OBSERVATIONS |
Wailing and distraught, family members dressed in undyed (white) cloth kneel around the coffin of a woman who had died the previous day. Her son, the chief mourner, watches over the whole proceedings standing at the right of the shot. All mourners have sticks to help them as they stumble through the rituals, too affected to be able to walk unaided. The prevailing white colour is relieved by red, deliberately introduced to offset the inauspicious effects of being in the presence of death, and every mourner’s stick has a red thread tied around it. |