Somewhere near the gas and brake pedals of this three-wheeled hybrid of a car and a motorcycle, which in Asia are called “tuk-tuk”, there was a cable with a grip, something like a cutter motor. The driver began with a force to pull the cable over himself, holding onto the grip. Energetic movements of the hand turned back into the turn of the body. In response, the engine responded only confused rumbling, which immediately fell silent. Finally, attempts from the eighth, the engine managed to start: there was already a more rhythmic rattling, and a cloud of black smoke enveloped the car, which, apparently, pulled the pipe out of itself.
Having made a dashing reversal of 180, the knock-knock with a roar and swaying began to cross the oncoming line. He abruptly maneuvered between cars, motorcycles, bicycles, people and cows sleeping on the road until he drove into his lane. Attempts to discern some sort of order and logic in all of this transport movement were unsuccessful. Cars were emerging from the most unpredictable places: here between two houses that, at first glance, were tightly attached to each other, the yellow nose of the same three-wheeled taxi seemed, which threatened to leave at any moment and substitute its side for a deadly collision ...
But the driver skillfully toured every obstacle, never ceasing to signal with each maneuver. The car, bouncing on potholes, rushed along a narrow street, crowded with people, cars and animals. Sometimes it seemed that the movement of a taxi experienced a great resistance of the environment, as if it were driving under water, so thick was the air, which contained a large concentration of moisture, heat, odors of sweat, spices, sewage and thousands more unknown flavors!
There were no doors in the tuk-tuk, and the air freely penetrated the space between the back seat and the cabin roof, where the passenger usually sat and where the Driver sometimes looked in through his mirror. But nothing saved from the omnipresent, damp, sultry, musty heat, which squeezed out drops of sweat from the dark naked backs of Indians, dragging large, human-sized bundles on their shoulders, a bundle strewn with flowers.
The funeral procession moved right along the road in a cloud of incense. While the car was traveling, several more such processions could be observed.
Somewhere in the distance, there was a muffled mutter, some familiar words, difficult to make out ...
"This city does not forget about death!" - the driver has filtered through wet cough. He cleared his throat with a loud sound and spat out a piece of red sputum on the dirty asphalt:
"The funeral pyres never go out, and the smoke from them leaks even into the houses! Brahmins utter sacred mantras for the departed constantly, and countless funeral processions create congestion on the roads. They come to die here on the banks of the River. ash. Some tourists have a depressing effect. After returning home, they promise themselves never to come again to this terrible place. And, having recovered from the shock, they return to their business: to work, to family, to entertainment. "
The driver was silent, since he no longer had the strength to shout down the stunning bibic on all sides. The river was a few kilometers away, but it seemed that its invisible presence was already felt here.
The tuk-tuk stopped at an intersection where there was no police traffic controller. He, apparently, left his post quite recently. And, naturally, chaos was formed: everyone wanted to drive forward, but intersecting traffic did not allow this.
Despite this mess, none of the participants in the traffic jam showed irritation or impatience. Drivers quietly pressed on their klaxons, as if they were paying tribute to a certain tradition, and didn’t try to influence the situation by any special road ritual.
To the right of the intersection, on a small concrete island of the parking lot, there were several tuk-tuk, whose owners lazily dozed in the back seats, shrouded in heat. Seeing what was happening on the road, they got up and headed towards the intersection. And, having appeared there, they began to wave with their hands, pointing the direction to the cars, like the most real traffic controller!
And their initiative bore fruit: in less than five minutes, as the cork had resolved, shops, street cafes, hairdressers, temples again began to rush past.
"You saw how? That's why I love India! Despite the Indians' pathological laziness, they are always ready to come to the rescue," the Driver shouted.
A minute later the noise passed and he could already speak without raising his voice:
"There are people who come back to this city again and again! Why? Who knows? Someone just loves to experience shock and strong emotions. Others see this as a sacred pilgrimage. But for some, seeing the spirit of death cleanses the soul. And these people , once having visited the burning banks, will never be the same again. You cannot go to the River twice, not because the River is changing, but because a person who has visited these places becomes another, you cannot hide from death, everything is in front of her equal, it will overtake the rich and the poor, smart and stupid, people the achievements and the government and people without it. Every second of our lives, we are going to our final milestone. "
Unclear monotonous mumbling intensified. It was difficult to determine its source. It seemed to come from everywhere.
Another funeral procession swept past. The driver, without stopping the movement and maneuvering, watched the body decorated with flowers, wrapped in bright fabric, and continued:
"And it would be all right if we all died in old age, living out the deadline measured by our health. But our life depends on many and many coincidences! Her, along with all your thoughts, dreams, plans, affections, love, can be cut off by an unlucky driver, who didn’t get enough sleep the night before and fell asleep at the wheel. Do you have any idea how many strangers we have to trust our lives every day: policemen, drivers, doctors, pilots, guards, and even cooks! And not only people! an animal, be it the size of a bull or less than a pinhead, for example, a virus. And your body! While nothing happens to you, it seems pretty durable to you, but if a car enters it at a speed of 60 kilometers per hour, then it's the end! "
The driver made the last statement with gestures: he looked up from the steering wheel, turned back, spread his hands and hit his fist into the open palm of his other hand, which made her close. The wheel during this presentation chaotically dangled, because the asphalt was very uneven. Suddenly, the car, sharply rocking from the fact that the wheel found on the stone, began to rush toward the dumpster (probably the only one in this city, because the local population is used to putting garbage right under their feet). The driver, noticing quickly grabbed the steering wheel, twisted it to the left and returned to the previous course, preventing a collision.
