Nepal In Pictures
Part Two: Matters Of Life And Death
Water cleanses. It purifies. Water supports life. It is a mother. Water is sacred to many Hindus, especially when it flows in a river like the Bagmati. Pashupatinath is the most holiest temple in Nepal. Even Indian devotees don't regard their pilgrimage as complete without a visit to Pashupatinath.
Since living is so interesting and colourful in Nepal, dying cannot be without ceremony too. Here, we see a corpse wrapped in yellow cloth, taking its last bath. The feet are immersed into the holy water of the river to prevent the soul of escaping through the feet and reincarnating into a lower form of life.
The body is then placed on the funeral pyre, unwrapped and then cremated. A pile of grey ash and some pungent gases - that's what we are made of really. When the flames have finally consumed the body, the ashes are swept into the river. Another death, another birth. Such is the endless cycle of birth and death.
A sadhu is a Hindu holy man who has abandoned his caste and all non-essential possessions like his bath towel. He believes that through asceticism, he can liberate his soul from samsara. This philosophy, as old as Hinduism itself, must have captured the hearts and minds of many souless youths living in the 1960s.
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