Simone's birthday

I've told you about Simone right? She is the lovely, lovely Australian lady with the laugh that comes up from her toes and resonates out of her tiny frame. She is the one who took me under her Christmas wing and who I jived the New Year in with, who I feared the first time I met because we were the only two in a yoga class and she was bendy and shaven headed and looked like she came out of the womb in the lotus position (turned out, as these things often do, that she is the least fearsome and most humble beautiful lady). She is also the one who helped me navigate my first gompa (buddhist holy room) and who has helped me explore meditation and Kathmandu.

So a few weekends ago it was Simone's 27th birthday and she wanted to go to Pashnupatinath. Pashnupatinath is a holy Hindu temple, on the banks of a river whose source is the Ganges. It is also the place where Hindu's cremate their dead. I didn't really think about it much before, I knew that they were public cremations, but it is really hard to think about or picture a public cremation. And reading this you are probably wondering why I went, why Simone wanted to go, weren't we being disrespectful... The thing is, as with everything in Nepal, cremations are really open and really public. Pashnupatinath is full of old people, young people, couples, children, everyone all come to watch the cremations, visit the temple, pay their respects, just sit, I even saw one guy reading a newspaper. And it was so strange being that close to death, with life all around you. I won't try and be all philosophical, because it will only come out sounding trite but I saw the whole process, the body being brought to the banks, the family performing the purification rights, building the pyre, placing the body on the pyre, setting it alight, watching the fire turn everything to ashes, and then sweeping those ashes into the river before the next family start the process all over again...and it made my head reel. In one moment it makes death less scary, less isolated and lonely because there are people everywhere and I couldn't help thinking that when I die, I would much rather be surrounded by people shouting and crying and talking and living. But then in the next moment it brings death right to you, no niceties, no dressing it up as anything else, the family's grief is right in front of you, and there is no getting away from it, the seemingly peacefully sleeping old woman was a mother and a grandmother and a sister and a daughter and she had a life and now she is dead and now she is smoke and now she is ashes and now she is the river.