2 girls give Covid victims a dignified farewell in Bengaluru

BENGALURU: While most youngsters remain at home, hooked to online shows or gaming consoles during this lockdown, two college girls, shaken by the spiralling Covid deaths, decided to step in. They began transporting bodies of victims and are now involved in giving them a dignified burial at a cemetery.
At 12.45pm Sunday inside Gate No. 4 of the Indian Christian Cemetery on Hosur Road, a line of ambulances is waiting outside with bodies. Nicole Furtado, 20, and her cousin Tina Cherian, 21, slip into their PPE suits at the right-hand corner of the graveyard. “There are eight bodies so far,” Nicole tells Tina.

The girls are part of a team of volunteers called Here I’m Squad which has been helping bereaved families bury their Covid-infected kin.

Nicole, a final-year Bachelor of Social Work student at St Joseph’s College, and Tina, a final-year MBBS student of Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, are on a break as their institutions are shut. “We’ve been seeing the situation in the news and my dad, who has been volunteering at funerals, told us the ground situation was grim,” Nicole said.

On May 10, the girls landed at the cemetery and joined the volunteers led by Sagayaraj. “Day 1 was a bit scary as we started out by bringing out bodies from ambulances to the graveyard. But, we got the hang of things over the next few days,” Tina said. With deaths hitting a record high last week, the girls handled 25 bodies on a single day alongside Nicole’s dad Mathew. “A young girl lost her mother last week and she came again to lay her dad to rest. She wept, asking her dad why he had left her too,” said Tina.
Their work has inspired others to volunteer at the cemetery and give a dignified farewell to victims.