A gravedigger is to a corpse what a mother is to a child, says Sampath, who works at the Krishnampet burial ground behind the Light House. “You have to tend to the body with great care,” he says. Besides digging graves , their job involves building stretchers for carrying the body, preparing the pyre andContinue reading “Dealing with death, daily”
Monthly Archives: September 2009
A Mosque of One’s Own
At Thandeeshwaram, a tiny village in Pudukottai district of Tamil Nadu, Sharifa Khanam is building her dreams brick by brick. The 42-year-old social worker has initiated the construction of a mosque here for Muslim women as a symbol of their struggle for equal rights in a male-dominated society. The first recipient of the Durgabai DeshmukhContinue reading “A Mosque of One’s Own”
The birdwatcher
One winter morning in 1968, on one of his weekend ‘birding’ trips, an unsuspecting Theodore Baskaran was crouching by the bund of the Devarayan Lake near Tiruchirapalli, when a skein of bar-headed geese emerged from the skies. Dropping their wings, they landed on the placid waters of the lake, a few meters from where heContinue reading “The birdwatcher”
Every refugee longs to return home
The Organisation for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation (OfeRR) has completed 25 years of work among Sri Lankan refugees in the State who narrowly escaped from the ethnic war in the island nation. Its founder, S.C. Chandrahasan spoke to Vidya Venkat about the hopes of the refugees and the future he envisions for the Tamils, now thatContinue reading “Every refugee longs to return home”
Sewer Rats
Imagine a man plunging into a 20-feet-deep sewer through its narrow mouth, holding his breath for over 30 seconds, scooping the filth inside with his bare hands or a shovel, and emerging from it, covered in muck. The only precaution he takes is to light a match over the hole sometimes, to detect the presenceContinue reading “Sewer Rats”
An anthropologist among the journalists 