The Seasons of Trouble

by Rohini Mohan

  First published by Verso 2014

  © Rohini Mohan 2014

  All rights reserved

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  Verso

  UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG

  US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.versobooks.com

  Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-600-3

  eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-678-2 (UK)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-601-0 (US)

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  v3.1

  To Thatha, for birthing an obsession

  And to Sanjaya, for nurturing another

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Preface

  Acknowledgements

  Part I. Unseen, June 2008–April 2009

  1. June 2008

  2. June 1980

  3. October 2008

  4. June 2008

  5. July 2008

  6. December 2008

  7. July 2008

  8. January 2009

  9. February 2009

  10. February 2009

  11. February 2009

  12. March 2009

  Part II. Claustrophobia, April 2009–June 2010

  13. April 2009

  14. May 2009

  15. September 2009

  16. June 2010

  Part III. Refuge, August 2010–April 2013

  17. August 2010

  18. October 2010 to May 2011

  19. January 2011

  20. May 2011

  21. July 2011

  22. August 2011

  23. September 2011

  24. January 2012

  25. August 2012

  26. November 2012

  27. November 2012

  28. November 2012

  29. March 2013

  30. April 2013

  A Brief History of the Sri Lankan Civil War

  Preface

  IN LATE 2009, I met the first of the three people whose stories are told in this book. After a hurried five-minute interview under a soldier’s watch in a dank refugee camp, the gaunt young Tamil woman challenged me. ‘I’m sure you’ll never return to see us,’ she said. In the next five years, I went back to her repeatedly. In these pages, she is Mugil. That same year, a middle-aged woman in a middle-class neighbourhood in Colombo told me of her bewildering search for a disappeared son. I call her Indra here. Her son, who finally reached England after several tumultuous years, is able to tell his story in his own name: Sarva.

  Over five years, the three let me into their lives and innermost thoughts. During this time, I lived in Sri Lanka for a total of ten months, and in England for another three. The rest of the time, I kept in touch with them through weekly phone calls from India. It was a journey that took us from mutual mistrust to confidence, as we negotiated the pitfalls of memory, bias, history and trauma. We talked in Tamil, without an interpreter, which somewhat helped overcome our differences of country, gender and class. The reportorial rigour of scrutinising documents, photographs and maps, listening to silences, repeating questions and revisiting locations provides the foundation for the events described in this book.

  I conducted dozens of other interviews at length, some with people who had met more tragic fates or lucky ends than Indra, Sarva and Mugil. But the words, decisions and silences of these three articulated better than most how the effects of a conflict can persist for a year, five or decades after. Their compelling stories also spoke to the Tamil community’s struggle with its past. They showed me the indelible nature of the violence and nationalism that reached deep into language and relationships, and crept into their futures. These stories challenged my notions of victimhood, patriotism and community.

  My goal here is to tell their narrative as honestly and engagingly as they did, to show the changes they experienced among the wreckage of civil war and the mundane omnipresence of conflict. Being present through these people’s setbacks and challenges in the aftermath of this war, I was privy to incidents and emotions they subsequently and frequently blocked out, reframed or remembered differently—in order to cope, because of oppressive fears, or simply to satisfy the human need for closure. As they attempted to define their lives on their own terms, they went from narrating their experiences as a series of events, to a series of responses, to a spiral of melancholy and aspiration.

  Apart from the inaccuracy or absence of official data, crackdowns on media, and restrictions on mobility, this is what makes war so hard to report on, and for those in Sri Lanka to live through and move on from: loose ends rarely tie up. Incompleteness and dread are as tangible as the deaths and destruction.

  The protracted civil war changed the nature of being Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim in Sri Lanka, and political sides have often tried to solidify these identities into exclusive, warring blocs. None of the people in this book are entirely representative of Sri Lanka or the communities they belong to, but they inherit the same conflict and its after-effects. Their points of view, prejudices and contradictions push and pull at the ethnic stereotypes the conflict has created.

  As the world grapples with new democracies and old hate, these three lives are a grim caution. Mugil says her experience is a warning for the next marginalised group that refuses to assimilate. Sarva sees the war as a permanent obstacle to love and happiness. Indra, his mother, calls it destiny.

  July 2014

  Acknowledgements

  DURING MY RESEARCH and writing, a number of people advised, scolded, cheered, sheltered, fed, and read me. My earliest and steadiest guides in Sri Lanka were Ruki Fernando and Ahilan Kadirgamar. V. V. Ganeshananthan fine-tuned my ideas and words from the very beginning to the last draft. Their generosity and honesty kept me from giving up when roads closed or concepts knotted up.

  After every field trip, seeking an even perspective, I turned by habit to Sithie Tiruchelvam. For long conversations about then and now, I’m grateful to Jayadeva Uyangoda, Seelan Kadirgamar, Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, Nirmala Rajasingham, Valentine Daniel and Radhika Coomaraswamy.

