It was not just the eeriness of a night funeral or the heart wrenching cries of mourners on Thursday that set Desaraji Sathaiah’s last rites apart. It was kind of bizarre as the cremation was being held almost six months after the death of the unfortunate expatriate in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
The funeral also brought Narsavva and Nagesh, the widow and teenaged son of Sathaiah, face-to-face with the harsh reality of life without the assuring presence of their family head. The tears which both of them had controlled for the last six months gushed out in a flood as the dead body was brought to the cremation ground on the outskirts of this village.
In fact it was Narsavva who had claimed the dead body at the Shamshabad airport and brought the casket to the village sitting for the agonising nine hours which the ambulance consumed to reach the village. “She did break down at times but was mostly composed,” said Shaik Chand Pasha, president of the Jagtial based NGO Gulf Returning Members Welfare Society (GRMWS), who helped the widow with the proceedings.
“The family needs all the support it can get,” said farmer Rekala Krishnamurthy, for whom Sathaiah, a blacksmith by profession used to make agriculture implements.
She has kept her sanity all along but it may be difficult to do so now, he adds imagining of the times ahead which could even make the son dropping out of school.
Gaddi Rajanna, a neighbour recalled the joyous time he spent with the hardworking blacksmith in the lane who died within 15 days of his reaching Dammam. “He used to crack jokes often and make us laugh,” he said.
According to his relatives, Sathaiah had incurred a debt of Rs. 3 lakh for marrying off his two daughters.
“He decided to emigrate to work in Dammam only to repay this debt,” Mr. Chand Pasha said.
Like many others of his kind, the Kalamadugu blacksmith too was cheated by his travel and emigration agent, which resulted in the authorities in Saudi Arabia refusing to send the body back as the immigration papers of the deceased were not in order,” he alleged.
