Kochi: Korappath Ramesh makes a living from death—the ultimate recession-proof industry. But it’s more than just a job for the double postgraduate (in economics and history)— conducting cremations is a calling for the 38-year-old.
“I never thought that this would be the course of my life, my career,” says Ramesh, as he moves briskly amid the smoke billowing from more than a dozen pyres.
Ivar Madham, on the banks of the Bharathapuzha river, is Kerala’s busiest crematorium. Elsewhere, at more famous cremation sites, grieving relatives are faced with what’s tantamount to extortion. Here at Ivar Madham, located 90km from Kochi, there is none of that attempt to gouge the vulnerable.
Regarding coins, as part of the rites done for the body before cremations, offerings are made by all the relatives participating in the rites and each of them will have to place coins along with some rice and flowers on instructions of the priest.
Consecrated ground: Cremations in progress at Ivar Madham. Ajayan/Mint
The price for a cremation is Rs1,800 and there are about 60 of them per day, which translates into an annual revenue of approximately Rs4 crore. From firewood to priests to conducting the last rites, everything is organized with clockwork precision and the relatives of the deceased are spared the long waiting periods that are the norm at other cremation ghats. Ramesh will also arrange ambulances to transport dead bodies at a nominal charge and collect and keep the ashes to be picked up later.
A.R. Kurup, a civil engineer working with a construction firm at the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, travelled 300km last week to perform the last rites for his father at Ivar Madham.
“It was my father’s wish to be cremated in this holy place. We know it’s very far but there is nothing more I can do for him,” Kurup said.
Ramesh says he’s handled at least 100,000 cremations at the burning ghat at Pambady, the town in Thrissur district in central Kerala, where Ivar Madham is located. The half-acre plot abutting the river bank is owned by the Pambady panchayat, which has a one-room office at the entrance where an official keeps records and collects a fee of Rs50 per body.
While cremations at family sites are still prevalent among Hindus, who constitute around 56% of Kerala’s 32 million population, public sites run by local bodies such as panchayats and municipal corporations have also been emerging. The move has gathered pace with the breaking up of joint families into nuclear families living in apartments, the burgeoning population and land reforms that have led to the redistribution and fragmentation of large holdings, amid the state’s annual death rate of around seven per 1,000.
The sacred nature of Ivar Madham comes from being the only public cremation site in the state located on the banks of a river, apart from being linked to the Pandavas of Mahabharata.