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A Time to Kill
Every day, shortly after dawn, Veer Bhadra Mishra, a silver-haired Brahman in a traditional Indian dhoti, or loincloth, walks slowly and stiffly down the long, steep stairway from his temple in the city of Varanasi to the banks of the Ganges, as he has almost every day of the fifty-eight years of his life. All around him, along a seven-kilometer stretch of the river dominated by majestic, crumbling temples, palaces, and ashrams built atop the bank, the pageant of Indian life passes by. Tens of thousands of bathers, at eighty different ghats, or landing areas, plunge into India's holiest river. White-bearded ascetics raise their emaciated arms to salute the sun god; housewives in brightly colored saris toss yellow garlands of marigolds to Mother Ganges; adolescent boys in G-strings do push-ups, flex their muscles, and wash their bodies; naked children splash playfully in the water; and families carry their dead to the "burning ghats" to cremate their loved ones and scatter the ashes on the river.
The tug of these traditions, some of which stretch back three thousand years to the founding of Varanasi, pulls Mishra irresistibly to the river, despite a bad hip broken a few years earlier that makes walking painful, and despite the poor quality of the water, which is filled with raw sewage, human and industrial waste, and the charred remains of dead bodies and animal carcasses. Normally, Mishra tries to perform five full immersions-five is an auspicious number. But even when he is feeling well he holds his nose as he puts his head in, and he no longer drinks the river water.
"There is a struggle and turmoil inside my heart," Mishra said. "I want to take a holy dip-I need it to live. The day does not begin for me without the holy dip. But at the same time, I know the condition of the river water is not good. I know what is 'BOD'-'biochemical oxygen demand'-and I know what is 'fecal coliform,'" he continued, referring to some of the scientific indices of water pollution. For Mishra, this struggle of the heart is particularly acute because of his complex double identity: He is the mahant-the head or holy man-of Sankat Mochan Temple, one of the principal temples of Varanasi, as well as a professor of hydraulic engineering at Banaras Hindu University.
As a devout Hindu, Mishra views the Ganges as a goddess-"Maa Ganga," or Mother Ganges, a river that, because of its divine origin, is pure and purifies all those faithful who immerse themselves in her waters. It is the dream of all good Hindus to visit Varanasi and bathe in the Ganges at least once in their lives. People from across India keep a little Ganges water in their homes to use as a religious offering or to add to their household cooking. It is said that one drop of Ganges water in a breeze that lands on your cheek hundreds of miles away is enough to cleanse a lifetime of sins. At their deaths, all Hindus [next page]