Chennai: Her own feminism led painter to suicide

Chennai: A young painter, stunningly beautiful and brilliant in her work, killed herself Friday night at her house in Porur saying in her suicide note she had had enough of her hurtful feminism. She left behind a grieving husband, who was her batchmate at the Government College of Fine Arts here and their 2-year-old daughter, besides her devastated mother and a brother.

“I have had enough of my feminism, which hurt those close to me. They gave me their love but I was rude to them, assuming it was a way of demonstrating my feminine strength, penn sakthi”, wrote Lavanya in her suicide note recovered by the police from the house soon after being called by the devastated family. Her husband Potrarasan Suban was away at Dakshin Chitra, where he taches ceramics, when Lavanya took the extreme step.

According to the police, Lavanya and family lived in the first floor of the house where her parents and a brother stayed on the ground floor. As her husband was away, she had gone down along with the child to spend the night with her mother.

The two were talking till about 1 am when Lavanya told her mother she was going back upstairs to sleep. She left the daughter behind as she was already fast asleep.

When she did not come down till late Saturday morning, Lavanya’s mother went up to check. Finding the door locked and getting no response to her repeated knocking, she called her son up to help. They broke open the door only to find Lavanya hanging by her sari from the ceiling. They rushed her to the nearby Sri Ramachandra Medical College Hospital (SRMC) where the doctors declared she was brought dead. The body was handed over to the family after post mortem on Sunday and the last rites were completed.

“She left us all alone and she is gone,” said Lavanya’s distraught mother after the funeral. “Why did she have to do this, we do not know”, she told Deccan Chronicle.

“She was one of my best students. She was very ambitious and her painting was just brilliant”, said Prof K. Pugazhenthi, who had taught her during her post-graduation at the famous College of Arts. He said the space of artists doesn’t see many women excelling but her work distinctly stood out.

“Her paintings used to be a reflection of herself and her thoughts on the liberation of women. Her paintings and her writings — she was a writer too — were vocal of the need for unshackling the woman”, he reminisced. He also said Lavanya had wanted to pursue fellowship in fine arts and aimed at being an internationally known painter.

“We are all shattered. She was brilliant, calm, with a spirited thirst for the liberation of women. She has left a huge void in her family, among us”, said a close friend wishing anonymity. “She could have been a great artist”, she went on, adding, “Why do such well-endowed successful people resort to suicide? There must be better awareness”.