Challenging times during lock-down

To fight the pandemic of Corona virus, 21 days nationwide lockdown was announced in India, it was the need of the hour to control the situation and to reduce the rate of fatalities. Challenging one but with no other option people decided to abide by the norm for safety of oneself and their loved ones, whether close or far away.

But there are few instances when people are in challenging situations to take calls owing to emergency situation in family, like someone’s demise or someone breathing his/her last breath. Everyone wants to pay final rites to the departed soul or see their loved ones before final adieu.

One of my mom’s friend’s brother expired in Kerala two days ago, after being bed ridden for long time. His only son (Rohan) is in Gujarat and my mom’s friend is in Uttar Pradesh with her family. Rohan tried to get pass to reach Kerala to perform final rites of his father, as a result of which dead body was shifted to mortuary.

Yesterday, when I called my mom to check, whether Rohan was able to reach Kerala or not?  My mom informed that Rohan has decided not attend his father’s funeral as there are lot of challenges in his path like, he has to travel through 3 states to Kerala and in current situation, he will put in home quarantine for 14 days mandatorily, only then he can perform the final rites and all this while his dad’s body will be in morgue.

Taking stock of these situations Rohan took the most unthinkable decision one can imagine of including me, which was to cremate his dad at the earliest without his physical presence there. He has entrusted this responsibility to his family members back in home town to ensure things go smoothly with just one request, ie to connect with him during video call in order to witness cremation proceedings.

I have no words to describe his act of bravery, well thought about decision but extremely difficult to execute it, at least I don’t have the endurance to do something like this and I hope am not in a situation like this either.

This is another side of lockdown where people are being forced to take emotionally dreadful decisions, I can just pray to the almighty to give courage to such people to sail through such testing times and together we defeat Corona.