“You see!” He said, “How everything happens! Our life is, first, finite, and second, very fragile. And if a person has at least a grain of wisdom, then communication with this city of death fills him with this truth!” He starts to value life more when he sees how the River takes body behind body, body after body ... Not everyone has so much time left and it’s not known how much is left: 60 years, one year or ten minutes! The moments of life are like grains of sand, every fraction of a second fall into oblivion: each such moment is unique, it cannot be returned, they should be enjoyed sya! And if a person already has two sand grains of wisdom, then he shows this knowledge in practice and stops wasting precious minutes on all nonsense, he begins to live! And he does what is important! What is important? Two liters of gasoline! "
The last words were addressed to the gas station worker, who sat with a bored look on a plastic chair next to the column. Exactly with the same bored look, he began to pour gasoline into the tank of the tuk-tuk. A sudden stop forced the driver to stop his monologue. He went out and, spitting on the ground, began to knead his sore members: and it became clear that his light gray uniform was small to him. And, it seems, it has not been erased for a long time.
After some time, the car moved again. The river was getting closer and this feeling of water, which, without stopping, accepts the dead, spread everywhere. They were saturated with trees along the road, dilapidated houses and narrow, dark streets that slowly began to descend into the water.
Soon a taxi chugged up onto the bridge and then, finally, the River appeared! She was wide enough. Below, the remnants of logs and algae rushed, which were picked up by the fast current. This is the great and terrible River, the sacred, fertile River, the terrible and beautiful River, whose water washes away all sins! Now under the monolithic gray midday sky, she looked quite normal. True, the descents along the water, the descents of the ghats with sharp turrets of temples, the kites soaring above them and, of course, the cremation fires, created a special and unique flavor.
The opposite shore was not visible at all because of some very dense haze, not even haze, but a veil of darkness that absorbed all the light. It was difficult to say what kind of climate phenomenon.
Mysterious muttering approached with each kilometer, now it was possible to distinguish individual words. It was a dead language, which immediately interrupted the voice of the driver.
The first sentence, as usual, was filtered through the sputum accumulated in the throat:
“People spend most of their lives on nonsense!” Cleared his throat, “get a job, save money, watch stupid films,” he spat, “their thoughts do not go beyond their own stomachs and genitals. They live like they never die” , as if you can spend precious life on it all. And many of them are afraid of life at all, try to run away from it, get drunk and forget.They treat life not as the greatest gift in the world, but as a heavy burden, time you need to fill with all sorts of nonsense, if only life about followed these occupations unobtrusively and quickly! What is this mass insanity! Why do people filter their moments of life through their fingers, like grains of sand in the River?
After all, the most important thing is not respect, power, money and fame. The best things that we can get in this life are love, harmony, this merging with the world and nature, this is the everlasting peace and happiness, standing on the other side of all earthly pleasures, this dissolving of myself in the whole universe, in God, if please! This is what Hindus call Brahman, Buddhists - Buddha nature, Taoists - Tao, Christians - Love or God. And in order to realize this divine nature in us, which is in each of us, it is not necessary to become a hermit and a yogi. God spreads all around and inside, it touches all aspects of being, being is God, and there is nothing in being that is not God. He is in us, and we are in Him. God does not live somewhere far away. He has no special place in space. But he has a place in time. His divine throne is elevated in the moment here and now!
Therefore, we devote this life to achieve this moment. After all, there is nothing more important! Nothing but this in life will bring so much peace and joy! And I'm talking about life, not death. Everyone has a chance to find God here before the fire of the city of the dead consumes him! And what about death? This is a secret to me. I just bring people to the point of departure, that's all. I was not on the other side of the River, and none of the living knows what is on the other side, how dark it is! But if there is something there, then we will not be able to take back our favorite car or "precious" work, our beautiful home and charming wife. I believe that there we will take only the sum of our good deeds, the results of spiritual work accumulated in prayers, fasting, contemplation, meditation, yogic exercises, good deeds and thoughts. And nothing more! And why can't you spend even a small part of your life on spiritual work? After all, life is so short, and behind it we are waiting for eternity ... "
The car slowed down at the huge stone steps, descending to the water, on the surface of which flowers were floating in the mix with trash. Tourists were not here. Around here and there lay large bundles of firewood prepared in advance. Between them, porters bustled about in dirty shawls wrapped around their heads, blackened with soot.
"That's all, come. I hope your life is not as meaningless as the lives of billions of people pass by. Well! Happily on the other bank."
After these words of the Driver, the car was shrouded in black smoke, but it was no longer coming from the tuk-tuk smoke pipe. He was born by fire, which gradually absorbed the human body lying on the logs near the water.
Next to the dead man, swaying steadily, as if in a trance, stood a brahmin. His brown torso was covered with ash, his pupils rolled under eyebrows, exposing the whites of his eyes. His mouth moved in sync with this strange murmur that was heard all the way and which has become deafening now. But it seemed that it did not come from the priest at all. It spread everywhere, and even the air and the surrounding space vibrated in time with it. These were mantras in a dead language meant for the dead.
The body of the dead man quickly burned down, after which the ashes were lowered into the River. Porters shouted: "The next!"
A few moments passed. And everything stopped. Every movement stopped. There were only burning logs below, and above there were black smoke and flames devouring every piece of gray sky. The darkness from that shore was already here, it was gathering around more and more densely and more densely, but the sacred mantras seemed not to allow her to close completely.
Already it was impossible to say that someone had uttered them, since they no longer rattled at the level of the human ear. And there was no hearing, no sight, no touch. There was only pure, united, good, being without any division and contradiction of being, into the inseparable fabric of which these vibrations were woven. It has always been here, always there and will be: unchanging and eternal, never ceasing for a moment! What then was human life? And was she at all?
Following! - the porters shouted after the ashes were swallowed up by the dark, barely waving waters of the Ganges, the sacred river carrying its gray waters through sacred Varanasi, a city in which funeral pyres never go out ...
