Breaking the Cycle of Violence, Abuse and Sabotage

Finding Freedom: How Death Row Broke and Opened my Heart (2/5)

Author

Shirisha Nagendran
November 08, 2024

There is a story of Savithri or ‘Thathri Kutty’ who hailed from Thalapally, a taluk in the state of Kerala in Southern India.

Thathri was born in 1885, when it was very normal for girls to be married off in their teens. Thathri was sexually abused by her relative repeatedly at the age of nine. In her teens Thathri was married off to Raman Namboothiri, a man in his 60s.

It was an unhappy marriage. Raman Namboothiri had sexual relations with other women, and when Thathri protested, she was ignored and cast aside.

Living in India during the late 19th century as a young woman meant she had no agency over her choices, circumstances, or conditions.

So what did Thathri do?

Thathri wanted to have agency over her life, to live her life the way she wanted. She wasn’t ready to bow down to her husband and serve at his feet as was expected of her.

Thathri turned to sex work. She fixed appointments with clients through her servants to keep her identity hidden. Thathri had various trysts with men of all walks of life, powerful men. She kept meticulous records of her partners - who they were, what did they do, who were they connected to and their social status.

Thathri noted the identification marks on their bodies—moles, scars, and birthmarks—details only known to a person intimate with them.

Everything went well, until all hell broke loose, when her husband ended up as one of her clients and recognised her! An honour court was convened, and Thathri was questioned extensively and “tried” for her sins against her caste.

Thathri did not take this lying down. Using her meticulous records, she revealed 64 men, and their identifying information, many of them in positions of power. Her trial was shut down suddenly by the King of Cochin, and it was believed that she was going to “out” him or one of his close relatives as the 65th man she had slept with.

Thathri was only 19 when this trial took place. She was excommunicated from her community, and her family performed her funeral rites, indicating that she was dead to them.

The story of Thathri brings out poignantly what happens when we take away the agency of young children, not give them love and affection. In this modern day and age, it seems so obvious that young children need unconditional love, affection, care and stability. But that is not a blessing many children around the world receive.

This is one of the key points that stood out for me from Jarvis Jay Masters’s book “Finding Freedom: How Death Row Broke and Opened My Heart.”

Jarvis talks about the common factor that binds the prisoners in San Quentin. Many of them had suffered abuse as children and the suffering perpetuated in lack of stability, love, affection, care and safety as they were taken away from their families and placed in child care systems.

“David and Pete recounted similar childhood experiences. Their stories said much about how all of us had come to be in one of the worst prisons in the country. Most prisoners who were abused as children were taken from their natural parents at a very early age and placed in foster homes, youth homes, or juvenile halls for protection, where they acquired even more scars. Later in their lives prisons provided the same kind of painful refuge. It is terrifying to realize that a large percentage of prisoners will eventually reenter society, father children, and perpetuate what happened to them.

Throughout my many years of institutionalization, I like so many of these men, unconsciously took refuge behind prison walls.”

When we do not find a true refuge, we end up seeking sanctuary in false refuges. True refuges are the outer and the inner spaces of unconditional love, acceptance and safety. When true refuges are not found outside, then we turn to strategies that offer us some modicum of stability - often that means perpetuating the very violence we were inflicted with - physical, mental or emotional.

“Secretly, we like it here. This place welcomes a man who is full of rage and violence. He is not abnormal here, not different. Prison life is an extension of his inner life. “

The only way to break this cycle is to create this true refuge in our hearts.

“Finally, I confided to John that I wished I had been with my mother when she died.

“Hey, didn’t you say she neglected you?” he asked.

John was right, she had neglected me, but am I to neglect myself as well by denying that I wished I’d been with her when she died, that I still love her?”

And we finish this edition with a tiny story.

Surprising the Master

The students in the monastery were in total awe of the elder monk, not because he was strict, but because nothing ever seemed to upset or ruffle him. So they found him a bit unearthly and even frightening.

One day they decided to put him to a test.

A bunch of them very quietly hid in a dark corner of one of the hallways and waited for the monk to walk by. Within moments, the old man appeared, carrying a cup of tea.

Just as he passed by, the students all rushed out at him, screaming as loud as they could. But the monk showed no reaction whatsoever.

He peacefully made his way to a small table at the end of the hall, gently placed the cup down, and then, leaning against the wall, cried out with shock, “Ohhhh!”

💌 Siri