Drowned Out

How Varanasi's coin divers save lives at the cost of their own

- SUNIL KASHYAP

"It's been seven years since my husband died," Poonam Sahni, a garland seller and mother of two, told me. "Whenever he used to go, we used to be scared and would argue bitterly. But he did not listen to us." Her husband, Gubbar, a coin diver, died at the age of forty while removing a dead body from the Ganges, at Shastri Ghat. Sahni now receives a monthly widow pension of ₹500 every three months. She worries about her children's education. "We have a boat but it is now completely ruined. The house is falling apart. I do not know what to do, how to feed them, teach them or get a house built."

Over the Ganges, near Raj Ghat in Varanasi, is a double-decker bridge which connects the holy city on the left bank of the river to Mughalsarai, an important railway junction in Uttar Pradesh. A marvel of colonial engineering from 1887, the Malviya Bridge carries a rail track on its lower deck and a road on the deck above. Pedestrians and passengers passing by train or car often throw coins and tokens into the sacred river below. The structure, combined with the Hindu practice of offering gods money to invite good luck and fortune, gave rise to a peculiar and informal community of divers compelled into their practice due to desperate socio-economic conditions.