  Colombo became home thanks to the warmth of Zainab Ibrahim, Aminna (Turin Abeysekera) and the kitchen magic of Rasamma. At another time, Tahseen Alam gave me shelter. In Trincomalee, my hosts Mr and Mrs Laxmanan never flinched when I dropped in without notice. In Jaffna and the Vanni, P., S., A., and T. shared their humble single rooms with me. In Mannar, Father Jeyabalan Croos always had enough room for a tired traveller. They offered not only survival tips but also glimpses of daily life in Sri Lanka.

  I am thankful to Mirak Raheem, Bhavani Fonseka and the Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo, for their stellar record of changes in the north and east; to everyone at the INFORM human rights documentation centre; to Sanjana Hattotuwa for the journalistic force that is Groundviews; to Ponnudurai Thambirajah for the silence and well-stocked brilliance of his library at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies; and to Deanne Uyangoda, Dinidu de Alwis, Ananda Galapatti, Sumathy Sivamohan, Guruparan Kumaravadivel, Meera Srinivsan, Namini Wijedasa, Murali Reddy, Father Ravi, N. Singham, Elangovan Chandrahasan, Vel Thanjan, Sanjeev Laxmanan, Sinha Ratnatunga, Manik de Silva, Nishan de Mel, Shireen Saroor and V. K. Shashikumar for their ideas.

  It’s unfortunate that many Sri Lankans crucial to my research cannot be named, so that they can live without another reason to fear
for their life or freedom. I also couldn’t have done without the friends in Colombo who helped by just being there, talking of everything but work, inviting me to cricket matches, karaoke nights and family dinners.

  I am indebted to my writing partner, Mathangi Subramanian, for her reactions to my early drafts. Also to Dave Swann in Chichester, whose trick for finishing a first draft I’ll never forget; Dragan Todorovic, Alex Padamsee, Nandini Nair and Anuj Bhuwania for their encouragement and sharp feedback; Nicholas Lemann, for his precise advice as editor in my first attempt at writing about Sri Lanka at Columbia University, New York; Jonathan Shainin and Vinod K. Jose from the Caravan, New Delhi, for enabling my first published piece on it; Basharat Peer for being excited about the project from the start. To Shoma Chaudhury and Harinder Baweja in New Delhi, Alexander Stille and Thomas Edsall in New York: teachers in the kind of journalism that still energises me.

  This work would not have been possible without the generous fellowships from the Authors’ Foundation, the Society of Authors, London; Panos South Asia, New Delhi; the Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi; and the South Asian Journalists’ Association, New York. I thank the Charles Wallace India Trust and the University of Kent for the three-month residency at Canterbury, UK, where I began to write; and Sangam House for the month at the idyllic Nrityagram, Hessarghatta, India, where I finished. In between, Bhagyam Aunty and Rajendran Uncle, Valparai; Mount Pleasant Artists’ Retreat, Reigate; and Joy Guesthouse, Auroville, gave me perfect writing spots.

  Behind the writing was Leo Hollis from Verso Books, the kind of encouraging and attentive publisher I did not expect to find as a first-time author. While editing, Mark Martin closely read and polished the drafts; tough, but always on my side. Without Peter Straus, my agent, this book might not have seen the light of day.

  Through it all, my parents and friends were the support team that kept me sane. The not-so-sane moments then fell to my husband, Shailesh Rai, whose admirable ability to read, listen and hold the fort, I know, needed love and more.

  Most of all, I am beholden to the protagonists of this book for their patience and trust. Their courage resonates in my life still.

  PART ONE

  unseen

  1.

  June 2008

  SOMEONE MUST HAVE talked plenty, because on an afternoon in June 2008, Sarvanantha Pereira was detained by men who didn’t say who they were. They would call it an arrest. It felt more like an abduction.

  Sarva was in a trishaw, his medical report in hand, returning from the doctor’s office near the red Cargill building in Colombo. He had just been certified a man of perfect health—no illnesses, no physical weaknesses. It could be no other way; he had spent most of his adult life making sure that the asthma attacks that had plagued his childhood would never return. Growing up, few things had worried him more than his mismatched body and health. With his broad chest, log-like arms and his relative height, he towered over most Sri Lankans—a matter of great pride to him. But his size also signalled an intimidating strength, which, at a boys’ school and in the sandbag-punching areas where he lived, was quickly interpreted as a challenge. He learnt to live up to the hype of his tree-trunk body. He ran, did push-ups and ate so competitively that he seemed to have shamed his asthma into submission. All to build a physical confidence to match his appearance.

  Two years ago, Sarva had completed a nautical engineering course. His diploma—the first in his family of high school just-pass graduates—was much celebrated. But like all the other young men in his class, Sarva had enrolled for the free travel. With his diploma, he got jobs sailing all over the world on merchant ships. The drab workshops on welding and refuelling had prepared him for an unglamorous job, but once he was actually at sea, it was worse than anything he could have imagined. He spent most of his time inside a damp cabin, greasy up to his elbows, busy with wrenching and oiling, a drudgery broken only for one brief meal a day. He worked almost eighteen hours a day for months on end, learning to swallow the nausea of seasickness, becoming someone smaller and quieter than he thought himself to be. But when the ship docked in a port, there was always a promise of adventure, of unseen countries. He always made sure he scrubbed to the tips of his fingernails and wore his best shirt before stepping out. Who knew what exotic beauty the land would hold, and he didn’t want to mar it with his grubbiness. Sarva’s journeys to the Maldives and to Thailand had been the best. They were the very landscapes advertised on billboards at home, with footprints in the sand and a pretty couple in shorts and white shirts. Those places convinced him that there was a world somewhere that was worth scrubbing decks for. Now with his health report, he was closer to getting the Greek visa he would need for his next voyage.

