Swimming in My Father’s Ashes

I guess you could call it a gut feeling: that sensation of hollowed-out selflessness that only comes when you’re bent over the toilet bowl violently releasing your life-force down the drain. And as you sit there, a crumbling husk of a human being, you may wish to contemplate – as I did – the idea of moksha.

In traditional Hinduism, moksha means release, or liberation from an endless cycle. For the spiritual seeker, moksha is the ultimate goal of consciousness. Then, when you finally pull the cord, the greyish water spinning around and around the bowl might help remind you that nothing lasts forever: that every human feeling, from agony to ecstasy, sooner or later gets wiped and flushed away.

*

I grew up with the idea of India as other kids grow up with teddy bears and comfort blankets. While they were being told bedtime stories of Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy, I grew up on tales of Kali’s bloodthirst and Krishna’s forgiveness; while they were watching cartoons and dreaming of Disneyland, I was having visions of the Hindu Kush and the snowy, white peaks of the Himalayas.

It’s not that my parents are Indian, or even Hindus. My father was a traveller, of the old-school, pre-internet, just-post-colonial style. He had the good fortune to see the world during that tiny window of freedom, just after WWII and just before the modern horrors of climate change, global instability and mass population displacement. He travelled extensively in the Middle East and Asia and, like many white Westerners in the 60s, he ended up having a spiritual awakening in India. 

On his eventual return, he brought back the gift of stories.

There’s an old joke about my father that I always tell when explaining his character: that he travelled for five years non-stop, and then spent the next fifty years in one place, talking about it.

So that’s how I grew up. And that’s why, many years later, when my father died, we decided to take his ashes back to India. To let him rest in the one place he’d felt most alive, in the waters of the sacred Ganga, holiest of Hindu rivers. 

It may have been the beginning of the final farewell to my father, but it was also – as he might have said, the start of a good story.

*

My first proper, real memory of India is the drive in from the airport. 

My budget flight spewed me out of the plane at around 4am, and my only route to town was a decidedly Mad Maxian night-bus that swerved its way into the highway like a drunken millipede. 

Despite the early hour, the road was near-frantic with cars, rickshaws and mopeds, all of which seemed to beep obsessively every time they passed each other. The Mad Max vibes reached a whole new level when I saw, looming out of the smog, a burned-out car. It lay in the middle of the road, blocking the highway like a giant twisted insect, still smouldering.

Assuming we were in for a long wait, I settled down in my seat for a much-needed snooze, but barely a moment later the old bus driver shook me awake with gestures toward the exit. The man proceeded to approach every male passenger – regardless of age or nationality, and with the same cheerful grin he coaxed us onto the pre-dawn road. It seemed he was bored of waiting for the tow-truck, and had decided to be the change he wanted to see in the world. 

I can still remember the heat of the blackened metal as I helped push the unwieldy carcass onto the hard shoulder. When it was done, we all back-slapped jubilantly and exchanged unintelligible cheers as, somewhere beyond the pollution, the sun began to rise.

The mood was clear: welcome to India. 

*

It turned out not to be the India I was expecting, nor the India I had dreamed about. 

After my mad night-bus experience, the adventure levelled out into something more recognisable. Via a three-hour taxi that beeped its way along busy mountain roads, I eventually reached my hostel in the late afternoon, in the holy city of Rishikesh, where we’d decided to scatter the ashes. 

Famous for being the yoga capital of the world, Rishikesh struck me very quickly as a city of contradictions. For example, one of the first things you notice is the excrement. It may not be in the guidebooks, but in Swargashram – the ashram part of town – it’s everywhere. 

Mostly it comes from the various animals who share the streets with the bustling crowds: monkeys, dogs, cats and, of course, sacred cows all roam completely free and unbothered. But some of it is undoubtedly human. Twice I spied figures squatting down in alleyways holding their shirts away from the ground as they relieved themselves. 

Don’t get me wrong, the city is absolutely stunning; full of a feeling of ritual and ceremony, and above all permeated by a sense of pure aliveness. But it’s also full of the messy things life leaves behind. 

Another example is the diet. Meat is strictly forbidden in the holy city, as are eggs and alcohol. No doubt this sounds like a dream if you’re vegan or vegetarian, and it was something mentioned over and over again by the fresh-faced, wide-eyed Western yogis I encountered. They spoke of the great health benefits, for spirit and mind, not to mention body, of this strict awareness of Mitahara – moderation of food, and Ahimsa – to do no harm to living things. 

