Consulate helps expats attend father’s funeral
TEACHER, BROTHER PUT ON MADURAI REPATRIATION FLIGHT
Two Indian expats were accommodated on a repatriation flight from the UAE on Monday so that they could perform the last rites of their father who died in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, on Saturday.
Nirmala Venkatraman, a teacher, thanked the Indian Consulate for letting her and her brother V.D. Pani board the flight to Madurai. Their father Vasudevan died, aged 81, a week after suffering a stroke.
A retired bureaucrat, Vasudevan had qualified himself as a homeopathy and acupuncture practitioner and used to see select patients till recently, Nirmala told Gulf News over the phone from Chennai.
“Apart from me and my brother here, we have one more brother in the US. All of us registered for repatriation after our father fell sick and got admitted in ICU. My husband and daughter also registered,” she said.
After emails were sent to the mission, she said her father showed initial signs of recovery.
“Then we decided to wait for our turn as there was a long queue of people with emergencies,” said Nirmala, who recently took up a job as head of a secondary school. But luck was not in their favour as their father suffered two more episodes of stroke and passed away early on Saturday.
Nirmala said the family then wanted to catch the first flight that would take them home for his cremation. “We lost our mother some years back. We wanted to be there for our father’s last rites,” she said.
Their situation was brought to the notice of Consul General Vipul on Sunday, and the siblings got seats on the Madurai flight. “Since it was a last minute request, my husband and daughter had to stay back,” she said.
The siblings performed the last rites yesterday morning.
“We are sad that we could not see him before he passed away. The last time we all got together with him was last July after a gap of six years. We will cherish those memories forever,” Nirmala said.