Born in India, and having lived 40 happy years in Australia, I am saddened to see the relations between the two wonderful countries deteriorating. Exaggerated claims of racism is making it worse. I hope the following story revealed on SBS radio’s Punjabi Programme in Melbourne last Saturday un-ruffles some feathers.
But this story has nothing to do with racism or with the cricketing Ashes between Australia and England.
Legendary Indian Test cricketer Kapil Dev has expressed his willingness to come to Australia to collect Punjabi hawker Pooran Singh’s ashes that have been kept safe by an Australian family funeral company in Warrnambool for the past 63 years and then to return these to his family in India.
Kapil Dev spoke exclusively to the Executive Producer Manpreet K Singh of SBS Radio’s Punjabi programme, which aired in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.
It revealed the moving story of Pooran Singh, an Indian immigrant whose ashes have been preserved by Guyett’s Funerals in Warrnambool for 63 years, in deference to his wish that they be returned to India and immersed in the river Ganges.
Although no one has come forward to collect the ashes, they have been preserved for their final journey to India and accorded pride of place at the Warrnambool cemetery.
Kapil Dev was touched by the Pooran Singh story.
Pooran left India as a 30 year old, landing on Australian shores in 1899. He worked as a hawker, selling goods laden in his horse-drawn cart, travelling from one country town to the other. He had left his family behind in Punjab and spent the remaining 47 years of his life in Victoria.
He died in 1947 in Warrnambool, aged 77.
Pooran had left instructions to Guyetts Funerals to be cremated, not buried, and so his body was sent to Melbourne, which had the only crematorium in Victoria at that time.
Speaking to SBS Radio’s Punjabi program, Alice Guyett-Wood recalled that before her father Jack Guyett died in 1986, he told her: “We should have done something about Pooran’s ashes. We should have sent them to India because he wished them to be immersed in the river Ganges.”
This wish has been passed down the generations of the Guyett family.
When asked why they kept the ashes for over six decades, Alice said: “We didn’t have the authority to dispose them off, so we just held them. In fact, I had thought that we may even go to India one day and fulfil Pooran’s last wish.”
The search is now on for the descendants of Pooran Singh, so that when the ashes return to India, the family can share the moment of his final homecoming. The search has been assisted by articles written by Manpreet Singh, published in Indian newspapers ‘The Hindustan Times’ and ‘The Tribune’, with a descendant now living in the UK coming forward as a result.
Kapil Dev said: “It’s a wonderful story. If I can fulfil Pooran Singh’s last wish I will come myself and try to take the ashes to the family.”
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