‘Want to Give Dignity to Dead’
As COVID-19 protocols prevent family members from performing the last rites for fear of infection, only volunteers like George and Khayoom are left to cremate bodies.
And April has been particularly hard for them.
For 44-year-old Azmat, a competitive weightlifter, it has been a month of lifting stretchers.
“Cremations are difficult to perform because of the heavy load at the crematoriums. The wait time for cremations is a minimum of 10 hours. I think the government should look into this,” Azmat told The Quint. Since 2020, Azmat has performed 30 cremations.
In one of the cremations that Azmat oversaw in 2020, the pandit who was worried of infection taught him the rituals, including placing of flowers and rice on the body, and the mantras.
Choked with emotion, he added, “So many times people have just slipped between our fingers. In such cases, we want to make sure that they get the cremation the family desires”.
Has any case triggered communal…