 by Jennifer Nemo
Known as “Ganga Ma” (Mother of India) to Hindus, India’s Ganges River stretches 1,560 miles from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. Considered a holy waterway, it is believed to possess purification powers that cleanse the sins from both the living and the dead. Boston filmmaker Gayle Ferraro’s documentary, “Ganges: River to Heaven” (2003) provides an intimate portrait of one of India’s most long-honored religious Hindu traditions: to die in the city of Varanasi, on the banks of the sacred Ganges in the hope that dying there ensures them freedom from the bonds of earthly life.
 Varanasi
(roughly translated as “the column of light that illuminates”) is
regarded as one of India’s holiest places of pilgrimage and is visited
by millions of Hindus every year. A beautiful city located on the western banks
of the Ganges River, Varanasi is well known for its hundreds of “Ghats”—or
wooden step-like structures along the riverbank—where people come to bathe
regularly in the river’s sacred yet extremely polluted waters, only a
short distance from the public places where the dead are regularly cremated.
At the center of Ferraro’s film is the story of four families’ pilgrimages
to Varanasi—the Pandeys, Chobeys, Singhs and Sharmas. Each of the families
has traveled great distances with their elderly, dying mother or grandmother—the
sons often carrying their mothers on their backs for lack of motorized transportation.
Unlike the Western tradition of private funeral homes, death in India is a public
affair that lacks the fear and squeamishness often associated with death in
Western culture. Ferraro records scenes of children rummaging through ashes
for valuables left behind, while nearby the seriously devout cleanse themselves
in the somewhat ashy waters of the Ganges.
 Ferraro’s
film honors the Hindu traditional public cremation ceremonies, showing them
in their entirety: from the preparation stage where shrouded corpses are wrapped
in red and gold cloths, strung with tinsel, marigold garlands and scattered
spices, to the procession through the city streets, where the corpses are carried
on makeshift wooden stretchers by the “Chandal” or the city’s
outcasts, followed by the deceased’s family members chanting and praying
until they reach the public burning Ghats at the riverbank’s edge, to
a prepared funeral pyre. An average of 250 corpses are daily cremated at the
burning Ghats, tended to by “Dom Rajas” or “keepers of the
sacred fire”: men who are hired to ensure that the fire never extinguishes
during the ceremony. Once the cremation ceremony is complete, the deceased’s
remains are scattered into the wind or along the water, with the strongly held
belief that the soul is on its way to “Moksha” or Heaven.
The most popular hospice in Varanasi is Kashi Labh Mukti Bhawan, a family-owned
operation since 1958 that Ferraro explores in her film. Not a medical hospital,
the Bhawan hospice—like other hospices in the city—is conveniently
located near the public Ghats, to offer sanctuary for families while they wait
and pray in preparation for their dying loved ones. Clean, unfurnished rooms
are blessed daily with Ganges River water and are permeated by the sounds of
continuous prayer songs and chants from attending family members and the local,
professional holy men, who inhabit the hospice grounds for that purpose. We
hear the sons of the dying mothers worry about their lack of appetite, while
their wives and sisters spoon-feed them milk and water. Not allowed to attend
the public funerals or be interviewed on film, the wives and sisters allow their
caretaking behavior to speak for them.
 In
the Bhawan hospice’s small dark rooms, the four families wait to grant
their mothers’ last wish to achieve “Mukti” or freedom to
go to “Moksha” or Heaven. When that moment finally arrives for them
and one journey ends, others continue as Varanasi’s inhabitants go on
with their daily lives—praying for health, bathing themselves and their
children, coping with the squalor of the city streets and the constant stream
of tourists.
Ferraro’s film also addresses the struggle that exists for the Hindus
at Varanasi: The long held spiritual practices of bathing and cremation are
threatened by increasing pollution and overpopulation. With an estimated 60,000
people bathing in the water regularly, and a few hundred bodies cremated daily
along the five miles of riverbank, the Ganges River is lethally contaminated
with raw sewage released directly into the river, combined with the increasing
pollution from urban sprawl. Ferraro shows footage of engineers testing for
fecal chloroform and getting results that, by Western standards, pose a serious
health threat. As one scientist explains in the film, “With my rationally
trained mind, I know what is in the water … but as a committed believer,”
his hope for the future is that the threat of pollution will not alter the spiritual
code and practices that dictate the ancient Hindu tradition of cremation and
spiritual cleansing in the Ganges River.
Featuring beautiful cinematography of India’s landscape, an absence of
narration and extraordinary images of the ceremonies, rituals and daily life
in the city of Varanasi, Ferraro’s film “Ganges: River to Heaven”
offers a profound look at the evolution of a sacred river, now polluted from
decades of overuse and tourism, and poses the question of whether or not this
force of nature—once strong enough to carve through mountains and form
the foundation of a nation’s religion—can survive and provide for
future generations’ spiritual needs. ||
“Ganges: River to Heaven” opens at the Bell
Auditorium on Fri., Jan. 20. Director Gayle Ferraro will be present on opening
night. The film runs through Thu., Jan. 26 with showings at 7:15 and 9:15 p.m.
nightly. 10 Church St. in the Bell Museum of Natural History, Mpls. Call 612.331.3134
for more information.
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