Friday, June 28, 2013

Merchants of Death !

At the height of the glorious Roman empire , death was a spectator sport. Trained fighters fought each other to death in the Colosseum. These gladiators sometimes fought lions and other animals. Both the Roman citizens as well as high and mighty of the empire watched and enjoyed the deadly combat of the mostly hapless individuals forced into this situation. It was financially, socially and politically lucrative to trade , train, own and run these slave fighters. Time passed on; the world changed. Roman empire became  history. Slave trade is dead; death however is still big business.

West is systematically  organized and a recent research for CNBC put the value of "death care" industry in the USA alone at a staggering $ 17 Billion. The business is recession proof and immensely profitable. If one was to scan the commercial real estate listings ,one would not find too many funeral homes listed for sale. If you find one it would never be  under several million. There are funeral directors, casket manufacturers;embalmers;hearse providers; grave diggers, headstone providers;musicians who play during the ceremonies; caterers who provide refreshments and of course the clergy to conduct religious ceremonies. There are real estate sellers who sell  "subterranean condos";(euphemism for grave) and grief Councillors who will help survivors come over the loss . They all deal with the rituals of death and turn it into a neat profit for themselves. There are multi-locational companies that operate as corporations,have a fully developed sales and marketing department and provide all these services as a package that you can  book and pay for , well in advance of your expected departure date. For all I know there maybe a "group discount" or "buy one - get one free" offered as well!

Like everything else this industry in India is not so well documented or regularized . It is part of the massive underground economy and based on individual entrepreneurs. There are no incorporated companies yet , although some professions are passed on from generation to generation.  One can however easily guess the size of the business considering a population that is four times the US. Everyone has to die.There are some social organizations providing transportation of the body and other basic services free of charge ; but mostly everything else costs money. From the small shop keeper who sells the bier; white shroud; rope to tie the body,incense, camphor ,flowers and  other required material;  to the  licensed wood seller outside the cremation ground. From the cremation ground keeper who will help in washing the body ,setup the pyre and conduct the cremation; to the pujari who performs rituals at the tenth day or thirteenth day at the river ghat and the barber to shave the head off. They all have an interest in death with a slick ,successful and proven business model built around it.

Other people deal in death too! Hangman at the jail will have no job if there was no one sentenced to die. Military men skirt with death all the time, sometimes their own. Insurance agent's commissions are entirely dependent on his skills in making you afraid of sudden death. Doctors see death around them everyday and have a job of keeping it at bay for their patients. Coroner and Postmortem performer however needs the dead to make a living. Butchers and abattoirs need to kill and sell the dead. Only in this case it is animals and not humans.

Some moral and ethical issues apart, none of them however can be called "merchants of death". It is clear that all of them provide  an actual service or fulfill a genuine need. This pejorative can only be applied to drug peddlers who prey on weaker minds to sell their deadly wares as well as criminals who make and distribute fake medicines . Both virtually murdering innocents for their profit . Terrorists and arms dealers also can be termed as such. One for their heavenly profit other for their worldly one. These are the kind that generate the feeling of acute abhorrence. Did we miss some thing here? Is there someone worse than them ?

Lord Shiva recently had to open his third eye a little bit in the Himalayas. He was forced to do so by the human greed and human propensity to misuse and exploit nature. That however is another story but the fact is that he did open his third eye  with the result thousands had to die and several times more were seriously impacted. Worst Merchants of death immediately swung into action. What kind of low life will loot from the dead and nearly dead is beyond me, but it did happen. The victims of nature's fury were made the target of petty crime as well. The matters did not rest there. The dead , the dying and the destitute also became a spectacle just like in the old Roman days. Kings of the merchants of death watched the dance of death sitting high on their perches in the sky; some came up close later on for disaster tourism and for political point scoring with their entourage, disrupting rescue operations ; uprooting rescue personnel and generally wasting precious resources. Some merchants came and hand picked their own slaves to save. Sometimes two merchants came to save but they got into fisticuffs to save the same group of slaves. Slaves  that will vote for them again if saved. These were blind to others crying for help and who could be rescued instead. These are the real heartless, self centered merchants of death. They enjoy and profit from the dead and give absolutely nothing in return. Not even to survivors. May heavens worst curses fall on these scum! Amen!