The Australian cycling team manager for the pre-Commonwealth Games invitational event, Ms Linda Wibberley, has fulfilled her mother’s dying wish to have her ashes immersed in the Ganga.
Born at Lahore, Jill Villier passed away in Mount Barker, western Australia, two years ago. But before she died she had expressed the desire for a final resting place amidst the sacred waters at Hardwar.
Despite having carried her mother’s ashes all the way from Australia to Delhi, Ms Wibberley could not make the trip to Hardwar. “My mother is from India. She was born in Lahore in 1945. As this is my first visit, I have brought her ashes to disperse in the Ganges, but it seems impossible since we have a tight schedule,” she told reporters at Delhi last week. Hugely moved by an Australian daughter’s efforts to fulfil the last wish of her parent, a clerk in Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s office, Mr Ravinder Kumar Aneja, offered to carry Jill Villier’s ashes to Hardwar. Ms Wibberley was moved to tears. “After many years the angels and God have found a way for my mom to come home,” she said. The Good Samaritan not only travelled to the holy city and immersed the ashes on behalf of Ms Wibberley but also arranged, at personal expense, to photographically document the ceremony and email copies to Australia. “I did it for the sake of humanity,” Mr Aneja simply said in explanation for why he took the trouble. The good man is not the least deterred or discouraged by reports of racial violence against Indians in Australia.
For Ms Wibberley and her 19-year-old cyclist son Benjamin too the trip to India has been a more than pleasant experience.
“It was on second thoughts that we decided to come. It seems we took the right decision,” she had told a reporter.