No Room for the Living.....or the Dead!!

No Room For the Living.....or the Dead!

When buildings are constructed overnight and apartments let out at unbelievably low rents, it should ring alarm bells. But in a city where the living face acute housing problems, where a 
chunk of the population lives in shanty huts and slums every square foot makes a difference.
Most people who flock to Mumbai come here to make a living, leaving behind their families,while the slave and scrimp to make their dreams come true .More often than not they manage to make a living: no one in this city need to go to sleep hungry--not if he can help himself, not if he's hardworking and ingenious.

The recent mishap , involving a 7-storey newly constructed apartment complex, where over 80 people lost their lives and scores were injured, should be an eye-opener..for the buyer and a warning for corrupt dealers, officers and builders.  For many ,owning an apartment ,a home or a piece of land in this city will always remain a dream. This however is no deterrant to  the lakhs who  land in the dream city each day. With no ceiling on the influx of population,the number  of dead too is rising and they have nowhere to go. While birth rates have dropped death rates are rising steadily. A study has found that the average Mumbaikar is likely to die at least seven years before other Indians and about 12 years before people living in the rest of Maharashtra.The most common device being employed across faiths, however, is the reuse of graves. Some cemeteries reopen graves after 10 years, and in crammed cities like Mumbai, sooner still. In fact, there are no permanent graves available in Mumbai.

The civic body runs 56 cemetries while NGOs run around 50.With the number of cemetries falling far short of requirement, the question of laying the dead to rest is cause for concern.This problem is not peculiar just to Mumbai but to other heavy populated cities over the world. 

The dead can wait but Holi can’t. If you had dropped by at  two of the cities well known crematoriums recently you would have been surprised to see this. Piles of wood, meant to be given free of cost for last rites, were sold at a profit in these funeral homes, for Holika dahan the burning of evil on the night before Holi.  Incidentally, BMC pays contractors Rs 6 per kg of wood at the end of the month, based on the data of bodies cremated. On an average, every cremation requires about 300 kg of wood. 

Great Britain, for example faces  a similar problem. However the concept of freelance burying is emerging as a solution because the law there allows burial of the dead  in their own gardens or backyards provided they maintain a burial register and do not contaminate a water supply or its source. This may not be an ideal situation for a place like Mumbai  where the civic body maintains the open drainage system and common water supply outlets in many areas.

Saudi Arabia on the other hand has come up with an ideal alternative---graves are dug deep enough to bury a person in standing position so that less space is occupied.

While the Catholics and Muslims have no choice but to relinquish claims on a grave after 18 m months, the Parsis and Hindus are better off. The Parsis dispose their dead by Dokhmenashni ( feeding the body to vultures in the Tower of Silence). Nobody is allowed to witness these rites though.

 A number of scholars  also feel that burials contaminate Mother Eart for atleast a century. Their predictions are based on studies which have shown that microenzymes of those buried centuries ago are still active.!