An Australian woman had her last wishes fulfilled when a clerk in the northern Indian state of Haryana travelled hundreds of miles to scatter her ashes in the Ganges River, news reports said Tuesday. Jill Villers was born in 1945 in Lahore, a city in pre-partition India which now lies in Pakistan. She passed away at home in Mount Barker in Western Australia two years ago, IANS news agency reported.
Villers' last wish was that her ashes be immersed in the Ganges, a custom followed by Hindus across India who consider the river holy. Her daughter Linda Wibberley was in New Delhi last week, as manager of the Australian cycling team for the Commonwealth Games scheduled to be held in India in October.
She brought her mother's ashes but could not make the trip to the holy Hindu town of Haridwar to throw them in the river. "My mother is from India, she was born in Lahore. She wanted us to immerse her ashes in the Ganges. This is my first visit, I have brought her ashes to disperse in the Ganges, but it seems impossible since I have a tight schedule," Wibberley told reporters at the time.