Yesterday (July 6), I was blessed to attend a funeral that was a quintessential example of neighbourly love. Friday afternoon, 51-year old Mr. Aslam, collapsed in his office suffering a cardiac arrest. He stayed in that part of Mira Road, a satellite town of Mumbai, where Muslims are not known to reside. In fact, his is the only Muslim family in the entire building.
When I went to his house early Saturday morning to perform his last rites, I saw the body preserved in a refrigerator box… which was procured from a nearby Church. And the box was brought home by his Hindu neighbours. And not only the box, his neighbours stayed up all night to host the deceased person’s visiting relatives, arranged for his death certificate, had it attested from Mira Road’s Jama Masjid and procured the permission letter from the Muslims’ graveyard (Qabrastan).
All we were left to do was perform the religious rituals – bathe the body and shroud it, offer the funeral prayers and inter his body in the grave. And they helped us in these tasks, too. Almost every society member came to pay his/her last respects. Even two Brahmakumari ladies attended the funeral. This was not all; when the body was taken to the graveyard, all those society members came to the graveyard as well. A Gujarati society member of the deceased was riding pillion with me. He told me how everyone in the society acted like a single family, and how they had similarly arranged for Aslam’s wife’s funeral some months back. I was left awestruck at this neighbourly love that traversed the barriers of religious identities.
The society members, all Hindu, stood in attendance, paying homage to the departed soul as we offered his funeral prayers. The grave was not ready, and the final rites took another hour and a half. But they calmly stood there in a corner bearing the Mumbai rains and then left only after we had covered the grave.
In this age of communal friction, where hatred is bring fostered between Hindus and Muslims, such a selfless gesture of brotherly love completely floored me. And it has inspired me to follow their pristine example and help my non-Muslim brethren in their need of hour as well.