When The Road Ends

Images of this story are being shot on Burning Ghat of Varanasi. This ghat is called the Manikarnika Ghat. People from all over India come to Varanasi to cremate their dead on Manikarnika Ghat. It is believed by the Hindus that cremation on Manikarnika Ghat gives the human soul liberation from the continuous cycles of birth and death. Pyres are being lit here continuously, without once getting extinguished for the last 3000 years. On Manikarnika Ghat, one comes face to face with death in all its raw and naked starkness.
Death has always fascinated me along with the myriad unsolved questions and the mystery that surrounds it. I have raised questions about it time and again when in the company of mystics, researching through books, and findings of science. I have finally come to an understanding that life (Consciousness) is indestructible, though there comes an end to the experiences undergone by it when it is in its finite mortal garb. Just as sound goes back into silence but never lost, also so the individual self or consciousness merges back into the fundamental ever flowing sea of Universal Consciousness, from which it may re-emerge once again at another time and at another place.