The Ghats of West Virginia

The Ghats of West Virginia-part 1

note - this story is irreverent and not for the squeamish, read on at own risk

fiction
edward w pritchard

The telemarketing industry in Akron, Ohio was in a slump and Bihar, a supervisor was laid off. Unemployed in America, a devout Hindu, and still wanting to send money home to his family in India, after a few weeks of idleness and without pay; Bihar became desperate for work.

Back in India, near Vasari, on the sacred Ganges Ma, Bihar's family had worked in the preparation of bodies for final termination in the waters of the sacred Ganges River for hundreds of years. Human corpses burned and smoldered on top of funeral pyres at the banks of the Ganges, at a ghat, a platform at Rivers edge, usually used for bathing but also used for final separation of the dear departed. Bihar had learned the techniques of final termination of bodies as a boy, tending the fires or working as needed about the Ghat.

Like many people when unemployment strike, Bihar when laid off as a supervisor in telemarketing applied for unemployment compensation in America; and in the course of the eligibility interview he was deemed most qualified to work again in the preparation of deceased bodies for final termination.

Bihar could find no employment in the typical American funeral industry and eventually in desperation to find work put an add in several newspapers around Akron to furnish a Hindu style burial and cremation for the dear departed deceased of Hindu ancestry. Although a legal outcry ensued, against instituting Hindu style funeral practices in America, an unmet demand existed because of recent immigration of Hindu's to America, and the law was properly bent and a loophole found to allow that demand to be met.

Thus one warm Summer day Bihar found himself pushing a corpse down several small creeks in Columbia County of Ohio headed for the mighty Ohio River. He was going to a newly constructed ghat in Newell, West Virginia where he would preform the sacred funeral rites. In the meantime he gently guided a pasty body with a long pole and lead it slowly toward the Ohio River, through the basin of the Ohio River Floodplain. Bihar was glad to be working again and was not entirely unhappy in his new job.

end part 1