The Professional mourner : rudaali

Many years ago when we visited Kerala every Summer vacations, I used to notice this scrawny dark woman with a hunched back sweeping in the yard or doing small chores. She would never cross a boundary to enter our house even when other workers did so. She would talk to herself most of the time and sometimes became ridicule of others for jabbering. There were times when she purposely asked me few things to listen to my broken Malayalam and laughed showing her few brown teeth. The character amused me. Her name was Pangi.

I always wondered why she wouldn’t cross a boundary beyond the yard of my great-grandmother’s (My mom’s grandmother) naalukettu when other workers did so. My great-grandmother then told me that this lady belonged to the lowest caste and in that too classified under professional mourners. Even though caste system was long abolished and with advent of communism in the state, people were free to go anywhere they pleased but people who belonged to old school of thought still believed in it and practiced and that also included older people of lower caste. For Pangi, she could never imagine there would be a day when she would be allowed to enter temples, nalukketu and houses of upper castes. So she followed the rules even when no one asked her to. She would still wear an old cotton white saree without a blouse (she covered that part of the body with her saree) ; another taboo prevalent in olden times when lower caste women were not allowed to wear blouse or cover upper part of the body. Such ubiquitous casteism prompted Swami Vivekananda to nickname Kerala as the mad house of India.

Younger generation of women from Pangi’s family wore blouse and casteism wasn’t rampant anymore but she would still follow most of those taboos. At this old age she didn’t know any better and perhaps she was senile to understand the changes in the society.

It was the first time I heard about someone who would cry at others’ funeral. My great-grandmother told me that in olden times the splendor of a person was known from the number of people who wailed and cried at the funeral. Women of aristocratic family were not allowed to wail or thump their chest. Since members of the family were mourning in silence, a group of professional mourners performed that duty. They wailed for hours and thumped their chest. They belonged to the sub sect of lowest caste called pulayar. With time, this practice stopped.

Further research on this custom, led me to many links where it is mentioned that professional mourning was part of almost all the cultures and civilizations and it is still practiced in some places in Brazil and Greece. In Brazil, professional mourning women are called carpideiras. They wear black clothes and are called to wail at the funeral in return of food or money. An important part of Greek tradition is epicedium where mournful songs are sung loudly by professional mourners and now since professional mourning is extinct, the tradition is continued by family of the deceased. Wiki says from about 1600 to 1920, The professional mourner, generally a woman, would shriek and wail (often while clawing her face and tearing at her clothing), to encourage others to weep. These people are mentioned in ancient Greek plays, and were employed throughout Europe, but the practice largely died out in the nineteenth century. They continue to exist in Africa and the Middle East. The 2003 award-winning Philippine comedy Crying Ladies revolves around the lives of three women who are part-time professional mourners for the Chinese-Filipino community in Manila’s Chinatown. According to the film, the Chinese use professional mourners to help expedite the entry of a deceased loved one’s soul into heaven by giving the impression that he or she was a good and loving person, well-loved by many. [Refer : Encyclopedia of death and dying]

Back home, this custom was prevalent in certain areas of Rajasthan where women of lower caste were hired as professional mourners upon the death of upper-caste males. These women were referred to as a ‘rudaali‘ (roo-daa-lee), literally translated as ‘female weeper’. Their job was to publicly express grief of family members who are not permitted to display emotion due to social status. Same custom was depicted in a Hindi movie based on the short story by Mahasweta Devi. Since this was a custom prevalent in almost all civilizations in ancient times, there are chances that it still exists in some cultures.

Pangi was perhaps last of professional mourners that existed in Kerala for no one even knew much about it by then or cared as the custom was extinct. I remember years later when my uncle (Mom’s older sister’s husband) died, Pangi perhaps in her late 80s then stood at a distance and wailed. Many people found it offensive and asked her to leave immediately.

Poor Pangi.. she was only doing what she was taught as a child. She didn’t have any place to rest or anyone to call her own. She worked for measly wages and slept on the sidewalks. After few more years, Pangi was hit by a car and found dead near some bushes. There was no one to shed even a single drop of tear for someone who cried for others.