19. Where It Hurts

Audio Description: Looping vocalizations of pain elicited by manual pressure on each body part. If played simultaneously, the resulting cacophony sounds like the internal noise I mentally hear, a potential, potentially pornographic spectacle that American humanitarianism insists I suppress (Halttunen, 1995; Abruzzo, 2011).

உடம்பு [udambu], n.
Body.

தலை [thalai], n.
Head.

நெற்றி [netri], n.
Forehead.

முகம் [muham], n.
Face.

கண் [kann], n.
Eye.

மூளை [moolai], n.
Brain.

காது [kaathu], n.
Ear.

மூக்கு [mookku], n.
Nose.

வாய் [vaai], n.
Mouth.

கழுத்து [kaluththu], n.
Neck.

முதுகு [muthuhu], n.
Back.

நெஞ்சு [nenju], n.
Chest.

கை [kai], n.
Hand and/or arm.

தோள் [thol], n.
Shoulder.

இடுப்பு [iduppu], n.
Waist and/or hip.

கால் [kaal], n.
Leg.

இதயம் [ithayam], n.
Heart.

வயிறு [vayiru], n.
Stomach.

தசைகள் [thasayhal], n.
Muscles.

நரம்புகள் [narambuhal], n.
Nerves.

ஈழம் [Eelam] n.
A Tamil name for the island that members of the international community call Sri Lanka, later taken up by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to refer to the Tamil homeland in the north and east of Sri Lanka. After the government's disappearances of and atrocity crimes against Tamils, after the internally displaced people (IDP) camps, the nonchalant admission by a white van driver that those disappeared were eviscerated and fed to crocodiles, the continued Sinhalization of this Tamil homeland after the war's end, an entire generation might have reoriented to pain: as chronic, as displacement, as normal in its chronicity, needing no expression, but manifesting in survival media: the spaces, practices, narratives, and artifacts produced by refugee bodyminds and the postmemory generation after them (Perera, 2016; Hirsch, 2012). The noise of pain, a song for those perpetually on the brink of defeat.

P.B. Srinivas, Aabavanan (1986). "Tholvi Nilayena Ninaithaal."

(–45. Gateways)