Follow the Elephant by Beryl Young

Martha said, smoothing her skirt over her knees.
    Anoop explained that it was a usual practice for a cow’s body to be tossed in the river. “As you must be knowing, our cows are holy. When they are dying, it is always of natural causes and they are never burned. Our beloved Ganga is taking them peacefully to the next life.”
    Ben had missed his chance to take a picture, and by now, the cow was too far away to look like anything more than a tree stump floating in the river. Just as well. Lauren and his mum would not want to see it. It had really been an amazing sight, though, and he felt proud of himself for not freaking out when the body had come so close.
    As the morning advanced, more and more boats floated around them. People shouted to each other across the ghats, sounds of chanting drifted from the temples, dogs barked, and from the streets farther away came the honking of horns.
    “Now we will return past the burning ghats,” Anoop said.
    “Martha and I have read in our guidebook about the burnings,” Geoffrey said. He was still nervous, patting his pockets and adjusting his hat.
    Anoop turned the boat around, and it bounced precariously upriver past piles of wood stacked on the river bank.
    Anoop pointed to a wooden platform where a body lay wrapped in white cloth. “This is the funeral pyre. You will see the grieving relatives.” A family stood beside a platform watching as a robed priest poured yellow liquid over the body, and then gestured for the family to stand back.
    The priest used a torch to light the fire, which became a signal for the keening wails of the female relatives to begin. Like the calls of high birds, the sounds carried across the water to their boat. Trailing behind came the smell of the blaze as the wrappings around the body caught fire. It was not the clean smell of a campfire, but the heavy stench of burning rags; and then another smell, sharp and sickening.
    Burning hair. Ben remembered his sister reaching over her birthday candles, the few strands of her hair, flaring only briefly, but filling the room with alarm.
    Suddenly the flames burst into a lashing red and for an instant Ben saw the clear outline of the body. He saw the head of the corpse, the arms folded across the chest and the outstretched legs. He heard the crackle of burning flesh. Other sounds came into Ben’s head.
The heavy thud, thud at the graveside as they took turns shovelling dirt on his father’s coffin. The March wind shaking the branches of the tall cedars that lined the edge of the burial ground. His mother and grandmother and Lauren crying
.
    He had not cried once. He remembered the heaviness of the shovel in his hands, how dirt had stuck to the handle and the dusty smell that stayed on his hands all that day
.
    He’d never thought of asking why his father wasn’t cremated. In some ways, burning was simpler. You weren’t forced to think about the body of a person you loved rotting slowly in the grave
.
    Ben checked his grandmother and saw the grim set of her mouth as she watched the burning pyre. No one spoke. When he turned back, the outline of the corpse was lost in the fire, which now sent long orange fingers into the sky, like a Halloween bonfire. Only it wasn’t Halloween. In front of their eyes, a body with skin and bones, arms and legs was being transformed into ashes.
    Ben reached to take his camera from around his neck, but before he could open the case, Anoop put his arm out to stop him. “Respectfully sir, you must be putting your camera away. To Hindus it shows dishonour to photograph the dead. Our boat could be rammed and we would be seriously harmed.”
    Anoop was funny the way he talked, but it wouldn’t be funny to end up in this water. Ben looked up and saw four large grey birds winding in low circles over the river bank. He heard Martha shriek, “Vultures!”
    “Yes,” said Anoop. “The vultures have much work here in Varanasi.”
    Gran and the others turned their eyes away, but