Families Turn to Symbolic Cremation After Nepal Floods
Thousands are missing, and some families have lost hope of recovering their bodies. To carry out his sacred duty, a son lights the funeral pyre for a straw effigy of his father.
The funeral pyres at Kathmandu’s riverfront temple have been burning steadily. But instead of bodies, it is effigies they have set ablaze — shaped out of sacred grass, as if to conjure something tangible of the loved ones who disappeared in Nepal’s devastating floods.
Nine days after the walls of mud and debris tore through a Himalayan valley along the border of Nepal and Tibet, wiping out entire towns, the death toll stands at more than 1,200. Relatives of 5,000 others who are missing have searched hospital to hospital, waiting and waiting, hoping for a miracle — or closure at least.
On Friday, rescuers were racing to recover survivors among dozens of people believed to have been found trapped in a tunnel. But to many whose loved ones are among the missing, resignation has begun to set in. According to Hindu rituals in Nepal, the mourning period after a death is 13 days. If the rites are not performed before the 10th day, the clock resets.
Some families, accepting that they may never receive the actual remains, have chosen to perform a symbolic cremation of a figure made of bundles of kusha grass. Nearly 300 effigy cremations have taken place at the temple during the past three days, temple officials said.
Among the solemn onlookers on Thursday at the temple in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, was Darshan Bhattarai, 15, who came to carry out the last rites for his father, Pushpa Raj Bhattarai, 46, one of the thousands dead or missing.
