Maverick\u2019s story<\/h2>\n
It was a cold November morning, and I had travelled with my family to our ancestral temple in a village in Tamil Nadu. My sister\u2019s 11-month-old baby was to be tonsured for the first time \u2013 a religious head-shaving that in Hinduism is a way of discarding the evil eye and removing any negativity from past lives; a new start.<\/p>\n
My wife drove, but asked me to park the car while she went inside with our son and her parents. I walked around the front of the vehicle and slid into the passenger seat. But when I tried to park, I felt resistance. As I pressed down on the accelerator, I noticed a middle-aged man running towards me, waving his arms frantically as he yelled for me to move the car backwards.<\/p>\n
My mind raced as I reversed. I prayed silently that I hadn\u2019t hurt anyone.<\/p>\n
It was only when I got out of the car that I saw her. The thin, frail woman who now lay on the ground, shaking and murmuring. Panicked, my mind tried to make sense of how she\u2019d come to be there \u2013 she must have sat down, assuming I\u2019d already parked \u2013 and how badly injured she was. She curled into a foetal position as I sat down beside her and gently placed her head on my lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes it hurt anywhere, paati<\/em> (granny)?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n She nodded, pointing to her leg.<\/p>\n I slowly pulled back the torn sari near her knee. The flesh was missing.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve been hurt, but we\u2019ll take care of it,\u201d I promised.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one will take care of me \u2026 just let me sit,\u201d she pleaded.<\/p>\n Villagers started to gather, but kept their distance. One man said the woman slept on the streets near the temple and was often seen begging. A woman chided her for always sitting too close to cars. \u201cIf you don\u2019t do something now, no one will take care of her, and she\u2019ll die,\u201d a man muttered before leaving.<\/p>\n Between groans, the woman told me her name: Chinnammal.<\/p>\n \u201cCan you find my bag, thangam<\/em>?\u201d she asked, using a Tamil term for a loved one that translates to \u201cgold\u201d. She was in pain, but speaking to me, the person who had caused it, with such kindness.<\/p>\n I looked around and found her old cotton bag. It was stuffed to the brim with an open packet of chips, a half-eaten bun, a few 10-rupee notes, and some clothes.<\/p>\n The ambulance arrived, but there was only the driver, and it would take at least three people to lift her safely; we needed another pair of hands. There were close to 25 people around us, but no one moved.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one will come to lift her. She\u2019s from a different caste. I have come to do temple rituals \u2013 otherwise, I would help,\u201d a priest explained before hurrying away.<\/p>\n My wife, who had by now seen the commotion and approached, stepped forward to help, and together, we lifted Chinnammal into the ambulance. I climbed in with her.<\/p>\n I could see from her face that the pain came in waves. I sat next to her, one arm under her shoulders, in a kind of half-hug.<\/p>\n \u201cMy bag?\u201d she asked, looking relieved when I placed it beside her hand.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are the first person to take me in a car,\u201d she told me, her voice trembling.<\/p>\n She called me saami<\/em>, a Tamil term that translates to God. I couldn\u2019t understand how she could show me such love and respect. I asked for her forgiveness, but she simply asked me to help her sit up.<\/p>\n When we pulled into the hospital, two nurses in neatly pressed white uniforms appeared with a stretcher. I helped the ambulance driver lift Chinnammal onto it and wheeled her into the hospital. I told the nurses what I knew of her injuries, while they exchanged uneasy glances. When Chinnammal lurched forward and vomited, the nurses scolded her and backed away in disgust.<\/p>\n Inside the emergency room, the nursing manager explained that Chinnammal\u2019s blood pressure and heart rate were high, but she was stable. She had two major injuries \u2013 a broken hip and severe grazing that would require skin grafts. Her leg, he said, was not so serious and would heal quickly.<\/p>\n Chinnammal reached for my hands. Hers were small and bony, but her grip was firm. Her eyes flickered, drifting in and out of focus. A soft-spoken doctor told me it was a miracle she was stable after sustaining such serious injuries.<\/p>\n She quietly listened to the doctor speak, but when he mentioned it would take three months for her hip to heal, Chinnammal started to wail.<\/p>\n \u201cI will visit you every weekend, paati<\/em>,\u201d I reassured her.<\/p>\n The hospital staff took Chinnammal for an electrocardiogram, and when she returned, now hooked up to a heartbeat monitor, she grasped my hands again. She tugged on one. I leaned in. \u201cAsk them to give me medicine to die,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n I assured her that the doctors would take good care of her and that I would be there to make sure of it.<\/p>\n \u201cThey won\u2019t,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n Then she looked into my eyes and lost consciousness.<\/p>\n I grabbed hold of her hand, but it was limp. I fell to the floor, sobbing.<\/p>\n Chinnammal was pronounced dead at 8.30 am on November 20, 2022. She was about 75 years old.<\/p>\n Chinnammal didn\u2019t always live on the streets. As a younger woman, she was impeccably dressed, with flowers woven into her neatly plaited hair.<\/p>\n She hadn\u2019t always begged for handouts either. She worked hard to farm a piece of land for her family, but her married life was difficult. Her husband was an alcoholic, and Chinnammal had to raise her daughter, run the house, and farm their land with little help.