Life-affirming death, reef in peace

One man's gimmick can be another man's ritual in the making. US companies innovating with ways in which you want to spend the afterlife - which has a huge demand-side advantage, unless someone like Elon Musk hits the immortality button someday - have hit upon a new idea that seems to be picking up steam: becoming part of an artificial coral reef on the seabed once one is kaput. So, yes, it's less about loved ones remembering you by going to the cemetery and leaving flowers at your headstone, and more in line with cremations where once you're done, you're dusted. Except what is on offer by Florida companies like Eternal Reefs and Neptune Memorial Reef is consigning one's cremated ashes inside a large hollow cement orb - and here's the really nifty part - that will allow marine life like corals, algae, sea urchins and sponges to thrive on it.

These reef balls may not be as easy or relatively cheap like your shamshaan cremation, electric furnace or old-style pyre. But with more folks wishing a sea burial-cremation - there's been a tripling of requests at the Florida firms after Covid - the current $2,000-7,500 (₹2.2-5.6 lakh) price tag may go down, if not to the ocean floor then at least to affordable shores. In one's death to support, and be surrounded by, life is comforting, whichever philosophical way one looks at it.