The photograph above was taken in the early hours, in the rain. The board is lit, the vehicle is loaded, and somebody is inside answering the phone. That is not staged for a website — it is simply what both shops look like at three in the morning, which is when a good deal of this work happens.
Deaths do not keep office hours
The largest share of the calls we take come between midnight and six. A long illness ends in the small hours; a hospital rings a family at four; somebody wakes at five and finds a parent gone. In every one of those cases the family's next few hours are decided by whether anybody picks up the phone.
A number that rings out at 2am and is returned at 9am is not a 24-hour service. It is an answering machine with good intentions.
What happens when you call at that hour
- A person answers — not a recording and not a callback request.
- We confirm what is available and what can move, on that call.
- A vehicle is dispatched from whichever shop is nearer, Payyampally or Chennalode.
- A freezer box is loaded at the same time, if relatives are travelling.
- You are given a plain figure before anything is arranged.
Two shops, so the hour is not spent on the road
One shop covering the whole of Wayanad would mean an hour's drive to the far end of the district in the middle of the night. Payyampally covers Mananthavady taluk and the north; Chennalode, just north of Kalpetta, covers Vythiri taluk, the centre and the south, and reaches on towards Sulthan Bathery.
Between them, a vehicle is usually at the house within the hour from almost anywhere in the district — which is the whole reason for keeping two of everything.
