Journalism of Courage
When a relative of city-based Uday Joshi passed away over a year ago, the deceased’s children were unable to attend the funeral because they were based abroad and could reach only after three days. Since the last rites couldn’t be postponed, they asked one of their friends to carry her laptop at the crematorium so that they could see their father during his last journey through skype.
This set Joshi, founder of city-based NGO Ninad Foundation, thinking how numerous families in the city must be having their relatives abroad who, despite wanting to come, could not participate in the last rites of the deceased.
In November last year, Joshi installed cameras at Vaikunth Crematorium with the permission from the Pune Municipal Corporation to facilitate live streaming of last rites for the families who requested for the facility.
In the last one year, more than 400 families have benefited from the initiative. The facility is provided free to the interested families.
Anup Joshi, trustee of Ninad Foundation, said, “The most important facility to run this is fast speed of Internet. Initially, we had taken the regular Internet facility, but later shifted to high-speed 10GB. We also provide them a copy of the live video recording of the last rites on a pen drive. We have put up a notice board about our services at the crematorium and that’s how interested parties contact us.”
The videos of the last rites are uploaded on the website rajjuchakshu.org. At a time, 10 latest videos are up on the website. The name of the website means “that can be seen from a distance”.
“Sometimes, it is not convenient for the people to log into the website and view the videos and hence, a pen drive comes handy,” Joshi says, adding that to make things even more convenient for the families, Ninad team is working on a mobile app that has been tried and tested at various levels and is likely to get launched next week.
Pradeep Garatkar, whose family has benefited through the facility, said that a few months ago, an elderly relative passed away. Though his near and dear ones based in Australia and the US wanted to participate in the funeral, they couldn’t due to the long-distance travel and the time needed to reach the city.
“The live streaming helped them do the same virtually,” he says.
Crematorium staff felicitated
On December 12, Ninad Foundation had felicitated 85 workers of Vaikunth Crematorium.
“Every year, we felicitate all the workers for their services. Other than gifting them a thermos flask each, we also educated them how they should propagate the usage of electric crematorium as against the traditional pyre to reduce use of wood and thereby cutting of trees. Given the climatic conditions these days, it is important to save environment and plant more trees,” said Anup Joshi.
