Searching for a boat and helmsman, we accidentally wander into one of Delhi’s crematoria. In the city every day, there are between 600 and 900 cremations. Two of the grounds that serve this demand stand here: the ‘electric’ crematorium, and Raj Ghat, which uses wood. Looking for the river, we stumble across its gate, where street wallahs are selling bundles of firewood to the poorer tribute-makers. In a small stone hut resembling an Auschwitz gas chamber, the ordinary people of Delhi bring their dead to be burned using Compressed Natural Gas, or CNG, the fuel that auto-rickshaws are run on. It’s also used to burn stray dogs. For the production of cremains, 500 rupees (£6) changes hands. It’s above the heads of most people. The other option, and a popular one, is just to dump bodies in the river. This must be done under cover of darkness.
Moving swiftly past the CNG chamber, we come to the last destination for Delhi’s well-to-do. In carefully sequenced plots, bonfires in various states of combustion flame and smolder; it takes some ten hours for the average body to burn and some of the fires, if you look closely inside the sticks, are yet to consume the bundles inside. Beside others are the charred remains of marigold garlands. Men stack wood on top of plots, waiting for the next bodies to arrive. We shouldn’t be here. But we are fascinated, floating through the scene, guided by perverse curiosity. We just cannot leave. We walk up and down the concrete ramps between fires, through the stench of burning wood and human flesh.
Behind us, an ambulance pulls up to the gates and from its back doors. Men hoist up a stretcher, upon which lies a body, swaddled in embroidered linen. It is covered with garlands of bright orange marigolds. The women remain outside the gates as the men begin to chant prayers and follow the procession up the concrete ramp and past the burning bonfires on either side. They pass the three of us as we stand and stare, and for the first time in India I feel invisible, as if I am a ghost at a funeral. They hoist the body up to a chlorinated pool which looks like a kind of morbid water-park feature: a garishly-painted statue of Indra, the manager of heaven, overlooks a platform set on the water. The long bundle is laid on top of it. More prayers are said in Hindi, the body is doused, and brought down to the river. Here, again, are more bonfires, and hundreds of men looking out across them. These bonfires are covered with canopies made of coloured foil and sticks, which partially burn along with the fires. Older boys are hoeing the riverbed, setting up and putting out fires, removing piles of ash. No one has said anything about there being a white woman in the presence of men, because no one has noticed. There is a silence here which is indescribable.
Eventually we feel uncomfortable enough to leave, and persuade a young Indian man to take us out in a boat down the river. Nitin wants to take some pictures of the Yamuna River for his project.
So here we are, on one of the most polluted rivers in the world, a river in which New Delhi dumps 57% of its daily waste. We are rowing through the dead body soup. From the other side of the river, the masses of men are obscured by the smoke, and the place looks like a factory. A couple of hundred yards further down the river, there are people picking among the rubbish dunes. Piles of garbage are everywhere, and birds circle overhead. Somewhere, a group of children are hoeing in the mud near their hut – they’re trying to make some home improvements. In front of them, men are defecating in the water. The air smells of shit and burning human flesh. Above us towers a monstrous concrete flyover. In the water around and on the banks of the river are scattered pieces of Diwali detritus: incense boxes, tinsel, marigolds, cigarette packets, plastic casts of Laskshmi, empty crisp packets. They float on the surface of the water like sparkly algae and cover the ground in a garish, half-rotten carpet. There are literally islands made of the stuff, and we float through them in our smelly lagoon.
“This is religious pollution,” says Alex. And he’s right, there’s sacred tat everywhere, just thrown into the river. And bodies, too are just that: sacred to be used and thrown away, because the party is over, and another one’s about to start.
It’s not that Indians have no respect for human life, as some have said. It’s that they have no fear of the dead. They can be dumped in water, burned by taxi fuel, or charred in open air, in front of all, before being floated out on the river covered in fancy aluminium foil. The party is over, after all. Why mourn it for so long - their next one might be even better.
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