Fire

My daylight hours were spent at work today. No time to take pics. Later, though, I was walking outside and came upon this fire. Some people came up to me and said, OK, you can take a picture.

I asked them why they were burning this fire, and they said that a small dog had been killed in the road that afternoon (today). They told me that they had covered the dog in coconut oil and kindling, added petrol and the result was what you see here.

They told me that when people die, the same is done to them. I asked whether they were Hindus, and they said yes, they were. Tamils.

Listening to their story had reminded me of Peter Godwin's book, When the Crocodie Eats the Sun, where he tells of how, when his father died in Zimbabwe, he had to convert him to Hinduism so that he could be burnt, as, at the time, conventional cremations and other burials were hard to obtain there.