View Single Post
Old 17th November 2012, 07:40 PM   #32
HansMustermann
Penultimate Amazing
 
HansMustermann's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 22,331
Actually, no, while people can be crazy enough to jump on a pyre, they can't STAY there for an hour or two until they get burnt to death. They actually experimented with that millimetre wave ray that, for all practically purposes, gives you an approximate sensation almost up there with being burned alive. People just can't stay there. It's a primal instinct to get the heck out of its way.

I can imagine that maybe one or two people out there have the willpower to just stay and burn, but even then not more than one or two. Have you seen recordings those rare nutcases that douse themselves in gasoline and set themselves on fire to make a point? Yeah, they invariably start to run around and flail. It's a primal reflex to try to make the horrible pain stop.

That every woman -- including some little girls, judging by the palm prints on sati stones -- can just stay on a fire for an hour or two... no. Just no. No frikken way.

And sure enough, by some descriptions we have:

A) there was immense pressure on those women, and if they didn't go with it, they could lose caste for them and their children. Meaning pretty much they could just be murdered afterwards anyway.

B) most didn't seem to go with it, and just got beaten up, drugged and thrown on the fire, and, crucially,

C) the whole thing generally involved some men with long pieces of wood to pin her down, and oil or oil-rich seeds to throw in the fire.

Especially C makes it plain old murder. Even IF someone actually just wanted to jump in a fire, but then changed her mind -- as 99% would, sooner or later, usually sooner -- preventing her from leaving the fire and throwing fuel on the fire is plain old murder.

I can imagine that some woman or another would take a handful of sleeping pills in grief, but not choose to jump in a fire. And again, you can't actually STAY in the fire unless drugged unconscious and/or pinned down.

So let's drop the romanticized ideas that some women actually sat in a fire and burned because they wanted to. It is horrible murder, plain and simple.

And if I were some kind of supervillain ruler of the Earth with such power... every single person at those few recent funerals where supposedly some widow just, you know, unexpectedly jumped in the fire and stay there, I'd hang them all. Down to the last one. Because they're all accomplices to horrible murder.
__________________
Springfield Heights Institute of Technology poster child

Last edited by HansMustermann; 17th November 2012 at 07:42 PM.
HansMustermann is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top