In the aftermath of catastrophic flooding across Nepal, thousands of families face a grief compounded by absence — their dead carried away by rivers, beyond reach and beyond the rites that faith requires. Hindu tradition holds cremation as a sacred covenant between the living and the departed, and so, when bodies cannot be recovered, families have turned to an ancient provision: the burning of straw effigies, shaped in human form, offered in place of what the water took. It is a practice as old as war and shipwreck, now summoned at a scale that speaks to the particular cruelty of this disaster
Families Turn to Symbolic Cremation After Nepal Floods
Thousands of people are missing and presumed dead following floods in Nepal, with families unable to recover bodies for traditional burial rites.