I stand on the steps that lead down to the bottom of the Ganges and people come up from out of the river and push against me, wet with holy shit water, ash dead water, dead people, fingernails and babies water, because babies can die too. I think that even people who know my name can die (Thank You). There is smoke in the air. I want desperately for the smoke to be so much incense, backyard barbecues, cheap cigars, but I know that the smoke is people. It stains the buildings where they cook rice and wake up in the morning and fight - they, the living, who carry stretcher-bound bodies through the streets wrapped in goldred sheets.
The heads on the stretcher bodies loll from side to side as they're carried down the alleys, covered. That's how you can tell. That's what I learned from TV.
Wealthy Indians who had fallen on hard times used to burn their clothes to extract the gold embroidery threads from them, they say.
They also say dying is like taking off one set of clothes and putting on another.
I need to pick up my laundry from that woman.
At the burning ghats on the bank of the Ganges there are a lot of bodies to be burned, a real pile up, so there is a fair amount of waiting around. Some of the young men (still soft) cry. Old men play cards, as old men do while death is waiting just over there. They don't allow women here - death is men's business. I'm waiting too. I wonder, how does a wet mound of flesh ever burn away? Three hours or so. Sizzle and some spit, puff and collapse. Great green scales weigh the fire wood that will consume each body, pitting the fullness of a life against a few sticks. It's rigged - the sticks always win. Dead wood, dead weight on a scale. Waiting, also. Every once in a while a hollow pop shoots from the embers and the hollowness of my gut responds, like to like, ashes to ashes.
On top of the dead people, standing on every rooftop, kids fight tissue paper kites, laughing and dancing in the smoke to the rhythms of some New Smash Hit Bollywood Jams. The kids fight with the kites and the kites fight with the wind. A string snaps and a kite flies off toward the Ganges, then the fight is over - a looser and a winner. The kite flies over the river as some untouchable man below scatters ashes into it.
The heads on the stretcher bodies loll from side to side as they're carried down the alleys, covered. That's how you can tell. That's what I learned from TV.
Wealthy Indians who had fallen on hard times used to burn their clothes to extract the gold embroidery threads from them, they say.
They also say dying is like taking off one set of clothes and putting on another.
I need to pick up my laundry from that woman.
At the burning ghats on the bank of the Ganges there are a lot of bodies to be burned, a real pile up, so there is a fair amount of waiting around. Some of the young men (still soft) cry. Old men play cards, as old men do while death is waiting just over there. They don't allow women here - death is men's business. I'm waiting too. I wonder, how does a wet mound of flesh ever burn away? Three hours or so. Sizzle and some spit, puff and collapse. Great green scales weigh the fire wood that will consume each body, pitting the fullness of a life against a few sticks. It's rigged - the sticks always win. Dead wood, dead weight on a scale. Waiting, also. Every once in a while a hollow pop shoots from the embers and the hollowness of my gut responds, like to like, ashes to ashes.
On top of the dead people, standing on every rooftop, kids fight tissue paper kites, laughing and dancing in the smoke to the rhythms of some New Smash Hit Bollywood Jams. The kids fight with the kites and the kites fight with the wind. A string snaps and a kite flies off toward the Ganges, then the fight is over - a looser and a winner. The kite flies over the river as some untouchable man below scatters ashes into it.
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