by Rohini Mohan
Sarva had grown up believing that the ghost of one who died unnaturally roamed the earth as an aavi, a translucent spirit that held life memories. He felt his aavi would surely go to Greece if he thought about it in his final moments. He would like that. Or perhaps he would be happier taking the bus up the tea-leaved hills to his home in Nuwara Eliya, a cool mist spraying gently across his face.
SARVA’S BODY, PERHAPS the only thing he had built himself and treasured, had betrayed him, giving his tormentors power over him. If only he could have willed his spine to be unbreakable, instead of aiding them in shattering his resolve.
He felt daylight piercing his cornea. Against the light stood a uniformed man. Sarva tried to focus on the badge. Silva. He found himself seated at a table opposite Silva.
The inspector set a glass of water down. Sarva’s handcuffs were taken off to let him drink. They were in a different room now, and through the window was a clear sky.
The inspector pointed to a man in the corner of the room, near the open window.
‘Identify him.’
Sarva looked. The man was short, thin, clean-shaven. He was looking at the floor.
‘I don’t know him at all,’ Sarva said.
‘Really? In 1997, did you not learn Sinhala from him?’
Sarva turned to the floor-gazing man again. He asked for more water. He insisted he had never seen the man before. ‘I learnt Sinhala because I lived in the hills. Because I was in Colombo. Because … I just learnt it, ayya. Even my mother knows it.’
‘Does your mother know you were in the LTTE?’
Sarva looked at his interrogator. He was a hefty man. The light from the window behind him gave his balding head a halo but blurred his features. All the earlier baton-wielding men had been leading up to this one. Silva spoke in an unhurried manner, like he could do this, play this game, forever.
Faced with this man, Sarva felt sure his body would shame him with its fragility. All he could control now was his own mind. He had worked to predict the cops’ moves, to guess where they would aim their boots or batons. He tried to remember pictures of men showing their scars in Tamil newspapers. Which blow left which mark? But this was pointless. He could not run, he could not dodge, and with handcuffs and no food, he definitely could not defend himself. He would succumb soon, and his back would break. Paralysis? Death? What was in store for him? After the petrol bags, his eyes seemed to both shoot flames and swim in darkness. He thought he heard his baby nephew in the room, the experience so real he could smell a baby scent. His own childhood returned to him in flashes: the day he caught a chameleon and put it on different coloured surfaces to watch its skin adapt. Lights and colours appeared at unpredictable moments, swirling forms that seemed to draw him into exhaustion, into a state of half-life. He was drowning in waves of consciousness; he had to get a grip before he went insane. He had to focus his mind, rein in his fear, vaporise the pain.
He found himself, to his own surprise, thinking of God. Oh well, if that was what his mind wanted. He prayed quietly, trying to recall the words he used to utter as a boy when dragged to the Navali temple. ‘The words will cast a kavacham, a protective armour around you,’ his grandfather would explain. ‘You will be like Superman, strong. No harm will come to you.’ Sometimes the sacred words came to Sarva. More often he just thought of that moment in the temple when, after all the rituals and must dos, he sat quietly with his grandfather by the mossy temple tank. He focussed on the reassuring taste of the prasadam they ate: usually sliced bananas with coconut shavings and jaggery, and the distinct whiff of tulasi that made this taste holy.
Silva told Sarva to stand up and bend with his stomach on the table. Even before he was fully down, the baton landed behind his knees, making him buck, throwing his head back. Another officer then cracked his forehead with a pistol. When he fell on his knees, they hit the soles of his feet. Again, when his head flew up, they went for his face. A man swinging at each end, like a morbid seesaw.
As he sobbed on the floor, Silva paced in front of him. ‘Let me tell you a story.’
Before he had joined the Terrorist Investigation Department or TID, he said, he had been in the army’s intelligence wing. A regular military man, just following orders. It was wartime, but there were rules. Rules the LTTE broke first, he growled. He talked for a while about the LTTE taking him prisoner during the battle for Jaffna town in 1994, and torturing him. He had pleaded that he would cooperate, would tell them what they wanted to know, but they had still beaten him. He said they called him and his people ‘savages’. Then moving suddenly closer to Sarva’s face, he said, almost smiling, deliberately emphasising each word, ‘You people only taught us all this. So don’t lie to me.’
