Don’t want to see repeat of May, says crematorium manager
YAMUNANAGAR: “This is my only source of income, but I would never want a repeat of what I saw in May. The virus is real,” says Dhanu Kumar, the manager at mukti dham (crematorium) near OP Jindal Park in Yamunanagar.
The 47-year-old man from Ayodhya’s Faizabad town has been performing cremations on the Yamuna riverbank here since he was 21. On the same job for the last 26 years, he is now also a gardener, while his wife, along with two kids, work in the community kitchen.
Kumar was relieved that the deaths due to the infection have come down. “During this second wave, I even carried out 15 cremations at a time by setting up four temporary structures, when we saw bodies lined-up. At times, we told the families to take the ashes on the same or next day which otherwise are collected in threefour days. We needed to free the space for the next pyre,” he said.
Two teams of four workers each of the local municipal corporation work on fortnightly rotation at the crematorium. The same system is followed at the Buria crematorium. “But people prefer this one because of the Yamuna flowing nearby,” said Ajay, 28, a member of Dhanu’s team. While readying pyres on Monday as two were already lit nearby, Kumar shared an anecdote how a UP family turned up requesting an early cremation.
“They had a marriage due in the family and a day before, an elderly man passed away and as per the custom, they wanted the cremation to complete before noon the next day. They came here at 6am, we performed the cremation and they got the ashes at 9am. They immersed the ashes in Yamuna and left,” he said, “Vo hairan the ki sab kuch itni jaldi ho gaya (they were surprised how it all happened so fast)”.