Photo Essays
COVID19
2 MIN READ
As the second Covid-19 wave consumes the country, funeral pyres bear witness to the devastation wrought by the pandemic.
The banks of the Bagmati are lined with burning pyres.
At Pashupati, only one of its two electric crematoriums is currently functioning, burning about 17-18 bodies per day. Many still prefer the traditional wooden pyres to cremate the dead and as more and more people from Covid-19, these fires have been burning day and night.
“We are receiving almost three times the number of bodies before the second wave. Because there isn’t anything else we can do, we are forced to burn them on open land,” said Subash Karki, chief coordinator of the Pashupati crematorium, which is operated by the Pashupati Area Development Trust.
The Trust has set up 16 new platforms on the banks of the Bagmati and 35 in the open space inside the electric crematorium's compound to burn bodies.
It takes around 300 kgs of wood to cremate a body, costing a total sum of Rs 10,000 per cremation, a price that is almost double the cost of an electric cremation.
So far, Nepal has recorded a total of 6,153 Covid deaths since the country saw its first Covid-19 infection last year in March.
Deewash Shrestha Deewash Shrestha is a student of Media Studies and a freelancer He can be reached via email: deewash.shrestha@yahoo.com
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