 NAGAPATTINAM, JAN 3 -
They are the ”untouchables”; the lowest of the low in India’s
ancient caste system. No job is too dirty or too nasty, and they
are the ones cleaning up the rotting corpses from last week’s
killer tsunami.
The
overwhelming majority of the 1,000 or so men sweating away in
the tropical heat to clear the poor south Indian fishing town of
Nagapattinam, which bore the brunt of the giant wave, are lower
caste dalits from neighboring villages.
Locals too
afraid of disease and too sickened by the smell refuse to join
the grim task of digging friends and neighbors out of the sand
and debris. They just stand and watch the dalits work.
Although it
has been a week since the tsunami hit, and the destruction was
confined to a tiny strip by the beach and port, the devastation
was so fierce that several bodies—located by the stench and the
flies—are still being discovered daily.
“I am only
doing what I would do for my own wife and child,” says M. Mohan,
a dalit municipal cleaner as he takes a break to wash off some
of the grime of the day’s work.
“It is our
duty. If a dog is dead, or a person, we have to clean it up.”
Mohan and
other sanitation workers from neighboring municipalities are
working around the clock to clear Nagapattinam, for an extra 50
cents a day and a meal.
The smell of
death still hangs heavily, mixing with the sea breeze and the
almost refreshingly tart smell of the antiseptic lime powder
that has turned some streets and paths white.
More than
5,525 people—close to 40 percent of India’s estimated total
14,488 fatalities—died along this small stretch of pure white
beach, where the huts of poor fishermen were built down to the
sand at the top of the beach itself.
Dirty jobs
Caste still
plays a defining role in much of Indian society.
Over 16
percent of India’s billion plus people are dalits. Despite laws
banning caste discrimination, they are still routinely abused,
mistreated and even killed.
They do the
jobs others won’t—they clean toilets, they collect garbage, they
skin cows.
For Mohan,
illiterate, uneducated and low caste, the only way to get a
government job and the security and pension that come with it,
was as a municipal sanitation worker.
For some
Indians, untouchables are less than human.
Just over two
years ago, five dalits were lynched near New Delhi after a
rumor spread that they had killed and skinned a cow, revered as
sacred in India.
An autopsy
was conducted on the cow—none were done for the dalits—which
confirmed the story their friends told: the cow had died of
other causes and they were skinning it legally.
In the early
hours of the tsunami disaster, Mohan and his colleagues worked
feverishly to clear the thousands of bodies without gloves,
masks or even shoes in some cases.
Now, they are
better equipped. But no mask ever stops the gagging smell of
rotting human flesh, which becomes almost overpowering as the
body is dug out, lodging deep somewhere in the back of the
mouth.
Each new body
discovered is painstakingly prised free of the wet sand, torn
palm thatch and debris, mostly by hand.
It is sweaty,
backbreaking work. Shifting sand and rubble make just standing
hard. It is done slowly, carefully and patiently with a delicate
respect for the victim.
But there is
no dignity.
The almost
unrecognisable body of a naked woman, one foot still
surprisingly wet, clean and white as if she had just stepped
from a bath, is carried on a mat to the beach.
There, a
small bonfire is lit with a tyre and some palm leaves and she is
heaved on top. Another mat provides a pitiful attempt at
modesty. Acrid, pitch-black smoke drifts to the sky.
No one knows
who she was. With the fear of an epidemic, there is no time to
find out. (Reuters)
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