Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh – Deen Dayal Verma has never burned as many bodies as he has this year.
Sitting under the shade of a cement roof at a crematorium in Barabanki city, the 55-year-old who has been a crematorium worker for the past six years, says with a wry smile: “Actually, no dead body has come today. Has COVID-19 come to an end or are the bodies being taken to other crematoriums?”
In India, where cremation on a funeral pyre made from wood has long been part of an elaborate ritual to honour the dead, the religious significance of laying the dead to rest has been all but abandoned as the bodies stack up during the second deadly wave of COVID.
Tales from an Indian crematorium | Coronavirus pandemic
Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh – Deen Dayal Verma has never burned as many bodies as he has this year.
Sitting under the shade of a cement roof at a crematorium in Barabanki city, the 55-year-old who has been a crematorium worker for the past six years, says with a wry smile: “Actually, no dead body has come today. Has COVID-19 come to an end or are the bodies being taken to other crematoriums?”
In India, where cremation on a funeral pyre made from wood has long been part of an elaborate ritual to honour the dead, the religious significance of laying the dead to rest has been all but abandoned as the bodies stack up during the second deadly wave of COVID.