Kapil Dev to bring ashes from Australia

Kapil Dev has been all on the cricket field: The all-rounder, the leader; the hero; the rebel; and the ‘Devil’.

The softer side of the fighter is manifest in the new role he has donned just now — that of a Good Samaritan.

The former India captain is flying down to Australia to fulfil the last wishes of an Indian, Pooram Singh, who died more than six decades ago.

Pooram, who had travelled to Australia by a ship in 1899 at the age of 30, wanted his ashes to be scattered across the Ganga after his death. He died in Arrnambool, west of Melbourne, in June, 1947.

Though it was known that he was from Punjab, there was none to claim his remains.

According to a Courier Mail report, the Guyetts Funerals, the only funeral home in that town, respected Pooram’s last wish to be cremated, and shipped his body by train to Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs, where the only crematorium in Victoria was located. Since then the Guyetts have kept the ashes in tact.

Few in India and in Australia know who this Pooram was. Fewer know who his descendants are.

“I don’t know them (the descendants) but I’m confident I can find them. I’m going to Chandigarh tomorrow,” Kapil said. He will be flying to Melbourne in the month-end to bring the ashes.

The Samaritan in Kapil surfaced when he was told about the ashes during an interview in a Punjabi programme of an Australian radio channel. He immediately agreed to fulfill the wishes of Pooram.

“I’m an Indian and I would do anything for my country and countrymen,” Kapil told DNA, admitting that he was touched by the wish of Pooram Singh.

Alice Guyett-Wood, who now runs the funeral home for her family, has told the paper that Pooram had made his last wish himself and it was passed down to each generation that ran the family’s funeral business.

“I think we looked at it and thought we really didn’t have an authority on what to actually do with them. We thought one day we’d do a trip to India to fulfill his wish, but that hasn’t happened,” Alice told the paper.

She or any of her family need not worry. Kapil is there.