Children laughed and played nearby while men loaded bodies onto funeral pyres. Dogs lay near warm coals from old fires to keep themselves warm. Cell phones rang and people talked and it felt a long way from holy. The other side of the Ganges seems to have no development whatsoever, and perhaps that is by design. As night came and the other bank vanished in mist, no one could say where the river ended, or where the bodies might go. The Ganges became a river Styx to let loved ones drift into the afterlife. Lit by the fires of the dead, a man near the water’s edge began to wail.

Still we sat, letting an uneasy darkness creep over us. Something at the ghat felt like voodoo. It felt like dark magic.