There is something rather oxymoronic about the (Bengali) Hindu rituals of death. On one hand, they are opulent, lengthy (lasting a year- with the first week or so after death being completely nuts), and pedantic with rules governing every absurd detail including what one eats, who with, what with facing which side, when one cuts nails, chops hair, wears what, throws away what, for what absurdly precise length of time, how the dead body must be decked up with sandalwood paste, incense, white flowers.
However, none of these heady excesses really helps to combat the almost dismissive immediacy and irrevocability of the almost macabre practicality with which this decked up, perfumed body is shoved in a giant oven like loaf of bread to be burnt to ashes and bones within hours. You get to wait outside and go collect the ashes from among the remains, but this does not come in a pretty urn, and you have to go throw it in the river immediately after.
Of course, this is India, so there is a queue for everything, and nothing really prepares you for that wait in the narrow, crowded passage way leading up to the ovens, with a dolled up dead body of a loved one who has died but hours ago lying on the floor next to you, just one in a line of a gruesome parade of the dead of sorts, while you try and make sure you don't step them.
The body right behind us on the floor belonged to a 27 year old woman who had died at child birth--the relatives brought her decked up as a new bride, covered with rose petals, vermilion and gold jewellery. The husband kept stroking her head and checking her pulse, as if hoping it was all just some mistake. The one right before ours, belonged to a really old man, but that didn't make it any better somehow.
Of course, some of the ritualistic Hindus tend to favour gender based discrimination even in death, and since my friend defied the middle/upper class Hindu laws in insisting on doing the last rites herself (rather than have some distant male relative do it, in the absence of a brother) she, another friend, and I were the only women in our party, the rest being men who she barely knew but who somehow were seen to have more rights than her to go burn her father. There were plenty of women there from poorer families--this sort of gender discrimination in Hinduism is DEFINITELY a class thing. Middle and upper class women go to the burning ghats only when they die, apparently.
