German woman dies in loneliness, ashes immersed in Arabian Sea

German woman dies in loneliness, ashes immersed in Arabian Sea - Times Of India You are here: Home>Collections>Arabian SeaRELATED KEYWORDS:Arabian Sea German woman dies in loneliness, ashes immersed in Arabian SeaT Ramavarman, TNN Aug 1, 2011, 05.40pm IST

KOCHI: The mortal remains of Elfriede Maria Schmidt, the 77-year old Austrian-born German passport holder who died in loneliness here 45 days back, were immersed in the Arabian sea off Cherai coast near Kochi on Monday in accordance with her wishes.

Maria, who is a self-exiled Jew and witness to Holocaust, had made a hotel room here her home for the past eight years. None of her relatives or friends had visited her during this period, according to the hotel staff. She was found lying unconscious in her room on June 14, and died in a nearby hospital next day.

The body was being kept in the mortuary of the general hospital here for the last 45 days and it was consigned to flames at the Pachalam Cemetery in the outskirts of the city on Saturday.

"We had located the addresses of her son and daughter-in-law and informed them of her death. They did not show much interest in coming here to see her body or to take the body there," the hotel manager Sabu Surendran told TOI.

The officials of the Foreigners' Registration Office (FRO) here had also tried to find out from the German Consulate officials in Chennai whether they would like to take the body to Germany. "We had informed them that we will perform the last rites if there was no response from the Consulate in a stipulated time limit," an official of the FRO said.

Since there was no encouraging response from any side, the hotel owners and staff decided to conduct the last rites here, with the permission of the authorities here.

"We didn't want her last rites to be performed as an unclaimed body. Even though she was very reserved, we had developed some form of attachment with her during the past eight years. In fact, we had to bend many of the hotel rules to suit her requirements. The last rites were performed in accordance with the Hindu customs, as she had suggested to us about a year back," Sabu said.

"Much of her past was shrouded in enigma. She had told us she had fled Germany along with her father during the Holocaust. She had worked in German Embassy in Pakistan, and had some assignment in Rajastan as well. She had also told us about her marriage and her son who is currently in the US. She used to exchange letters with a friend of her in Germany till last year. Later she told us that friend too died about a year back," he said.

In her will, Maria had left half of her assets to the tiger reserves of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh while the other half was for her son Captain Julian Asphandiar Fatakia with whom she was not keeping much contact, after she came to India.

"She was intensely attached to TV. The TV in her hotel room was never switched off ever since she had come here in June 2003. Maria also used to get wild when she saw somebody smoking in our restaurant. She was a passionate lover of cat and ardent cricket fan. In her will, she had wanted to immerse the ashes of the cat she was keeping earlier, along with her mortal remains in Arabian Sea. But sadly, we could not locate where she had kept the ashes of that cat," Sabu said.

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