CREMATORIUMS TURN INTO OCEAN OF DEAD BODIES
By — Shaveta Nayyar Dham
On 26th April 2021, my friend’s daughter passed away in Delhi due to covid. The disease caused pulmonary failure that led to cardiac arrest. A sweet thirty-year-old girl gone in no time. Hearing the news, I reached the crematorium with my brother. As we walked inside the gate, I could feel the immense heat in the environment, something that could burn away the soul itself.
Soon as we came closer to the Hindon Nadi crematorium area on Delhi- Merut highway, the site was horrifying. For almost a kilometer, the ambulances were parked with dead body or dead bodies in them. A little step further, I saw dead bodies lying on the footpath after every 10–15 steps. In the waiting area under the shed, people were sitting, some wearing the PPE kits while others mourning the death of their loved ones and waiting for their turn to perform the last rites.
I saw the deceased father sitting motionless and speechless under the shed. Myself and my brother walked to the person in-charge to ask about the covid patients last rites. The guy who already looked overworked & pale said that the waiting hours is 6–7 hours as few dead bodies from the previous day need to be cremated and that we need to wait till everything is sorted out. I saw other guys who were helping the dead bodies move from one place to the other shouting “ Body Number 76 laao” and others ‘ Is body ko vahan le jaao”.
In no time, a name became a body,- a living cell became absolutely dead with no one to turn to, with no one to see, feel or hear. It was ironical that day that the dead and the living played similar roles. I felt a deep void and experienced death not only what I saw outside but also death of my soul- as if some devil has completely taken the energy and soul out of me.
The overcrowded cremation ground appeared to be an ocean of dead bodies. The color “white” just caught your eyes everywhere you looked to. We peeped inside, all the pyres were full and even the space beside the pyres was used to cremate the dead bodies. Few dead bodies were lying unattended at the floor. Some people were so exhausted that they had no idea that what is expected out of them at that point. Blank faces, worn out looks and their swollen eyes all depicted darkness- darkness of life, darkness of death.
Completely lost in the moment and sensing the urgency, we called up another crematorium in Green Park. We took a decision in 10 minutes to leave from that crematorium to another one. We requested the ambulance driver to take us, and, on much pleading, he agreed to come at the cost of Rs. ten thousand. It was like we had no control on the situation and we gave in as demanded.
As we left, I saw more ambulances entering already packed crematorium. The crematorium that day reflected the darkest shades of humanity that could not be forgotten easily. The grief and the of intensity loss were more than I could put in these words.
When we reached the other crematorium, we saw several dead bodies placed on wheel stretchers, some lying on the floor inside and even outside. As I went to the Registration counter, he first said it would not be possible and then after requesting him, he said it could be done after three hours and not before that. We patiently waited and sat under the tree not knowing what to say to each other. I just saw ambulances, stretchers, people in grief everywhere. As our turn came, we wore our PPE kits first. The wood had to be brought from the wood area to the pyre area in a “thela”. There were only two people in charge of placing the wood at the pyres in the “thelas”. When I went to get the wood arrangement done, to my horror people were fighting for the wood too so that they could do the last rights properly.
With those PPE kits on, it was so difficult to stand amid the burning crematorium. I saw, some people waiting for their turn, some relative sitting beside the dead body, some unattended dead bodies lying on the pyre, it was a completely devastating site…
There was no Pandit available. The person who brought the wood only performed the last rites. We bid our good bye to her; a girl full of life who had no complaints from life ever, who left us without giving us time to even say good bye to her in the right way….
I have never been able to sleep peacefully after what I saw- It seemed that sitting in the comfort of home and speaking about covid and people suffering is easy. After what I saw, it seems the deaths are much higher than what is being reported in all the news channels in Delhi. As I spoke to people, it appears that all the people irrespective of cast & religion faced difficulties in performing the last rights. Today, after experiencing human suffering and seeing death closely, it makes one wonder the existence of our “being”.
It seemed that I just took a dip in an ocean of dead bodies and came out with an evolutionary transformation in consciousness, soul & my being……
