India is Building a Park Using Ashes of People who...
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Bags containing unclaimed ashes of victims who died from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), are seen at a crematorium in New Delhi, India, May 9, 2021 Adnan Abidi/Reuters
Years from now when visitors happen upon a park in a corner of Bhopal City, India, they should tread lightly - because they'll be walking upon the resting place of some 6,000 COVID dead.
A 12,000-square-foot area of empty land is being converted into what the city plans to be a memorial and a lush burial ground for those who died during the COVID pandemic.
This is because the city's main Bhadbhada Vishram Ghat crematorium has completely run out of space to store the overwhelming amounts of uncollected ash from COVID victims, per Indian news organization Hindustan Times.
The outlet estimated that 21 truckloads of the ashes, from over 6,000 people cremated from March 15 to June 15, will be used to develop the park.
The South China Morning Post spoke to crematorium manager Mamtesh Sharma, 51, who said the unclaimed ash at Bhadbhada Vishram Ghat was initially being stored in huge urns.
However, the rate at which bodies are still being burned there has far outpaced the storage space available on the crematorium's premises.
"At the height of the second wave after we had been burning 100 to 150 bodies a day, we had to keep making space. We added more and more lockers in which we keep the urns.
Once we made space for 500 lockers. Then we added another locker room. Now there isn't any space left, but we need space for other cremations," he told the SCMP.
Sharma also told the SCMP that he was unsurprised that so many ashes remained uncollected. Some family members took only some of the bones, but not the entire quantity.
It is also possible that some ashes remained unclaimed because there was no one left to collect them. Bloomberg reported in May that entire families were being wiped out by COVID, particularly in rural India.
Meanwhile, New Delhi is facing a similar problem with piles of uncollected ash, but volunteers are choosing to scatter these sacks of cremated remains in the Ganges river instead of burying them.
Indian news outlet NDTV reported that the ashes would be placed on the land after being blended with a mixture of soil, cow manure, wood sawdust, sand, and other material.
The park can accommodate anywhere between 3,500 and 4,000 plants, and its development committee is inviting people to come forward to plant saplings.
"We have urged the family members of those who lost their lives due to COVID-19 to participate in the plantation work. The management committee will take care of these plants till they grow into a tree," said Arun Choudhary, president of the Bhopal park building committee, to NDTV.
The central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, within which the city of Bhopal is located, has reported 790,042 COVID cases to date and over 9,000 deaths.
India has recorded over 30 million COVID cases and over 400,000 deaths. The country in May had to contend with a serious surge in highly transmissible Delta variant cases in its devastating second wave - which overstretched its healthcare system, crippled its funeral service industry and resulted in bodies being disposed of in the Ganges river.
Troublingly, in May, India also declared that the infectious and deadly black fungus was becoming a secondary epidemic circulating amongst COVID survivors, causing people to lose eyes and limbs.
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