Baaram

I first read of Thalaikoothal, or forced senicide, online in 2012 in minor news portals and blogs.

Families of elderly or infirm villagers were dispatching them by starving them for 10-15 days, giving a cold water head bath to their weakened bodies, and then plying them with copious amounts of tender coconut water, which induced renal failure.

The inconvenient family member was dead within 2-3 days

The numbers were preposterous – thousands of elderly or ill villagers were purported to be killed by their own families in rural Tamil Nadu every year in a practice that enjoyed wide social and administrative sanction. I was raised very lovingly by my grandparents in Secunderabad, and the idea of head baths is irrevocably tied in with memories of Deepavali celebrations rather than murder, so the practice of Thalaikoothal disturbed me deeply, and I began to research it.

There was little information about it in any mainstream media or on the net, and I could see why. 

Although practiced widely, it was done underground, usually clandestinely at night, and there were no medical or administrative records left behind. I still wasn’t sure how plausible the whole thing was.

Then Aamir Khan discussed the issue of Thalaikoothal in an episode of ‘Satyameva Jayate’ with the journalist who had filed the first story about it in the Deccan Chronicle newspaper in 2010. I was shaken. In 2015, after 3 years of research and debate, I decided to go to the small town in Tamil Nadu where the Deccan Chronicle broke that first case.

There, I met M. A., a 55-year old trade union leader, whose favorite uncle had died suddenly after a hip fracture.

He came to my hotel room at 9.30 at night and told me what had occurred.

It was a horrifying story of such inhumanity and helplessness that, having heard it, I had no choice but to make the film.

And that is how ‘Baaram’ was born.