Everyone Gets A Farewell With Honour

Hyderabad: In the last six years, Goutham Kumar has performed the last rites of over 800 people – most of them abandoned, destitute and orphans. Each time he called family members or relatives, they either disconnected the call abruptly or bluntly said they had nothing to do with the deceased.

“But nobody deserves to die feeling unwanted. People who live in homes and orphanages do not lead happy lives. Do they not deserve respect and love even in death?” asks the 33-year-old founder of Serve Needy Voluntary Organization and Orphanage Home. He runs the organisation with help from his parents, C Venkataramana Reddy and C Lalitha Reddy, and a handful of volunteers.

The turning point in his life came in 2015, when Kumar saw a body at Gandhi Hospital, surrounded by mourning relatives. “I realised how alone people are in death. The wife sold her mangalsutra to get money for the last rites,” he said. Since then, Kumar’s NGO started gathering details about bodies from the police and homes and performing the last rites, following a thorough inquiry.

From getting the death certificate, obtaining necessary permissions and organising the items necessary for rituals, Kumar and his team do it all. They even conduct the post funeral rites, like ‘pind-daan’. About Rs 6,000 is spent on each funeral. Interestingly, it’s mostly women volunteers who help him with the rituals, despite a taboo around such practices.

Asked about the funding, Goutham said he either pays out of his pocket or uses the money left from donations that come in for other projects, he is involved in.

Speaking to TOI, Father Thomas of St Alphonsa Karunalayam at Rajendranagar said, “Earlier we were given a small plot by the GHMC. But villagers living around objected to destitute being buried. Caste would be one of their issues. Now we call Goutham and they readily help.”

But providing respectable funeral is only a part of what the NGO does. Their other social service projects include providing food and clothes to the poor, encouraging organic farming and distributing those vegetables in homes for free, making logs out of cow dung so as to reduce usage of wood in

funerals

, contributing basic amenities at government schools and recycling waste paper into notebooks that are then distributed among poor tribals.


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