VILLUPURAM: Wishing to embrace death from the comforts of one’s home is a yesteryear dream. R Marimuthu has camped outside his own house to make sure that he is not stripped of this rite of passage since March 28.
The septuagenarian is accompanied by a single cot parked under a tree shade, a water can perched atop a gas cylinder due to space crunch, belongings shabbily stacked on top of another, and his wife M Lakshmi (55).
The couple has been rendered homeless and just an iron gate away from their own house after their younger son locked them out before leaving for his in-laws’ home near Vanur.
The 72-year-old farm wage labourer, married his younger sister-in-law, M Lakshmi (55), after the death of his first wife. The couple has two sons, M Govindaraj (42) and M Vengatesh (40), and daughter M Sankari (35).
According to Marimuthu, he distributed his property among his kids and handed over the house to his younger son, Vengatesh, after the latter’s marriage in 2015. A dispute erupted between the father and son, which resulted in Marimuthu and his wife moving in to a rented house in the same village in 2017.
Marimuthu recently expressed his desire to return to his own house, since he couldn’t work anymore and struggled to pay rent. But Vengatesh refused.
After Marimuthu complained to Villupuram Revenue Divisional Officer S Ravichandran and the police, the RDO on March 27 ordered Vengatesh to let his parents in and ordered the children to pay a monthly allowance of Rs 5,000 to them.
Despite the order, Vengatesh kept the house locked and left for his in-laws’ house in Nesal the next day itself.
Marimuthu approached the RDO once again on Monday and has requested for a peaceful resolution.