A Pornography of Death, The Prestige

A Pornography of Death,  The Prestige


Pornography, to write about prostitutes, originally from the Ancient Greek porne (prositute) + graphein (to write); compare hagiography, to write about the holy, or hagios.

 From Christopher Nolan’s movie, The Prestige, about rivaling illusionists, we learn that a proper illusion has three elements: the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige.

The Pledge shows us something ordinary, a small bird for example. The Turn, likewise, makes the Pledge disappear. However, the true stamp of an illusion is the Prestige, in which the Pledge is brought back, but with a twist, something better, a bigger bird.

Mãyã, in Sanskrit, means “illusion” or “magic.” It is neither good, nor evil, neither black, nor white magic, but merely just an illusion. The Buddha taught that life and reality is just such an illusion, the product of Queen Mãyã’s sleight of hand. Much like the Faerie Queen Mab that haunts the dreams of Romeo’s star-crossed mind, deluding him of reason and rhyme, Mãyã weaves a web of illusion across our world-weary lids, causing us to believe in a world that doesn’t really exist.

Varanasi is the city where people come to die. It is the city of prostituting Death and proffering lies.

Varanasi is the city of illusions dispelled. It is the City of the Dead.

The Pledge was shown to me this morning. A confounded trip along the Ganges, sparking annoyance in me, bringing to question, “have I really even learned anything this entire trip?”

The Turn made India disappear from my eyes when I went to the  Varanasi Mall next door to my hotel. Suddenly, before my eyes, I was back to the “reality” of shopping malls and McDonald’s. I had been filtered through the masses at the Taj Mahal, and now, the Turn had made it all disappear. “My India” as my friend said, was over, and I was missing it. Indeed, but, it wasn’t.

Like a frustrated John, I went back to my pimp, demanding satisfaction. I went out to the waiting rickshaws in front of the hotel, and having argued with a group of them who were all pushing and shoving each other to get my fare, I settled on an honest-looking man with bloodshot eyes and a bit of a turban.

“Why are you going to the Ganges now?”

“For the Pooja.”

“You want to go on the boat again?”

“I’m not sure,” I hesitated, remembering the morning, and I wasn’t sure.

After meandering through an inexhaustible tangle of traffic, my driver took me then through what was the most intricate labyrinth of backstreets I have ever seen in any city. Rickshaws are not allowed to go up to the main ghats where the Pooja is being performed, but he knew a secret passage. We went through the thickest of the thick part of old town. This was not the tourist way to say the least. For a moment, the paranoia set in that I was going to be taken to a backstreet and robbed of what little I had and my camera. I felt a bit uneasy, feeling less like a seasoned traveler and more like a nervous tourist, but it soon passed.

We pulled over and he said, “Follow me,” and off he went like the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole of even more labyrinthine walkways, his mock turban my only marker of him in the crowd, trying to keep pace with his incredible fleet feet. Then, suddenly, we walked out onto the Kedar Ghat, which is next to the “holy man” academy that I had seen earlier and the state-run crematorium.

The sun had set by now, and the river seemed empty, devoid of the thousands of boats from the morning. I was a bit confused.

He summoned a young man from the bottom of the ghat to come up. He asked if I wanted to go on the boat.

“How much?” I asked quite briskly.

“You come down, I show you, tell you the price on the boat.”

“I’m not stepping on the boat til you give me a price.”

I think it was apparent from my tone, this was not bargaining time.

“Six hundred.”

“O.K.”

My rickshaw driver said he would wait for the two hours on the ghat and take me back. I agreed.

The middleman passed me over to my ferryman. A tall, gaunt man of about my age, probably younger, though aged harder by life, features carved from his face with a silent expression of having seen life from a different angle than I could ever imagine. Crimson and white paste on his forehead, suggesting his caste, mostly likely quite low.

For the next two hours, every sense of orientation about what I had seen and experienced from the morning was transformed into an alternate universe. The Prestige.

It had all been given back, India in her most bizarre, most challenging, most magical, most haunting, most elusive and illusive.

To experience India at the fullest is likened I image to having your skull cut open under local anesthesia and every pre-conceived idea or concept that you ever had about what is possible, plausible, practical, or potential is scraped cleanly out of your mind, your brain replaced, emptied, and your skull screwed back on. Something like that.

For the evening ride, going upstream past the smaller crematorium, we were nearly alone on the pitch black Ganges, the only light was the burning of the funeral pyres.

“One hundred bodies each hour. Small child, no pyre. Poor, no pyre. A “no-touch,” no pyre. All day, all night.”

We sat there bobbing on the water, the chugging of a diesel engine in the background from a dredging pump. What had disgusted me this morning about watching Death as a spectacle suddenly changed quite dramatically. I watched as one body after another was brought down the ghat and placed on a fire in turn.

We then headed downstream.

Approaching the Dasaswamedh (ten-horse sacrifice) Ghat, which is the main one, was a spectacle that I cannot begin to describe, the Pooja. But, we passed on by, for now.

We went down to the other crematorium, the one where people pay privately. Here, the corpses are brought down wrapped in gilded garments and swathed in white. The undertaker undresses the garments and carefully the body is placed upon the pyre. Many people are around the pyre, chanting, but not crying. I hear someone in a boat near ours explaining that this is seen as Moksha, or release. It is not a Time of sadness, but of joy. A celebration of Life, not mourning for Death.

When the body has been burned, the undertaker takes the skull from the ashes and breaks it open, releasing the Soul. The ashes are left, and the family and friends turn their backs to the Ashes. The ashes don’t matter, they are the past. The Soul has been released.

“The city will sweep away all of the ashes in the morning...” Meanwhile, monkeys and stray dogs are scampering around the various piles of ashes.

We then head back upstream, back to the ongoing Pooja.

In an incredible display of lights, music, and incense, the final Pooja of Diwali takes place. It is a full-on celebration of Life. It is mesmerizing, beautiful, and pure serenity. We sit for about a half an hour with the other boats, nearly all of them filled with Indians and very few tourists. The exact opposite of this mornings macabre fleet of spectators.

As the Pooja festival winds down, we head back upstream to the Kedar Ghat, where my driver is waiting.

My personal Charon docks the dinghy and disappears into the shadows after I have paid him. I go back up to the maze of backstreets with my driver, whose name I still don’t know. He smiles back at me with bettel-stained teeth and bids me to follow.

We get back to the rickshaw and in another serpentine ride, we manage our way back to a restaurant I found out about yesterday. I ask him to drop me off there and we agree that he will take me to Sarnath tomorrow. He does not ask for the 300 rupees tonight for the 4 hours he spent with me as a promise that he will show up in the morning. I bid him farewell, still not knowing his name.

Tomorrow, I go to Sarnath, to Vulture Peak, where the Buddha began to teach, having won out over the battle against Mãyã, realizing that all that we have taken for granted, all that we thought we knew, all that has been Pledged to us as reality, can be taken from us in a flash, stripping us of any remaining vestiges of preconditioned thought, Turning into Ashes, revealing the Prestige of Life in the indifferent face of Death.