Unmarried Women and
Dead Bodies Everywhere
(The Universe is in Your Hands edit)
Janet Kuypers
4/25/24
The Ganges River in India
is most sacred to Hindus —
but on one day not too long ago,
they discovered twenty-eight bodies
at one tributary of the Ganges River.
Online news sources explained
that the bodies may have been left
when families couldn’t afford a burial...
Now, I read the Star of India, arriving to me daily,
reporting that they found one hundred and four bodies.
The local papers than explained
that this is a ‘custom’ in some cultures —
that 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 imagine was that
because this river was supposed to be sacred,
this may be their effort
to give these women a family in the afterlife,
putting them in this river they call sacred.
Because, I know how they view women in India,
cover their skin, don’t allow them to talk back...
but give them something to hope for in the afterlife.
For even though women are treated like nothing by men there,
they’re less than nothing if they’re not even married.
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