Christo­pher Boodram, the on­ly div­er to sur­vive the trag­ic mishap at Paria’s Berth No 6 seabed pipeline in Pointe-a-Pierre two Fri­days ago, stood next to the cof­fin of his fall­en col­league Kaz­im Ali Jr and wept yes­ter­day.

It was one of sev­er­al emo­tion­al scenes dur­ing fi­nal rites for the 36-year-old fa­ther of one in Mara­bel­la. Ali’s fu­ner­al was the first to be held among the four divers whose bod­ies were re­cov­ered last week.

Boodram, who had been hos­pi­talised since the in­ci­dent, was among co-work­ers present when the fu­ner­al cortege made a stop at the of­fices of LM­CS, the com­pa­ny owned by Ali’s fam­i­ly, which was con­tract­ed to do un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance work on the 30-inch pipeline.

Sev­er­al em­ploy­ees, many of them dressed in blue cov­er­alls with the com­pa­ny’s lo­go, gath­ered to pay their re­spects.

A very emo­tion­al Boodram broke down as the cof­fin was re­moved from the hearse and brought un­to the com­pound. He placed his hand on the cof­fin, bent over it weep­ing dur­ing the brief trib­ute.

The fu­ner­al of Ali, fond­ly known as “Bean” and “Kaz”, was the first to take place fol­low­ing the fa­tal ac­ci­dent which al­so claimed the lives of Yusuff Hen­ry, Fyzal Kur­ban and Rishi Na­gas­sar.

A sim­ple cer­e­mo­ny held un­der Mus­lim rites and at­tend­ed on­ly by close friends and fam­i­ly took place at 2 pm at the late div­er’s home in Gopaul Lands, Mara­bel­la. Among those pay­ing trib­ute was his sis­ter, Kate, who re­called his sense of ad­ven­ture and his “amaz­ing ca­pac­i­ty for or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

She said he nev­er had a prob­lem mak­ing friends and had a great pas­sion for the sea and “his sec­ond love”, his boat. How­ev­er, the love of his life was his wife, Jamie, who he mar­ried in 2016. Their daugh­ter was born in 2018.

She said their home was filled with “love, re­spect and quite a few gad­gets.”

In her trib­ute, Ali’s wid­ow said: “I would like to wake up from this night­mare.”

In her mov­ing trib­ute, she de­scribed the life they had to­geth­er and his spe­cial re­la­tion­ship with their daugh­ter, Ada.

“I was blessed to have him for 12 won­der­ful years,” she said, re­count­ing how they start­ed as friends, then start­ed dat­ing. His mar­riage pro­pos­al took her by sur­prise, she re­vealed.

Kaz­im Ali Snr spoke of his son’s evo­lu­tion from a fun-lov­ing boy to be­come “pro­fi­cient in all as­pects of his fa­ther’s busi­ness.” He said Ali was revered by LM­CS work­ers and re­spect­ed by his col­leagues in the en­er­gy in­dus­try.

“I will choose to re­mem­ber him with his mis­chie­vous smile,” he said.

Fol­low­ing the ser­vice, the fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion made two stops at places that were im­por­tant in the late div­er’s life, LM­CS and then the San Fer­nan­do Yacht Club where the avid sailor kept his boat.

Bur­ial took place at the Mara­bel­la Ceme­tery.

The fu­ner­al was orig­i­nal­ly due to take place at 1 pm on Fri­day but was post­poned due to an ad­min­is­tra­tive blun­der on the death cer­tifi­cate. One hour be­fore the fu­ner­al, the fam­i­ly was is­sued a no­tice say­ing it had been post­poned.

Ali Jr had been cap­tur­ing footage of the pipeline when tragedy struck.