India's Vanishing Vultures

tion. We’re more invested than those armchairconservationists.”Even with his dismissal of BNHS’s breedingwork, his acknowledgment of how irreplaceablethe vultures are echoed what Prakash had toldme in Pinjore. “Vultures play such a beautiful,natural role in our death ritual,” said Mistree.“To replace them is a unique challenge.”While the Panchayat struggles with the burdensomebodies in theory, the Parsi undertakersare presented with a more tangible mess. Forgenerations, their job was to carry an intact bodyup and lay it on the tower roof, a sloped circletilting in toward a central well from which threeconcentric rings radiate out like ripples. Menare on the outside, women in the middle, andchildren on the inside, each ring smaller thanthe last. The vultures would set to their task,and within days, the nasarsarlas could push thebones into the ossuary at the center.The nasarsarlas are the poorest of Parsis, and Iimagine they might miss the vultures more thananyone else on the subcontinent. Farmers have adead cow every now and again that needs to be attendedto, and the dogs at the carcass dump haveto be treated with caution, but every single daythe nasarsarlas have to face a new batch of bodieswhen the old ones have not yet disappeared.Like Baria, others are ready to allow burialor cremation into the Parsi parameters of worship,eager to find their own way to adapt to thevultures’ absence. Some Parsis have suggestedthey move from the ancient to the cutting-edgeof green technology, using gasification, whichinvolves high heat, but not in direct contact withthe body, or promession, a technique catchingon in Sweden that uses liquid nitrogen to deepfreeze a body before vibrating it into a fine dust.One prominent bird breeder suggested they tryinsects, but all the recommendations have been46 VQR | spring 2011