Shaktapur

Shaktapur was a city revered for its ancient and divine providence, and for its riverside pillars and steps which descended below the water line, as if to then disappear deep into the waters. Legend witnessed the illusion in reverse, claiming that the city had surfaced from the holy river, and that once exposed had resonated with eternal truths disentangled from Lord Siva's watery locks. It told of how the city had thrust itself into and with the world, before the time of Manu and the great flood; ageless, having been born with rather than in time. Weathered inscriptions encircled the city's pillars, celebrating the epic age when deities battled and wagered over the city's throne. Amongst the most eloquent were the pillars framing the largest of the ancient burial sites; the Ghanysham ghat, whose walls were said to be the first to cleave the waters. In picture and verse they told of a great king's accession; of his ascent to power having won a wager challenging him to perform a feat unheralded even among the most exalted of the brahmins. On the edge of the old city, the king had faultlessly performed ten horse sacrifices. Simultaneously!

Holy fever still gripped the city's riverside quarter. Frenzied ritual spilled over from the northern banks into the water, where bathers shed their grime and sins and the burnt remains of the dead came to rest. More modern day commerce also flourished by the river's edge. Tourists bought spiritual trinkets from sadhus who were salesmen and salesmen who were sadhus. The south bank was flat and deserted, giving way to marshland that extended to the horizon. The north bank was crowded with temples and ghats, some of which had been recently built by rich benefactors hoping to accumulate credit for the cyclical drama of judgement and rebirth. From the temples and ghats, a maze of interconnected alleys spread out northwards, east and west, fading into the newly built affluence that sprawled beyond the outer edge of the old city.

Chotu set of in the morning mist, walking eastwards from the Tulsi ghat along the north bank. The night had passed sleeplessly, so that his step was uncertain and his eyes heavy. He squinted at a group of women preparing for their morning ablutions, their brightly coloured saris reflecting mosaically in the rippled water. A huddled figure rowed a boat lazily along the pink column cast on the water by the still rising sun. Beyond, over on the south bank, the mist shrouded the transition from land to water. He passed a group of young boys sipping hot chai. They were huddled around a decaying tiger, who, together with its twin statue had once guarded the entrance to a magnificent temple. What remained of the temple stood decrepit, stranded, half submerged in the river. Its walls blackened by smoke, windows bored into their stained fabric.

Chotu approached the Ghanysham ghat, overflowing with pilgrims, bodies and hands rubbing on bare skin. Here the sounds reached a new pitch. The splash of water and soapy lather, the drone of incantation, mundane conversation, appeals and admonition, the background hum of meditation, competing loudspeakers plying bollywood tunes and religious exhortation. Large boats laden with chopped wood stood moored by the ghat. Steps rose from the water?s edge, and then iron railings corralling the cremation enclosure. Further inland, and raised above the cremation area, another enclosure fronted by railings, in which accumulated ashes were dumped. These were periodically being doused by water, propelling ashes upwards, so that the surrounding air swirled with grey white flakes and the hiss of rising steam. Two small girls sifted the ashes in metal pans, prospecting for valuables that may have survived the flames. A funeral cortege bearing a body on wooden poles descended down the steps to the water. The body was wrapped in gold and green foil, it's garlanded head emerging from the gaudy shroud. Cupped hands submerged to then douse the corpse with water. The body was carried aloft to the cremation enclosure, where three men tended the flames, shifting logs, clasping them with pincers fashioned from sticks. They encircled the fire, squatting on their haunches, toes splayed, their displaced veins bulging from the sides of their ankles. Next to the pyre, within a few feet, dogs lay curled up in broken sleep, basking in the flames' heat. Occasionally one would rise, circle, and then collapse again. A boy sat perched on the lower bar of the railing, his legs dangling glibly, while tourists beyond the railings watched on in earnest. Chotu saw a young man's shaven head glinting in the sun. The man stood alone bearing witness to his father's final rite of passage into the ethereal haze that would then drift and settle on the water. Chotu watched him attend to the ceremony, fighting his grief with ritual and custom.

Chotu turns away from the cremation and walks to the adjacent main steps where crowds have thronged to bathe in the river. Men in loin cloths, women in saris, wet, clinging to their bodies. A Pepsi Cola sign. An old man clasps his hands. A crimson tikka, exclaiming from his forehead a silent polemic. A saffron scarf around his neck. White cropped hair. Eyes closed, his lips trembling with prayer and cold. Beyond, a flat rising angled wall upon which are spread out washed sheets and clothes to dry. The loud distorted thud of laundry being slammed, from above the dhobiwallahs' heads, onto the lower steps. Chotu descends the steps and enters the water. A bather rubs the sole of his foot on the lowest step, as if his sins had manifested as a physical patina of filth so that every square inch of his skin demanded cleansing. A woman lowers her cupped hands repeatedly, frantically, each time drawing up water to fall on her body. She performs her ritual ablutions, clapping her hands twice, chanting a prayer. Holding her nostrils she immerses herself, and then rises shaking off the cold water, and then immerse, rise, immerse, rise, her sari clinging precariously, immodestly. He moves forward, the water's resistance forcing him to sway from side to side. As he advances he draws up water and rubs frenetically at his skin. Chotu's eyes close, and the events of the last days unfurl in his head, a chimera of images, blending and then disassociating, each image precipitating another, and then dissolving back again. And now his eyes are forced out, sideways, into the watery world, by,.., by something familiar. His eyes, stinging, cold, fixed into the middle distance. A floating body entombed in a wet sari. Orange and green. Drifting, not now with the natural flow, but towards him, against the gentle current. His hands submerge again, lifting the water; water fleeing through the cracks in his cupped palms. Eyes downcast, voicing an empty prayer. And then, with a jerk, he is impelled to look up to where the body is now closer, much closer. He wades in deeper, pushing back the water that only recoils to surround him. Suddenly the body is within touching distance. The light fades, the noise abates, smells recede. His senses are consumed by the body. He reaches out and removes the floral and paisley veil. Sajeev's face. Uncovered. Sajeev's eyes, they open wide and smile knowingly. Chotu chokes. His throat constricts. The strangulation; it ripples through his half clean body. His legs buckle and he sinks beneath the surface. Something has taken hold: from below; weighing him down, into the deep; cleansing him to his core.