The city of Banares, as it was known during the colonial times, located on the west bank of the river Ganges is about 700 kilometers east of Delhi. It is the center of the Hindu world where all who believe in Rama, Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva, Kali, Durga, Ganesha come for worship. Nowadays the city has reverted to its old name, designating the place between the two tributaries to the river, Varana and Assi, hence Varanasi. Actually, the city is called many names by the Hindus, such as Kashi, or the City of Lights, Rudravasa, the City of Shiva, or Mahashmashana, the Great Cremation Ground. People believe that the river Ganges was released from the hair of Lord Shiva, this is why shivaite sadhus are seen everywhere36. It is considered to be the oldest city that has been constantly inhabited without interruptions for three millennia or since the sixth century BC. In Dian Eck’s words:
“[…] Benares is a city whose political history is little known. It has rarely been an important political center, and the rise and fall of kings through its long history have no role in the city’s sanctity […] It is not the events of such long history that make it significant to Hindus; rather, it has […] survived and flourished through the changing fortunes of the centuries because it is significant to Hindus. […] The India we see here reflects […] a tradition of pilgrimage to sacred places, bathing in sacred waters and honoring divine images. It is a tradition in which all the senses are employed in the apprehension of the divine.” (pp. 5-6)
Varanasi is known for its sculptures and architecture, crafts and silk fabrics, and its musical, poetical, and philosophical schools. But its most famous feature is the sacred river Ganges. The west bank is covered with thousands of large temples and small shrines, ashrams, hotels and inns, with stone platforms in the shape of wide flights of stairs, called ghats, leading down to its waters, where different types of activities such as rituals, cremation, washing, bathing, etc., are undertaken. The bank on the other side was desolate. I was told it was considered inauspicious and if someone was cremated there this person would be reborn as a donkey in the next life.
Pilgrims worship the river, calling it Ganga Ma, or Mother Ganges. They believe that the river goddess descends from heaven through the hair of Lord Shiva, who protects the city. Her water brings light in the darkness of ignorance, washes away sins and leads to a favorable re-birth or even complete salvation from the cycle of incarnations. A purification bath in the sacred Ganges’ water or even a sip or a sprinkle is what millions dream about. This is why in every altar along with the images or statues of gods there is a small vial with the revered water, Ganga jal. Dying in Varanasi and having one’s ashes immersed in the sacred river is what millions live for. Its power is believed to have an effect beyond the body and the earthly world because it is divine.
One morning at 5 o’clock I got up and still half-asleep, I headed to the river. I wanted to see how people here started their day. I hired a boat with two boatmen and we moved quickly to the middle of the river where we drifted down the current until we reached the outskirts of the city. Then we moved close to the bank where the current was not so fast and the boatmen started to paddle. About 6 o’clock we heard the chime of numerous bells in the temples and we smelled the fragrance of hundreds of incense sticks. We heard the noise of a blessed city waking up. Hundreds of devout Hindus started coming down the ghats to greet the rising sun. Many stepped into the river up to their knees, backs slightly bent forward and palms gathered in front of the chest; others entered waist-deep, scooped the sacred water with cupped hands, took a sip and poured the rest over their head and face; some dipped several times splashing the water around themselves. The swaying crowd was chanting morning prayers full of adulation for the gods, exaltation, hopes and aspirations. Flower garlands and lighted oil lamps offered to the ancestors and the gods adorned the iridescent surface around us. Ascetics, called sadhus, having renounced their families, possessions and pleasures to devote themselves to God through piety and austerity, spiritual discipline and knowledge37, were sitting cross-legged on the platforms by the riverside facing east and the waking sun. They wore yellow or saffron-color robes, a loin cloth, or were naked, their bodies smeared with ashes from the cremation ground to remind themselves 
of the transitory nature of the physical world. They had their heads shaved or had long matted hair over their shoulders or worn in a knot on top of their heads. Many were meditating motionless and silent, and others were chanting mantras, moving rhythmically their body back and forth. Most of them had horizontal lines painted on their forehead, which showed their affiliation with the Shaiva tradition and others had vertical lines – the followers of the Vaishnava tradition.
We approached the ghats of the washers. Men and women, after collecting the laundry of their clients in the neighborhood, had gathered the saris and clothes in piles. They were busy soaping, rubbing, tapping with hands, hitting them against the concrete platform, rinsing them in the water and twisting them. Then they stretched and spread the colorful pieces of the fabrics, installing them next to each other on the ground or at the higher end of the bank, which reminded one of a colossal multihued abstract piece of art a-la Christo.
Further up the river we saw hundreds of people taking a refreshing soap bath after the scorching night. Many were cleaning their teeth with a small stick, cut from a young flexible branch of a tree, usually lemon or willow, as thick as a finger. When I bought one for myself, the shop owner instructed me to peel the skin, to chew it at one end in order to make it tender and to separate the fibers and to rub my teeth while holding it horizontally. He also told me to spit the small fibers left in the mouth, when done and to split it in two, to bend one half in a U shape and to use it as a tongue cleaner. I did it a few times at home. The taste was very bitter. The twig has natural cleansing, antiseptic and anti-stain effects and it has been used for oral hygiene all over the world since ancient times.
