Making Tea, Honour Killing or Suicide?

Don't know where to begin but a couple weeks ago Susila, a young Tamil woman who comes to clean at the house, told me that her 'sister' had been in a terrible fire. Apparently, she had been making tea when some chemical was nearby and erupted in the gas-fed stove. She left gruesome photos of her sister in hospital, charred face and bandaged body. On Tuesday I talked with her over the phone to ask why she could not come to work this past week. She informed me that her sister had come home from the hospital so she was being with her family and providing care services. My ex-flatmate, who introduced me to her, also discussed with her on Monday about her absence at work. She had told us that we could visit her sister at the house later this week. Apparently, my Jaffna-born, London-bred ex-flatmate confused verbs in Tamil.

On Thursday I bought an exotic bouquet of wild purple orchids and planned to convene with my ex-flatmate and current Swedish flatmate in order to troop down to her house. Susila and family live in a good section of town, Cinnamon Gardens, but it is in cramped settlements. Her tiny 2-story, loft house is buried within a maze of other similar settlements, not quite a tenament, not quite a shanty. My ex-flatmate noted that they seem to be middle class. My ex-flatmate just got a Volkswagon Beetle, late 60s model which is vanilla coloured. Since he didn;t know the way he followed me in my regular three-wheeler, Zulfi's, tuk tuk. Upon arriving to her house, across from a decadent kovil, or Hindu temple, there was a massive funeral procession, with followers clad in white saris and kortas. Zulfi frankly exclaimed, "he's just died?! are we late?" (he and she are used interchangeably in many South Asian languages). The Swede and I burst out laughing in disbelief. It looked like a Buddhist funeral and Susila is Hindu. I realise now that Buddhist, Hindu and Christian funerals are very similar in Sri Lanka, only Muslim ones differ. The coffin with the charred young woman of 20, Rosemary, was carried down the road to the next door cemetary with the whole neighbourhood following. Zulfi managed to find the pint-sized Susila with huge dewey eyes in the crowd. All I could do was embrace her and explode with anger and grief, breaking into hysteria. It is contagious, when you are around so much emotion. My flatmates were completely numb and awestruck. The irony was too heavy to know what to do. We expected to be going to see Susila's sister recover, only to come to a full-on spectacle of grief. They sort of glumly looked at the ground, shuffling feet...I just tried whatever I could do to comfort this broken, already fragile young woman. It was earth shattering to hear her shrieking "Maaadam, whyyyyyyy?!! Why is she not here??!"

We followed Susila to the burial site, witnessing the hoopla - mothers, sisters, aunties throwing themselves on the body (which by then had been removed from the coffin and laid out on a wooden plank across the grave). The sobbing and wailing was nearly deafening! I tried to steady Susila and try to wrap my head around so much confusion. How did she get burned in the first place? Why weren't we directly told that she had died on Monday? What could we possible do for her? (Again, my ex-flatmate mixed up the two verbs in Tamil that mean to die - he didn't understand the verb that Susila had used. In conversations with both of us it was said that she had come home from the hospital, meaning the body had come). Everything had fallen away, watching someone's entire world shatter before me. I have no idea why she invited us hillbillies to something so solemn and personal. But it was clear that she wanted us there and appreciated our sympathy.

Not knowing the protocol for Sri Lankan funerals the three of us just stood around trying not to get in people's ways. After the performance of people trying to throw themselves on the body, and the subsequent near riot of relatives trying to calm others down, Susila invited me up to see the dead girl. You are supposed to put fragrant oil on the body and send it to the next world or next life with your wishes. Comically, I squatted down to get close to her, but I stepped on the back of my skirt. Then people said I should put the oil on her so I stood up only for my skirt to yank down, exposing my white ass! While trying to pour oil and hike up my skirt, my foot slipped down under the plank, the soft earth near sucking me into the open grave. All the while a cool breeze moving across my bum! Where's the video camera when you need one? It may remain as one of my most scarring memories, though, nearly being sucked down by the underworld, with the still body lying starkly above, swaddled in white dress and garlands, her scorched hands hidden in white, gauze gloves, her melted, charred face pancaked with makeup and covered by transparent gauze. Luckily people grabbed hold of me and I managed to embarassingly pull myself together.

When they started putting the exposed body into the ground and throwing dirt on her, most of the crowd lost it and another small riot nearly erupted. I learned later that at all funerals this is a ritual; the more wailing and chaos the more it is said that the person was loved. I found my flatmates in the crowd and in my chagrin we shuffled to the end of the funeral queue, in which we are supposed to press two hands together, bow heads and wish blessings or words of comfort. At the same time, out of the corner of my eye, I see Zulfi who had pulled up outside the cemetary. Like some kind of jester, he is waving his hands frantically with a grin on his face. In the initial ironic moments we forgot to say anything to him and left him waiting. So we met with him to release him, all the while he has a comical grin on his face, chuckling to himself at our utter stupidity.

We went back to Susila's or Rosemary's house where the funeral party gathered to drink juice and nibble biscuits. Oddly, women were not allowed to immediately surround the open grave or get too close to the body (maybe so they don;t fall in?), but then are forced to host the gathering and make tea and the dinner. We didn;t stay long, only to look at the glittered photo album of Rosemary's coming of age shindig and to try to get some of our burning questions answered. There are so many dodgy, puzzling aspects related to her death. First, Rosemary is not Susila's sister, but a cousin - in Tamil, they call cousins 'sisters/brothers' as it relates to patri or matrilineal descendents. I think on your father's side you can marry cousins, on your mother's side you cannot. Then, it was strange to see Susila's family more worked up about the death than Rosemary's immediate family. It is also weird that Rosemary supposedly threw turpentine into the flame while making tea. Sri Lanka has the highest rate of suicide in the world, apparently, and the most common forms of suicide are by hanging or by setting oneself on fire. So it is highly possible that she attempted suicide and the family politely tries to hide it, by calling it an accident, rather than dishonour the family.

However, there have also been cases of honour killing in Sri Lanka, even though the practice is more common in India and Bangladesh. When a woman is perceived of wrongdoing, such as looking at a married man, having love affair(s), having a child out of wedlock, essentially anything that a family perceives as dishonouring them, some form of hideous torture is inflicted on her. This can also be the case if a woman rejects a man;s advances. In Bangladesh it is a widespread practice to throw acid on the woman; in India they may be beaten or stoned to death or set on fire. It is unclear if there were any associated ill motives with Rosemary's tragic death. But there are too many discrepancies in the story and no one is telling the full details. Or perhaps it is another case of structural violence. If it was suicide perhaps this incredibly repressive, violent country with its little recognition for Tamils' human rights drove her to it. Or perhaps she had been waiting 3 weeks in the government run hospital with little or no sufficient treatment. After all in this country she is seen as just another beastly Tamil, in which case maybe she is better off dead...

...In other news, the bloody President has started to expel 'undesirable' Tamils from Colombo, sending them to the conflict-distraught North and East. Although a number of these families, who operate restaurants, hotels, shops, have lived in Colombo for decades they are forcibly removed and relocated to live in internally displaced peoples' (goddamit they are refugees! where is their state?) camps. It is a revolting, sobering policy that taps into how illogical this government and its profiteering, genocidal President is. Tamils have no rights here, no state, but are forced into territory as if the government is 'helping' them. As if sending them to a constantly redefined part of the country would lead to a new Tamil state, as if expelling Tamils would make Colombo safer. I am mortified more from the bumbling, irrational, right-wing, nationalist Singhalese.

***********************If there is a Sri Lankan embassy in your country, contact them or your government to say you disapprove of the ethnic cleansing that is taking place.