unmarried women and
dead bodies everywhere
Janet Kuypers
2/11/15
the Ganges River in India,
the most saced river to Hindus
is still religiously renowned
but on one day not too long ago,
at one tributary of the Ganges river
they discovered twenty-eight bodies
the locals first spotted the corpses
when vultures surrounded those bodies
as they piled up along the shore
online news sources explain
that bodies may have been left there
when families couldn’t afford a burial
and at those same online news sources,
lucky you, you can see videos of dogs
eating at the flesh of the dead
—
but I was there, I read those newspapers
as the Times of India came to me daily,
while locals discovered more bodies:
before they found one hundred and four
the local papers explained
that this ‘tradition’ of “jalpravah”
is a custom in some cultures —
when unmarried women die
their bodies are dumped in the river
—
unrecognizably decomposed,
more and more bodies
of unmarried women
kept floating to the surface
in just a few days,
in the sacred Ganges river
—
I kept looking for an explanation,
and all I could think was that
this river was supposed to be sacred
and I wondered if this is their effort
to give these women a family
in the afterlife, putting them in a river
they call sacred
because I know how they view women
in India, cover their skin, they don’t talk back,
because even though women
are treated like nothing by men there,
they’d be less than nothing
if they’re not married
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