The fires at Manikarnika Ghat have never gone out. Not once. Every hour of every day, funeral pyres burn on the stone steps above the Ganges in Varanasi — Hinduism's holiest city. Up to twelve bodies at once, hundreds every day. The smoke rises, the ash drifts into the river, and here's what makes this place unlike anywhere else on earth: Hindus believe dying here doesn't just end your life. It ends the entire cycle of death and rebirth. Here, death is the door to total freedom.
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Prophets & Pilgrims·1/3·1′
The place
Varanasi (Kashi — City of Light)
Where Death Is Liberation
At the burning ghat where the fires have never gone out, an untouchable holds the flame that frees every soul -- and death is the holiest act in the holiest city on earth
Mythological origins to present day (fires burning continuously for centuries)Varanasi (Kashi — City of Light)
Moral of the Story
“Varanasi built its holiest place not around a temple but around a cremation ground — and discovered something the rest of the world spends a lifetime running from: the only way to be truly free is to stop being afraid of the fire.”
Characters
S
Shiva (the Hindu god who whispers liberation to the dying)T
The Dom Raja (keeper of the eternal flame, from India's lowest caste)K
Kabir (the fifteenth-century poet who left Varanasi to die)Source
Parry, Jonathan P. Death in Banaras, Cambridge University Press, 1994; Eck, Diana L. Banaras: City of Light, Princeton University Press, 1982; Justice, Christopher. Dying the Good Death: The Pilgrimage to Die in India's Holy City, SUNY Press, 1997; Skanda Purana, Kashi Khanda (12th-14th century CE); Markandeya Purana (Harishchandra legend); Bhutiani, Shubhashish. Hotel Salvation (Mukti Bhawan), 2016 film, Venice Film Festival