KLANG, Sept 4 — A lorry driver by day, D. Dhatchinamoorthy is the head of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that helps to bury the unclaimed dead.
Persatuan Kebajikan Khairat Pengebumian Kaum India Selangor (KHAIS) believes that everyone deserves a decent burial.
The 53-year-old and some 20 members of the NGO have embarked on this noble cause for over a year now and have since performed proper burials for 20 unclaimed bodies in Selangor.
It is a challenging task to juggle between driving his lorry for a forwarding firm plying the Klang Valley route on weekdays and arranging funeral rites for unclaimed bodies over weekends but the father of three has grown accustomed to this.
He equates it to doing good deeds for anyone in need, adding that the dead too need to be taken care of.
In his own words:
Helping people has always been what I wanted to do since my younger days and it is something that I tell my children to do as well. Even if it means sweeping the ground of a place of worship is what you can only offer, by all means do it. No one is going to tell you your effort is not good enough. I did not come from a very well-to-do family and I wouldn’t consider myself as financially rich today but I believe I am very rich in terms of accumulating good deeds.
I joined KHAIS in July, 2015 after I was informed by our advisor R. Muthurajan of several unclaimed bodies in hospitals in Selangor. Initially, we tried to assist burial processes for some unclaimed bodies without forming the group but it was difficult as we were not a registered entity. There is a lot process and paperwork that we must go through and the police are very strict about this… we are not doing this to gain any sort of popularity but simply to ease congestion at hospital morgues and more importantly to give these unclaimed bodies or body parts a proper burial.
In Malaysia, the number of unclaimed bodies increases every day. These corpses are unclaimed for various reasons. They could be accident victims whose bodies are beyond recognisable or bodies, whose next-of-kin refuse to claim. It could be because of family conflict that the family refuse to claim the body. As for unclaimed Muslim bodies, the Islamic department will do the necessary but for the non-Muslims, there aren’t many venues to turn to.
KHAIS claims all non-Muslim bodies, locals or foreigners, and give them a decent burial or cremation. We also perform a simple prayer before we put these bodies six feet under.
All those in KHAIS have also been doing similar good deeds prior to the formation of the group. From helping out at the orphanage and disabled homes, they have done almost all these in the past. We got to know each other over a period of time from meetings at temples and other goodwill efforts.
I admit it is very tiring to divide time between my day job and concentrating on KHAIS at night. Sometimes, I work from 8am up to 8pm with very little rest but my employers are nice to me and they allow me to take time off as and when for work related to KHAIS. My wife is also very much involved in what I do. She is very supportive and although my children are not involved, they give me the much needed moral support.
Claiming unclaimed bodies from morgues and giving them a decent burial is not something I had always wanted to do… no, not even in my wildest dream.
When I told my family what I wanted to do, they did not believe me. They thought I was joking because by nature, I am a funny person as I love to crack jokes all the time. In Oct, 2015, we performed our first burial ceremony for an unclaimed body and my family was surprised. They were not shock but surprise and gave me a pat on the back.
When I was younger, I did not have any special interest to further my studies or to become someone successful. This might be the aim and desire of most people but I have always wanted to just lend a hand to those in need. There was this one time when I helped a temple prep for a prayer ceremony and I did it, not for the money or food, but just for the sake of helping the temple. I experienced that joy of helping others and I was probably in my early 20s when I did that. That feeling I experienced, I wanted that feeling to last for the rest of my life.
In the long run, there is nothing much I would want more than to see KHAIS reaching out nationwide. At the moment, we are struggling to find funds to assist us monthly as we rely a lot on public donations. Most of the time, we fork out money from our own pockets to bear the cost.
