Prelude

Vikram was sitting ten feet away from a burning pyre. It was a late autumn evening. His face glowed with the heat and light of the pyre, his pastel coloured linen casuals were speckled randomly with soot, as he sat staring at the charred body being ravished by the hungry tongues of fire. Around him there were more than twenty pyres in different stages of getting burnt.

This was the Manikarnika ghat on the banks of the Ganga at Varanasi.

Vikram was in the city to attend a two-day conference on International and Comparative Law at Banaras Hindu University. It was an august gathering of intellectuals and practising professionals in the fields of law and policymaking from south-east Asia.

After the conference, the guests were taken to see the spectacular Ganga Arti at Dashashwamedha ghat. As they sat in the boats watching the five young priests swaying and swinging the tall, multi-layered, flaming lamps synchronously to beats of drums and cymbals, accompanied by singing of devotees, Vikram was getting distracted by the fires burning on the neighbouring ghat.

The fires of destruction fascinated him more than the fires of devotion. He decided to slink away from his present company and explore the other ghat.

Manikarnika ghat was as busy as its neighbour Dashashwamedha. Every five minutes, a new marigoldladen, shrouded-in-white corpse was brought in for cremation. The accompanying family members performed the necessary rituals with the help of specialised ghat attendants. Maybe visually morbid, it was actually a very professionally handled scenario. The most intriguing part was that nobody was crying, not even the relatives of the deceased. Death was not a grotesque ending of an individual life here, it was just another step in the collective lives of people.

Vikram had given up on religion and all associated rituals ages ago. He had cremated his parents in an electric crematorium. A simple, efficient, and clean process, he felt. So for him, watching the burning pyres was a novelty.

The crackling logs, leaping flames, often interrupted by eerie moans, groans, and squeaking sounds from the burning corpse. . .the rising smoke, flying ash, acrid smell of burning flesh, the sudden spurt of sparks from the skull exploding to release the soul. . .a chaos. . .yet instilling a strange sense of calm within.

As Vikram sat immersed in the tableaux, a withered old man came and sat next to him on a pile of logs.

“This is the place where the soul steps out from this world to enter the next. Crying creates attachment, thus hindering the soul’s departure.”

Vikram was startled to hear the rasping voice of the man sitting next to him, drinking tea nonchalantly from a disposable cup. It was as though he was reading Vikram’s mind.

“This is Lord Shiva’s Kashi, Babu, it changes everyone. Even the mighty Ganga flows in reverse here.”

With the old man’s cryptic remarks echoing in his head, Vikram left the burning ghat to return to the cool five-star comfort of his hotel. He had an early morning flight to catch for Delhi.

Little did he know what he was heading into.