Who could murder their mother?

I DON’T know if others felt like me. I couldn’t read the POST article, “Parents hacked: son held” the first time. (March 1-5). I looked at it in disbelief, put the paper down and only a few days later could I steel myself to read it.

To make it even more repulsive, next to it was the Kandasamy murders.

Parricide is the most heinous of crimes. How could the 21-year-old son allegedly turn so viciously on his own parents? What cruel mind, what evil heart, what bloody hand could lift up a bush knife and hack them to death?

We live as prisoners in our homes, barricading ourselves with burglar bars, high boundary walls and electric fences to ward off intruders. Yet we have criminals living in our homes. Everyone knows who is a drug lord, drug addict, copper thief and whose tuck shop is a front for illicit business in the neighbourhood.

Drugs and alcohol have long been associated with the Indian community. In one of his columns in POST, Yogin Devan was highly critical of the Hindu community for turning worship into a fiendish ritual where alcohol and ganja are glorified. It cannot be worship when someone in a crazy, deranged state wrings a fowl’s neck and drinks its blood.

When we first came to Chatsworth there were shebeens galore. No one really minded. Police made half-hearted attempts to close them down but they continued to thrive and made many shebeen owners rich. Now we are paying a heavy price for this indifference and tolerance.The film, Keeping up with the Kandasamys paints a glorified picture of Chatsworth. It does not show the filth and the dirt and the heartache of broken homes caused by the scourge of alcohol and drug abuse. It does not show the wretched Sugars addicts in their skeletal figures.

Parents, especially mothers, are revered by the Hindus as gods. What son, then, no matter how high on drugs, could murder the very mother who bore him? THYAGARAJ MARKANDAN

Silverglen