
—This stone (red granite, sort of body-sized, sloping down toward the water) is from the Shiva temple, which is a few hundred yards away, behind a couple of other buildings. The stone is important—we were warned not to accidentally sit on it during evening prayers.
—The family washes the face and feet with river water, then moves the body to a stretcher. Then they carry it downriver a few hundred yards to the pyres. They carry the stretcher three times around the pyre, then place it on top.
— A professional ‘burner’ arranges the wood, kindling, straw, camphor, incense, and aromatic herbs. The burners are incredibly experienced—they cremate 40-50 bodies per day, 24/7, so the set-up goes quickly. The eldest son lights the fire in the mouth of the deceased.
—Then the burner takes over, keeping it all covered with damp straw and crackling away, while the family drifts away to watch and grieve and comfort each other. When the fire burns down, anything that remains is thrown into the sacred river, to flow down to the Ganges.
Above the scene is a building, windows opening over the sacred-stone-body-washing area. The building is a hospice facility. Those who are truly lucky—whose families know that death is imminent—can live out their last few days here, with a view of the river and the stone and the pyres. If they’re truly lucky, the doctor is able to give the family a few minutes’ warning, and they can rush their loved one down to the water’s edge, so they can draw their last breaths on the sacred stone, and the washing ritual can begin immediately.
And all the while, all around, life is happening. So much life—the bells and incense and singing of prayers, families visiting the temples on their weekend outings, groups of young people hanging out flirting and laughing as young people do, monkeys and cows and dogs and crowds.
It was an intense evening. Lee and I both have a lot to process; I suspect (I hope) this was an experience that will mark us both, for life. Parts of it made me feel a bit ill (but maybe not the parts you’d think). The water of the sacred river is badly polluted, and we sat on the embankment watching people dip their hands in it, sprinkle it on their children, wash their faces with it. (That’s the part that made me feel ill.)
We watched people grieve: raw, open sobbing and wailing. One woman had to be pulled away from (what we assume was) her husband’s body; she fainted and had to be carried away. That was hard to watch—I felt uncomfortable, like a voyeur peeking at someone’s most private inner agony. But it was all out there, incredibly public, so I just stood quietly and witnessed her grief.
I am accustomed to shying away from death, both physically and emotionally. Watching these Hindu funerals was an eye-opening experience. Death is simply … part of life. What blew my mind the most, I think, was the hospice center in the middle of it all, and the notion that it’s preferable to actually depart this world already in place for the funeral. Our equivalent would be putting the person in the coffin for those last few breaths. THAT is a completely different relationship with death.
Sumit, our wonderful guide, is a former slum child. He grew up in a building (torn down after the 2015 earthquake) that abutted the temple park. He spent his childhood playing around the funeral pyres. Death was just part of the normal fabric of his days. He was fourteen when his father died, and he and his older brother performed their parts in the rituals.
We spent three and a half hours with Sumit, and I pelted him with questions. His love for his country and its people, its history, its rituals, were all part of what seemed like a generally positive outlook. As we watched smoke curling into the night sky, I watched him. A small smile played at the corners of his mouth; his body exuded patience and calm and contentment. It seemed as if that funeral ground, surrounded as it was by both holiness and ordinariness, was truly his happy place.
A thick layer of smog blankets the city; always, everywhere, I can smell woodsmoke. Death is literally in the air you breathe in Kathmandu.
Take care,
Lisa
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