VARANASI—Pyres burn 24 hours on the banks of the river Ganges in Kashi, a city where Indians have been coming to die for thousands of years because they believe death here can liberate their soul. As the pandemic struck India, Kashi saw fewer corpses reaching its shores, but the ones who came included those dead due to the virus. The arrival of those dead from COVID affected the cultural forms and the business of death. With the pandemic easing, things in Kashi are returning to the ancient ways. The holiest cremation ground of the Hindus, the thousands of years old “Manikarnika ghat,” stood busy on Feb. 12, with every five minutes a dead body arriving, carried on the family’s shoulders through the narrow lanes on the ghat’s—the bank’s—slope that led straight to the river. Those carrying the dead repeated a Hindu chant that reinforces the belief in god and the afterlife. …