When I was a wee girl, my parents brought home one of what would be a scant handful of Malayalam phil-ims; the plot involved an extremely loved child who drowns and the inevitable emotional Sturm und Drang that accompanies such tragedies.

I almost don’t remember anything about the movie: not the actors, not the words, not the setting…I blank when I try and reach back for those details. I only remember one thing, and that thing is so big, it seemingly takes up all of the space my mind has allotted for this memory; I remember the recoil, the vomit in my throat and the gasp I made when they retrieved the boy’s “corpse”, tattered and grotesque, from his watery grave.

:+:

They are the “untouchables”; the lowest of the low in India’s ancient caste system. No job is too dirty or too nasty, and they are the ones cleaning up the rotting corpses from last week’s killer tsunami.

Apparently, the vast majority of men who are working 24 hours a day to clean the “poor south Indian fishing town of Nagapattinam” are Dalits (untouchables); members of this caste comprise about 16 percent of India’s population.

These “lowest of the low” are municipal sanitation workers who have migrated to the chaotic aftermath of the tsunami– 40 percent of India’s total fatalities occcurred in Nagapattinam–from nearby areas, drawn by the promise of “an extra 50 cents a day and a meal.”

Locals too afraid of disease and too sickened by the smell refuse to join the grim task of digging friends and neighbours out of the sand and debris. They just stand and watch the dalits work.

Although it has been a week since the tsunami hit, and the destruction was confined to a tiny strip by the beach and port, the devastation was so fierce that several bodies — located by the stench and the flies — are still being discovered daily.

“I am only doing what I would do for my own wife and child,” says M.Mohan, a dalit municipal cleaner as he takes a break to wash off some of the grime of the day’s work.

It kind of blows my mind; these untouchables are recovering the bodies of people who very well might have discriminated against them, in a different moment, during another time. It reminds me of U.S. Military doctors who help enemy soldiers; duty without hesitation, service without appreciation.

Or tools…

In the early hours of the tsunami disaster, Mohan and his colleagues worked feverishly to clear the thousands of bodies without gloves, masks or even shoes in some cases.

Now, they are better equipped. But no mask ever stops the gagging smell of rotting human flesh, which becomes almost overpowering as the body is dug out, lodging deep somewhere in the back of the mouth.

Deride my earnestness if you will, but I do think that the humble, compassionate efforts of the Dalit workers should be recognised:

Each new body discovered is painstakingly prised free of the wet sand, torn palm thatch and debris, mostly by hand. It is sweaty, backbreaking work. Shifting sand and rubble make just standing hard.

It is done slowly, carefully and patiently with a delicate respect for the victim…The almost unrecognisable body of a naked woman, one foot still surprisingly wet, clean and white as if she had just stepped from a bath, is carried on a mat to the beach. There, a small bonfire is lit with a tyre and some palm leaves and she is heaved on top. Another mat provides a pitiful attempt at modesty.

There is a pitiful lack of dignity for all involved and this is a pitiful attempt on my part to say something insufficient to people who are supposedly “beneath me”…

For doing what none of us is willing or ready to do, thank you.