Flanked by Golu, Sohanlal and Lakhan, all Hindus, these were the men who buried the bodies of the Muslim patients who died at the hospital.

РІР‚ВThe virus does not distinguish between Hindu and Muslim,РІР‚в„ў said Jagdish Paswan, a mortuary worker at IndoreРІР‚в„ўs private Aurobindo Medical College. They are the gravediggers, the body washers, the corpse burners and the furnace cleaners, the conduit between the end of this life and whatever lies on the other side.Р”Р„lso read: 2021 in photos part 2 - Covid pyres burn all day, police of 2 states clash, a deadly ambush Many had spent years at the very bottom of the caste or economic ladder, socially discriminated against, even though it is in their hands that we place the bodies of those who have our hearts. The COVID pallbearers РІР‚вЂњ Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian РІР‚вЂњ were the handymen tasked to repair and reassemble the broken bits of our humanity. It was a job no one else was ready to do. In India, paradoxically, in a Dickensian besting and worsting of times, the breakdown of social and community structures ran parallel to extraordinary displays of courage and compassion.Р”Р„nd nowhere was this more evident than in the stories of those who stepped up to be the pallbearers of COVID. There were other religious communities that were on pilgrimages when the lockdown was announced by the prime minister РІР‚вЂњ Sikhs at the gurudwara in Nanded in Maharashtra, Hindus at Vaishno Devi in Jammu РІР‚вЂњ but the language used for them in mainstream media was very different.

The bodies РІР‚вЂњ before they are Hindu or Muslim РІР‚вЂњ they are human.РІР‚в„ўР”Р„t any other time, this would have been a truism, a self-evident do-gooder statement that may have even been overlooked for its obvious good manners.Р”В«ut Indian public discourse had already been coarsened by a communal, poisonous conversation around the role of the Tablighi Jamaat, an orthodox Sunni sect, as a super-spreader. РІР‚ВI am more scared of the living than the dead. That he was a Muslim, now immersed in all the Hindu rituals of last rites, right from slokas to sandalwood, did not strike him as the least bit comment-worthy. With almost no one willing to handle bodies, not even those of their own parents, lovers or siblings, the cityРІР‚в„ўs municipal corporation had tasked Malbari with the job.Р”Р„lso read: 4th Covid wave could hit India between June & October, IIT-Kanpur preprint says But nothing he had done in the aftermath of limited natural calamities РІР‚вЂњ in peacetime his work was limited to the burial of the body of a beggar or a homeless man who would die unmourned on the streets РІР‚вЂњ had prepared him for this. Malbari, who had set up his small volunteer force after the Gujarat earthquake in 2001, had long made it his mission to provide dignity in death to those who had remained unloved in life. Countless others were simply left to die, at the gates of graveyards and crematoriums or inside hospital wards. Malbari performed both, making sure to take a photograph of the rituals to share with families later, so relatives could be reassured that those they loved had been sent off with dignity. There were casket sheets and prayer mats for Muslim burials, but also Gangajal and ghee for Hindu cremations. A slightly bigger adjacent room was chock-a-block with ceremonial material haphazardly organized in colourful, untidy piles that rose from floor to ceiling. A bare table and chair were placed in a room that was as narrow as a phone booth.

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