I was struck by this line and Mythri Jegathesan’s follow up that it was “one of the first questions older women would ask [me].” The emphasis on care between the workers and also with Jegathesan, a researcher and technical outsider, stands out to me because in some ways it feels almost too “personal” to be reading about in an ethnographic context. The way she portrays her interactions and relationship with Sadha and her family are so dramatically different from her introduction to the reader of Saroja (who reminds me greatly of a lot of well-meaning youthful organizers in the US that suffer from the biases they so protest against) and Michael.
The concept of ‘ūr’ was really interesting to me because I guess I can’t really tell the nuance of the way the term was used by various sources and Jegathesan. There is the ūr that the Hill Country Tamil made for themselves in their line-rooms, but there is also the ūr back in India, somewhere in Tamil Nadu no matter how long a family has been in Sri Lanka, and then there is the ūr for women that comes with marriage: leaving your “ūr” for your husbands, one example for that being Devi (104). The ‘piranta ūr’ (natal home) matters less. I found the discussions of locations and their importance or lack-of-importance in various discussions of the Hill Country Tamil’s belonging in Sri Lanka. Visiting Sellamma in her line-room home on the Kirkwall plantation, Jegathesan notes that the very fact that Sellamma is comfortable and ‘lived-in’ in her home indicates that Hill Country Tamil workers become comfortable and belong to where they live and work, yet when asked earlier what her ūr is, Sellamma says “Abbottsleigh,” where she was born.
Hey Stephanie! I really enjoyed reading your comment. I agree with you that her descriptions of these interactions feel so personal. Even her use of photos transform her writing into experiences that feel familiar to an outsider reading in. In the context of the example you mentioned, I think Jegathesan is such a good ethnographer because she is able to capture small intimate details that speak so greatly to the culture of care that exists in this part of the world. I think she did a nice job highlighting other systems of care and how they are shaped by gender, and kinship.
To your point on ūr, I felt similarly at first and was trying to find a way to reflect on my own life using it. I almost wonder if there is a distinction between what the word means in Tamil, and how we can define it in English. I think the best way to approach it is to reject the temptation to search for English equivalents, and to try and understand it solely in the context of Hill Country.