Vinod Kumar was away from home on Tuesday, as he usually goes out for days in search of masonry work, when he received the dreaded call.
Three generations of women in his family were killed in the stampede.
For the rest of the day, Mr. Kumar and his three sons went from house to house, searching hospitals for relatives among the bodies of 121 victims killed in a large gathering of spiritual teachers. Falling into extreme panic.
They found the bodies of his wife Raj Kumari (42) and daughter Bhumi (9) lying on a block of ice among dozens of people in the corridor at the government hospital in Hathras close to midnight.
“Why did you abandon me like this? Who will scold the children now and make them go to school?” Mr Kumar wailed at his wife’s feet.
But he couldn’t quite let go of his grief yet. His mother’s body hadn’t been found. He leaned over and picked up his daughter, giving her one last hug. Bumi wore a yellow top and her hair was tied in a ponytail with a pink headband.
“Let her sleep,” Kumar’s eldest son Nitin told him, pulling the girl away from her father and laying her on a slab of stone so they could continue their search.
“I don’t know when I will find my mother’s body,” he said as he continued his search. “I want to perform the last rites with them.”
Kumar’s mother, Jamanti, is the mistress of the family. She is a major devotee of the guru, who always hangs his posters in the house and often listens to his sermons.
Suraj Pal, a former policeman turned self-styled spiritual guru known as Narayan Sakar Hari or Bhole Baba, ministers to women and families like her: those on the margins of India’s stark economic inequality and at the bottom of a rigid caste hierarchy.
Women from the Dalit caste, who make up a large portion of Baba’s followers, have long been considered “untouchables”, suffered discrimination and have historically been barred from entering the temple.
When Mr. Kumar’s mother, Jaimanti Devi, heard that the master was going to hold a large gathering so close to home, she could not miss it. She persuaded her reluctant daughter-in-law to go along.
As for Bhumi?
“You know how kids are,” Mr. Kumar said. “Our daughter said she wouldn’t stay without her mom.”
At dawn on Wednesday, Mr. Kumar brought the bodies of his wife and daughter home. They were placed in black body bags on ice in a narrow lane outside his brick house. His mother’s body was found in a morgue in the city of Agra, about two hours away. When an ambulance finally brought her home, neighbors and relatives helped lower her body to rest beside the other two.
Mr Kumar completely broke down in the arms of his sons.
The Kumars have lived here for at least two generations. Kumar’s father, who died a few years ago, was a mason like him. It’s clear that they have been barely considered in India’s development plans and are left to fend for themselves.
Around them, sewage from the villages overflowed from narrow drains. A larger drain, which held sewage from a neighboring town, was piled with rotting garbage. Dengue fever and typhoid were common here.
But Mr. Kumar wants to give his children a better future. He works as a day laborer and bricklayer, earning $200 a month to keep his children in school. Bhumi, he said, loves to learn. She wants to be a police officer.
“We’ve always been poor. This has been our life,” he said. “Now that my dear daughter, wife and mother are gone, it’s all over — it’s a one-time thing.”
First, it was his daughter’s turn to receive last rites. According to local tradition, children are buried, while adults are cremated.
A bamboo stretcher was prepared for Bhumi. The body will be wrapped in new clothes before the last rites. Mr Kumar bought an unstitched blue floral cloth to cover her torso and a dark blue cloth to cover her legs.
Men carried bamboo frames from all sides and walked for several miles to the cotton fields, near a small pond next to the road. Some people had already dug a grave. Mr. Kumar slowly lowered Bumi’s body into the trench and let out a long wail.
Villagers helped bury her body, spreading dirt over the grave with shovels.
At that moment, a few metres away on the highway, the motorcade of state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath sped past, taking him to the stampede site. At that time, villagers were stopped from crossing the road.
Mr Kumar continued to prepare the bodies of his mother and wife, carrying them on bamboo to a fire at the other end of the village. They were wrapped in brightly coloured saris – pink, red and green.
A thick layer of cow dung was used to light the fire, and then thick wood was laid on top. The sky was overcast. The politicians came in one after another, one of them with a personal bodyguard, armed with rifles and dressed in all black. The officials stood there and watched the bodies burn to ashes before moving on to the next destination.
Some of the villagers sitting around the pyre cursed the government’s laxity, while others cursed the “master” who had gone underground since the stampede and seemed to care little for the safety of his followers or the families they left behind.
One of Mr. Kumar’s sons sobbed in a corner. He held the child in his arms as smoke rose from the fire.
Now, they are left with only each other, a grief-stricken family.
As they walked back to the village, Mr Kumar consoled him: “Don’t cry, son.”
Mujib Mashar Reporting contributed by New Delhi.
