Legendary cricketer Kapil Dev will receive the ashes of Indian immigrant Pooran Singh in Australia for relocation to his homeland 63 years after he died.
According to the Australian High Commission here, on June 24, a radio programme on June 24 revealed the story of Pooran Singh. In 1899, as a 30-year-old he left his family in Bilga, a village in Punjab, to go to Australia.
He worked as a hawker, selling goods from his horse-drawn wagon, travelling from one country town to the other.
He spent the remaining 47 years of his life in Victoria, dying in 1947 in Warrnambool, aged 77, single and childless. He left instructions to be cremated, and so a funeral home sent his body to Melbourne, the only crematorium in Victoria at that time. His ashes, contained in a plastic cylinder were mailed back to the funeral home.
As Pooran's last wish was that his ashes be returned to India and immersed in the Ganges, the funeral home kept them for 63 years in case family members came to claim them.
In the late 1980s a trust kept the ashes in a niche on its cemetery wall. Alice Guyett-Wood, the daughter of the funeral home owner told the radio show that her father Jack Guyett, who died in 1986, had expressed regret that Pooran's wish had been unfulfilled.
As well as being broadcast on radio this moving story was published in an Indian newspaper on June 25 attracting the interest of Kapil Dev who expressed his willingness to travel to Australia to collect the ashes and return them to the family.
Pooran's relatives were traced to Uppal Bhopa, a village in Punjab, where they still live in the house that was built with the money Pooran bequeathed to them.
The house in the village still bears the inscription “Pooran Singh [brother of Sultani Ram] of Australia.”
The story was picked up in England where Harmel Uppal, one of Pooran Singh's great-nephews, lives.
This week Kapil and Uppal will travel to Australia to receive Pooran's ashes.
Since the story was first broadcast many locals have come forward with personal memories of Pooran Singh. His photographs and even his horse wagon have been found, fully preserved.
Published - July 24, 2010 02:09 am IST
