Varanasi: India’s city where people come to die

Fellow resident Gayatri Devi from Rajasthan, who had been at the lodge for more than five years, has a son and two daughters living in other parts of India, but they rarely visit her, she told me, as we later sat on a wooden bench in the courtyard talking about everything from her family to my family to her life philosophy and women’s rights. Shukla told me that the guest’s family members stay in the same room and bring their own bedding and other necessary items. Another woman named Vimla Devi from Hyderabad waited for 40 years in Varanasi before she died last year at Mumukshu Bhawan, Pandey told me.

Source: www.bbc.com