This archive report was first published on 3 July 2019.
Bob Collymore's Final Resting Place ¶
On a day when only close friends and family were allowed to attend, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore was cremated at Kariakor Crematorium.
Published on July 3, 2019, the cremation ceremony was a private affair, with only a select few in attendance.
The Kariakor Crematorium, a place of solemn reflection, is where many choose to bid their final farewells to loved ones.
According to Maharaj Samshan, an attendant at the crematorium, the process of cremation is a carefully choreographed affair.
First, the crematorium is cleaned, and the necessary preparations are made for the ceremony.
Depending on the chosen method, either an electric kiln or firewood is used to facilitate the cremation process.
Samshan explained that the kiln undergoes maintenance once a year and that a body requires about 40 litres of diesel to burn fully.
Once the body is placed on the pyre, the family selects one member to light the fire, and the cremation process begins.
The temperature reaches a scorching 1,000 to 2,000 degrees Celsius, and the cremation takes approximately one-and-a-half hours.
After the cremation process is complete, the family can choose to collect the ashes the same day or wait until the following day.
If not collected within a certain time frame, the ashes are dispersed in the crematorium grounds.
Samshan and his colleague do all the work, including chopping firewood, cleaning, maintaining the lawn, pruning trees, preheating the cremators, and sorting out paperwork.
For many, the choice of cremation is driven by spiritual or cultural beliefs.
As Pandit Trivedi from SSDS temple explained, Hindus do not believe in the bodily resurrection and the reuniting of each soul with its physical body.
They thus place no importance on preserving the corpse, which is the intent of burial in Christianity and Islam.
Trivedi noted that the role of cremation is to sever the ties of the soul to the body that it is leaving, freeing it to move.
Similarly, Sikhs cremate for spiritual reasons, as Singh Khalsa-Lakhvir, a former Visual editor at the Star, explained.
Since Sikhs believe that the soul is immortal and does not die, they burn the physical and mortal remains to totally detach the soul from the body as it journeys back to its Creator.
As per Sikhi, the soul's divine purpose is to further its journey beyond the physical.
Cremation is a dignified way to return the body to the earth, and helps absolve the family the burden of the upkeep of the grave or mausoleum.
For Buddhists, cremation is a common practice, as it was also the method chosen by the Buddha himself.
However, burial is also permissible, and the choice between the two ultimately depends on personal preference.
