Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
that lights the pyre. Scripture assigns them the vital task of ensuring
that cremation leads to the deceased's salvation. Yet their task is
considered unclean: dead matter is ritually impure, and those who
provide the fire that burns it take on the karma of the deceased.
This, yet again, is a typical Indian paradox. Here in Benares, you
find the greatest anomaly in the caste system, and its only obvious
traditional advantage. The doms are supervised by the dom raja, the
'King of the Untouchables,' perhaps Benares's most infamous citizen,
and also reputedly one of the wealthiest men in India. What is the
price for taking on someone's karma? In 1992, I asked the man
himself.
Back in the seventies I'd lived in a converted palace on the banks of
the Ganges. It was owned by 'Mataji,' a wealthy California woman of
White Russian descent who'd spent thirty years studying yoga and
meditation with various gurus in India, buying the crumbling
maharaja's palace and turning it into an ashram of sorts - really
more a hostel - for Westerners on the road seeking something in
the subcontinent, the way she once had.
All along the west bank of this great curve in the Ganges, which
has been likened to the shape of the new moon that Siva wears as a
crown, are palaces mostly still belonging to the great princely
families of India. They seem forlorn, decayed, abandoned, now. But
they are not. Like the tides in the lagoon at Venice, the waters of the
Ganges are capricious, rising thirty feet or more during the
monsoon flood. Thus, ground floor rooms exist through expediency
only - as do the many steps leading down to the Ganges. At flood
tide the river reaches or exceeds the upper steps. In late July 1992,
the monsoon had so far failed, and the great steps, the ghats,
descended some fifty feet before reaching water level.
Layer on layer, side by side, the palaces and temples jockey for
position above the ghats along nearly two miles of the west bank.
Across the Ganges, which is nearly a third of a mile wide here, the
east shore is empty, only Ramnagar Fort, the Maharaja of Benares'
palace, visible on that side, far to the south. Some will tell you this
is because only the king of the holiest city was allowed to build on
the eastern shore. In fact, nothing could be built there. When the
