Indonesian man killed by own mother’s coffin falling on him
It’s quite clear – snigger – that we shouldn’t – gurgle, snort – laugh at this – tee hee – but a bloke in Indonesia – guffaw – has just been killed by his own mother’s coffin falling upon him at her funeral.
Bwahahahaha.
Err, yes, we really shouldn’t laugh at this:
An Indonesian man has died after his mother’s coffin fell from a funeral tower and crushed him during a service on the island of Sulawesi, police said on Sunday.
Funeral rites do change as we move around the world. We tend to fire the corpse or stick it in a hole in the ground. Parsis have been known to practice sky burial – chop the body up and feed it, quite literally, to the birds. Vikings stuck the body on a boat and burnt both.
So, sticking the coffin on a tower isn’t all that odd:
Samen Kondorura, 40, died when pallbearers lost their footing carrying the coffin up a bamboo ladder in the Parinding valley in North Toraja district.
The casket fell as the group hoisted it onto a lakkian – an ornately carved tower where the dead are placed before elaborate traditional funeral rites.
That lakkian is performing the function of a bier for us. A nice position where we can all see the coffin while we sing the hymns and lament the departed. Theirs is just a little higher up than our:
Mobile phone footage showed the team of men laboriously carrying the coffin to the platform at the top. When it was all but secure the ladder slipped, dropping the bearers to the ground and the coffin on top of them, to screams of horror from the mourners. Mr Samen suffered severe head injuries and died on the way to hospital.
And no, really, we should not, must not, laugh about this. Certainly not. But we do have to try and work out why every damn paper in the country is carrying this story. After all, random Indonesian man dies isn’t something that normally comes to the attention of The Times, Daily Mail and Guardian. They don’t even print most such reports that do reach them.
They reason they have all printed the story? Because they know we’ll laugh about it.
Posted: 19th, June 2018 | In: Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
