MOTHER INDIA
beautiful young Indian woman, relaxed as though in a swoon. Her long black hair falls loose around her, a few flowers among its meshes. Her forehead, her hands and the soles of her feet are painted red, showing that she is blessed among women, in that she is saved from widowhood—her husband survives her. The relatives, two or three men and a ten-year-old boy, standing near, seem uninterested. Crouching at a distance, one old woman, keening. Five or six beggars like horse-flies nagging about.
Now they take up the body and lay it on the pile of wood in the pit. The woman’s head turns and one arm drops, as though she moved in her sleep. She died only a few hours ago. They heap sticks of wood over her, tossing it on until it rises high. Then the little boy, her son, walks seven times around the pyre, carrying a torch. After that he throws the torch into the wood, flames and smoke rush up, and the ceremony is done.
“With a good fire everything burns but the navel,” explains Mr. Haldar. “That is picked out of the ashes, by the temple attendants, and, with a gold coin provided by the dead person’s family, is rolled in a ball of clay and flung into the Ganges. We shall now see the Ganges.”
Again he conducts us through the crowds to a point below the temple, where runs a muddy brook, shallow and filled with bathers. “This,” says Mr. Haldar, “is the most ancient remaining outlet of the Ganges. Therefore its virtues are accounted great. Hundreds of thousands of sick persons come here annually to
