Lalita has never seen anything like it. Smita has often told her about this city, a place of pilgrimage to which she had been brought several times as a child. Together, she and her parents had completed the Panchatirthi Yatra, an itinerary that involves bathing in five places along the sacred river, in a specific order. They had ended their trip with a visit to the Golden Temple, as custom dictated. Smita followed her parents and her brothers, she let them guide her. The journey had left a deep and lasting impression, an enduring memory – and especially Manikarnika Ghat, one of several flights of riverfront steps reserved for the cremation of the dead. She remembers the burning pyre on which the body of an old woman could still be seen. In accordance with tradition, she had been washed in the Ganges, then dried, then burned. Smita had watched in horror as the flames licked at the woman’s body, then devoured her whole with a hellish crackling sound. Strangely, the dead woman’s loved ones hadn’t looked sad. Rather, they seemed to be rejoicing at their grandmother’s moksha, her liberation. Some were chatting, others played cards, and some were even laughing. Dalits dressed in white worked at the site non-stop, day and night. Naturally, it fell to them to perform the cremations – that most impure of impure tasks. It was their job, too, to supply the tons of wood that were needed for the pyres. They brought the logs to the ghats by boat. Smita remembers the mountains of huge tree trunks waiting their turn on the quays lining the waterfront. A few metres away, cows were drinking the river water, indifferent to the scenes being played out along the banks. A little further along, men, women and children were making the ritual ablutions – traditionally, pilgrims immersed themselves in the Ganges from head to foot, for purification. Other groups – colourful and lively – were attending wedding ceremonies and celebrating with religious and secular chants. Some were washing their dishes, or even doing their laundry. In places, the water was black, its surface dotted with flowers, oil lamps – the pilgrims’ offerings – and the decomposing bodies of animals, even human bones. After the cremations, the ashes were ritually scattered in the river, but many families could not afford a full cremation and tossed the departed’s body into the water half-charred, or even whole.

No one is leading Smita today. There is no reassuring hand to cling to, only her daughter’s. Lalita is following her now. They are alone in the anonymous throng of pilgrims, trying to find their way. The railway station is in the centre of town, far from where the bus set them down.