“My mother always wanted me to be more like her,” Renji Thomas said of Ms. Joseph. In 2002, five years after Ms. Joseph had moved into the family home, Annamma died a painful death. She had been unwell, and one day, Ms. Joseph urged her to sit down and relax, promising a warm bowl of goat soup to ease her churning stomach. Friends and family stopped coming by, feeling the house had grown cold under its new matriarch, Ms. Joseph, said Mohammed Bava, a neighbor who lives across the street. He said Tom Thomas, Ms. Joseph’s father-in-law, became reclusive after his wife’s death.

Source: New York Times October 19, 2019 04:26 UTC