[ExI] India built a park using the ashes of 6, 000 people who died from COVID and it's a memorial to those who perished in the pandemic

[John Grigg]

The bad blood that has existed between China and India, will only
exponentially increase due to the death toll that the pandemic has so far
extracted from India...

"Years from now when visitors happen upon a park in a corner of Bhopal
City, India, they should tread lightly — because they'll be walking upon
the resting place of some 6,000 COVID dead.

A 12,000-square-foot area of empty land is being converted into what the
city plans to be a memorial and a lush burial ground for those who died
during the COVID pandemic.

This is because the city's main Bhadbhada Vishram Ghat crematorium has
completely run out of space to store the overwhelming amounts of
uncollected ash from COVID victims, per Indian news organization Hindustan
Times
<https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bhopal-news/uncollected-ashes-of-covid-victims-being-used-to-make-park-at-bhopal-crematorium-101625494369069.html>.
The outlet estimated that 21 truckloads of the ashes, from over 6,000
people cremated from March 15 to June 15, will be used to develop the park.

The South China Morning Post
<https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3140107/india-park-made-human-ashes-pays-tribute-victims-covid>
spoke
to crematorium manager Mamtesh Sharma, 51, who said the unclaimed ash at
Bhadbhada Vishram Ghat was initially being stored in huge urns. However,
the rate at which bodies are still being burned there has far outpaced the
storage space available on the crematorium's premises.

"At the height of the second wave after we had been burning 100 to 150
bodies a day, we had to keep making space. We added more and more lockers
in which we keep the urns. Once we made space for 500 lockers. Then we
added another locker room. Now there isn't any space left, but we need
space for other cremations," he told the SCMP.

Sharma also told the SCMP that he was unsurprised that so many ashes
remained uncollected. Some family members took only some of the bones, but
not the entire quantity.

It is also possible that some ashes remained unclaimed because there was no
one left to collect them. Bloomberg reported in May
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-05-17/-entire-families-wiped-out-by-covid-19-s-carnage-in-rural-india>
that
entire families were being wiped out by COVID, particularly in rural India.
Meanwhile, New Delhi is facing a similar problem with piles of uncollected
ash
<https://www.reuters.com/world/india/volunteers-collect-unclaimed-ashes-indias-covid-19-dead-final-farewell-2021-05-11/>,
but volunteers are choosing to scatter these sacks of cremated remains in
the Ganges river instead of burying them.

Indian news outlet NDTV
<https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/uncollected-ash-of-covid-victims-used-to-make-park-at-bhopal-crematorium-2479158>
reported
that the ashes would be placed on the land after being blended with a
mixture of soil, cow manure, wood sawdust, sand, and other material. The
park can accommodate anywhere between 3,500 and 4,000 plants, and its
development committee is inviting people to come forward to plant saplings."
https://www.insider.com/memorial-park-made-from-ashes-of-covid-dead-being-built-2021-7
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