COIMBATORE: The ambulance leaves behind a cloud of dust on a road leading up to a burial site before coming to a grinding halt. Inside the ambulance lay a corpse carefully wrapped in a white cloth. Donning a pair of white gloves, S Kandhavelan places a garland, lifts the body and lowers it to the grave a few metres away. For the past 20 years, the 47-year-old Kandhavelan has been burying the abandoned dead free of cost, giving them a dignified farewell.
Born into a financially struggling family, Kandhavelan faced adversity at the age of five when his father passed away, leaving behind his mother and four siblings. The burden of running the family fell on his mother, who sustained the family by working as a sweeper in a school in Singanallur. His education, limited to Class 10, had to be put on hold as family responsibilities weighed heavily on his young shoulders. Kandhavelan started to work to support his family. Little did he know that destiny had something extraordinary in store for him.
His transformation as a ‘saviour of the dead’ began in a twist of fate in 2002. “A homeless man in his 80s breathed his last in our neighbourhood. A police officer from Singanallur station asked for assistance to bury the body. Me and my friend agreed without hesitation. All legal procedures were done in my name. Later, we buried the body after the final rituals. That day changed my life,” he says.
“At that time, I was running a small fabrication unit. I decided to use that income to bury unclaimed bodies free of charge. I approached five police stations and a government hospital, offering assistance. After that, the police started informing me whenever they encountered unclaimed bodies,” he says.
Since 2002, Kandhavelan has buried 1,675 unclaimed bodies free of cost. He remembers the day when he buried 24 bodies in a single day. To further his cause, Kandhavelan established a trust named Aathma Arakkattalai, initially partnering with two friends. However, over the years, circumstances led to one friend’s demise and another’s family commitments, leaving Kandhavelan to carry the torch alone.
The initial years were tough. Kandhavelan funded the burials with his hard-earned money, a cost that amounted to around Rs 1,300 per body back then. Today, the expenses have risen to Rs 2,500 per body, primarily due to the cost of labour for digging burial pits and purchasing items for the final rituals. He personally handles every aspect of the process, from transporting bodies after postmortem to assisting with the body wrapping, saving Rs 1,000 in the process.
Beyond the city streets, he also retrieves bodies from railway tracks in Coimbatore and Tiruppur, even when the smell from the decomposed body is off-putting. Additionally, Kandhavelan provides a final resting place for abandoned individuals and those who die of HIV infection. In recognition of his service, the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation has entrusted him with the upkeep of burial grounds in Singanallur, Uppilipalayam, and Kallimadai.
But his mission goes even further. He offers solace to grieving parents by burying newborns who didn’t survive birth in hospitals. Despite receiving contributions from some well-wishers, Kandhavelan refrains from seeking sponsorships, as he believes his business earnings are sufficient to sustain the noble work. In recent times, he has handled an average of 11 to 14 bodies per month. During the challenging times of Covid-19, he went above and beyond, burying 133 bodies at no cost and providing van services to transport patients from their homes to hospitals.