What I feared most about going to Varanasi was to be reminded of the ever-present shadow of death. However, it was not the burning ghats or the hindu rituals of the afterlife that shook me the most, it was one little boy watching a human autopsy on YouTube next to me at the internet.
"Oh my God, what on earth are you looking at, stop it", I cried out at the involuntary and ghastly sight of a knife slicing up the abdomen of a white haired man, intestines spilling out from it's wax-like shell.
"Sorry madame, sorry", the little rascal excused himself, before explaining in perfect English that he wanted to become a doctor when he grows up, that was why he was watching the autopsy.
This incident has returned to my mind over and over again, and I cannot help but feel fear clutching at my heart every time I visualise the glimpses of the autopsy forever imprinted on my retinas. And then I think about the quiet, matter-of-factly respect shown to the dead at the Manikarnika Ghat, a reminder that death is nothing more than an aspect of life, and life is only part of death.
And in the middle of this all, a 12-year old boy way wiser beyond his years, a boy who has already grasped what doesn't come to me until on the plane back to Delhi, and it is there, at 30 000 feet and with the mighty Himalayas as a backdrop, that I suddenly realise that death is not what we should fear in life. It is the life without death, the loneliness which kills.
"Oh my God, what on earth are you looking at, stop it", I cried out at the involuntary and ghastly sight of a knife slicing up the abdomen of a white haired man, intestines spilling out from it's wax-like shell.
"Sorry madame, sorry", the little rascal excused himself, before explaining in perfect English that he wanted to become a doctor when he grows up, that was why he was watching the autopsy.
This incident has returned to my mind over and over again, and I cannot help but feel fear clutching at my heart every time I visualise the glimpses of the autopsy forever imprinted on my retinas. And then I think about the quiet, matter-of-factly respect shown to the dead at the Manikarnika Ghat, a reminder that death is nothing more than an aspect of life, and life is only part of death.
And in the middle of this all, a 12-year old boy way wiser beyond his years, a boy who has already grasped what doesn't come to me until on the plane back to Delhi, and it is there, at 30 000 feet and with the mighty Himalayas as a backdrop, that I suddenly realise that death is not what we should fear in life. It is the life without death, the loneliness which kills.
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