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Last Rites

A heroic story during the pandemic of 2020.

By Dipra JainPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Last Rites
Photo by Val Pierce on Unsplash

In March’20 when the whole world went into lockdown to save itself from the deadly Coronavirus, some people decided to give back to society and one of them was Yash. He was a 30 year old man residing in India who decided to start a Non Profit organisation(Last rites) to give a proper funeral for people who died due to Covid-19 virus. The pandemic victims could not get a proper funeral because their families were too scared to catch the super spreading Virus. Due to this mentality amongst people, the number of unclaimed dead bodies piled up at multiple hospitals all over India and sometimes hospital staff had to do the last rites of many victims. The NPO called Last rites came in and helped to reduce the burden of already burdened medical staff.

On 20th March’20, Yash left his well paying job at an Multinational Investing firm and rented another flat for himself. He did not want his family consisting of his parents, wife and little kids to be infected because of his desire to help others. After settling down to his new life, everyday onwards 25the March’20 Yash, got up, wore his PPE Kit and went to RWC Hospital in Delhi to collect dead bodies with his team. Every body bag had a name tag attached to it, Yash thought about their names and possible lives they lived on Earth. He thought how in a moment a human leaves everything he built on earth for his/her life and vanishes into the universe. One by one Yash said a prayer with the names of the victim and did their last rites. After this, he came back to his empty home, cleaned himself, had food and slept. However his day did not end here, before sleeping he made sure to write the names of people he said goodbye that day in his little black notebook.

It has been 3 months now, pandemic is still not in control in India and a single day has not gone by where Yash took a break. He took it to himself as his duty and aim in life to help others. Now, his little black notebook has 900 names of different victims of different race and age. The toughest goodbyes he gave were the one’s to little kids, it made him cry for days and question god's existence and his plans for mankind. Even though Yash started the NPO himself, this started taking a toll on him. He stopped talking to his family and having proper meals. All he now thinks about is the lives lost and what happens after death.Even though he was not feeling mentally well Yash did not stop his selfless work.

One day, a reporter from Rime’s Newspaper was visiting RWC Hospital and he saw Yash and his NPO- Last rites. He enquired about them and published a story about their selfless act. The story went viral on social media within hours. Everybody was talking about it and sharing it further. People were contacting the NPO to volunteer with them as they also wanted to give back to the society. The Government of India also read the article and was impressed by the selfless and hard work done by Yash and his teams. The Government of India decided to honour the acts and decided to grant Yash $20,000 as a token of his selfless work.

Yash, was smitten by all the positive comments which were coming from not only India but the whole world. Everybody was praising him and when he got a call from the Government about the grant he got teary eyed. Nonetheless, he took the grant and donated it to the NPO to grow it more in other parts of India.

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About the Creator

Dipra Jain

24, student at King's College London. A marketing fanatic and passionate about photography.

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