And they all come to die - Short Story

 

Every morning, before the sun burns the mist off the Ganges, the city wakes. Bells ring. Boats slide across the river like tired prayers. Somewhere, a corpse burns. Somewhere else, a child laughs. Varanasi does not lower its voice for death. They come to die in Varanasi. They do not arrive by accident, the river calls them long before their bodies fail. Some hear it as faith. Some fear. Most only hear it when there is nothing left to hold them where they are.

 

I unlocked the wooden gate of Paradise Lodge. The building is old and a coat of paint was long overdue. Inside, the air smells of incense, damp walls, and something else people don’t talk about: the lingering smell of death.

Most people arrive carrying more than luggage. They bring unfinished lives, heavy with karma. They come seeking Moksha….that quintessential release from the eternal cycle of life & death.

 

The way they step into the room tells me everything - whether they are still bargaining with time, or whether they have already begun to loosen their grip on it. Suitcases are placed carefully, as if they may take it back. Eyes search the walls, the window, the river beyond, looking for instructions, but none to be found, just the blankness of the old walls... death comes without any instructions.

 

“Namaste, Deb bhaiya,” says Radha, handing me a steel tumbler of tea. She has been here longer than me. Longer than most residents survive.

“Who’s new?” I ask.

She nods toward Room Seven. The man is foreign. They often are. White hair, eyes too alert, as if he suspects death is hiding somewhere in the room. His breathing sounds like cloth tearing.

“He came last night from Germany.”

I smile. “Germany? That makes twenty-three countries this year.”

In Room Seven, the man lies stiff as if already practicing. White hair, skin like crumpled paper. His daughter sits beside him, eyes swollen, holding his hand as though it might drift away.

“Good morning,” I say softly.

He opens his eyes. Blue, Clear, too alive for a dying man.

You are…?” he asks.

“Debabratha" I said with a bit of self-pride. “I look after things here.”

He chuckles. “Ah. A caretaker of endings?” … I’ve heard worse.

“You have come to be free?” I asked him.

“Free of what?” he asks.

I do not answer. In life or in his case death, some things are better unanswered.

His name is Fredrich. He tells me this in broken English while I help him sit up. He came because someone once told him that dying in Varanasi breaks the cycle - that here, death is not a full stop but a door left ajar.

“Do you believe that?” he asks.

“I believe,” I say, “that people die better when they believe something.”

At noon, I take Fred to the Ghat in a wheelchair. His daughter pushes from behind. The steps are crowded - priests chanting, tourists clicking, dogs sleeping through it all.

Fred watches the flames across the river.

“So many fires,” he whispers.

“Yes,” I say. “And still, the river keeps flowing.”

“Why here?” he asks me, voice thin as thread.

“Because here,” I say, “death is not an interruption. That is the purpose.”

He laughs weakly. “That is a terrible thing to build a city around.”

“Yes,” I agree. “And a very honest one too.”

He smiles at that. Later, when the pain comes, Radha brings medicine. When fear comes, I sit. When silence comes, we let it stay.

That night, Fred calls me close.

“Deb,” he says, his breath shallow now, “will you stay?”

“I’m here,” I said.

His daughter is crying quietly. Fred looks at her, then at me.

“Funny,” he murmurs. “I travelled halfway across the world… and in the end, I have lost my fear.

When the moment comes, it is quiet. No thunder. No light. Just a soft loosening, like a knot giving up. His eyes fixed on something behind me - something I cannot see and do not try to. When his body weakens, I whisper the name of Shiva into his ear. Not because he believes - but because the sound knows what to do. Sound is older than belief.

He exhales…. does not inhale again.

The room goes very still. Outside, someone lights another incense stick.

I have learned that death is not dramatic. It is administrative. The body completes its paperwork quietly. Breath signs its last document. The room does not change - only the weight in it does.

Once, a young man whispered, “Am I late?”

“No,” I said, with the weight of my profound knowledge “You are exactly on time.”

He smiled, as if timing had been his only worry.

By morning, Room Seven is empty. Radha scrubs the floor. The bed will soon belong to someone else, someone perhaps, from another country. They all come…..

As I lock the gate that evening, a tourist stops me.

“Excuse me,” he says. “Why do people come here to die?”

People ask why souls come to Varanasi to die. They think this city offers escape. They are wrong. Varanasi offers no escape at all, in this city, death is not treated like a stranger, a place where death is so familiar, that it finally stops pretending to be merciful.

They come because this is a place where death is not an interruption - it is the exhaustion of Karma itself. And here, at last, the living have no choice, but to let go.

I turn back inside, where another bed waits. Because in Varanasi, people don’t come to die. They come to be taken care of….right till the end, with no new beginning.

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