‘Come with me sir, cremation starting now – you come, you see, you mourn … come, come now … ‘. I am not sure whether Charles Dickens ever visited Varanasi, on the banks of the River Ganges, but surely the wizened, and somewhat dishevelled, ancient man who was now tugging on my sleeve and trying to pull me goodness knows where, features in one of his novels. I had fallen behind the others, as they climbed up the ever-narrowing lane away from the cremation ghat with our guide, to take a photograph of the huge piles of wood stacked ready for more cremations. Luckily the same guide had just warned us to turn down such offers flatly and not to linger in the area where the dead were lying in shrouds ready to be burned at
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