Dead in Banaras: An Ethnography of Funeral Travelling

184 Pages·2023·4.668 MB·English

by  Ravi Nandan Singh

Dead in Banaras

Dead in Banaras
Ethnography of Funeral Travelling
RAVI NANDAN SINGH
1
3

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DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780192864284.001.0001
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to the halt house
Rauza

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Transliteration, Translation, Kinship Names and Notations xv
Preface xvii
1. Following the Dead: Corpse as Multiple Social Condition 1
The City 2
Bio- medicine 3
The Corpse 3
The River 3
Polythene 4
Bacteriophages 4
Funeral Travelling 5
Dead as Multiplicity 5
The Banaras of Fieldwork 7
A Brief Genealogy of Death and Desire as Thoughts 8
Postcard Bookmark 11
Sighing Speech 12
Domghouse 14
Anecdote 16
Circumstances 16
2. The City Multiple: Place-N ames Play Dead 23
Visiting the Place-N ame 24
Take the Train 24
Take the Bus 25
Take the Plane 26
More Than a/O ne Name 27
Irony Lives in Place-N ames 29
A Talkative Landscape 31
History 32
Tradition 34
Legend 39
The Time of Before and the Time of Now 42
Temple and University 43
Playing Dead 51
viii Contents
3. Good, Bad Death: Family Necrology and Hospital Sojourn 53
Unfolding Itinerary of Funeral Travelling 55
Father as a Relative 61
Father as a Dying Relative 71
4. Crying and Listening: Forms of Mourning and Community 81
Father as a Dead Relative 82
Dead Father as a Relative 88
Father’s Dead Relatives 97
Father’s Father 97
Father’s Mother 98
Father’s Youngest Daughter 101
5. Conversation of Pyres: Seen and Unseen Passages of
Crematorial Aesthetics and Ethics 105
Eco- Aesthetics 106
Seasonal Variations of Hindu Civilization 106
The Language of Environmental Pollution 110
Complexion of Pyre and the Complexion of the River 114
Polythene and Ganga Ji as Mirror Concepts 116
Forms and Formats of Crematorial Architecture 118
Bacteria, Virus, and National Microbes 122
Ganga Aarti, Pyre Show 125
Thresholds 127
Dead as Multiplicity 127
Dead as Maati (Clay) and Body 127
Touching and Handling the Dead 131
Dead as Madh (Cadaver– Carcass- Carrion) and Laash (Corpse) 131
Cremation Ghat to Aghorashram 134
Dead as Murda (Not- living, Dead) 134
The Dead as Irreducible Surface of Names 137
Care 138
Remains of the Dead 138
Notes 141
Bibliography 155
Index 161
Acknowledgements
The ethnographic and the autobiographical colours involved in the
making of this book run deep. I will limit myself to some hues that illu-
minate aspects of its making.
The anonymous funeral travellers at Harishchandra ghat who came
with their respective biers make the ambient milieu of the book. The un-
spoken pact of not talking, not interviewing began early on and gradually
settled into a listening to their presence that deepened over the fieldwork
years and emerges in the book, in turn, as ‘sighing’ speech. The funeral
workers at the ghat, often too busy to sit down for a talk, helped in making
alternative connections between the dead and thought. Let me recount
one lesson, I learnt from you. Let me not reveal your name, as you wished.
Also, as the adage of the place goes: secrets are more powerful than rev-
elations. Early on in fieldwork, pursuing the several men working with
the pyres, I approach you one day, timidly, for an interview—w anting to
know more about you, the community, the neighbourhood, and the fam-
ilies living at the ghat. I stutter: I am seeking to study death. You gaze down
with anger and retort: why must the truth of death lie with its workers? Go
where they come from. Chase them, seek them. True, I thought, why it
must? I left, dithered, and after following the dead all around returned to
the same place once again. Retrospectively, I see that you made these new
ethnographic maps a question of thought before they became actual jour-
neys. Let me recount one more lesson. I am on a different side of the city,
closer to Rajghat, observing the cremation work being undertaken by a
small group of workers in the Khadak Vinayak neighbourhood. Hardly
a few kilometres away from Harishchandra and Manikarnika— the two
always aflame, busiest cremation ghats—a lone pyre burnt here with a few
funeral travellers in tow. Why? The question became a limerick amongst
the small mix of workers and travellers as the solitary pyre burnt. Another
day, at the same place, a young apprentice handed me the answer without
a prod. Dead bring their own dead. That’s how names and places live and
flourish. Our place is forsaken. I acknowledge this illumination that came