Photo Essays
2 MIN READ
The last months of Gyan Bahadur Acharya’s life as a cremator
Gyan Bahadur Acharya, 70, spent a good 31 years of his life cremating the dead at Pashupatinath’s Bhasmeshwar Ghat. One of Nepal’s oldest cremators, Gyan Bahadur has lived a singular journey by the blazing pyres.
Born into a poor family, Gyan Bahadur realised the obvious importance of money at quite a young age. Searching for a stable income, at the age of 15, he travelled from Chandragiri to Kathmandu, placing his faith in Lord Shiva. He believes it is his devotion to Shiva that eventually led to his working as a cremator in Nepal’s most holy site--Pashupatinath--after working other jobs.
Although he is a firm believer in destiny and a stoic at heart, Gyan Bahadur has had to struggle with a series of immense losses. By the time he was 25, he had lost two of his young sons, with his first wife, Radha Acharya. And although many years have passed since those tragedies, Gyan Bahadur and Radha still haven’t found closure.
After Gyan Bahadur lost his sons, he could not bring himself to cremate the bodies of children and infants. “I would see the faces of my sons if I got close to the body of a child,” says Gyan Bahadur.
Gyan Bahadur recently stepped away from his life as a cremator. But even as he embarks on his life of retirement, he knows the memories of his time spent at the ghat will continue to haunt him, until, he says, he too leaves this earth via a pyre laid out in the very place he spent the majority of his life.
In the retrospective photo story below, I document Gyan Bahadur’s daily activities in the months before this year’s Dashain, after which he stopped working at the ghat.
This photo essay uses stills captured from the documentary ‘The Cremator’, which will premier at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF) on Dec 12.
:::::::
Nishon Shakya Nishon Shakya, a recipient of the Toni Hagen Foundation Documentary Youth Grant 2020, is a recent graduate of Media Studies at Kathmandu University. He creates documentaries, short films, and advertisements. ‘The Cremator’ is his debut documentary.
Features
6 min read
Nepal has had a record number of landslide-related deaths this year
Features
4 min read
The government wants to make money off stranded Nepali workers desperate to return home
Perspectives
9 min read
Concealed in a package of humor, cringe culture makes bullying palatable and the intolerable tolerable.
Interviews
Longreads
Features
44 min read
As the crisis unfolds in Myanmar, two Burmese youths talk about their experiences and what life is currently like on the ground there.
News
3 min read
India’s inauguration of the link road to Mansarovar causes alarm in Nepal, but is a press statement enough?
Features
5 min read
A look into the psychedelic culture's white-man problem.
Opinions
5 min read
The privileged must do more to facilitate and encourage discussions around the abuse and othering of the marginalized and systemically oppressed