Angels in the desert
The death of 29-year-old Nitin Chandran, a Malayali engineer working in Dubai who doubled as a social worker, has sent the expat community into a pall of gloom. Nitin had a cardiac arrest in his sleep on June 8, a month after he had helped his pregnant wife Athira board the first Vande Bharat Mission flight repatriating Indians who desired to go back owing to personal emergencies. He had achieved popularity for helping his wife petition the Supreme Court for early repatriation.
Nitin was an active member of the Dubai chapter of Kerala Blood Donors and the youth wing of the Indian Culture and Arts Society (INCAS). Known as a champion of the people, he had foregone his seat in the first flight for the sake of people who needed to fly out more urgently. A close friend remembered him as someone who always put others first and ignored the warning signs his body gave.
Nitin was actively involved in food and blood donation programmes for those affected by Covid-19. The ongoing pandemic has seen the selfless service of many like him in the UAE. The kind of dedication and love people show to their compatriots is far greater in a foreign land, and the UAE has seen many such angels who try their utmost to help those in trouble. Sometimes a newspaper or TV report is enough to turn the fortunes of a family in dire straits. Take for instance, Madhusoodanan, a Kollam native who was living illegally in Sharjah for 32 years with his Sri Lankan wife and never sent their five children to school because their passports and visas had expired. Help poured in from many quarters once their plight came to the limelight.
Covid-19 has brought in greater challenges for Good Samaritans in the UAE. It has meant having to distribute food kits for those under isolation unmindful of the risk of contracting the deadly disease. A good part of such services is for blue-collar workers in densely populated neighbourhoods whose sources of livelihood have been temporarily or permanently cut off.
This brings to mind the philanthropy of Naseer Vatanapally, a petrol attendant-turned- businessman from Thrissur district who makes it his life’s mission to give back to the country that helped him make his fortune. As a Covid-19 survivor, he now follows safety measures while volunteering in Covid-affected ares. He even performed the last rites of an elderly Hindu man from Mumbai because the dead man’s family was under quarantine.
The Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC) is one of the prominent volunteer organisations that has been visible in the Gulf in these trying times, be it with arranging quarantine facilities for the sick, charter flights for those desperate to return to India or help with burials and cremations. The Al Warsan facility in Dubai to accommodate Covid-positive patients from ‘bachelor’ sharing spaces saw a bunch of young men from Kerala put aside their businesses to manage the DHA’s quarantine efforts under the umbrella of the KMCC. They furnished the brand new residential complex donated by Al Wasl, provided toiletries and traditional meals three times a day to the quarantined men, and supervised the maintenance of the facility.
Then there are the individual social workers who have made it their life’s mission to help the living and the dead. Ashraf Thamarassery is one such soul who is the go-to man for arranging death formalities in a foreign land – be it certificate, repatriation, cremation or burial. When he is indisposed he sends his assistants to help, who accompanies the bereaved to the consulate, police station or morgue. In Covidian times when there is a long waiting list at crematoriums, they arrange appointments with a few phone calls. Not a penny charged, not even a glass of water is requested. Not surprisingly, Ashraf’s name figures first in the list of volunteers for death cases given by the consulate in Dubai.
Community champions like Ashraf and Naseer are only the tip of the iceberg, the milk of human kindness and hospitality runs through the veins of Kerala’s northern districts and its people. And in times when there is an orchestrated campaign to demonise and ostracise the Muslim community in India, we should take a moment to remember the large-heartedness of these people.
Khalbilu thenozhukana koyikode… Aluvaamanassulloree koyikode (Kozhikode that oozes honey in its hearts… Kozhikode with people who have hearts of halwa), sings Abhaya Hiranmayi in a film that is remembered only for the song. From Nitin to Ashraf, hearts as sweet as Kozhikode halwa continue to serve expats in their adopted land in the Arabian desert.
