Ahmedabad: His bamboo biz is booming, but he’s not a happy man

AHMEDABAD: A group of about 22 persons work tirelessly at a large workshop in Shahpur area of the city as they cut dried bamboo stems into three-feet pieces and make piles on Monday evening.
“The demand for it has not ceased for the past one month. We are making about 6,000-odd pieces a day, which gets consumed in two to three days. Earlier, the stock would last for 20 days or more. The business is booming,” says Govind Rathod, 54, proprietor of the business.
His ‘business’ is to supply the bamboos used to make bier (nanami in Gujarati, arthi in Hindi) to carry a dead body to the crematorium for the last rites. According to the Hindu rituals, the body is tied to the bier, which is then carried by four persons, without which the last rites are considered incomplete.
As the city has recorded a major rise in mortality, the demand for biers has also shot up. Considering each bier takes about 10 horizontal and two vertical pieces, Rathod’s workshop, at 6,000 pieces, creates raw material for 600-odd biers which is then supplied to smaller traders across the city near crematoriums.
“The bamboo pieces are also used to keep the body on the frame inside the CNG furnace. Thus, we are also supplying a large quantity to AMC,” said Rathod. “The raw material primarily comes from south Gujarat. To meet the increased demand, we have also created a workshop at Naroda.”
But Rathod says that he is not happy with the boom in business. “Who can be? I lost my aunt in the pandemic. Every day, we hear about someone’s illness or death. We just pray to God to free us from this calamity. It’s our ancestral business, and I’m not doing it for profit. I’m supplying it to the smaller traders and AMC covering my cost,” he said.
On the brighter side, he said that it’s his tireless work to ensure that the dead get the proper send-off, his family including five daughters and a son have not even got sick once in the past one year. “I see it as an omen to extend my help to those in need. Bamboo is considered crucial for a person’s last journey and I become a part of that journey in some way for many citizens,” says Rathod.
Narrating a recent incident, Rathod said that a man in an expensive car came searching for the bier for his deceased mother at 10 pm. “He had searched everywhere but due to night curfew, he could not get it from anywhere. Eventually, someone pointed him to us and we made him one. He offered us triple the money, but we refused, considering it as a humanitarian work. He cried, saying that all his money cannot buy his mother’s life or the bier,” recounts Rathod.