Thalaikoothal: A Ritual to murder your parents.

Tamil Nadu’s industry hub of Virudhunagar is one place which has the ability to question the entire mankind. Here, the people who cannot afford their parents who are old or infirm are murdering them in the name of ritual. Nobody questions or reports it to the police. They don’t even see it as a crime. It is a kind of accepted practice,” says Dr Lakshmi, a physician in Karyappetti village. Over 75, Dr Lakshmi recollects that she has been hearing of this practice of killing the elderly for 34 years now. The irony of the situation is the young do it because parents are burden to their own family. Thus the hand that rocked the cradle is brutally made to sleep.

OVER THE years, other methods have evolved too. The most painful one is when mud dissolved in water is forced down; it causes indigestion and an undignified death. Velayudham of Help age India says the families often take the mud from their own land, if they have any. “It is believed that this makes their souls happy, However if they survive then they are given the ‘milk treatment’. “When the milk is being poured, the nose is held tight,” says Dorairaj. This ‘milk treatment’ is often preceded by starvation. The household stops serving the parent solid food. “When milk is poured uninterruptedly into the mouth, it goes into the respiratory track. A starving person cannot withstand even a moment’s suffocation,” says 60-year-old Paul Raj, coordinator of a district elders’ welfare association. However the most accepted is Thalaikoothal 

Thalaikoothal  works thus: an extensive oil bath is given to an elderly person before the crack of dawn. The rest of the day, he or she is given several glasses of cold tender coconut water. Ironically, this is everything a mother would’ve told her child not do while taking an oil bath. “Tender coconut water taken in excess causes renal failure,” says Dr Ashok Kumar, a practicing physician in Madurai. By evening, the body temperature falls sharply. In a day or two, the old man or woman dies of high fever. This method is fail-proof “because the elderly often do not have the immunity to survive the sudden fever,” says Dr Kumar.

                                                                                                                             

When 65-year-old Maariyamma suspected this might happen to her too, she moved out of her son’s house two years ago. “I’m not well enough to live on my own, but it is better than being killed by them,” she says. Amazingly, there is no bitterness in her voice. Or anger. “They’re struggling hard to take care of their own children,” says Maariyamma, of her sons. She places no blame. Her two sons and two daughters are farm labourers who travel to different villages every sowing and harvesting season. Seeing her children at pains to run their house, and feed and educate her grandchildren, Maariyamma knew she was a burden. She knew how it would end if she didn’t leave.

Ironically parents do not carry any grudge against their children. They hold poverty responsible for it. To them its not a cowardly murder, but a brave farewell. Maariyamma do not see how extreme it is, how dramatic. For her, it is a sort of practical love that is simply about survival.

What is it? Helpless poverty? No. It’s the death of the conscience. Nobody can be so poor to do this to their parents. Nothing can make you choose Death for your parents who gave you life.