Also sprach Zarathustra

For the past couple of weeks I've been thinking about Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest religions in the world, and it's followers, the Parsis. The Parsis of India make up a very small (100 000), but influential and educated community, and mostly reside in Bombay. They originally came from Persia over a thousand years ago, but the Indian Parsis have fairly little in common with their modern day Iranian counterparts.

The key beliefs of Zoroastrianism are way too complicated for me to get my head around, but I can't help but being fascinated by the funeral rites practiced by the Parsis in India. The newly deceased is placed on a "Tower of silence", which is exposed to the sun and the elements. The tower consists of three concentric rings, one for men, one for woman and one for children. One this tower the flesh of the corpse is to be eaten by vultures, and when the body is decomposed the bones are burnt in a commune well.

However, there is one huge problems. The vultures are dying, and not until a few years ago did they discover the link of their death to an anti-inflammatory drug called Diclofenac, commonly used in cattle and humans. Sources claim that 99.9 % of the vultures have perished, which means that the corpses of the Parsis are rottening.

Ever since Brina told me this story, I've woken up in cold sweat every night, my brain full with images of rotting corpses with cloudy half-open eyes, lying on a huge tower and waiting for the vultures which never will be.

I am actually not looking forward to tomorrow's trip to Varanasi. According to Hinduism, a person who dies in Varanasi is immediately granted access to "heaven", without having to go through the whole "re-born again" malarkey. It is therefore a very auspicious, and popular place to die. And even though a traditional Hindu funeral mainly consists of cremating the deceased's body and then spreading the ashes in Ganges, they still sometimes just chuck the corpse in the Ganges, especially if the poor soul can't afford to pay for the cremation. Sadhus, pregnant woman and children are however considered to be "pure", so they are simply disposed of in the river with weights around their wrists and ankels, which technically means that the corpse floats back up to the surface after a few days or so. For a hindu, Ganges is a holy river. For a westerner like myself, Ganges is the river of death.

I wish I wasn't going on my own, I wish I had someone with me, someone who could just hold me and calm me down when my nights are ravaged by these echoes of the towers of silence.