Mortician: a profitable but stressful profession
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Mahanani does not have to worry about her clients blinking when she puts on their eye shadow. After all, their souls have already departed their now cold bodies.
Still, she will chatter and apply face powder and lipstick softly and carefully -- a sign of respect for the dead, said Nani, as she is called.
Nani is one of the not-so-many people whose task it is to make the deceased look as fresh and beautiful as they were when they were alive -- a job that would leave most people quivering.
"It started with the father of a friend dying, and I had to take care of everything," she said recently.
"I couldn't sleep properly for a month afterwards, I kept seeing his face. But afterwards, when more people asked me to do make-up on corpses, I took it as my calling."
Most morgues and mortuaries will clean the body, embalm it and do make-up as part of their package. But don't imagine that it's anything like the Fishers' complete service in HBO's hit series Six Feet Under. Most morticians do not use make-up specially designed for corpses, and none has certificates to prove their qualifications.
Dea, a 27-year-old account executive, had the women from her church come over and dress her mother when she passed away five years ago.
"They did her make-up too; nothing much, just a thin layer of powder and lipstick," she said.
"We fixed her make-up from time to time ourselves. I didn't like touching her face, though. It was so cold," she added.
Nani, whose clients include relatives of former president Soeharto, imports the special powder she uses to smooth the skin of the deceased from Germany, at a pricey Rp 2 million (US$200) for a small bottle. Unlike regular powder that needs to be freshened every two hours or so, especially in the sweltering heat of Jakarta, mortician's powder will look better with each passing day.
For the make-up service, a professional mortician can get between Rp 500,000 and Rp 2 million, depending on the client's condition. Bodies that need special reconstruction efforts, such as burns patients or accident victims, require higher prices.
Despite the relatively large sums -- Rp 500,000 will be enough to get a make-up session, have the hair set in a French bun elegantly, and a pedicure and manicure -- not many people are taking up the profession.
"Would you do it?" Nani said with a small laugh. "It's a very stressful job. You are in touch with other people's sadness constantly."
"You also get called day or night," said the mother-of-four, who had just got called at 2 a.m. the night before the interview.
For morticians who take the next step and become funeral event organizers, the rewards are even bigger. Several morticians have started such a business, arranging everything from flower arrangements, decorations, memorial services, to renting chairs.
A complete package for upper-class customers, excluding the catering services and coffin, goes for Rp 30 million and can even exceed Rp 100 million.
The job is not as easy as it sounds, though. When Nani received a phone call an hour after former finance minister Radius Prawiro died on his hospital bed in Germany, she packed her bags, rounded up her crew, went to his house, and stayed there for four days straight.
"They wanted white roses everywhere. I used some 700 bunches of roses, each with 20 stems, and had to search for them through all the flower suppliers in Jakarta," said Nani.
Perhaps for many people, a funeral is the last chance to do something for the deceased -- to show respect, fix mistakes, make perfect previous imperfection. Therein lays the market opportunity for funeral supporting businesses.