At first sight, Reddiarpatti is just another dusty hamlet in the hinterlands of Tamill Nadu, with its crumbled stone walls and narrow alleys roasting in a haze under the blazing sun.
Reddiarpatti, however, has an air of secrecy. Visitors are viewed with suspicion. For good reason. Kasturi knows better.
The social worker is on a rescue mission. She hurries off on a dusty alley that ends in front of a shack. She parts the dirty curtain that acts as a door to the shack. A vacant charpoy (a cot made of ropes) is seen in the dim light offered by an earthen lamp placed in one corner of the shack. The place smells of sesame oil and herbal medicines, as if someone has just left it.
“Where is the granny who lives here?” Kasturi asks a little girl who peeks from behind the half-closed doors of the neighboring house.
“She died two days ago.” The reply struck Kasturi like lightning. She has been dreading the news.
“It cannot be. She has been killed. This is definitely Thalaikoothal!”
Socially sanctioned mercy killing
‘Thalaikoothal’ is the form of mercy killing practiced in Reddiarpatty and scores of other hamlets in Tamil Nadu for generations. Aged people are finished off in various ways by their children and relatives. Today’s perpetrators are tomorrow’s victims.
The practice is part of tradition in various villages in Virudu Nagar, Madurai and Teni districts in south Tamil Nadu. Mercy killing may be a crime in the rest of India but ‘Thalaikoothal’ has the sanction of society in villages like Reddiarpati, 116 kilometers away from Virudu Nagar on the Thoothukudi route.
Villagers in these areas consider it their duty to “help” elders die once they are too weak to work.
The traditional way is to wake up the elder early on the fateful day and pour liters of sesame oil over his or her head. The ritualistic bath lasts for hours. A dripping of cold water follows. The near-dead victim is then given tender coconut water infused with a cocktail of herbs that is sure to damage the kidneys. The entire process causes high fever or even pneumonia.
Death follows in two days. A lamp is lit near the victim’s cot for the next 41 days, like the one Kasturi noticed near the granny’s vacant cot.
Rising tide of murders
The tradition has become a convenient means of getting rid of aged parents. There has been instances where young sons have killed their fathers to secure their government jobs under the “die-in-harness” scheme, according to a recent study by M. Priyamvada, an assistant professor in the Criminology Department of the Madras University in Chennai.
She had a word of caution for us before we left for Reddiarpatti. “Take care. The villagers are very suspicious about outsiders. Do not even mention the word ‘Thalaikoothal’. They are angry since the day the world came to know about their secret.
“You may be able to find someone who escaped the practice if you meet the right people. There are many elders who have survived the practice but left alone to languish in lonely shacks,” Priyamvada said.
Our first stop was the office of the Elders Development Association in Virudu Nagar. We met Gary Paul Pereira, a volunteer in charge of HelpAge India’s activities in the region. His organization is actively involved in an awareness campaign against ‘Thalaikoothal’ in 15 panchayats in Virudu Nagar district.
“I had a visitor from Usilampatti a week ago,” said Pereira. The young man was ferocious that Pereira and colleagues had blocked the murder of his father. They had intervened at the right time and informed officials at the District Collectorate of the planned ritual.
“He even wanted to kill me. He was a manual laborer and he had raised Rs 5,000 for ‘Thalaikoothal’. He said he would kill all the volunteers,” Pereira said.
The sorry story of Kasturi
Pereira led us to Kasturi, a crusader against ‘Thalaikoothal’. An ordinary housewife at Reddiarpatti, Kasturi took it upon herself the responsibility of saving the aged souls after she witnessed the killings of her relatives including her grandmother.
Kasturi has been working with other volunteers to create awareness against the mercy killings in Reddiarpatti, Mandapasala and Lakshmipuram villages.
“My grandmother, my father’s sister, and many other relatives were killed in the name of ‘Thalaikoothal’,” she said. “My aunt was killed just six months ago, by injecting poison into her feet. It was too late by the time I reached her place.”
Everyone in this village has an experience to share about ‘Thalaikoothal’. “But you will never hear anything from anyone,” Kasturi said.
The latest victim of the practice lived just 4 kilometers away from Kasturi’s house. It is no surprise that Kasturi was unaware of the murder. Even close relatives are kept in the dark sometimes.
The woman was aged about 70 but was healthy overall, Kasturi said. “She only complained of a pain in the legs in the mornings,” she added. One of the reasons for Kasturi to suspect that she did not die of natural causes.
She lived alone in a shack near her ancestral house. Her grandchildren had moved away. Some of the relatives had visited her on the day she died, the neighbors said. That means that the ritual was conducted, Kasturi said.
The survivors
Kasturi has saved many people from being murdered by their children and grandchildren. Yet she cant forgive herself for not being able to save her own aunt. “Everything was over when I reached,” she said.
Kasturi, a woman who did not study beyond tenth standard, is the savior of scores of aged people in the area. She has a list of all aged and destitute people in her village and surrounding areas. Kasturi and her colleagues visit these people once in every two months to ensure that they are alive.
If they could not be murdered, they are sure to be abandoned. Kanakammal is one of the survivors. The old woman spends the rest of her days in a temple yard in Mandapasala village. Ratnavalli has found herself a shack to live in near the public well. She finds it difficult to move about with a weak leg.
Every house in Mandapasala has an attached structure that resembles a cattle shed. Each of these shacks house an unfortunate grandfather or grandmother. They are surprised in a pleasant way when someone goes near them to talk. Their untrimmed fingernails and tangled hair speak volumes about their miserable existence. They stink in the shards of rags covering their frail bodies. Cattle are treated more fairly in this village.
“Thalaikoothal? That happened ages ago. Now we have changed,” said Seenichamy, a villager. “We take care of our elders. We observe all families with bedridden people. We do not let anyone kill their parents.”
He is right. Mandapasala is not as murderous as Reddiarpatti. The elders are spared their lives here. They scavenge for food in the peripheries of the village in the company of stray dogs.