Pittu Laugani, a Hindu living in the West, explains the pain of witnessing a commercial, industrialized cremation. Instead of placing the body onto the wood of the pyre, mourners watch the coffin “slide off on an electrically operated carousel and drop into a concealed hole.” Locked away in the steel and brick-lined chamber, when the skull cracks open, the man’s soul will be imprisoned in the machine, forced to mingle with the thousands of other souls the machine has trapped. It will be an akal mrtya, a bad death. For the family, the whole process “can be an unnerving and even grotesque
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