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A woman wailed piercingly. Straight ahead of us, one stoker hoisted
an entire sizzling head and spinal column high on his oar, flipping
it deeper into the blazing soul of fire. The woman wailed even louder.
The dom raja started to explain everything to me like the CEO
of some plastic extrusion plant giving his investors a tour of their
investment. I mentioned that business was certainly booming.
'Yes,' he agreed. 'Too much of work; also little space.'
Siva obviously hadn't considered the population explosion. The
sacred spot was extremely small. The essential space required
between blazing funeral pyres is quite well defined: it's the space a
man needs to stoke without cremating himself. The dom raja proudly
drew my attention to a high-tech worker's safety feature: the hoods.
Though not asbestos, they were, he claimed, nonetheless fireproof.
They didn't look it - a couple were definitely smouldering.
Unable to bear the suspense any longer, I asked where the
Founding Fire was. Accordingly I was shown up some slimy steps
to a sort of open stone porch in a crumbling temple above the
infernos. Inside, on a narrow ledge, fumed a rather pathetic little
fire.
'This is the fire that Indra lit, then, is it?'
The dom raja nodded with enormous disinterest. This surprised
me. I'd imagined he would at least fake some reverence for the
oldest and most important fire in the world - or certainly in his life.
Nearby was a vat of Ganges water, presumably stored for ritual
uses. A valuable commodity across the length and breadth of Hindu
India, Ganges water was not quite so valuable on the banks of the
sacred river itself. Indra's fire - burning now for some thousand years,
perhaps - the life-giving blood of Mother Ganga . . . I suddenly had
an irresistible urge to douse the sacred fire with the sacred water. I
had to physically restrain myself, folding my arms and looking away.
It did occur to me that so lucrative a business as the dom raja's
surely could not depend on this little puffing pile of dull embers
and blackened wood.
'What would happen if someone accidentally put the fire out?' I
asked. The king of death looked at me as if he'd expected better.
'There are many fires,' he replied scornfully. 'All lit from the god's
original flame. Flame has never died, you see?'
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