Doctor conducts last rites of woman as son recovers in hospital
NEW DELHI: For over a year now, doctors and other health care and frontline workers have been shouldering the burden of India’s battle against Covid-19. On Thursday, a 37-year-old doctor at a Delhi hospital took on some more weight. He performed the last rites of an elderly woman, who succumbed to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), at north Delhi’s Hindu Rao Hospital because her son, also diagnosed with the viral illness, was not in the condition to perform the rituals.
“I got a call from a junior working at the Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Hospital late on Wednesday, and he told me that an elderly woman had died of Covid there, and her son was unable to perform the last rites since he was still Covid-positive. I asked him to contact their immediate family and neighbours.when no one came forward till Thursday, I decided to help the family. I asked my doctor friend to get the consent from her son so that I could perform the rituals,” said Dr Varun Garg, assistant professor of forensic medicine at the North Delhi Municipal Corporation Medical College and Hindu Rao Hospital.
“Her son gave us written consent, and authorised me to perform the rites in his stead. It was quite painful to realise that none of the woman’s relatives nor her friends and family were there,” he added. The woman’s son is currently admitted to the Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Hospital.
The doctor then coordinated with his colleagues at Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Hospital and brought the body of the 78-yearold woman to the Nigambodh Ghat cremation ground. “I performed all rituals, and lit the pyre. I have stored her ashes in a locker at the crematorium so that whenever her son recovers, he can immerse them,” he said.
Garg said he and his family -his mother and his wife -- recovered from Covid-19 last week, and he resumed work on Saturday. “If there is anything that can help us overcome these challenging times, that is empathy and compassion. We need to help each other in any way we can amid this pandemic,” he said.
The 37-year-old has been working at the hospital since 2015 and has been on Covid duty since last year. Delhi, bearing the brunt of its fourth and worst wave of infections, has seen long queues at crematoriums in recent weeks as the city has been consistently recording more than 300 daily deaths for the last 16 days. On Friday, Delhi again added 341 deaths and 19,832 new Covid-19 cases.
Last month, police helped cremate the bodies of an elderly couple who died in their homes while in quarantine in north Delhi’s Burari. In some cases, family members of the victims have been unable to reach India for last rites, leaving them to rely on funeral organisers.officials at Messy funerals, a service provider in Civil Lines, told HT in April that they also carried out the last rites of two elderly people, aged 76 and 82, in neighbouring Ghaziabad.