THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state capital faces a strange predicament. With the city corporation's electric crematorium at Thycaud closed down for maintenance, caretakers of the traditional crematorium saw an unusual rush that they had to deny permission to bring four bodies on Thursday morning.
"Their relatives were asking for the same time slots and we were already booked by then. We might have been able to accommodate them if they had agreed to cremate at a later time," said Jayan, who works at the traditional crematorium.
The electronic crematorium has been temporarily shut down owing to maintenance work in the transformer and will be functional within a week. On average, up to seven bodies are cremated everyday at the traditional crematorium. It may go down to three on some days. As many as 185 cremations have been done here this month till date; the monthly average is 200. A normal day at the crematorium begins at 6 am and functions till 10 pm. It takes three-and-half hours to cremate a body. However, with the electric crematoriums out of commission, the number of bodies at the traditional crematorium has increased.
"Until noon on Thursday alone, seven cremations took place. The number of cremations can go as high as 12. The demand increased today but since we only have four slots, there is not much to be done. Since we have prior bookings, we can let clients know early itself if a slot is unavailable," said Jayan.
In the electric crematorium, eight cremations take place on average. They start functioning from 8 am and works till 6 pm, where the last body can be accepted at 6 pm. "It takes one-and-a-half hours to cremate a body. The two furnaces are powered by the transformers. This is a technical snag and it should be ready soon," said a worker at the electric crematorium. About 165 corpses were cremated here till 2.30 pm on Wednesday, when the technical difficulties forced them to halt operations.
electric crematorium
The crematorium has two furnaces powered by transformers
On average, eight cremations take place every day
The crematorium functions from 8 am to 6 pm
It takes one-and-half hours to cremate a body at the crematorium