The rest house where Hindus 'check in' to attain nirvana

We were at Mumukshu Bhavan, a 100-year-old institution near the Assi Ghat of Varanasi, where elderly Hindus live out their last years. One section is for monks like Jairam Ashram, who belong to the Dasanami sect of Hindu monks. The “Ashram” in his name, which I had assumed meant institutional affiliation, is actually one of 10 titles for each sub-sect.Avdhesh Tiwari, the caretaker of Mumukshu Bhavan, was accompanying me when I met him. He explained later: “When Dandi Swamis renounce the pleasures of life, they say they have conducted their own funeral and been born again. So, when you asked about his life before Varanasi, he was upset. What he meant was that he can’t go back to the life he left and that pains him. Because he has ‘died’. If he meets those who were his family in his ‘past life’, they will only see a ghost.”Perhaps. But Jairam Ashram did tell me he came to Mumukshu Bhavan in 2020 and stays in touch with his mother. Before that, he added, he was a farmer who also worked as a labourer — work was hard to come by — at Chhatarpur in Madhya Pradesh.Another monk, who didn’t tell me his name, used to be a teacher. When I asked why he and so many others were here to ensure their last breath was in Varanasi, he said: “There is no alternative to death. It is the biggest truth of nature. If it weren’t inevitable, people would seek eternal life. But they can’t. So, they seek moksh and want their death to be auspicious. Because moksh takes you from death towards life, just in a different manner.”The Varanasi bhavan where Hindus come to die - in 15 daysIn this part of the bhavan, the monks wake up early, perform puja, leave to collect alms and then go back to puja after returning. “What else will monks do?” asked Dandiswami Indradeva Ashram, amused when I asked what the daily routine was.When a monk dies, the Bhavan takes responsibility for cremation. The body is made to sit in this red chair and taken around before it heads to the burning ghats.When Avdhesh was showing me the red chair, a man in white was cycling past us. Avdhesh stopped him. “Tell her something about yourself,” he nudged the man. The man, Ramprasad Dwivedi, started with a Sanskrit shloka. He said it meant all sins are destroyed in Kashi.The other half of Mumukshu Bhavan is for what they call “Kashivasis”, those who wish to be residents of Kashi. “Any Hindu who is 60 or older and has a family is allowed to live here for the rest of their lives. Basically, people in retirement. People make their own food, buy their own things. We are here for support,” said Manish Pandey. Only Hindus? “Yes,” he said. “It is a religious institution. No Muslims or foreigners.”For residents, no money is charged. But the waiting lists can be long. “Sometimes, people whose applications are in the queue die before those who live here,” said Avdhesh. Then, he took me to see a couple who had given up their house in UP’s Deoria to live here. The man, a retired music lecturer at Mani Nath Inter College, had stepped out. His wife (she wasn’t comfortable sharing her name) was around. Their room had an AC and a cooler. Residents can install any appliance they want.“We have been here for six years now. My husband retired in 2009,” she said. “We used to keep coming to Varanasi and decided this is where we want to die. It is auspicious to die here. My brother-in-law lives at our house now with his kids. We don’t have children.” They felt happy about the simplicity of life here, she added.When we got out of the room, Avdhesh said, “Someone named Sita used to live in that room. She died nine years ago. She was all alone. A school principal.” If someone dies without anyone who can cremate them, the Bhavan organises the funeral.Waiting most ardently for death, maybe out of compulsion, was another elderly woman. A bed and a cooler. That was all she had. Her husband worked with electricals as long as he could. Because he didn’t have a steady job, there was no retirement plan. When they got old, they had nowhere to go.“We moved into Mumukshu Bhavan 22 years ago. My husband died 12 years ago,” she said. “I have a daughter. My grandchildren send some money. I have lived too long.”The cremation grounds where fires never go outMy final stop was Manikarnika Ghat, one of the two burning ghats in Varanasi (the other is Harishchandra). Like everything in the city, it is enmeshed in a series of mythic stories.That Shiva’s earrings, manikarnika, fell into a pit Vishnu was digging with his chakra. Or that Shiva was mad with rage when Sati killed herself after a king insulted him — to calm him down, Vishnu cut Sati’s body into 51 pieces and the earrings landed here. Or that Parvati concealed her earrings here to stop Shiva from going away from here. “Every soul that is here after death is asked by Shiva, ‘Have you seen the earrings?’” Panna Thakur, the funerary barber at the ghat, told me. “He’s still looking.”What I had seen of Manikarnika before this were really old photos, archival ones, from the British Library. “Burning the body is a way of offering it to Agni, the god of fire. The ashes are later scattered onto the river,” says the caption to this 1865 photograph.And this is a 1903 photo of those handling cremation at the Manikarnika Ghat.I was not prepared for the actual experience. Yes, it is a historical cremation ghat and what else would someone expect to see? A temple-like structure with centuries of soot, a piece of yellow fabric that belonged to someone once and one forgotten slipper. Just the sound of wood and bodies burning slowly. The silence stupefied me. Barring one elderly man, who was there to cremate his young son, no one shed a tear.“Kal vasna (the wish of Kal, the god of time) doesn’t operate here, only Bhairon vasna (the desire of Bhairon, a form of Shiva associated with annihilation),” said Panna. When someone’s time is up on earth, he went on, the god of time can’t take them away without permission from Bhairon. “So, no one is afraid of death.”Maybe. But it still means conversations which place a value on a life that has just ended. Huge scales to weigh the cremation wood line the ghats. Do you want the good timber for the one you loved? Will you buy the best flowers or settle for something within your budget? It is, however, work that must be done. Can’t grudge anyone that.Presiding over everything, for instance, are the Dom — a community of Dalits historically associated with handling corpses — dictating cremation costs and perfunctorily dismissing those who don’t comply. After centuries of caste-based atrocities that meant to isolate them, they call the shots here.On my way out, I saw that a signboard from the time Covid-19 had first struck was still hanging, announcing the government-mandated costs of cremation — Rs 7,000 for those with Covid-19 and Rs 5,000 for those without. “Those are for people to see, not to follow,” said a person at a teastall next to it. “Who will haggle about death?”After coming back to Delhi, I would keep wondering what happened to Chaturbhuj Jha. On June 19, I called Kalikant Dubey at Mukti Bhavan to ask. “He obtained moksh on June 8. He was cremated at Manikarnika.”The Varanasi bhavan where Hindus come to die - in 15 days(Photographs by the author. Lead illustration by Sajeev Kumarapuram)