In a short story called “Message Bearers from the Stars and the Necrophiliacs” which I wrote in my metafiction style, I portrayed Tamils as necrophiliacs. They neglect artists and writers when they are alive. However, when these artists die, mostly, out of hunger, the very same people who ignored them, turn into undeniable necrophiliacs. They take a picture of the corpse, put it in the middle of the hall, and worship it, burning incense sticks to it. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, every home in Tamil Nadu typically had one or more photographs of such corpses. When the head of the household or a parent died, it was common practice to take a picture of the dead. In our small house which had a tiled roof, we also had such a photo: an image of grandfather. In the picture, the corpse’s mouth is wide open, resembling the entrance of a ruined cave. The jaw is secured to the skull with a cloth to prevent it from dropping too low. The picture of the corpse triggered more panic in me than the ghosts of our town. 

None of the dead, whose pictures hung at the centre of these houses, had ever taken a single photo during their lifetime. There was no need for that in their simple lives. But the very families, uninterested in taking pictures of their elders while they were alive, would promptly shoo in every photographer available, as soon as the old man snuffed it. 

In the 1960s, a photo studio opened in our town, leading to a surge in capturing moments from both death and weddings. Interestingly, the couples, especially if the groom was a Brahmin, never took any personal photos throughout their lives. Except on the day of the wedding. The groom would don a coat for the occasion, a garment seldom worn again. Poor thing, that coat. It really lived only once. 

I think, that the French philosopher Georges Bataille must have been born in Tamil Nadu. Consider this, Bataille combined death and sexuality. In my land, a photograph did this job for you. The first photo of your life commemorated the wedding and the next your death! 

My grandpa was a police constable, with Telugu roots. He migrated from Chittoor and made his home in the Thanjavur district. With the holy srichurnam adorning his forehead, he stood tall and stout. I don’t know the backstory of the many Telugu men who settled in Tamil Nadu and pursued careers in the police force. 

The biggest loss of my life is that I never talked to my mother much. Never spoke to Naina either. Naina was a class one teacher at an elementary school in Nagore. Then, to get that job, one needed to have completed the eighth grade and secured a recommendation from someone influential. However, once you took up the job, you had to clear the teacher training examinations. 

Naina had a routine of waking up at five in the morning and setting out by six on his bicycle to provide door-to-door tuition. He dedicated three hours to tutoring, attending to every student individually. Tuition has evolved into an enormous business in India today. The tuition fee demanded by teachers these days can amount to even one lakh rupees per student. 

But, during the 1960s, providing tuition to a boy or girl would yield, maybe, five rupees at best, at the end of the month. Naina had three more ‘tuition’ students in the evening. He would wind down by around seven. He would then cycle to the home of one Mr. Swami in Nagapattinam. There he would play student, learning from Mr. Swami. This was part of his teacher’s training routine. The sessions were from eight to nine o’clock, followed by a chat with Swami after nine, which went on till ten. (This Swami is the reason why I am a writer today. I will tell you that story later.) Naina would arrive home by eleven. The journey from Nagapattinam to Nagore Kosatheru, took an hour on his bicycle, which must have been purchased during the early days of its invention. (Covering that five-kilometer distance on foot takes about an hour.) 

A miniscule room, a tiny kitchen, a small hall, and a thinnai. My mother and six children. This was what he was cycling back to every night. My brother and I would sleep in the thinnai. A sack was tied around the thinnai to shield us from the view of the street while we slept. The reason for this curtained arrangement, as planned by our mother, was to ward off any wandering ghosts from entering the thinnai.

How did ghosts know that we were sleeping in the thinnai if we hid ourselves behind the sack? If I got up in the middle of the night to pee, I would wake up my brother, and together, we would venture out into the street. The idea was that ghosts held no sway over the second and third children, and they focused their attention solely on the first child. 

My friend Arathu is making a documentary film about me. When he interviewed my sister (the ‘ear ring one’), she said: “At home we would all go to sleep at half past ten. Annae (that’s me) would be studying then. When we woke up at five in the morning, we would still find him engrossed in his studies.” 

When Naina returned home at around eleven, I’d be reading by the chimney lamp. “It’s time for bed, thambudu”, Naina would say. Upon hearing those words, I would drift into a peaceful slumber. While waiting for Naina, my mother, would have taken a seat on the mat and dozed off. 

So, I never had the chance to talk to Naina. However, after a long time, Nainaretired from teaching and came to Chennai, settling in my sister’s house. If only I had talked with him more, I could have learned the story of his parents migrating from Chittoor to the Thanjavur district. 

And I did worse with my mother. Her story, or rather, that of ammachi, my mother’s mother, who had walked all the way from Burma to Tamil Nadu, was lost, because I never spoke to my mother either. Ammachi was living in Burma with her husband. A few centuries ago, Ammachi‘s ancestors had migrated to Burma from the Nattukottai region of Tamil Nadu. Ammachi‘s husband’s father, my great-grandfather, married a Burmese woman, and my grandmother was born to them. 

Because I have Telugu, Burmese, and Tamil ancestry, my East Asian friends often inquire whether I am from Thailand or Burma. Perhaps in my face they see the images of all these dead.

By Charu Nivedita