Dignity to Rest in Peace: Free Firewood bank in UP for Poor Families for Cremation

It’s not the first time that a pandemic has spread fear among the living being in fear of the dead that is, 1918 has witnessed the corpses of Influenza victims who were dumped in the Narmada river during the time, similarly, the corpses of probable covid victim were seen floating in river Ganga, the sight of which caused in all obviousness, a spread-out panic amongst the people not only in the surrounding districts but the news of which disturbed far too many in the country.

Not only this but poor families lost their near and dear ones but didn’t have enough money to provide their bodies with a proper pyre and cremate them and thus let their bodies go in the river or buried them along the banks of the river

As unsettling as that has been, it led to Sanjay Rai Sherpuria, a Gujarat base entrepreneur to emerge a savior for the poor families for cremation of their loved ones. Sherpuria happens to reside in Ghazipur and said that the sight of dead bodies floating in the river or on the banks in Uttar Pradesh was a ghastly sight and left him devastated which is why he decided to set up a firewood bank in Ghaziapur itself.

He gathered a over 5,000 volunteers to help him with his endeavor with the aim to provide free wood to the poor families who were not able to afford the wood for the funeral services of their departed loved ones. Sherpuria believes that no matter who it may be, irrespective of their caste or religion, everyone needs at least as much dignity to be able to rest in peace.

Thus, along with the help of volunteers and the district administration they set up 10 firewood banks at different ghats in Ghazipur. Farmers were also among various people who helped donate wood for the cause piling up the amount of available wood to 700 tons in the wood bank.

Peace has been preserved for many, a whole 100 lot of families who have received free wood from the bank, all this from the period of May 14^th, 2021, to June 2021. While it is all but a noble cause, wood is not as easy to acquire to say the least and if there were another alternative, it would definitely be a better help. Sherpuria states that to cremate one body, you would need over 500 kg of wood which is a lot. And this is where his innovativeness kicks in as he is in the process of developing a machine to make cow dung wood. As bizarre as it may sound, this indeed would help cut the current demand of wood.

If successful and the machine works smoothly, the cost of cremation would be cut down severely as instead of the 500 kgs of wood, one would only need 130-150 kgs of the cow dung wood.

Along with this cause for the collection and donation of wood to the families in need, Sherpuria also has a team of Covid-19 response team in the district of Ghazipur providing Covid test set up in camps, medicines and other resources wit volunteers making it an effort to visit the villages on their own and provide any and all necessary help.

Ghazipur District Magistrate Mangala Prasad Singh has also praised Sherpuria’s work and the awareness that it is helping create urging the villagers around to not dump the bodies in the river instead and rather put their loved ones to peace with respect. The newly elected gram pradhans have also been asked to reach out to the district administration for assistance for the last rites if needed.