The Living and the Dead

Between fire and water, body and smoke, ending and return.

After the death of my father, I found myself in unfamiliar terrain — it was a space filled not only with loss, but also with silence. In the West, death is sterilised, hidden behind hospital curtains, funeral home walls, and euphemisms. It is something to be feared, ignored, or managed discreetly. But grief, I soon discovered, has no interest in discretion. It led me to question how other cultures approach death — not as an end to be hidden, but as a moment of meaning, a rite of passage, a continuation….

My search took me to two places where death is not banished from view, but lived alongside the living: Varanasi, in India, and Tana Toraja, in Indonesia.

In Varanasi, also known as Kashi — the City of Light — the dead are not hidden. They are carried through ancient alleyways on bamboo stretchers, wrapped in saffron cloth, accompanied by chants and fire.

At Manikarnika Ghat, the most sacred of cremation grounds on the banks of the Ganges, bodies are bathed in holy water, then placed on wooden pyres.

A flame said to have burned for over 3,000 years is passed from family to firewood. In a matter of minutes, flesh turns to ash, and the soul — it is believed — is freed from the cycle of reincarnation, granted moksha, liberation.

I watched the rituals in silence, my senses overwhelmed by the heat, the smoke, the smell of burning wood and flesh, the relentless rhythm of the pyres. In a place filled with fire and death, I felt strangely alive. The public nature of grief here, the way death is accepted and honoured rather than hidden, was both shocking and comforting.