In Foreign Parts: Only in death is there equality of life for the troubled Nepalese

For the living, there is not much democracy or equality in Kathmandu these days. Power lies with the King, the army and the rich. But the dead get their due. Eleven of them, ordinary folk, were publicly reduced to smoke and ashes before lunch in an impressively egalitarian manner.

They were placed on pine logs on stone platforms on the banks of the Bagmati river, a tributary of India's Ganges, which it rivals in holiness and grubbiness. The Bagmati's sacred waters wind through the valley in which the Nepalese capital sits, framed by the Himalayas. Kathmandu basks in its reputation as the capital of the highest nation on the planet and, although it takes no pleasure in this, of one of the poorest.

The bodies, swathed in white and orange cloth, were covered in straw. Garlands of marigolds spread over them when they were borne in on stretchers were removed. Vegetable ghee – oil – was dribbled on them. And through the morning, watched by an impassive crowd on concrete steps climbing the river's opposite bank, their pyres were set alight, one after another.

Troupes of red-arsed monkeys, who should have no place at a funeral but are considered manifestations of the Hindu god Rama, squabbled noisily and tumbled around.

After 15 minutes, the flames were strong. Barefoot attendants prodded the logs with a long wooden poker. Half an hour, and the smoke was rising above the rooftops and drifting up the hill to the international airport, guarded by troops and armoured personnel carriers, and the Royal Nepal Golf Club, where brigadiers and colonels battle on the putting greens with other members of the elite for silver trophies named after the King and his kin.

The smoke merged into the usual haze over the city centre to the west, over the drearily modern Royal Palace, also guarded by troops, and the luxury Yak & Yeti Hotel and its casino (every other commercial enterprise in Kathmandu seems to be named after the yak, yeti or Buddha, who was born in Nepal).

Cremations are round the clock at Pashupatinath, an ancient complex of pagodas, temples that straddle the Bagmati. It is the holiest shrine in Nepal for the Hindu majority. Unlike most other aspects of life for the 23 million inhabitants, they are free of the suffocating constraints of caste.

These proceedings were governed by strict rules until 1991, when Nepal embarked on its democratic exercise. That was suspended last October by King Gyanendra because he decided the elected government had failed to end a six-year Maoist uprising.

There were four cremation platforms. One was exclusively for Brahmins; the second for Chhetris, also high in Nepal's social pecking order; a third was for Vaishyas, the merchants; and a fourth for low-caste Shudras, the labourers.

Democracy swept away this system. The authorities added three cremation platforms, and declared all available for anyone. All that matters now is money: the cheapest cremation costs £25, more than most earn in a month. "Everything is democratic now; and why not?" Kumar Sunar, a 26-year-old site guide, said. "Anyone can be cremated here, no matter who."

But there is one exception. A platform, 50 yards upriver, below the temple to the god Shiva, is for the King. A decade after the reforms, in June 2001, the platform was put to use because Crown Prince Dipendra drunkenly shot to death his parents, King Birendra and his queen, Aishwarya, and seven other royals.

This week, there were echoes of that shocking event. Thousands of Nepalese saw another middle-aged couple cremated, feet from where royalty was reduced to ashes. This time it was the chief of the armed police, Krishna Mohan Shretsra and his wife, Nudup, a teacher, shot dead in Kathmandu with their bodyguard on a Sunday stroll.

The ceremony was sombre and moving. Hundreds of members of his force presented arms as Last Post was sounded by buglers, and the pyres were set alight. The crowd watched in a silence interrupted only by the monkeys.

Those I spoke to said their mood combined sadness and despair with anger. The anger was directed at everyone involved in the nation's fate, from the King, to the armed forces, unaccountable state organs guilty of numerous atrocities, to the Maoists who almost certainly killed the couple.

Now there is a ceasefire between the Maoists and the government. No one knows if it will stick. But many of the living in Nepal have already begun to hope the equality enjoyed by the corpses burning by the Bagmati river will one day be available in this life, too.