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Hindus believe that if their ashes are sprinkled in the Ganges
River, they are freed forever from the cycle of death and rebirth.
This may be popular wisdom in India, but not in Seattle's cowboy
bars, where a gay Vietnam War veteran named Johnny Bowman used to
hang out. Several years back, when Bowman realized he had AIDS, he
stunned his drinking buddies by asking them to sell off his
possessions after he died-he didn't own much-and use the money to
pay for a trip to India. There, his ashes were to be immersed in
the Ganges. Bowman was also a diehard country music fan and, as a
last laugh, he wanted a tape of Patsy Cline's I Fall to Pieces
played as his earthly remains did just that. "Johnny decided that
in the Great Karmic Picture, he didn't want to come around again,"
explains Beth Selby, 47, a designer in Seattle.
So it was that Selby and 48-year-old nurse Judy Alexander found
themselves on a strange odyssey to India, one on which a growing
number of westerners are embarking these days. They hefted Bowman,
five pounds of bone and white ash sealed in a black plastic box,
through New Delhi customs as hand luggage. Then they caught a train
up to Rishikesh, a temple town where the Ganges, swift and
serpent-green, rushes down from the western Himalayas. Once on the
riverbank, they pour Bowman's remains into a basket of marigolds
and cue up Patsy Cline on a cassette player they brought along.
"Johnny was a Texas boy," Selby says. "Not much of a voice, but he
was always snapping' his fingers and singing along with Patsy
Cline. Johnny's idea of a better rebirth is probably being able to
sing her songs on-key." The two women clamber out onto a boulder in
the swirling current and let their friend's ashes go. Instantly,
the basket snags on a rock. Selby frets: "We hope Johnny won't be
stuck there till the dry season."
Every year, hundreds of westerners and Japanese-no one knows the
exact number-flock to the Ganges to dump the ashes of their friends
and relatives. Country-and-western isn't the only American music
that the Hindu sadhus, or holy men, meditating in caves and ashrams
along the river in Rishikesh hear during funeral rites. Last April,
the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir strummed Friend of the Devil before he
and Deborah Koons, widow of the Dead's late guitarist Jerry Garcia,
floated away Garcia's ashes in a secret ceremony. The idea of
sending Garcia, one of the patriarchs of the '60s psychedelic era,
off on his last trip in India reportedly came to Weir in a dream.
He said at the time, "Jerry was too humble a guy ever to say, 'Put
my ashes in the river but I knew that's what he meant."
The Dead's guitarist once described himself as a Catholic who
believed in reincarnation, and today an increasing number of
western Christians are also accepting the notion that they will
come back after death, again and again. A 1982 Gallop poll showed
that one out of four Americans believed in reincarnation. That
figure is probably higher today judging from the plethora of
bestselling books on the topic. The Tibetan Book of Living and
Dying, a New Age guidebook for the hereafter by Sogyal Rinpoche,
has sold nearly one million copies in the United States, Europe and
Asia. "We all have a natural belief or a hope that something in us
survives after death," Rinpoche said in New Delhi recently. "Some
sages tell us that death is like changing clothes. But on a deeper
level, it's good to know who is changing clothes"
Many westerners making the final pilgrimage to the Ganges are
followers of feel-good Indian gurus like Deepak Chopra, whose
reduction of ancient Vedic texts to snappy soundbites is pervading
TV talk shows in the U.S. But ecological awareness may also explain
foreigners' fascination with the holy river. In a life measured by
office commutes and microwaved dinners, there is a yearning for
nature that cannot be satisfied by buying a new off-road vehicle.
The 2,510-km-long Ganges is a microcosm of the natural cycle; it,
too, undergoes many reincarnations. Roaring down from its Himalayan
source, the river transforms itself from a destructive force into a
life-giver as it slides across the wide, fertile plains of northern
India, home to more than 200 million people. Then it fans out into
a mighty delta before mingling its waters with the Bay of Bengal.
Hindus believe the Ganges' final journey is similar to the soul's
union with the divine. Says Rana Singh, who teaches sacred
geography at Benares Hindu University: "In India, we feel the earth
is a Mother. Many westerners come to the Ganges because they're
missing that attachment to the Earth Goddess." Rinpoche concurs: "
In the West, I've heard so many people say they've lost that sense
of the sacred. The Ganges speaks to them emotionally. They want
to become part of that long, unending tradition."
Tapping into that tradition is not easy for a westerner.
Foreigners who arrive in Benares, the holiest of Ganges cities,
with a loved one's ashes are often shocked by the greed. Death in
Benares is big business. Bus companies with names like The Last
Rites Mail and the Corpse Wagon carry the dead to funeral pyres
along the city's banks; workers sift through the smouldering ashes
for gold dental fillings; Hindu priests haggle over every rupee
during the rites; the Benares post office is swamped with parcels
containing ashes from all over India and abroad destined for an
unceremonious dump in the river by uncaring priests. "Death can be
too mechanical and cruel in the West. You shove the body into a
mortuary, and that's it," says Rinpoche. "It's good to think that
the East is full of spirituality, but sometimes there's too much
custom and not enough compassion."
Hinduism, which has around 330 million gods and goddesses, is a
religion of both complexity and simplicity. Death for a Hindu,
says Mark Dyczkowski, a British Hindu philosophy scholar in
Benares, is "more than ashes to ashes, dust to dust." During the
13-day funeral ceremony, priests sometimes dress up in the dead
man's clothes and eat his favourite curries. Yet these rituals can
be flexible enough to accommodate a Patsy Cline song.
Some priests still refuse to perform the last rites for anyone on
the bottom of Hinduism's caste hierarchy, such as India's wretched
untouchables, and, of course, foreigners are not allowed to have
their ashes placed in the Ganges. But for a few dollars, other
holy men would be happy to chant some mantras and bless the
casteless departed. The price for a funeral dip, says Hira Pandey,
a priest is, "anywhere from $14 up to $500. For the rich, only the
best silver urns are used." Comments Rishikesh pundit Chandradev
Joshi: "We are crazy about imported goods; foreigners are crazy
about Indian things." Several priests rationalize their avarice by
claiming that westerners automatically become Hindus once they are
cremated. As for Bowman, he maybe coming back sooner than he
planned. Says Selby: "I saved a pinch of his ashes, so maybe a bit
of him will have to come around again, after all" - With
reporting by Meenakshi Ganguly/ Rishikesh
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