As elderly and retired Tamil women rework their pasts into pragmatic methodologies for the future of their families, they realize that the present insecurities faced by the Malaiyaha Tamil community writ large are felt most acutely and intrusively by young women approaching and in marriage and motherhood on the plantations. On a very basic level, older generations of Malaiyaha Tamil women had received different messages about their reproductive ancestors. Families with eleven children, such as the one into which Ramaiyi was born, or even Sakuntala’s brood of six, were no longer possible; marriages, albeit arranged, were more and more ending in separation and divorce. Most painfully, such narrowing and foreboding relational and reproductive trends hinged on how couples and their families handled the perpetual problem of financial insecurity and poverty. In conversations with expectant mothers of one child, having two children was enough and desired. For a mother of three unexpectedly having a fourth, that extra child—though wanted and loved in the future—presented too much of a financial burden if viable outside the womb. Who is permitted to draw the line that says two children are enough for Malaiyaha Tamil women on the plantations? What does it mean for these women to be told that their wombs should no longer be generative of future life?
This chapter concludes with attempting to answer these questions. But an understanding of the end of womb production—female sterilization—entails an understanding of the womb’s possibility as manifest in the centrality of fertility and its representations among Malaiyaha Tamil families on the estates. As Margaret Trawick so
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simply begins her chapter on children in Notes on Love in a Tamil Family, “Childhood is made much of in Tamil Nadu” (1990: 215). Her observation was mirrored in numerous observations of affection for and signs of love expressed to children among Tamil families living on the plantations. Children, especially younger ones, were, in Ramaiyi’s words, “the center of the house.” With such emotional investment in the production of life, its continuation through the fertile wombs of offspring is an obviously natural desired outcome within cycles of families.
One of the most outward demonstrations of such investments among Tamils in Sri Lanka’s Hill Country is the recognition of fertility through the celebration of a young girl’s coming of age or first menstruation. A ritual also known colloquially among my interlocutors as the vayacu #ccutunka (“age [attainment] ritual”), this ceremony and celebration comprise the first major introduction of a Tamil girl-turned-woman to the larger community and signifies her potentiality as reproductively able woman that is eligible for marriage in the near future. In September 2009, I was able to witness and document the cutunka of one of my interlocutor’s brother’s daughters on an estate in Talawakelle, which is about twenty minutes by train from Hatton town. The ceremony and celebration spanned over two days and, as confirmed by my interlocutor who took place in the ritual as the young girl’s maternal uncle, cost nearly 50,000 SLR for her family including the rental of the hall for the celebration, material goods for the ritual, catering of food for both days, photography and video (including professional album making) and of course, three different saris and sets of jewelry for the young woman.
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Figure 7. Sivadharshini, photographed on the day of her vayacu #ccutunka and professionally videotaped during the reception on the day after in Hatton area. Both photographs take by author.
During the reception, I sat with my one of younger interlocutors, Rajesh, a young boy working in a Colombo shop from Kirkwall estate. He had taken leave from work and come back for the #ccutunka because his father was the young girl’s maternal uncle. I asked him what the standard money-gift or moi would be for relatives and estate community members attending the event to give to the young girl. He told me that nowadays, one could not give less than 500 SLR but that one family could give whatever they please like as long as the moi was placed in a sealed envelope with your name, name of your estate, and address on it for reciprocity purposes. His family, because they were closer in relation, had given the girl a gold ring, which he had purchased in Colombo and brought back with him to the celebration. I shared with him the obvious fact that 500
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SLR was a lot of money (more than one day’s salary for estate work) for one family to give, and he told me that it had to be that way because the cadangu’s cost would put a significant dent in the family’s savings. The moi, he said, would help the family recover. It was then that he said the most telling thing:
You know why they do a big cutunka, Akka? It is because, now, most young girls do not get married like before with their parents finding a boy for them, watching for caste, and what not. Now, it is either a love marriage or mostly elopements so the family figures that this will be their only chance to show and celebrate their daughter’s virtuousness so publically. The cutunka has become more important than the marriage.”
If such is the reality for young Malaiyaha Tamil girls looking up to the horizon of marriage and motherhood, what do such expectations of disappointment hold for marriage once they are wives and expectant mothers?