The city of Varanasi – or Kashi, as its people know it – sits on a bend of the Ganga in India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Author Mark Twain described it to be older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and to look twice as old as all of them put together.
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You see what he meant in the city’s elaborate ghats; in the oil lamps, or diyas, that burn through the day and night in the city’s 3,600 temples; in the burning pyres on the riverbank; and the lingams (symbols of Lord Shiva) endlessly anointed with the same Ganga water, as though each day here were only a rehearsal of all the days that came before it.
Considered one of the holiest cities in the Hindu imagination, Varanasi is spirituality in its most raw, unvarnished form – loud, crowded, insistent. Believers and tourists alike arrive from across the world to touch its soil, to lower themselves into the Ganga in the hope of washing away their sins.
But the promise of the city doesn’t end with ritual bathing.
It carries a deeper lure: the belief that to die here is to be freed; unshackled from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth. Karma, the ledger of deeds, good or bad, is said to dissolve in the smoke of funeral pyres by the river.
In Varanasi, death is marked as salvation.
Anjani Mishra, 27, from Bareilly – a city almost 600km away – believes in this promise as much as his forefathers did. He has come with his 97-year-old grandmother, Sharda, who wishes to take her last breath here. “It is her wish to be free from the cycles of rebirth,” Anjani says. “And as children, it is our duty to fulfill that.”
His grandfather, too, died in Varanasi, in the same place: the death hostel Mukti Bhawan, whose name translates literally to “Salvation Home”. It’s a modest two-storey building that dates back to 1908 and was donated in 1958 for its current purpose.
Photos: Anuj Behal
Death as salvation and spectacle
Over the past decades, as the strange, persistent urge to die in Varanasi has grown, lodgings like this have sprung up to house those waiting for death – from Mukti Bhawan, the most well-known of them, to others such as Mumukshu Bhawan and the more recent KVD’s Mumukshu Bhawan, each catering in its own way to this final pilgrimage.
Anjani, who works as an academic coach, arrived at Mukti Bhawan with his parents, brother, a few clothes, some utensils, and his ailing grandmother. Sharda now lies on a narrow cot in one corner of the room; another cot, opposite hers, is used by the family. Theirs is one of 12 rooms here, all equipped with the bare minimum – a bed, a chair, a small window, nothing more.
Like its function, the house has rules that are unusual.
“Staying is free, but entry is only for those who are desperate to die,” says Krishnanand Dubey, one of the caretakers.
More than 15,000 people have died here, he notes. If a resident doesn’t pass within 15 days, the family is asked to leave. Only in cases of extreme sickness is an extension granted.
Krishnanand tells me that people travel to Mukti Bhawan from near and far. “We’ve even had guests from England, Europe and Mauritius who converted to Hinduism.” Even those without money or who have been rejected by hotels unwilling to host the dying can find a space here.
Near the doorway, a hand-painted board in Hindi lists the rules: only those who believe in salvation in Kashi may stay. Only Hindus are allowed. The sick cannot carry contagious diseases. If you are caught having sex or engaging in “sinful activities”, you will be asked to leave. Lodging is free, but there’s a small fee for electricity.
Photos: Anuj Behal
There is a strange nonchalance in these places, a silence that unsettles outsiders. For those who come from elsewhere, death is supposed to be grief, rupture, an unbearable absence. But here, it is something else entirely – a pursuit, almost, to be achieved in its fullest form.
Visitors who come from across the globe often describe being in Varanasi as a lesson, a masterclass in how death need not be mourned. “For people who come here, it offers a perspective on the cycle of life and death. We don’t want to deprive them of that by dismissing it as death voyeurism,” says Krishnanand.
Anjani and his family echo this sentiment.
When I spoke to them, they told me that the presence of visitors – often foreigners – didn’t feel like an intrusion, but instead made the slow march toward loss easier, even ordinary.
Strangely, in the city, and especially within the walls of Mukti Bhawan, the word death is rarely spoken. Instead, people call it mukti – salvation.
Death is ambient, like the sound of the chanted mantras echoing from the adjoining temple, occasionally breaking against the cries of pain from one of the rooms. Twice a day, the priest arrives with an earthen lamp filled with camphor, and chants prayers beside each person on their deathbed.
In this half-way house between life and afterlife, families carry on with their small routines. A stove and utensils are provided so they can cook simple meals as they wait.
For Anjani’s family, too, the rhythm of the days is steady, measured by the fragile breaths of Sharda, who lies on her cot in the corner, waiting for her salvation.
Families tend to help their loved ones die as if carrying out a ritual: fasting the body from food, offering only a sip of Ganga water. Over time, Sharda grows more lifeless; the family has begun to live inside the acceptance of her passing. They have already decided on the pyre they will use to cremate her body – Manikarnika Ghat, the city’s most sacred cremation ground along the Ganga.
Photos: Anuj Behal
At Manikarnika, the pyres burn without pause on piles of mango wood, flesh melting into smoke. For them, as for many, to die at Manikarnika is as central as belief itself.
In the hands of Shiva
Mukti Bhawan is not always full. Alongside Anjani’s family there was only one room occupied when I was there: a 40-year-old woman, battling breast cancer, who died during my visit. Her relatives – an extended, extravagant folding of mourners – declared the death as salvation and began the rites. She had been a patient at the Banaras Hindu University Hospital, a short distance away. When doctors said there was little left to be done, the family carried her from the hospital to the hostel to await the end.
Krishnanand explains the compact cosmology that drives such journeys: “If you die within Kashi’s special zone – roughly 4km from the old city – you attain mukti. Die outside it, and you may be reborn.”
That belief, he says, is why families will pull the very sick out of hospitals and bring them here: not merely to die, but to die in the right place.
The hostels, other than witnessing thousands of deaths, also have stories of people who came seeking their final moments and instead went on to live for years after leaving.
Harishchandra, 87, arrived at the city’s Mumukshu Bhawan last year after falling seriously ill with high fever and almost giving up on life. “I thought I wasn’t going to live anymore. I went there ready to die, but instead I recovered and came back to life,” he recalls.
Now, back in his hometown, Harishchandra says he has accepted that “if it is meant to happen in Kashi, it will happen there”. According to Krishnanand, such cases are common: “Many people wait here for weeks, only to pass away the very day they return home – or they end up living much longer.
“It’s all in the hands of Shiva. If he doesn’t will it, you could spend years in Kashi and still not die.”