One of the boatmen abruptly stopped rowing and called me excitedly:
“Madam ji, Madam ji! Look! Over there!” He pointed to the left of the boat.
I turned my head and saw something big, shiny, white and blue-grey floating close by. I felt shivers up my spine when I recognized what it was. It was the back of a human torso that was visible on the surface with the face down, head and limbs submerged in the muddy water. This was probably not the corpse of an unfortunate drowned person, but rather a person who was destitute in life, but blessed in death. This soul’s life path on this earth had concluded in the sacred river. The relatives perhaps could not afford to pay for the cremation which can require up to 300 kilograms of wood and can cost up to 3,000 rupees, or maybe it was one of the many homeless people who died on the streets of the holy city and became lucky in death by having their bodies disposed of in the river. Unnamed children are not cremated; they are wrapped in a shroud, covered with flowers and consigned to the sacred waters. Sadhus, when they leave their body, are tied to a chair close to the sitting meditative position, then a stone is attached to it before immersing it into the sacred river.
The boat was moving up-stream by Manikarnika, one of the cremation ghats, where we passed by a burning open air funeral pyre. I recall the stinging sensation in my eyes, the pungent irritation in my throat, when I inhaled the choking smoke, and the fierce crackling in my ears, the sound of the logs being swallowed by the flames. The blazing fire had engulfed the wooden bier and the corpse shrouded in red cloth in a merciless embrace. A sudden bang startled me. The boatman hurried to clarify that the skull was cracked open by the heat and this released the prana, the life sustaining breath. He was trying to push the boat away from the stairs as if someone was pulling us with an invisible rope closer and closer to the ghat. I was very uncomfortable about intruding even as an inadvertent spectator of this solemn farewell ceremony. Usually, no women are present – they part with the deceased at home. Only men surrounded the cremation pyre. There was no open mourning, no weeping, no tears. It seemed almost quotidian. When the blazing fire subsided, charcoaled logs emerged from the pile still emitting smoke that looked to me like gaping jaws awaiting the next cadaver. The ceremony would take place again in just a few minutes. About 250 times a day. Members of the untouchable chandal and dom castes would arrange the wood supply, sweep and prepare the cremation grounds, handle the deceased and handle the polluting physical remains of dead, the mourners would offer their sacrificial gifts to the gods and generous donations to the funeral priests, who would perform the needed rituals for purification of the mourners and for the posthumus fate of the souls to transform them into benevolent ancestors38.
Soon we approached several cone-shaped stones decorated with statues and bas-relief, which were sticking a few feet above the water near the bank. When the boat came close to one of them, I stretched my hand to touch it, wondering what it was. One of the boatmen said that it was part of a Durga temple. It was completely submerged in the swollen waters of the river and what was left peaking above the surface was only the top part of the roof.
The river comes out of its bed every rainy season. It inundates the banks and invades the city, but slowly and silently without destruction, roar, or rumble. Like a snake it glides its enormous ochre-copper colored body, shimmering under the rays of the rising sun, stretching far to the horizon, where the ocean awaits her to unite with him.
“We are hopeful about the future of the river. She was sick. Really sick,” Manas said when we met after my boat ride. He is an environmentalist and an engineer who worked in Delhi, but was visiting his family in Varanasi.
“Well, she was seriously infected by pollution to a point that we didn’t know whether there was a remedy. Millions of liters of raw sewage, industrial product waste, fertilizers and pesticides were poured into her body. Now we are slowly taking control… You can imagine 103 cities are built on the banks of the Ganges and more than 300 million people depend on this water and its canal and irrigation system. There are so many water-born deceases, such as hepatitis, cholera, amoebic dysentery, and typhoid that we need to prevent and, actually, you cannot believe it, but the situation could be much worse and out of control, but the water has an amazing self-purification power.”
“What do you mean? Because it is divine?” I asked.
“Well, yes…but what is important is that a special micro-organism is found in it that rapidly multiplies and attaches to the cell wall of pathogenic bacteria and thus destroys them, and replenishes the oxygen content.”
“So, there are no bacteria in the Ganges?”
“See, these bacteriophages sort of control the bacteria level, but it is still dangerously high – way higher than the standards recommended by the World Health Organization. We didn’t know for how long this would continue before we faced large-scale epidemics and before the river became completely toxic. Our population is growing fast, cities are becoming overpopulated with the recent economic upsurge. The government has supported several projects and a few plants were built to treat and filter the waste, but power cut-offs and unaffordable expenses still pose plenty of obstacles. The only way is for all of us to take responsibility, right?”
“The situation is pretty desperate, then?”
“Well, not quite. In the last few years even babus and sadhus have come out publicly and raised their voice worrying about her health. Thank God, people started to listen and be aware. It’s up to us to help the river. It’s up to us, you know. We made her sick, we need to cure her. We will not just let Ganga Ma die!”
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36 See for more Eck, Dian. Banaras: City of Lights. Columbia University Press, 1998. 25-34
37 See for more Hartsuiker, Dolf. Sadhus: India’s Mystic Holy Men. Rochester: Inner Traditions. 1993.
38 Jonathan P. Parry. Death in Banaras. Cambridge University Press. 1994. 75-115