A kilometre away, in neighbouring Sellankottai, Divya’s mother was huddled up in the silence at her home as a lone policeman stood guard outside the house.
Having become an unwilling poster-girl of an inter-caste marriage-all-gone-wrong and the gruesome violence that was unleashed in the wake of her private choice, Divya has been living at her maternal aunt’s place in a neighbouring district.
After the caste-Hindu girl eloped to marry a Dalit boy in 2012 Illavarasan, her community stepped in to regiment the private choice of a family, putting them on dock. The girl’s father Nagaraj, employed as a cashier in a cooperative society, committed suicide. However, today, the community has left them orphaned forcing them to grapple with shreds of what was left. “Nobody has spoken to us in the village and they blame her for all that happened,” says mother Thenmozhi. Paternal relatives had disowned them and the girl is now staying at her aunt’s place.
The family had long before petitioned for a job for Divya or help her to study. When the violence happened, she was a third year student of nursing in a private college here.
After Illavarasan’s death, the mother and daughter tried in vain to continue the stalled education through a transfer to another college. “We tried to get a transfer, but the college said they could not get university order. I was hoping if I could register her in third year in a nursing college in Salem by borrowing money.”
The girl was briefly employed in a private school to teach English, at the behest of the then Superintendent of Police Asra Garg, in a bid to provide socio-psychological support. However, after his transfer, the school developed cold feet fearing caste violence and she eventually quit.
“Her name and image had been tarnished so much that she fears going out to seek help or a job,” says the mother. Today, she’s pursuing correspondence course in B.A. English literature from Annamalai University. “I could hate my own daughter or I could hate my husband for ending his life that led to all this….but, she’s my daughter and I can’t see her suffer like this,” says the mother, who was given compassionate employment in her husband’s cooperative society for a salary of Rs.6, 000.
Today, as a family besieged, the girl, her mother and her college-going brother are yet to pick up threads.
After the communal furore ended, the women of the communities were left to come to terms with the loss. While Krishnaveni is still grappling with the loss of her son Illavarasan, the other mother Thenmozhi is struggling to couch her daughter from the spite of her own community that has now disowned them.
