A notice gave the cost for incinerating a human body in the electric crematorium at Rs 65. For children below 13 the cost was slightly less.
There were also essential items, which had to be paid for as well as optional ones. These were included in the total cost.
With man doing his best for deforestation, I was not surprised to find that a pyre made of wood (250kg) would cost the relatives of the dear departed something above Rs 500.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation has set the rates.
My mother-in-law died last evening.
The office where the money was to be deposited for the ‘essential items’ was a poky little room. The cashier was a man getting on in years. He was a cheerful soul. He told us that the death certificate we had brought was illegible. “This is a carbon copy. But they rarely change the carbon paper,” he explained helpfully.
A transistor radio was playing songs from Bengali film songs. On his desk among the papers and files was a Bengali film magazine. He perhaps leafed through this when business was dull.
A bamboo frame to put the body on for the last rites before being shoved into the red hot plates of the furnace was easily found in a shed next to the cashier’s office.
The other ‘essential’ items – some coarse grains of rice, a single sickly looking banana on an earthen plate was handed to us by the cashier. There was a shroud also. It was almost transparent.
The body of my late mother-in-law was brought from home by her weeping sons and daughters on a “Bombay Khat”, a wooden bed made of inexpensive wood. It was highly polished though. The option to a “Bombay Khat” is a crude wooden structure, which can be carried on the shoulder by mourners.
The bed had a new mattress and a new pillow. Both had been manufactured with the understanding that no living soul would use it. The same could be said for the “Bombay Khat”.
The flowers and wreaths were real enough. The use of artificial flowers at funerals has not been thought of yet. But if artificial flowers and garlands can be used for home décor and for the gods and goddess, the time may come when this imperishable commodity catches the fancy of the bereaved.
This was a Hindu funeral. The body is cremated.
Christian funerals are none different. The coffins are trimmed with a cheap shiny black fabric. The trimmings are of tin foil. I do not know if brass trimmings are available in Calcutta. The wood that goes to making a coffin is the yellowish and brittle wood for making crates.
I have even seen a shop, which proudly proclaims that it makes coffins, while in reality it turns out coffins by the dozen.
Those in the funeral business readily take advantage of the fact that a mourner will not haggle over prices and is possibly looking for the best, yet has no time to examine the goods. It’s like ‘goods once sold will not be taken back’ disclaimer.
Though there is no question of a coffin being reused, since it is interred, the cots used for Hindu funerals are sometimes recycled.
Long ago, the ‘doms’ or scavengers took away the cot, the mattress and the pillow. During a normal day quite a few piled up. These were resold for sale afresh to others bereaved. The prices of these were lower.
As long as people die, the business of funerals will not.