SALEM: For most, a final farewell from this world is a tapestry woven with family, gentle embraces, familiar faces, and age-old rituals. But some leave alone, with no family to claim them, no loved ones to weep, and sometimes not even a name to anchor their memory. Yet, in the heart of Salem, their quiet departure is not met with indifference. For nearly two decades, S Kalaivani and a group of steadfast women have quietly stepped into that silence, ensuring that every unclaimed soul receives the warmth, honour, and sacred respect of a proper farewell.
One day in 2008, while feeding destitute people on the streets around Annadhanapatti in Salem, the women met an elderly man who became a regular. One day, they learnt that he had died after falling into a drain. Police arrived and informed the corporation, but the body remained there for nearly two hours as they waited for workers to retrieve it. The women could not simply stand and watch. Around eight of them put on gloves, stepped into the drain and brought the man out. They helped by moving him into an ambulance and accompanied him to the Salem government hospital (GH).
The sight they saw there remained etched with pain in their hearts. There were many bodies there without anyone to claim them. After asking around, Kalaivani learnt that those bodies were sometimes buried without a proper farewell.
“I have even seen crows gather around corpses, which made me question if human lives are so meaningless,” she recalls. The answer to that question later became a responsibility that Kalaivani took up. If people had no one to stand beside them in death, her group would.
A native of Karur, Kalaivani grew up in a village and envisioned a life beyond it. She mastered tailoring and married at 21. Soon after her son was born, she went through a divorce and moved to Salem, supporting herself and her child through small tailoring jobs and classes.
In 2006, she came across an opportunity with an NGO to teach tailoring to women who had been divorced, abandoned or left without family support. The pay was modest, but the work meant something to her. She saw women facing circumstances she could relate to and wanted to teach them a skill that could help them be independent.
This was where her life in social service began. “Through my work, I met more women who wanted to help in their own small ways. Women from all walks of life came together and formed a small group. They began by doing what they could, including preparing food and feeding around 20 destitute people,” Kalaivani said.
Starting with small contact boards at Salem GH and police stations, the group answered every call for help despite having no formal setup. As their workload grew, the Salem Corporation provided an old ambulance that frequently broke down, often forcing the women to push it. Recognising the value of their dedication, a donor eventually gifted them a brand-new ambulance.
“Some cases are difficult to forget,” Kalaivani said. “Bodies could remain in the mortuary for weeks while officials waited to see if someone would come looking for them. By then, decomposition could make it difficult even to enter the room, and sometimes, the bodies would even be infested by worms,” she added.
The women’s group also faced resistance along the way. Kalaivani said some relatives stopped speaking to her because of what she had chosen. Cremation and burial grounds were traditionally seen as places for men, and a group of women taking on such work was not acceptable to all. However, despite resistance from their own families, they were determined enough to continue what they had started. Even during Covid-19, when much of daily life had stopped, the women continued the service with protective equipment.
Since 2008, Kalaivani and her team have helped perform the final rites for around 3,300 bodies. Nearly two decades after eight women stepped into a drain for a man who had no one else to do it, Kalaivani continues to hold on to the same belief that brought them there that day — a person’s dignity should not disappear simply because their life has ended.
(Edited by Subhalakshmi PR)
