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unmarried women and dead bodies everywhere Janet Kuypers 2/11/15 the Ganges River in India, the most saced river to Hindus is still religiously renowned but on one day not too long ago, at one tributary of the Ganges river they discovered twenty-eight bodies the locals first spotted the corpses when vultures surrounded those bodies as they piled up along the shore online news sources explain that bodies may have been left there when families couldn’t afford a burial and at those same online news sources, lucky you, you can see videos of dogs eating at the flesh of the dead — but I was there, I read those newspapers as the Times of India came to me daily, while locals discovered more bodies: before they found one hundred and four the local papers explained that this ‘tradition’ of “jalpravah” is a custom in some cultures — when unmarried women die their bodies are dumped in the river — unrecognizably decomposed, more and more bodies of unmarried women kept floating to the surface in just a few days, in the sacred Ganges river — I kept looking for an explanation, and all I could think was that this river was supposed to be sacred and I wondered if this is their effort to give these women a family in the afterlife, putting them in a river they call sacred because I know how they view women in India, cover their skin, they don’t talk back, because even though women are treated like nothing by men there, they’d be less than nothing if they’re not married

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