Never a grave moment: Undertakers divulge odd gems of their profession

John Pinto International Pvt Ltd

Sixty-three-year-old John Pinto and his two sons are the only three embalmers in Asia certified to conduct post-mortem reconstructive surgeries. He's the sole mortician to have received the MBE from the Queen for embalming almost all the victims of the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Their 'Autumn Leaves Programme' lets you design your own funeral and pay for the arrangements in advance. About 6,000 people of all faiths have signed up and about 380 funerals have already been performed. "Our first client died at 92, about a year ago. We stuck to the original price that he'd registered at 15 years ago." Right from choosing the flowers to booking a prayer hall, Pinto is open to all requests, except booking alcohol and Catholic priests, and non-Catholics wanting a Catholic burial.

Among the countless cases he's handled, he recalls embalming the puppy of an American couple and successfully flying it to the US, despite it taking him 23 days to locate a carrier that agreed to carry the dead pet. Amid coffins, crosses, freezers, and 150-year-old antique furniture pieces that he once dealt in, Pinto displays his choicest section of about 50 Toby mugs next to his manufactured urns at his Byculla shop in south Mumbai. "I have handpicked these from all over Europe. I don't like the Malaysian ones because they are not fired right."

Danny Michael Pinto

Mahim, in central Mumbai, has two establishments that tickle the city's funny bone with their witty message boards. One is St Michael's Church and other, Danny Michael Pinto's funeral parlour; the latter being the cheekier of the two Michaels. When the jolly 60-year-old took over his 112-year-old family business in 1982, the melancholic clientele completely drained him out. To "lighten the mood", he installed seven tanks of imported marine and freshwater fish from Malaysia, Singapore, and Zambia and even grew a garden of flowering plants in every hue and variety. But his efforts didn't pacify the bereaved. Then Pinto had a brainwave. He started coining one-liners on death to stir up the living. Some of his few deadly ones over the years include: 'Drop in when you drop dead', 'Many are dying for our services', 'Hey smoker, you're the next guy coffin' in', 'It's going to be: The law of averages – 10 out of 10.

Everyone dies', etc. "In fact, the former principal of St Xavier's College included my idea of self-promotion as a topic in the advertising course," says Pinto, who has embalmed the likes of Rajiv Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Has anyone taken offence to his dark humour? "Yes. Just Harsha Bhogle. He walked in one day and angrily told my son, 'Why do you come up with such glaring lines and make fun of death?'"

Lonica Undertakers & Ambulance Service

Thirty-three-year old Sunil Colaco, who took over this 33-year-old family business started by his parents in 2003, started visiting the morgue after school since age 12 to dress coffins, instead of hitting the playground. He found it very easy to decorate his house for a Halloween-themed birthday as the choicest props — spare coffins and crosses — were collecting dust in the parlour. "My cake was a graveyard scene with a lowering device on a dug up pit," says Colaco, who also bakes cakes, teaches music and is a photographer.

Over the years, Colaco has fulfilled unusual requests. In one, the children wanted him to bleach their mom's hair black after prolonged hospitalisation had turned it grey and give her a facial to rejuvenate her skin. The live-in partner of an Italian national, who died on flight, asked for her to be dressed in a short number with deep neck, adorned with diamond jewelry and nails painted bright. A mother and daughter danced at the grave of their beloved husband and father. Two cases, however, gave the bold and chatty undertaker, the heebie-jeebies. Once, when a body ultimately began decomposing six years after its burial, and another when the exhumed body of a woman had the hair intact and the flowers in it still fresh. "I later found she dabbled in black magic," he says.

Colaco, one of Mumbai's youngest morticians, is still single. "I tell all the girls on the first date itself that I'm an undertaker." Clearly, that line hasn't worked for him.

St Blaise Undertakers

The Andheri undertaker services co-founder, Audie Almeida, rolls his eyes about comments that paint him as a vulture eager to claw on the dead, but disguised as lame humour. "I still get, 'So, you are the one who waits for people to die, huh?' I coolly retort, "I don't have to wait, they show up themselves!" In his 35 years of business, Almeida admits to have never prayed for good business. "How can I?" he gets slightly shrill. "It means I'd have to pray for people to die!"

While Almeida's buttoned up people into old suits they've outgrown and seen mourners spend over `15,000 only on flowers to be laid on the coffin, nothing prepared him for a fresh widow who wanted her husband wrapped in a purple shroud like "what Jesus wore when he died"along with a hood. Almeida also claims to have noticed that people die more in the rains and winters. "If there are 12-15 funerals in winter, then in summers, its 7-8. "People look forward to the holidays."

The anonymous one

An undertaker from suburban Mumbai remembers finding a grave digger he'd sent to exhume a grave, roaring drunk in the graveyard, hours later. The employee had downed a bottle of wine that was buried with the body — a tradition of placing an item much loved by the deceased into the coffin. "I sacked him for drinking on the job."

Snubbing Catholic shroud burials for their shoddy execution, he recalls one that took place one rainy day. The dug-up grave had collected about 4ft water. Despite the gravedigger chucking out bucketfuls, the water level stayed put. When tears and patience ran out, the body was lowered into the grave. "It began to float. Then, it turned face down! Someone put stones on it for it to sink. One landed on the face. Not the way I want to go."