A concrete archway in Paharganj's bustling Nehru Bazaar leads to an open, leafy plot. Inside, a tall signboard hangs under a tree: "Due to inflation, we are increasing the cost of coffins." The Indian Christian Cemetery is not an obvious landmark, obscured by shops and a brimming traffic of people, carts and rickshaws. In a room by the gate, lined with empty coffins, a red phone shrills. Undertaker Maurice Morgan picks it up on the first ring to receive the day's tidings: news of the dead from all over the city.
Morgan, 69, a shrewd businessman, intelligent and suspicious of journalists, dressed in a white safari suit and socks, nods in acknowledgement from his cot. He wears a gold chain and a thick gold ring on his middle finger. He is prone to fly into a rage if the questions don't suit him, and talks little about his business. But he boasts, "I'll transport bodies wherever in the world they have to go. This is my service to the people".
And a profitable one too. For the last 20 years, Morgan has been making a killing on the dead. Born to an unemployed father and a mid-wife mother, he once had to struggle to make ends meet, sometimes fishing in the Jamuna, at other times selling vegetables . He recalls that when his father died in 1961, he used the only Rs 5 he had to cable his mother the news in a Kanpur hospital He sold his cooking utensils for Rs 200 to pay for the coffin. "I saw how expensive coffins were, so I thought, why not get into it?" He pauses. "I work for the poor."
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The two decades since have seen him carrying cadavers from hospitals, disaster sites, Himalayan slopes and desert expanses, often in an advanced state of decomposition. He's had them em-balmed, put in sealed coffins, and despatched to their destination. The scent of money lingers about him. He has a fleet of eight cars, including two Tata Estates. He owns a gym, a photocopying shop, and a dhaba near the Patel Chest Cemetery in north Delhi where he lives with his wife, four daughters and three sons-in law _ Joseph, Robin `Kuku', and Moon, who help with business.
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