When a Hindu Dies in SAN FRANCISCO

A DARKLY FUNNY TALE OF DEATH, FAMILY, AND CULTURAL COLLISION, EVERY ROOM HAS A VIEWTURNS A SILICON VALLEY CREMATION INTO A SITCOM-LIKE SPECTACLE

- —Palash Krishna Mehrotra

Naveen Gupta's body lies on a dining table, pushed against a bay window facing the Golden Gate and Alcatraz. Naveen, an engineer who made good in the Silicon Valley boom of the 1990s, has left behind a will, asking to be cremated in San Francisco "on a pyre on the shore", with the same ceremonies as he'd cremated his father 30 years ago: "Whatever I may have been in life, let me be a Hindu in death."