Sandstone Press

Smoke signals by Stuart Campbell

Posted by RLD on 28th July 2010

Lothian buses are carrying advertisements for the two Edinburgh crematoria. Warriston or Mortonhall? It is a dilemma, they both look nice in the picture. On balance I think Warriston if only because I have a fond memory of Richard Holloway starting the service before my dead friend John had been brought in.

I had misgivings about visiting Pashupata, the sacred Hindu cremation site in Katmandu, but had been intrigued by the smoke rising gently from the riverbank throughout the day. I wished neither to intrude in private grief nor be a vicarious guest at a human barbeque. The car park was overflowing with ancient coaches, torn curtains fluttering from open windows. Most would have been hastily hired almost before granny was cold, to meet the aspirational deadline of a cremation within twenty four hours of death, quickly packed with relatives, rice and water, with the old dear in the boot.

In the village monkeys ignored the babies leached to their underneaths and picked fleas off each other while the dogs slept. The only discordant note was the Mother Teresa complex which had muscled its way between the pagodas and temples. No show without Punch. The mad old bat was not going to be upstaged by Buddhists and Hindus. The sectarian perspective is mine and not one shared by the shaven headed monks and the rope haired sadus whose huts clustered next to each other on the sides of the gorge, and who ministered to both the living and the dead.

We looked over a low wall with a degree of trepidation. There were four or five smoking pyres. The attendants provoked the last sparks from the charred logs and pushed them into the river beneath us. A hip replacement had obstinately refused to burn.

These particular platforms were reserved for ordinary folk, a little further up the river was the site for more important people such as politicians. I could see the idea catching on alongside the Thames at Westminster. At the top was the platform reserved for royalty. The fires would have burned through the night after the disgraced King of Nepal embarked on his own Shakespearian killing spree and slaughtered his entire family on a jealous whim.

Alongside one of the platforms relatives sat chatting and joking as smoke trickled from the last embers. Just within view was a trolley heaped high with impossibly yellow flowers; waiting its turn.

A bed was just visible through the open hospice door yards from the river. A life was ebbing away. Further up the river a queue of small boys leaped excitedly from the bridge into the water.

I have always seen William Dunbar’s Lament for the Makaris as my chosen statement on the subject of death. With him I accept that ‘Our pleasance heir is all vane glory, This false warld is bot transitory’ and that ‘On to the ded goes all estatis, Princes, prelotis, and pottestatis, Baith riche and pur of al degre.’

With Dunbar I too have shuddered at the final underpinning refrain ‘Timor mortis conturbat me.’

No more. Pashupata was a transformational experience. When the time comes, throw open the doors, let in the fresh air and the sight of the mountains, let the waters flow fast, let me hear the children laugh, and smell the smoke.