CHENNAI: Alagar peers at his phone closely every now and then, waiting for news of his brother, Karuppaiah, who was among those who were in the building in Moulivakkam when it collapsed.
There is certitude and pragmatism in the way Alagar speaks of own brother as dead. When accosted by television crews, he issued a simple but well articulated plea to the State government to help him take possession of his brother’s corpse at the earliest.
“We have lost all hope. There is nearly no chance that he would be alive. All we want now is for his body to be handed over to us without any hassle so we can take it back to our village,” he says. Alagar’s family hails from Soudarpettai in the Tirumangalam Taluk of Madurai District. Karuppaiah, aged 42, was among 10 masons from the region who had been employed at the ill-fated construction site for the past three months.
Alagar has only one eye, and has found employment at the accounts department of the Pothys clothing store chain. He lives in Chennai in accommodation provided by his employer, and was the first of his family to start doing the rounds between the site of the collapse, the Royapettah Government Hospital and Ramachandra University, hoping for word on Karuppaiah’s status.
“Some of the others who had come with my brother escaped with injuries. A number of our relatives have now come to Chennai. Some of us are standing here, others are at the hospitals. So far, we have no word. All we are looking for now is some confirmation that he is gone, so we can start trying to get our lives back together,” he says with poise and composure.
Karuppaiah’s son, Vinodh, is presently waiting for his engineering counselling, after scoring 1,005 in his Class XII exams, while his daughter, Vinodhini, has just entered her Class 11 after scoring 450 in her Class X exams.
“This was the biggest project he had worked on. He had gone home only 15 days ago. He went home every month. They spoke to him every day over the phone. They even spoke to him on Saturday morning,” says Alagar.
The wait is painful, he adds, saying it is all but certain that he will never meet his brother again.
ALSO READ: