City's unsung men who serve the dead

Pankhoori Sinha / TNN / Nov 7, 2005, 00:33 IST

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Prasad has been camping outside the Safdarjung mortuary since Sunday morning, helping people cremate their dead.

NEW DELHI: Even though in the business for a little over two decades, Rajendra Prasad swears he has seen nothing like this before. Prasad's daily work includes inquiring about unclaimed bodies in the city's hospitals, and cremating them with due honour.
"After a lifetime of seeing dead bodies in all conditions on everyday basis, the sight of badly charred bodies even shook me up," said Prasad.He had rushed to the Sarojini Nagar blast site, as soon as he heard the news.
A resident of Krishna Nagar in east Delhi, Prasad has been camping outside the Safdarjung mortuary since Sunday morning, helping people cremate their dead.
Same for J S Marwah, a 47-year-old businessman from Malviya Nagar, who has stayed outside the mortuary for the past one week. Part of an NGO called Bhai Dayal Singh Charitable Foundation, Marwah along with Prasad helped cremate 25 bodies only on Sunday.

The Foundation has been helping with the cremation of the bodies of the blast victims free of charge. They have provided hearse vans for the bodies to be taken to the Green Park crematorium.
Its volunteers are also arranging for shroud, wood, ghee and even the customary dakshina to the priest at the crematorium. "When people come looking for their relatives, they are in a state of shock. Sometimes, they have no money at all.
When they are hardly in a condition to make arrangements themselves, how can we charge them for our services?" asked Prasad.
In midst of this tragedy, the personal lives of people like Prasad and Marwah have but been forgotten. "Diwali came and went, we didn't even realise when. Anyway, we couldn't celebrate after all of this," said Marwah.

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