<\/p>\n She doted on her daughter and was happy when she married a man from a nearby village. A few years after her daughter married, Chinnammal\u2019s husband died. Chinnammal adapted easily to life as a widow. She enjoyed visiting her daughter and son-in-law and would take them homemade sweets. When they struggled to conceive, Chinnammal worried, but she was overjoyed when they decided to adopt. She loved watching her grandson grow. He became her \u201ceverything\u201d.<\/p>\n That joy was short-lived. Chinnammal\u2019s daughter fell ill with a severe form of diabetes. When Chinnammal wasn\u2019t at her daughter\u2019s bedside, she was at the temple, praying for her, or concocting various treatments from herbs that she hoped would help.<\/p>\n But nothing worked, and Chinnammal watched her daughter slowly die.<\/p>\n That was the moment Chinnammal\u2019s life changed. She stopped interacting with people. Some villagers started to harass and steal from her. She once filed a police complaint against a drunk neighbour who harassed her, but the police refused to help. Late one night, when she caught the man near her home, she threatened him with a sickle.<\/p>\n In her grief, Chinnammal no longer cared where she slept, what she ate, or how she dressed. She started to sleep by the temple, clutching her cloth bag close to her.<\/p>\n A few hours after Chinnammal\u2019s death, I went to the local police station and handed myself in.<\/p>\n A police officer contacted Chinnammal\u2019s son-in-law to release her body and begin the family\u2019s settlement case against me.<\/p>\n Her son-in-law initially refused to claim her body. The investigating officer told me he\u2019d said, \u201cShe should have died a long time ago. She was just a burden \u2026 You can ask them to bury her and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n But the officer insisted, and the man reluctantly came to the station.<\/p>\n When he arrived, I gave Chinnammal\u2019s bag to the police officer, who inventoried its contents and shared the details with her son-in-law. His demeanour changed. He wanted to claim the body and register himself as her closest living relative, he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was close to two lakhs ($2,250) in the bag you surrendered, and now this guy is trying to claim it and the compensation that the government might pay,\u201d the police officer told me.<\/p>\n Chinnammal\u2019s death felt like losing a loved one. I knew I had caused it. But she had shown no anger or animosity towards me. In her final hours, she had treated me with kindness and compassion. She had shared her love for her daughter and grandson with me, held my hand, and spoken tenderly to me despite her pain.<\/p>\n At the hospital, a doctor had tried to console me. \u201cWhat if you had hit a child?\u201d he\u2019d asked. \u201cCould you live with yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe had lived her life,\u201d he reasoned. But his reasoning made no sense to me.<\/p>\n The following day, I went to the temple to help the police with their investigation. As I stared at the spot where my life had changed, a priest interrupted my thoughts.<\/p>\n \u201cYou did a good job,\u201d he said. Thinking he was chastising me, I apologised.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I mean it,\u201d he responded. \u201cNobody used to go near her. Local drunks used to steal the money she collected. So she used to cuss and throw stones at anyone who came near her. She had absolutely no one in this world.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the temple staff used to chase her away, he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cI think she chose to go through you. Through you, she died with dignity, the dignity that was denied to her in life,\u201d he said, urging me to be at peace.<\/p>\n But nothing could give me peace.<\/p>\n I stopped driving. For a year, I withdrew from friends and family. I couldn\u2019t sleep and, when I did, I\u2019d see Chinnammal in my dreams. Whenever I was alone, I would think about her, replaying that day in my mind and wondering what might have happened had I done something differently.<\/p>\n Nearly a month after her death, I was able to track down the contact information for Chinnammal\u2019s 19-year-old grandson. I called to ask for his forgiveness, and he asked me about the last moments I spent with her.<\/p>\n Three months later, at the court hearing, I was found negligent and ordered to pay a fine of 10,000 rupees ($115) to the court. At the hearing, I met Chinnammal\u2019s grandson. I hugged him, and though he barely spoke, I could feel the warmth of his forgiveness \u2013 just like that of his paati\u2019s<\/em>.<\/p>\n In her dying moments, Chinnammal taught me the value of life \u2013 every life.<\/p>\n Chinnammal means \u201csmall mother\u201d.<\/p>\n A neighbour who had known her said, \u201cShe spent her whole life caring for her daughter, and, even in death, she ensured that her family was taken care of [with her savings]. Her mind and body may have given in, but she never stopped being a mother.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was told to Catherine Gilon by Maverick Prem. Information about Chinnammal\u2019s life was gathered from interviews with her former neighbours, who asked not to be named. Her family declined to be interviewed for this story. <\/em><\/p>\n Maverick continues to pay his respects to Chinnammal at the temple grounds where she spent her final years. In addition to the court fine, he made a voluntary donation to Chinnammal\u2019s grandson.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Maverick\u2019s story It was a cold November morning, and I had travelled with my family to our ancestral temple in a village in Tamil Nadu. My sister\u2019s 11-month-old baby was to be tonsured for the first time \u2013 a religious head-shaving that in Hinduism is a way of discarding the evil eye and removing any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ambulance-1761825342.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C433&quality=80\")
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Chinnammal\u2019s story<\/h2>\n
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After Chinnammal\u2019s death<\/h2>\n
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