Selina makes a living by cremating the dead

KOCHI: Six years after she first lit the fire on a dead body, Selina Jacob  says she is happy with her job in a crematorium. “It has helped me pay off my debts, marry off my daughters and keep the kitchen burning,” she says. Her first encounter with the profession came when her neighbour, who was the in-charge of the Thrikkakara crematorium, asked her to extend a helping hand to burn the corpses. “I was working at a construction site then. The neighbour’s wife came with  me to the crematorium to instruct me on how to place the body among the   firewood and light the pyre. The next day there was a dead body and I began my job,” she says.Today, Selina is the in-charge of Thrikkakara crematorium, managing   everything right from getting the firewood on time to lifting up the body to the pyre, making sure that each part is burnt well and at the end selecting out the bone pieces from the charred remains for rituals.  Though this job has ensured a livelihood for her, burning dead corpse is often not an easy task. “You can’t just put the fire on the pyre and go off. The shutters should be opened and additional firewood has to be placed at least thrice. While burning bodies of people who had taken a lot of medications, like cancer patients, certain chemicals spurt out of the body. This can be hazardous if it falls on you,” she says. The worst are those who died of drowning. “The body would start stinking and  the relatives are often reluctant to even lift it up on the pyre,” Selina  says.  Ask her if she was scared to see a corpse for the first time, she says, “No, not all. In fact I was happy. Those three hours fetched me Rs 200 while the work at a construction site from dusk to dawn earned me only `250.”  Life has not been easy for Selina. When her two daughters were small, her husband left her. Though she worked day in and day out, debts kept mounting. “I could not compromise with my daughters’ education. I had to get money from somewhere to marry them off too. It was only a few months after my first daughter's marriage that I got the job,” she says. But her worst fear is neither the corpses nor ghosts but human beings.