Earlier this week I used the new Google Buzz to comment on another teacher's reflection on his visit to the ghats in Varanasi, India. You can visit the original article and see my own reflection to a similar visit in Nepal below.I've seen this ceremony in Nepal, at Pashupatinath Temple (पशुपतिनाथको मन्दिर) on the Bagmati River near Kathmandu. It was one of the most interesting sights I've seen in travels to about 45 countries. Your story brought some of these memories back, though I don't remember smelling anything like roasting meat.
What was so interesting was that never before had I seen strangers dealing with death before. Men paid a few rupees for someone to shave their heads along the side of the river before the ceremony began. Sons placed bundles of burning straw on the mouth of their loved-ones. A particularly vivid image is the wood of a funeral pyre collapsing, crackling and sending embers breaking off, falling from the ghats and floating down the Bagmati. Out from the weakened structure and its wrappings came a woman's arm, fingers stiff and pointing toward the sky. It was as if the deceased woman was holding the flames in her old, wrinkled hand making her own offering. Families waited for this pyre to be extinguished as they removed their own family member's body from the back of a delivery van. Meanwhile workers swept
ashes and chunks of unburnt wood and bone into the grayish-brown waters of the Bagmati and another crew of men quickly set up the next pyre before the smoke had finished rising from the concrete platform. In Nepal, all waste is sifted through multiple times and everything has many uses. The larger chunks of wood swept into the river didn't have to float far. They were scavenged about 100 meters downstream. I stood mesmerized watching the cremations happening on multiple platforms as these scenes repeated themselves.
