The fires that keep burning

Deewash Shrestha, May 23, 2021, Kathmandu

The fires that keep burning

The banks of the Bagmati are lined with burning pyres.

A man in protective gear readies wood for a pyre for a Covid-19 casualty.

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.

Across a wall of thin rails, families say their final goodbyes. Families of the dead are not allowed to perform last rites inside the premises due to safety protocols. The pandemic has made their grief more public, but lonelier.

“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.

After hasty last rites are carried out by families outside, Nepal Army personnel get ready to move the bodies to the cremation site.

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.

Nepal Army personnel and Pashupati crematorium staffers carry a body towards a cremation site.

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.

A man in protective gear walks to collect wood for a pyre. It takes almost three hours for a body to be cremated on a wooden pyre, whereas an electric crematorium takes an hour.

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.

In the end, all that remains are a pile of ash and strewn garlands.

Deewash Shrestha Deewash Shrestha is a student of Media Studies and a freelancer He can be reached via email: [email protected]

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The fires that keep burning

The fires that keep burning

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