Graveyard! Easily one of the most haunting terms ever! A place away from home, a place that’s the antithesis of rest. A phrase that seems to be in perfect enmity to life. A reality that signifies ‘The End!’ Rather, call it the final resting place. Away from comfort, the lasting bed of misery. Just the kind of place you and I dread visiting and perhaps, truth be told, hate even hearing about. And yet, all we are getting to hear about in these torrid times marred by the COVID 19 pandemic is the fact that countless bodies of COVID 19 patients are being ferried to the graveyard.
Yet, amid this chaos, one woman stands mightily apart. Her name- Varsha Verma. Her residence- the city of nawabs, Lucknow. And just why’s she making news? Well, believe it or not, at a time where the most important task on everybody’s sleeve is to watch out for personal safety, staying bunked inside one’s premises, Varsha Verma is actually busy ferrying the body of COVID 19 patients to the graveyards in Lucknow.
And she’d doing this for free. You read that right. What’s both inspiring and surprising is that this mid-aged woman is keeping herself engrossed in the service of the dead, confronting hour upon hour the very mortal danger of contracting the virus. Everyday, standing outside the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, there stands Varsha Verma wearing a PPE kit busy in providing free carriage service to the victims of the ghastly COVID 19 virus.
And make no mistake; there are countless trips made during the day to the crematorium to pay final homage to the deceased. Varsha Verma helps in this final resting journey unfailingly.
It’s perfectly normal to help people but it’s absolutely sensational to offer solidarity toward someone who passes away, someone whom we have absolutely no ties or relations with. Right?
The first to break news about Versha Verma of Lucknow was premier news service ANI that shared that the brave and large-hearted woman from UP is not only an author but also a judo player.
But a key question remained: what compelled Verma to extend the heartfelt service to the deceased? To that end it’s important to note that the moment of reckoning arrived after one of her friends passed away due to the virus where it became difficult to find a vehicle in the hospital to ferry the body.
From that point on, she decided to act. That if she too couldn’t do something about the situation where one is not able to ferry a dead body to its funeral then just what is the point of humanity. She told ANI that she first hired a car to take her late friend to the crematorium for the funeral soon after which she decided to get involved in the work of ferrying the bodies to the site of the final rituals for free.
A truly inspirational albeit uncanny saga where one gets involved in the final journey of the dead! Something none of us hear about everyday- right? If Varsha Verma for her selfless act isn’t a hero, then one wonders, who is?