Sapna Kamal Sangra
I grew up with a poignant imagery of man who keeps running to capture more and more land and couldn’t make to the point where he started from before the sunset. I cannot recall correctly where did I read the story but the way understanding and rhetoric “Do Gaz Zameen” got ingrained in my psyche with a moral loud and clear hints that it must have been a lesson in my Hindi text book in school and my revered teacher succeed far beyond in making us get the point. Material pleasures are momentary and material progress measured merely in terms of percentages and numbers tell us half the story. Our dualism in responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic as individuals and communities has brought out the ugly face of who we are in real. We are a blasé society, selfish and callous that we cannot even afford our dead a decent and dignified burial and cremation. I was shaken when the first incident of people not letting the body of a Covid-19 victim enter the cremation ground came up. The video I came across was shot in the dark which gives us a sense that it was at night that a few people were seen standing outside the cremation ground along with the Lady Councilor who seemed to have come in support of the people barring the family of a victim to enter for performing the last rites of the deceased. As if it wasn’t enough, there was reportage that on June 2, a mob had disrupted the cremation of a 72 year old Covid-19 victim while in another such incident in Domana; a family had been compelled to take-half the burnt body of their relative off the pyre. The body was later cremated at Belicharana Tawi river-bed. The most abnoxious and unfortunate incident took place on June 18 when two men collapsed of dehydration and suffocation in their PPE kits while walking nearly one and half kilometer in Sidhra Tawi river-bed struggling to cremate their relative who had given in to Coivid-19 again. They were made to shuttle for over two hours in an ambulance in search of a suitable spot in Tawi river-bed after their request to cremate the deceased at the Shakti Nagar Cremation ground was not acceded to by the authorities. The two were later cremated at Shastri Nagar. These are not mere incidences and mere numbers. They are hinting at a much deeper social problem. This is an indication of us heading towards a normless, anomic society where we lose rationale to interpret things correctly in the light of our value system. It looks like that our material progress has robbed us of our rich cultural heritage embedded in self-sufficient sui-generis nature of our society. On one hand, people came out to offer support, assist others and cheer the front line workers while on the other, we witnessed attacks on Medicos and Para Medicos and they were shunned out of the societies being treated like an Outcaste. We also had instances where some families refused to take the dead bodies of those who died of Covid-19. Societies have left their value system and compassion far behind forgetting that it is this value system comprising love, compassion and kindness that is the essence of humanity. Cemeteries and crematoriums like the parks and ponds are the public assets which are collectively owned, maintained and used by the communities and societies with or without government support. I wonder how many of us have contributed to that end except for having used them at some point in time. When did they become someone’s personal property? We don’t necessarily need to be a science student to understand when a body is put to ashes and burnt; it leaves no scope for the spread of the virus. In exigencies such as the one we are facing now, our collective wisdom and compassion must prevail over our petty unwanted fears and insecurities. It’s imperative we put in practice an iota of what we share on social media. I want to leave my readers with a thought: “Do Gaz zameen” is their due and let’s give them that with dignity and decency.
(The author teaches Sociology at the University of Jammu and is the SPIC MACAY Chairperson for J&K)
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