The final set of photographs sent to me by Manika opened ominously, like dead birds strewn in the sand on the way to the sea. The first few pictures in this series did not even include my mother, but rather images of what she saw as she was carted by Bulbul in the bicycle rickshaw around Varanasi, and what for reasons it was left to me to decipher she had instructed Manika to photograph and pass on to me. There was a single theme to all of these pictures. They all showed stones upon which the image of a married couple was carved in relief, posed side by side united in devotion, monuments placed as a shrine near the spot where the good wife had set herself aflame on her husband’s funeral pyre. Ma was drawing nearer to the fires—that was the obvious message. So it did not surprise me at all that when next I saw my mother come into virtual focus it was at the burning ghat, the great cremation ground of Manikarnika.

Manikarnika means jewel earring, Ma explained to me—Same like my girl, Manika. It has to do with some bubbe meise of theirs, one of their gods losing an earring there or some sort of narishkeit like that. Ma, of course, didn’t hold with such nonsense, but she was drawn by the idea of likening death to a lost earring. She had once read, in a magazine geared to ultra-Orthodox women, that a holy Jewish sage and mystic had said that if you find sixty-nine earrings you had lost, you would achieve redemption. One loss after another—that was life in a nutshell—you lose everything until you have nothing.

She was conveyed to Manikarnika Ghat sometime in the morning and sat there all day, often into the night. The fires burned twenty-four hours, never stopping, for my information. She arrived in the bicycle rickshaw with Manika squeezed in beside her in the carriage and Bulbul pedaling furiously. He would pull up as close as possible to the top of the steps. Four eunuchs awaited her; she had won their hearts weeks before when they passed her terrace begging in their hormonally deep belligerent voices, which she softened and soothed by feeding them rugalekhs and strudel while stroking their arms. The eunuchs greeted the arriving rickshaw with bowed heads and palms pressed together in a namaste. They approached, bearing an ancient palanquin with a flaking gilt cabin and shredded upholstery, which they had appropriated from the decaying museum in the crumbling palace and fort of the Maharaja of Benares on the other side of the river where the dead souls go. Each of these eunuchs was a formidable giant, unusually large for an Indian man, thick layers of makeup masking their stubble, false eyelashes, long dangling earrings jingling as they moved sinuously, parodying an idea of woman, lustrous saris in silk and chiffon synthetics. Effortlessly they lifted Ma’s 250 pounds from the carriage of the rickshaw and transferred her to the seat of the litter. With the poles resting on their broad shoulders, they bore her halfway down the steps to a platform in the middle of the cremation ghat, the best seat in the house, the ideal position for viewing. Manika followed closely in their perfumed wake, carrying a folding lounge chair and a pile of cushions, and set it all down on the designated spot. Gently, as if positioning a rare artifact, the eunuchs moved Ma from the palanquin to the chair and parked her there.