Circle of Life

In Fire on the Ganges, Radhika Iyengar trains her journalistic eye on the Doms, the sect responsible for the cremation of Hindus in Varanasi

- Geeta Doctor

FIRE ON THE GANGES Life Among the Dead in Banaras By Radhika lyengar HARPERCOLLINS ₹599; 352 pages

At a time when Hindu revivalism is on the rise on the embers of 20th-century nationalism, the focus on Banaras emerges with a raw intensity in Radhika Iyengar’s study of the human toll that it also extracts. Her close interaction with the sect known as the Doms, the designated human despatchers of the Hindu dead on the famous burning ghats of Banaras, resonates with a clamour that is as compelling as the blowing of a hundred conches at the water’s edge.