A woman walks in, dressed primly in a starched sari, pats the sweat off her face with a handkerchief, looks straight at you, and nods. Presumably, on getting the go-ahead from the cameraman, she immediately composes her face in an expression of silent grief and gazes down at the bandaged head of the body lying in a coffin in front of her. She stands there for 2.14 minutes, before looking up, nodding her head again at the camera and walking off.
Sometimes, people come in groups, middle-aged husbands and wives. They stand somberly, heads bowed. Some spend only a few seconds, most hang around for a long minute or two. Once, I saw a man sitting on a chair next to a coffin and engage in what looked like a heated phone call — much gesticulation with the hands, slapping of forehead — for a good 20 minutes, before shuffling away to make room for the next mourner. The dead person, of course, lay undisturbed.
A still from a ‘haldi’ ceremony of a couple from Kerala.
| Photo Credit:
Weva Photography
For the last few weeks, I have been sucked down the rabbit hole of videos of family ceremonies from Kerala. Wedding videos — engagement, pre-, post-, and all other permutations and combinations — are now such an integral part of mainstream Internet content that they all land somewhere on the sliding scale of banality. The videos that I have consumed though, are quite different. They are a slice of life. Or, to be more accurate, they are long, unedited reportages of a slice of death.
Dedicated channels for funerals
Funeral videos, which became a necessity during the pandemic when people could not travel and visit their families, have now created their own niche. YouTube has thousands of these. Even with my rudimentary research, I have found channels dedicated almost entirely to this kind of thing. You can scroll through the listing to find the funeral of your distant grand uncle and watch it to feel present, or like me, you can hit play on a stranger’s funeral and get absorbed in it as an interesting sociological exercise.
This photo of a 95-year-old’s funeral in Kerala, where the family members are seen posing happily beside her casket, went viral last year. The family said they wanted to celebrate the matriarch’s happy life.
| Photo Credit:
Image via Twitter
Although online prayer meetings and funerals were taking place all over the country (and the world) during COVID-19, it seems to have endured as a content form mostly only in Kerala. I reached out to writer N.S. Madhavan to try and understand this unique ritual. It’s an old tradition among some Christian families in the State to take a family photograph with the coffin, he tells me. Added to this is the fact that Kerala families have for long had relatives who lived abroad and are often unable to visit the family for the funeral.
During the pandemic, the awareness and use of technology that helps record and stream videos became widespread, allowing people live access to the event. In essence then, this is the application of a new technology to an old custom. Hosting these recordings online is a logical next step. Maybe the nephew in America found it inconvenient to stay up and watch the live proceedings, and can now schedule a weekend viewing session instead? Perhaps people who attended the funeral would like to see themselves on screen a few weeks later? Who’s complaining? Not me. I’m too busy watching the little boy trying to decide whether he should touch the dead person or not, his hand hovering over the face.
15 seconds of fame
Public consumption of private moments is the very essence of much of the content on the internet. And, in Kerala, it seems, no moment is spared a chance of 15 seconds of online fame. From baby-naming ceremonies to “puberty functions”, a videographer seems to be the first invitee to any gathering. Watching them is voyeurism without its shame, for you didn’t go snooping around for it.
A housewarming ceremony.
| Photo Credit:
Getty Images/ iStock
In fact, in housewarming videos — another popular genre — you are literally invited home and given a grand tour: here, the washing area, where the lady of the house poses with a washing machine, there a little temple, where the lamp is solemnly lit. The protagonists manage at least two changes of clothes, one for the “private” religious ceremony, and the other for when the guests arrive. The buffet is a lavish spread and waiters walk around bearing trays with orange fizz and colas. Children find a place to play. The women examine the table linen and marvel at the fish tank. They seize a bit when they see the videographer and then immediately break into a smile. Some men, maybe old friends, form a circle. Someone cracks a joke. Everyone laughs, until one of them breaks free and goes for another helping of the cake.
He looks around, hoping no one is watching. But, in Kerala, at an event like this, the camera always is. And it’s not going to stop. Even when you’re dead.
The writer is the author of ‘Independence Day: A People’s History’.