But it was a few days into my stay, when chatting to a local who’d just sold me an armful of flowers – holy offerings for the river – that I learned the ban only extends to the city limits. My flower seller seemed amused at my naivety, and said meat and alcohol are readily available in the bars just outside the city. The road to Rishikesh is lined with restaurants, apparently, like sins on the path to salvation.

*

Despite these contradictions, or possibly because of them, Rishikesh is truly a magical place. It holds all of the wonder you would expect and some that you wouldn’t.

What I found most beautiful, and most confusing, were the gods. Hinduism has literally millions of them – as every major god has dozens, or even hundreds of aspects, and these aspects have a habit of evolving into one another, so it can be hard to keep track of who’s who. Nevertheless, a few key characters dominate. 

The three forms, or trimurti – to give it its Sanskrit name – refer to the balance held by Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva: Creator, Preserver and Destroyer respectively. These three gods, along with a few other players such as Kali, Hanuman, and Ganesh, are the ones most-often portrayed in statues and images – and they are portrayed a lot. So much so that it can feel like you’re never alone. Their sheer quantity inspires a strange feeling of company. Of presence. Even in an empty street.

One day, about a week into my stay, I got up before dawn and walked to the riverbank. Other than the ubiquitous holy cows, the town was completely deserted, but every nook and cranny was jam-packed with statues of gods of every size – some as big as elephants, others small as coins. And every wall and shop front held posters with images of Ganesh, Kali, Vishnu, all crowding together. No matter where I looked, the gods looked back. 

The effect could have been chilling, or overwhelming, but instead it felt graceful and somehow gentle. Even in the murderous gaze of Kali – red-tongued embodiment of rage itself – there was something reassuring. I had the feeling that I knew this person. That’d I’d met countless versions of them throughout my life.

In India, or in Rishikesh at least, there is a sense that the gods aren’t far away. Instead, they are right beside you, wading through the same messy streets and messy life. Their stories are full of flaws and mistakes which somehow complement their divine wisdom. My father used to say that the reason the Hindu gods have so many aspects is because every one represents another element of humanity. It’s taken me this long to realise what he meant by that: it’s not that the gods here are human-like, but rather that every human being has god-like potential. 

*

Three weeks in, it was almost time to leave. 

My family gathered on the stony shores of the Ganges to scatter the ashes. We’d all been experiencing India in our own way, and were in various states of reverence and exhaustion. My brothers had brought a huge basket of flower offerings and some incense to accompany the ashes. My sister was taking pictures of the evening light. I was eyeing the ground suspiciously for spent condoms. 

The night before I’d seen a bonfire on the beach, made by some Western yogis who were having a party (alcohol-free, no doubt), and the receptionist at my hostel said it was a damn bloody nuisance – he said those words exactly – damn bloody nuisance! Because every time the Western yogis had a party, they inevitably ended up having sex and the beach was becoming littered with condoms.

Thankfully our section of bank seemed sufficiently clean, and our little ceremony went without a hitch. Our father, who was like a river in life, forever moving and yet forever staying the same, sank fast into the muddy water. The ashes were heavy – like gravel, and we cheered as we tossed them in, celebrating another turn on the wheel. Another spin around the bowl of existence, heading toward moksha.

*

The day before I left, my receptionist offered to take me to a local bathing spot on the river as a special farewell to Rishikesh. Following his example, I stripped off and leaped headfirst into the Ganges.

The current was strong, and at first I swam hard against it. Then after a while I tired and dove under, letting myself drift as I stared up through the water. I thought of all the stories my father had told. Imagined them as streams of murky liquid, snaking around me. All the things he had done, adventures forgotten, remembered, and invented. The lies and the stories and the lives. I thought about the difference between those things. I wondered if every life was just a collection of stories, as every god was just a collection of aspects of humanity. A long minute passed, until I couldn’t hold it anymore. I came up coughing and spluttering. 

It wasn’t until the flight home that I realised the river – and in some small way, the remnants of my father’s ashes – had got into my body. I knew this because of the violent pain that suddenly gripped my guts. Hurrying to the tiny toilet, I experienced a bout of diarrhoea more intense than I could ever have imagined. 

It’s a funny thing, my memory of the nine hours I spent in-and-out of that aeroplane toilet is somehow more vivid and more emotional than the three weeks I spent in one of the holiest cities in the world. All I can say is that as I sat there – hour after hour, staring at the white walls of my plastic cell, miles above the earth – a strange calm descended. An acceptance. And gradually I made peace with that muddy river that flows through all us, like energy through a body, on its way to an inevitable release.

Cover by Yash Bhardwaj