This is a very interesting and well written article by Krishna Dangi, my bicycling partner last week. It is about a man that makes his living cremating bodies in Kathmandu. The article was printed in The Kathmandu Post, the regional edition of The New York Times.
Please read the story to the end. It is very descriptive writing, even more impressive when you know that English is a second language for Krishna.
I wish I could write like this.
Waiting for the Dead
Gyan Prasad Acharya is half-sleeping, propped up on a corrugated iron bench that’s been pushed against an old wall. It is early morning, and we are at the Aryaghat by the banks of the Bagmati in Pashupatinath, a place where the living and the dead comingle daily. The ghats are mostly empty at this hour, aside from a few people huddled together here and there, and one can see the smoke dancing off of a lone funeral pyre on the other side of the bridge from where Gyan Prasad is reclining. Behind us, the morning prayers—now midway through and punctuated by the clamouring of bells—reverberate through the air.
As the morning light gains strength, the temple’s metal roofs beginning to glimmer like spun gold under its touch, Pashupati jerks almost suddenly to life. As if pulled by an invisible thread, devotees pour into the temple complex, eager to get their day off to an auspicious start, while the sadhus and babas who reside within the temple’s kutis, stir awake as well, knotting their bodies into practically impossible positions as a greeting to the sun, before settling into the daily affair of pulling out pipes and preparing whatever concoction they wish to fill these with. Then, slowly, your assorted others pile in—whether it be beggars or street vendors, couples out for a walk together, young street urchins fishing for coins with strings and magnets, or plunging into the murky waters for a morning swim, tourists, unemployed youngsters, the old and the retired—all making up the kaleidoscope of forces that is one of Hindu religions most sacred sites.
Gyan Prasad is now awake, and lifts his body languidly from the bench. He is of medium height, dressed in a thin white vest and white dhoti, the plainness of which serves to emphasise on the plainness of his features—a stoic, well-creased, nondescript face, characterised by tanned skin and framed by thinning grey hair. His eyes, however, are anything but nondescript; stony, dark, reluctantly expressive, these spheres tell of the years and years he’s spent toiling under harsh conditions, and of the things he’s seen over that time.
Many lives have come to be intertwined with that of the temple, but there are perhaps not too many who are as intricately bound to it as Gyan Prasad is today. As one whose job it is to set alight funeral pyres, the 63-year-old is an integral part of Pashupati’s fabric, as he has been for the more than four decades he’s spent doing this, and as he will be for as long as he continues in the future. Gyan Prasad, who is one of the 32 men employed under the Pashupati Ghat Samiti (PGS) to assist in cremations, says he’s probably burned more than 8,000 corpses in all. But he is something of a dying species himself at present, belonging as he does to what is presumably the last generation of such pyre burners, given that an electric crematorium is already being installed at the temple, expected to be operational in a little more than a month. If it pans out, burners like him, like so many others around the country whose traditional occupations have come under fire in modern times, will slowly be rendered obsolete, a thing of the past.
Gyan Prasad’s family had lived in Thankot when he’d been young, and were dirt-poor. Education was pretty much out of the question outright, becoming even less of a possibility after his mother passed away when he was eight, following which he’d had to look after his ailing father, crippled by a spinal cord injury. Gyan Prasad had attempted trying to work as a domestic helper for a while, but quit after a few years when he could no longer stand the kind of indignities he was made to suffer on the job, going on to work as a firewood carrier at Pashupati. Despite all his efforts, his father’s health continued to worsen, and he passed away eventually, leaving his son an orphan at 22. And that very year, Gyan Prasad applied for the position of the pyre burner at Pashupati, and was taken in. The rest was history.
Gyan serves around four funerals a week on an average, earning a little over a thousand rupees from each, once PGS’ commission and wages for the pyre-maker—also his assistant—have been deducted. The money is just enough to make rent for the two rooms he’s leased in Battisputali, where he lives with his wife. His daughter is married, while his younger son and wife are breaking sweat over in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait respectively. “Things aren’t always easy, but as long as you’re alive, you have to keep going,” he says. “That’s what I tell myself.”
Clouds have now swept over the morning sun, and the temple is soon awash in a clumsy monsoon drizzle. A group of men are approaching Gyan Prasad’s ghat no 10, shoulders hunched under the weight of the bamboo stretcher they’re carrying that holds the body, we learn later on, of a recently deceased 14-year-old boy. The child had fallen off the roof of his house, and been killed almost instantly by the impact. Gyan Prasad, however, reacts little when he hears this, only concerned with the ritual at hand. We watch as the boy, wrapped in cloth, is set on the pyre beside the bank, relatives coming forward and taking turns to pour some holy water onto his lips, everyone’s faces drawn with suppressed emotion. Meanwhile, Gyan Prasad is all business, his hands occupied in making a mixture of unpolished rice, kaajal, vermilion powder and curd. He lights incense sticks and inspects the pyre—built of 80 to 100 pieces of wood, rectangular in shape and thoroughly doused in ghee. He doesn’t stop what he’s doing even when the boy’s mother breaks into heart-wrenching sobs, collapsing, weakened, into her husband’s arms.
In the background, traditional instruments are played, prayers chanted, as the last rites are conducted. Like one would see at a circus, spectators are gathering to watch the proceedings, alongside a group of inquisitive tourists on the other side of the river, most of whom have their cameras trained on ghat no 10. Once all preceding rituals are over, the father circles the pyre three times before torching it gently. It’s now upto Gyan Prasad to ensure the fire spreads evenly, and he works around the pyre, kindling it at different sections, until the fire is raging, crackling, emitting a thick blanket of smoke, and swallowing up the young boy’s body in its embrace. By this time, we can see other pyres being built in all the 11 ghats on the banks.
Hindu belief has it that in order for the souls of the dead to be liberated from their bodily cages, these bodies need to be burned, erased, so the spirit is set free. Gyan Prasad, though, believes it has to do more with logic than religious myth—“We burn the dead because to we can’t preserve them, and to have bodies lying around, decomposing, would be difficult.” He says that if working the ghats for so many years has taught him anything, it’s the universality of death. “Whatever the differences that existed between people when they were alive and kicking, it’s all gone, just like that. We’re all the same in death.” Does he feel he’s become entirely desensitised to the whole phenomenon? “Maybe,” he says. “It’s hard not to be when you see it so close-up, day in and day out.”
Aside from how the job has affected his psyche, working at such close proximity to fire every day leaves Gyan Prasad vulnerable to a great many health threats, although he says he’s been lucky in that respect so far, unlike many of his colleagues.
He’s more concerned about what to do when he no longer has the physical strength that is such a major part of the job; with no savings, provident fund, or any other type of security, it’s going to be a challenge, he says. “It’s sad to think that after so many years of service, you really have nothing to look forward to at the end.”
But Gyan Prasad refuses to spend too long dwelling on things “he has no control over”. Three hours in, and the pyre has finally been reduced to ashes. After smoking a cigarette, he clears the ghat, hurling the charred remains of the logs into the river, and waits for the dead to come his way again.
Posted on: 2013-08-17.
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