MUMBAI, India â The bodies have burned for so long at crematoriums in the western state of Gujarat that furnaces have started to melt.
Firewood for funeral pyres is rationed and sparse, leaving the dead half-cremated on the banks of the Ganges. Gravediggers in the capital New Delhi are in such high demand that families are hiring them to excavate plots while stricken loved ones are still alive.
All across India, a trail of death and misery is devastating a country whose leaders boasted of defeating the coronavirus just a few months ago. An explosion of new cases fueled by the so-called double mutant variant of the coronavirus first discovered in India is now pushing the nationâs overburdened health care system toward collapse.