Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

Varanasi, Utar Pradesh, India. May 2017.

 

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Varanasi is a city devoted to death. Some see it as a hell on earth, complete with no-stop fires and trident carrying holy men. For others it is a place of salvation; it is the Hindu belief that if an individual dies in Varanasi they will automatically be released from the eternal wheel of life, karma and suffering. Bodies of the deceased are brought to Varanasi to be cremated for the same purpose.

The city sits on the banks of the Ganges river and it is into this holy watercourse that the remains of the deceased are released after cremation. Not everyone can afford the required wood so many are released only partly cremated or ot at all.

I’m more interested in the life of a place rather than the death that inhabits it so I took no photographs of the burning funeral pyres. I took no baths in the holy water either. Instead, my brother and I, took to the water with a local boatman. Sitting on a boat is a celebration of life for me while travelling. A chance to sit back rather than be swept up in the hecticness. A chance to take photographs, lots of photographs, while being able survey the scene and not be rushed.

I ignored the burnings going on on the bank and let them become a blurry background and focused on the living before me; the boatman. He is dressed only in white; the symbolic colour of mourning, peace, purity and knowledge. His face paint echoes this. All we asked of him was to row, row, row your boat.