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.
