They toil to ensure the dead get their due

The phones start ringing just after dawn. That is when the various coronavirus designated hospitals start announcing deaths among their patients.

The calls are jarring and abrupt in their morbid messaging. They galvanise an oddball group of techies, hospital staffers, BBMP staff, cemetery workers and other citizen volunteers involved in funeral transport and body disposal, as they begin gearing up for the difficult day ahead.

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The job of body disposal may not be the easiest in the world. With the added dimension of Covid-19, it is almost a nightmare.

In the last 114 days of the outbreak in Karnataka, the state has been witness to 253 Covid-19 deaths. As on July 1, 98 of these have been in Bengaluru. These are numbers which have radically changed the lives of many funeral conveyors or graveyard workers.

As a fourth-generation graveyard worker and director of the Hebbal Crematorium, Raja Kalpalli, 47, thought he had seen it all.

Until June, he had been working at a crematorium in Cox Town which was handling about one body a week. With the increase in Covid deaths in Bengaluru, he was also made in-charge of the Hebbal crematorium which accepts several Covid-19 fatalities, plus about 10 non-Covid bodies every day.

“On Wednesday, we had five Covid-19 bodies come in. On Thursday, our first fatality came in at 8.30 am. The pronounced feeling is that of unease. My life before the lockdown feels like another lifetime ago,” he said.

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The strain is compounded by the fact that government graveyard workers do not have insurance coverage or health, least of all Kalpalli. “My family is worried. This is a contagious disease and I am afraid that I will pass this on to them. But this is my profession. I have no choice but to continue,” he added.

For those bringing bodies in an ambulance, the strain is no less.

Across the city, in Shivajinagar, lab technician-turned Covid-19 funeral transporter Veeresh, 45, and pharmacist Sheikh Imran, 35, both members of Mercy Angels, an NGO group, prepare to deal with their first case after 1 pm. They do their office work from morning till afternoon and volunteer from 1 pm to 7 pm.

Since April, the group has been officially sanctioned by the Department of Health and Family Welfare (DOHFW) to transport Covid-19 fatalities from hospitals. The DOHFW supplies the PPE kits and bears operating costs, the NGO provides the volunteers and the ambulances.

It has so far transported over 46 non-Covid deaths, plus a larger number of Covid-19 deceased patients.

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“We don PPE kits, rush to the designated hospital where two health or BBMP officials will be waiting to give us the papers and release the body into our charge. Then comes the task of taking the body to either a graveyard or a crematorium,” Veeresh said.

After the men don the stuffy, non-breathable PPE kits, sweat begins to build up inside. Soon, it feels like they are taking a shower within. But this is not the hardest part of the job, both men say.

Battling fatigue, the transporters sometimes also have to contend with human ill-will. Neighbours and acquaintances have often been at odds with them over their work and the stigma of the disease looms large. Occasionally, families of Covid-19 victims are also heartless.

On Wednesday, a message received by a traffic warden coordinating with the family of a Covid-19 fatality, typified the situation: Family will pay cremation fees, but they do not want to be “associated with the dead Covid person”, the warden wrote.

There have been a few people like this, but not all, added Imran.

“This job has taught me that we humans just need to spend the rest of our lives with love for each other,” he said.

It is a sentiment that Kalpalli agrees with. “We will do your duty until the crisis is over. We owe it to society,” he said.