Pandemic casualties give gravedigger sleepless nights

Death had not fazed gravedigger Mohammed Shamim up to now, but since the grip of the coronavirus crisis has tightened in New Delhi, a shiver runs up even his spine each time he sees a hearse pull up at the cemetery he tends.

“I’ve been burying the dead for the last two decades. But until now, I’ve never been scared for my own life,” he said.

The Indian capital has become one of the country’s Covid-19 hotspots, with media reports based on graveyard records saying there are 450 dead – triple the official tally.

Shamim has dug graves for 115 bodies at the cemetery’s designated area for coronavirus dead, about 200m away from the others.

Despite the third-generation gravedigger’s experience, his family has now started complaining about his job at the Jadid Qabristan Ahle Muslim cemetery, and Shamim has moved his four daughters to his parents’ house to reduce the risk of them catching the disease.

“They are scared. Sometimes I lie to them that I don’t touch the bodies,” said the 38-year-old.

He gets a call an hour before the hearse arrives. That is when he becomes nervous. He prepares the relatives, asking them to put on protective suits, gloves and masks, before the family says a prayer and lowers the corpse – usually wrapped in cloth or plastic sheets – into the grave.

The mourners then throw their protective gear into the hole before a mechanical earth-mover fills it in.

Some of the bodies of coronavirus victims arrive without relatives to help with the burial, so Shamim has often defied orders to stay away.

“People just refuse to come help with the burial. What can you do? I have to step in,” he said, describing “heartbreaking” scenes such as when only a wife and a small child came to the funeral of one man.

At a recent burial, Shamim had to find gloves for a small group who had turned up with only plastic bags for protection.

“I understand that it’s never easy to bury the dead, but some families don’t follow the rules at all. So many times I have had to beg the hospital workers who accompany the body for gloves,” he said.

He has been so worried that he has twice been tested for the coronavirus, and paid for one of them himself despite his meagre wages.

With the number of victims growing in Delhi and his services in greater demand, Shamim says he worries now if his breathing changes or he has a stomachache.

“I always felt safest around the dead and most vulnerable in the outside world. Now I find it difficult to sleep at night,” he said.