BOMBAY TOWERS INSPIRE FASCINATION WITH VULTURES
On my first trip to Bombay in 1982, I remember seeing the Towers of Silence, where the Parsees placed their dead to be dismembered and eaten by vultures. On a more recent trip, I found the picture in my mind’s eye had been a false memory because the 50-foot-tall towers are hidden by trees and not visible to outsiders. What I had seen were the vultures circling the area, and my memory had thrown in a tower.
Parsees, members of an old religion called Zoroastrians, believe a corpse is impure and therefore cannot be allowed to corrupt the elements. They can’t bury, cremate or place a body in water. Instead, the dead must be left on hilltops in special towers built so vultures have easy access. I was told that with a population of Parsees of about 90,000, three people on average die each day. In the three-tiered, open-air towers, the men were placed in an outer circle, women inside that and children at the center.
I had been traveling for a month by train to the major cities in India before I came to Bombay. There had been so many new and unusual things to see that I was suffering from culture shock. In addition, my stomach was having serious reactions to Indian food and germs, and I was down 20 pounds in weight. After a period of being low in spirits and feeling very tired, I had regained considerable energy, so I walked and walked around the city, taking in the sights. Like most Indian cities, it was crowded and noisy, with something interesting around every corner.
When I first learned the purpose of the vultures, I became fascinated; as I watched them, I had gross images of the birds carrying body parts that they might drop on people below. I don’t have notes in my journal about it, but I vaguely remember some gardens had been built around the towers to absorb anything dropped by vultures.
%5B1%5D.png)
Parsee Tower of Silence in Bombay (Wikimedia Commons)
Parsees come from long distances to place their dead there, but they are not allowed into the towers; instead, professional body handlers take the bodies inside. The workers who do this job are social outcasts, or untouchables.
At that time, there were more than 100 vultures working the territory, their flight plainly marking the area they were interested in. With so many vultures, a body could be disposed of in a matter of days. On a visit in 2001 I couldn’t find the site because the vultures had been dying off and there were few available to do the work. A dozen vultures simply could not take care of the number of dead, and the community was looking for a solution to speed up the disposal. At that time, I was told attempts were being made to breed vultures in captivity that would be set free to do the job.
Recently, a conversation with a friend who had lived for six years in India caused me to recall my visits to Bombay, and I wondered what was happening with the towers. I went to the Internet and did a quick search. Evidently, the breeding program of vultures did not work, and another solution had to be found.
Remember, the Parsees cannot cremate the bodies, but they can make them very warm so that they decompose more quickly. The solution they adopted was to build solar reflectors to concentrate the heat of the sun on the bodies. This increases the body temperature to higher than 180 degrees Fahrenheit. One of their religious writers noted: "Doctrinally, this experiment is sound. There is no use of fire in this option, therefore, the bodies are not burnt." Another report indicated the high temperature does not keep the remaining vultures from doing their work since they seem unaffected by it.
Lest this religious practice strike some readers as grotesque, they need to keep in mind that our western habit of preserving bodies and putting them in the ground and using up precious space is seen by some groups as bizarre.
________________________________________
A Tower of Silence vulture (Wikipedia Commons)
%5B1%5D.png){kind=link}