I, Mohammed Ibrahim, grew up believing Amar, Akbar, Antony to be equal and got an opportunity to apply it in real life when I performed the last rites of a Hindu man for the first time.
On 24th July, I got a call that the 34 year old Sudeep Saha, who had been estranged from his family for the last 15 years, had died of cardiac arrest. His family asked me to cremate him and immerse his ashes in Bangalore itself, as the Covid crisis was at its peak. When I checked if they wanted a Hindu to immerse the ashes, they told me to do it. After the cremation, we fell short of finding a water body to immerse the ashes in, as everything from Ulsoor to Lumbini Lake was closed. Finally, after ferrying the ashes in my car for 10 days, I immersed it in the Arkavathi river as per the guidelines given by the family.
While I have buried over 20 bodies since then, our NGO Mercy Mission has performed the final rites of over 700 people. My journey didn’t begin here though. As the Covid crisis hit us, my first thoughts were with the homeless and the stranded, helpless people who would go hungry. I, therefore, decided to keep my restaurant open and have fed over 2 lakh people ever since, including doctors working in the Victoria, Bowring, Rajiv Gandhi & CV Raman hospitals. During the holy month of Ramadan, many a time my friends & I broke our fast with a glass of water and ate our meals late at night while continuing to organise food packets, blood, plasma, and oxygen cylinders. Even though I took extra precautions while being amidst people, my wife and I were always worried about the safety of our three young children. And at times, she would stay away in her parent’s place.
My journey has taught me that irrespective of religion, everybody experiences the same trauma while losing a loved one. In that sense, COVID has been a great leveller; it brings a lonely death with kith & kin neither being able to get a final glimpse of the body wrapped in three layers of protective material nor being able to perform final rites as they are themselves in quarantine or staying away due to the fear of infection.
But even during such times of unrest, I see miscreants breaking the harmony in the name of religion when all of us should instead should be out there, trying to help each other irrespective of caste or creed. I didn’t grow up in such an environment where people are living in constant fear, strife, and uncertainty. My childhood was filled with Diwali, Holi, Dasara as much as it was filled with Eid, Bakrid, Ramadhan. But today I worry about my children growing up in such a toxic environment; yet I hold on to a firm faith that this too shall pass. Because like the varied colours in our Indian flag depicts, we may originate from different faiths but all of us are ultimately woven together into one harmonious cause of progressing together as Indians!
Mohammed Ibrahim
