remains

He shot this from the top bunk of the 1st Class sleeper carriage on the train from Varanasi to Kolkata.

My 2nd visit of 3. His first and, probably, last.

We had watched bodies burn on the banks of the Ganges.

Mango wood withstands monsoon. $35 to contribute a corpse to the world’s oldest ongoing funeral. We didn’t start the fire, Shiva did…4,000 years ago to keep his mother warm. It’s burned continuously ever since: THE eternal flame. Ashes to ashes in about 3 hours, save for a woman’s pelvis and a man’s sternum, the only bones that don’t disintegrate to dust. The cows chew those.