The Delhi crematorium where Sanjay acts as a priest is dealing with so many bodies from India’s Covid nightmare that it has been forced to expand into an adjacent car park. “I have lost count,” he told AFP of the number of dead brought to the facility. “We start at sunrise and cremations continue past midnight,” he says next to burning pyres and smouldering piles of ash. Families mourn silently on the roadside of this low-income neighbourhood as they wait the turn of their relatives wrapped in white cloth and garlands of yellow marigolds.