Hundreds of men and women broke down as fire was lit on the funeral pyres. Sobbing relatives stayed at Ramghat until the bodies were completely burnt to ashes. The din of wails left participants speechless. [break]
Among those cremated on Wednesday were Gopal Giri, his son Shiva, Sudarshan Shrestha, Gopi Sunar, Girimaya Sunar, Bimala Karki, Meena Karki, Tej Bahadur Karki, Krishna Bahadur Thapa and Manbuja Nepali of Kaskikot; and Kapilmani Timalsena and Nandakali Adhikari of Sarangkot.
The sense of loss was infectious. Dozens of squatters, who were extracting sand nearby, stopped working and witnessed the cremation with blank faces.
A local, who has been living near the cremation site for years, said the site witnessed three to four cremations on an average daily and it was the largest ever number of cremations on a single day.
Earlier, thousands accompanied the relatives who reached the Western Regional Hospital to receive the bodies. Desperate cries of grief from relatives engulfed the entire hospital. A few relatives were struggling to prevent close family members of the deceased from becoming hysterical. Some elderly and women lost consciousness and had to be admitted to the hospital.
Bride turns widow in 18 days
Goma Giri, who was widowed just 18 days after marriage, embraced the body of her husband Shiva and refused to leave him. She had to be forcibly freed from the body by her relatives, after which she fainted.
The two got married on November 26. Goma´s husband and father-in-law died in the accident.
When 12 bodies were taken out of the hospital, the whole Ram Bazaar area went quiet, except for the wails of the relatives.
Bimala Timalsena of Sarangkot-3, who also died in the accident, was not cremated on Wednesday, as her husband Durgadutta, who is abroad, has requested that her body be not cremated until he arrived.
Durgadutta, who entered into a love marriage with Bimala, a Gurung girl, left for an African nation a few months ago. All that remains of his marriage is a 17-month-old daughter, Khushi. The daughter, who was also in the ill-fated bus, survived miraculously.
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