  The smoke from the trishaw driver’s cigarette flew into Sarva’s face as they turned past Colombo’s world trade centre. His phone rang; it was his father calling from Nuwara Eliya. ‘Your aunt tells me you aren’t home for lunch yet?’ he asked in Tamil.

  Sarva looked at his watch. It was already past three o’clock. He was staying at his aunt’s house in Colombo and she would expect him for lunch. ‘Did Aunty call you?’

  ‘Yes, she has made fish,’ his father said, ‘your favourite.’

  Sarva never tired of his aunt’s fish curry, which she made following a traditional Jaffna Tamil recipe: steamed in tamarind extract and seasoned with mustard seeds sputtered in sesame oil. It was the taste of his after-school evenings at her house, where he had stayed with his brother and cousins till the seventh grade.

  ‘Aunty will remember to save me the fish head,’ he told his father. He had to go to the recruitment office to hand in the medical report. He would be home by four, he said. His parents, who lived in Nuwara Eliya, had stayed in Colombo till the previous day, for his mother’s hernia operation. This was her fifth, but was the first one he had been around for. She had been overjoyed that he had come, which amused Sarva. He was accustomed to thinking of himself as the ignored middle son, always exiled to aunts’ houses. Maybe he had acquired this new central position in the family because his older brother, the former favourite, had married a woman his mother disapproved of.

  The trishaw drove past the Pettah bus stops, honking and weaving through the hordes of people crossing the road. The recruitment office Sarva wanted was on Armour Street, and they were almost there. There was no reason to hurry; June in Sri Lanka brought on everyone’s worst mood. The oppressive humidity and heat seeped right through one’s clothes and into one’s nerves. The stream of shops selling mobile phones and pirated CDs gave way to forklifts, iron scrap and hardware shops. This part of Colombo always looked plundered, the predominance of grey concrete and rusted metal signalling heavy demolitions just beyond view.

  The trishaw driver asked Sarva in Sinhala if he was sick. He had seen the stamp of the doctor’s office on his papers.

  ‘Aiyo no, it’s just a check-up,’ Sarva replied in Sinhala from the back seat, scooting closer to the driver. ‘For a job on a ship.’

  When he bent his head to meet the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror, Sarva saw, from under the array of decorations hanging above the windshield, a white van standing near the recruitment office across the road. The trishaw driver didn’t seem to notice it. He was making a U-turn around some workers digging up the road. Sarva felt his heart race. This was not good. No white van was ever good.

  ‘Turn around!’ Sarva hissed.

  The driver looked over his shoulder. ‘Huh? Did we miss the place?’

  At that moment, four men got out of the van; two of them started to walk towards them.

  ‘Turn around! Turn around!’ Sarva was shouting now.

  The driver hit his brakes and was just shifting to reverse when the two men from the van caught up and hopped in.

  ‘Who … who are you?’ Sarva stammered, trying to squeeze out of the now cramped back seat. One of the men then grabbed Sarva by the trousers, removed his belt, and pushed him out of the vehicle in one motion. They took everything of
f him—the medical report, his wallet, his mobile phone. They used the belt to tie Sarva’s hands at his back. At the wide car park nearby, with traffic still whizzing past, the bigger man threw Sarva on his knees.

  Standing above him, the other man screamed questions at him.

  ‘Is your name Sarva?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have three artificial front teeth?’

  A pause.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you been to the Vanni?’

  ‘No. No.’

  By now, the trishaw driver had begun to yell, ‘Kidnap! Kidnap! Help!’ A small crowd of labourers gathered around them. Some people were shouting, ‘Aye, aye! What is happening?’ One of the men from the van flashed them an ID—held it high above his head. He was a plainclothes policeman, he said. Pointing to Sarva, he snarled: ‘This is a Kottiya, a Tiger,’ a Tamil militant from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The driver fell silent, the crowd disappeared. Later, Sarva would wonder what happened to the driver after that. Did he drive away—in fear or out of indifference or hate? Did he wait to be paid for helping them set this trap? No one could be trusted.

  The men dragged Sarva towards the white van. Its windows were tinted and rolled up. He was made to crouch in front of the passenger seat beside the driver. A man clambered onto the seat and pressed his feet to Sarva’s back. The door was slid shut. He counted six or seven men before he was blindfolded.

  They drove for about half an hour, perhaps less. Sarva swayed with the sharp turns the van was making. The man above him gripped Sarva’s curly hair to keep his balance but did not remove his hand afterwards. Dirty boots dug into his back, and now this hand. Sarva had seen goats taken like this to the slaughterhouse, bleating all the way. A Muslim butcher in Negombo once told him he always killed the noisiest goat first. The quiet ones were smarter, Sarva had decided. Sure, they were still going the same way as the rest, but they managed to stay alive a little longer.