Under a thick cloud of fog and fumes, alongside a Ganga choked by tradition, religion and pollution, stands one of the world’s oldest constantly inhabited cities; Benares. It’s a place steeped in history, touts, karma cola (purchasable spiritualism) and ritual, where stepping out one’s door requires careful mental preparation. You’ll be pushed and pulled, hassled and groped and faced with a barrage of queries and offers. It’s hectic, at times overwhelming and at best, irritating as all hell, but it is survivable. And, though it may take some effort, once you see past the tourist crush, Varanasi has a grandeur, a constancy and spiritualism, which is as undeniable as the filth and the stench.

The history of Varanasi gives it a continuity with the past which is as bizarre as it is beautiful. The sight of a baby being woken and washed in the Ganga is a sight heavy with the strange knowledge that the child is a descendant of generations of individuals who were woken in the same way, individuals whose ashes now float in that same water. This knowledge and spiritualism is most prevalent at the city’s most confronting sight; the burning ghats.

Intensely intimate and undeniably awkward, the covered (or sometimes not) bodies being eaten by flames, as a mourning family watches on, is not a sight for the faint-hearted, nor those who find the cultural difference of watching a stranger’s funeral too bizarre. The experience for me was decidedly detached, something which I suspect was triggered by the rather emotional (and negative) responses of the people I was with. All were a few years my senior, yet few had experienced a relative’s death nor seen a dead body before. Beyond this, many also confessed to not having faced the eventuality of their own death and therefore felt forced and confronted by the sight. For myself, the bodies were merely shells which had once contained life, which experienced nothing now. I thought the reality of seeing the dead body necessary for the mourning process and the choice of fire rather than interment a personal one. I foolishly recall being proud of my calm, seemingly mature reaction.

Returning happily to Shivpuri from Varanasi, and the food poisoning I’d acquired there,  the reality of death was once more present. With horror, Gracie and I learnt that one of our kindergarten students, a favourite of mine, had died of a fever the previous night. My calm processing of death was thrown out the window at the thought that a 4 year-old girl from a well-off family could die of such an easily prevented cause, purely because her access to suitable medical facilities  required an 8-hour inter-state drive. Far beyond being mature or even emotional, I went into complete denial, something I have yet to properly come out of. The idea that when, 3 weeks ago, I was playing with her at the kindergarten, lifting up her and her friends and giving them dizzy-wizzies until I declared I was exhausted and she, so adorably, stood before me with her hands out, informing everyone that I needed my rest, is the last time I’ll ever see her, is beyond comprehension. The thought that there will be no more early morning wake-up calls of ‘ex-scuuuuuuuuse mee!!’ when she would decide it was time for us to play with her, the thought that there will be no one to steal pappadams for her little brother by marching into the mess hall and hiding a handful in her hand bag…unthinkable. It’s undoubtedly been a damper on our placement and yet, even now, none of it seems real. I’m still in a dazed disbelief, a happy delusion that all is fine and well, punctured only by the occasional, painful reminder; her little brother playing by himself, the kindergarten playground, the sight of her shoes, sitting outside her house are all like a punch in the gut, a sudden, grounding moment when pretending is impossible. Death may be something we must all face and deal with in our own way but sometimes, it feels better not to. Is it so wrong to pretend?