Floating corpses occupational hazard for Ganges boatmen
Ganges' holy waters are the most desired site for Hindu ashes, but cost-cutting and caste discrimination means many bodies are uncremated
One of the occupational hazards of being a boatman in the ancient Hindu holy city of Varanasi is dealing with undesirable objects bobbing in the water and nudging the sides of the boat. Sadly, they are corpses, to be precise.
That's when oars come in handy to push them away, and sailors hope the current in the River Ganges will take them off in another direction.
"I keep a constant lookout when I've got tourists with me. The last thing I want is to upset them with a bloated body floating towards them," said boatman Virender Nishad.
Like other Indians, he has been reading about the mysterious appearance of bodies found floating in a tributary of the Ganges, the nation's holiest river, near Lucknow last week.
Local police were astonished at the number - first scores, then more than 50 and finally around 102 badly decomposed bodies were washed up near Pariyar village. The congregation of dogs and vultures alerted villagers.
For Nishad, the number is not high. He estimates that more than 50 uncremated bodies are immersed in the Ganges at Varanasi alone every day.
Although he is a low-caste boatman, his family has been in Varanasi for generations and he knows all about Hindu death traditions. The first is that Hindus want to be cremated on the banks of the Ganges and have their ashes immersed in its waters to liberate their soul from the cycle of rebirth.