Anatomy of a Massacre

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A STRANGE FEELING overtook Muthulakshmi Bhaskar around noon. “I suddenly felt unwell,” she told me. “I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe properly.” She ignored it and continued with her household chores. In an hour, she had severe leg pain. She decided to call her 22-year-old son, B Ranjith Kumar, who usually ferried her to hospital when she needed care. Someone else picked up the phone. The voice at the other end said that Ranjith had had a head injury and was being taken to the Thoothukudi general hospital. “I started screaming,” she told me. “My head was spinning.” She tried hailing an auto but each driver refused saying there was a riot in town. With the help of a neighbour, she reached the hospital a half hour later. It was a scene of chaos.

Bullet-ridden bodies were being rushed around on stretchers. Wailing echoed through the halls. The police were there in force, chasing patients and bystanders. “They were hitting everyone with lathis,” Muthulakshmi said. “I saw the police mercilessly beating a young boy. They were ruthless.” She kept running between the hospital’s floors frantically. She had forgotten her cell phone at home. “I called my husband using someone else’s phone,” she said. Her husband had reached the hospital earlier. “The minute he spoke, I sensed something terrible had happened. He never used to talk softly, his voice was weak. I rushed to where he was standing.” Her husband kept assuring her that their son was fine. Ranjith was in the intensive care unit. Muthulakshmi refused to believe him. She does not remember the following hours too well. Her husband eventually shepherded her out, telling her they had to go home. “I kept asking why he brought me back when Ranjith was in the ICU.” On her way back, she barely noticed how the city had been rent apart.

Before 2018, Thoothukudi, called the Pearl City, was an unassuming, quiet, sea-swept township. Known for its saltpans and plump fish, it was the sort of city that reporters only went to during election season. Near the mouth of the Thamirabarani River, the sea forms a natural harbour, which made it a vital port according to the earliest Tamil records. Its access to shipping made its industries thrive, with the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu setting up one of its earliest industrial estates there in 1984. A generation later, it was a town of tired industrial retirees and fishermen.