Sarva kept silent. He hung on Silva’s every word, trying to figure out what the story meant for him. He did not know if he believed the commander, but he was sure this elaborate monologue was leading somewhere horrible.
That same day, more thrashings later, Silva brought a pistol and threw it on the table. ‘Didn’t you have this in Colombo?’ he asked. Sarva shook his head. Silva goaded him, ‘You know how to use it, I know. Pick it up, let’s see.’
Sarva did not touch the gun. That would be all the evidence they needed, a weapon with his fingerprints on it.
In between bouts of violence and interrogation, Silva sometimes stroked Sarva’s head paternally. ‘Please understand, putha,’ he would say, almost apologetically in Sinhala. ‘Help me do my job, son. Don’t you want to see your family?’
That evening, some men dragged a limp and half-conscious Sarva out of the building to a deserted seaside location. From the raised embankment, he saw the harbour across the sea wall; groups of seamen worked by the sides of ships, hauling ropes. Where he stood, the sand was hollowed by a jagged rock. His eyes burned from the petrol bag, and everything he saw appeared smoky. Then the inspector stood before him, seeming to materialise from the haze. He pushed Sarva down till his bare knees fell on the rock. Silva put a gun to Sarva’s head. It was the first time a firearm had been aimed at him since he had been taken.
Silva said he could kill Sarva right now and throw the body into the sea. ‘You will be finished,’ he said.
To Sarva, it seemed like salvation.
AT AROUND SUNSET—perhaps on the same day the gun was pointed at him, perhaps the next—a constable led Sarva back to the lonely basement. By this time, his left foot was almost useless, and Sarva needed to put his arm around the constable and drag himself forwards. It was slow going, and they stopped often to catch their breath. They had just reached the ground floor corridor when they ran into a white man with a bag stuffed with files.
The cop accompanying Sarva froze. His free hand twirled with the English question before he asked it. ‘Hello? Permission?’
The white man nodded calmly. His shirtsleeves were rolled up in typical Sri Lankan style, perfect to keep sticky sweat out of the crooks of arms. His beige chinos were wrinkled. He wouldn’t have inspired a second look if not for the circumstances in which he had been spotted. His so very white and untimely presence in the police station and his possession of who-knew-what files would make any cop break into a flop sweat.
‘Office closed, sir,’ the policeman stammered. He seemed undecided about whether to intimidate this intrusive foreigner or to be cautiously nice to him. Finally, he stretched his lips in a fake smile and said, ‘Sir, you wait, okay?’ and ran towards the office.
When he was out of sight, the white man walked closer to Sarva and, unexpectedly, addressed him in rapid Tamil.
‘Don’t worry. I’m with the ICRC?’ Sarva had heard of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The man continued, ‘I was told by a prisoner I met here earlier that you were brought four days ago. He saw the sacred thread on your hand and recognised you as a Tamil.’
Sarva’s frayed sacred thread had been on his right wrist since the previous year. His aunt had tied one for him at home, praying for his employment and divine protection. I
t had been bright red then. It was a dirty yellow now.
‘I speak Tamil, you can talk to me,’ said the white man, in case Sarva hadn’t cottoned on.
This had to be either a trap or a dream. Sarva wasn’t sure how to respond. Had it really been only four days since this madness began?
The man touched his arm. He said he didn’t need to ask if they were torturing him. ‘I can see it. But did they arrest you?’
Sarva said he didn’t know.
‘Okay, how did you get here?’
He briefly described being whisked off the street.
‘So people at home don’t know where you are? Give me your home number, quick.’
Sarva reeled off his aunt’s Colombo landline number. ‘Please call my mother,’ he added. It was the first time since his arrest that he had thought of her.
The cop hadn’t returned, but the white man hurried away, muttering something about contacting the family.
That night in the locked basement of the TID, Sarva was occupied with thoughts of his mother. He couldn’t be sure how Amma would react to the news of his arrest. She would be worried, of course. But surely she would blame him, too. ‘What did you do?’ she might ask, as she used to when his grandfather or his aunts mockingly threatened to stop taking care of him. Everybody else had raised him, cajoled him, spoilt him, but Amma had the monopoly on scolding.
5.
July 2008
THE AMERICAN TOOK one sip of the plain tea and set it aside. Pity, it was good tea. John had noticed too, and had already begun his spiel about how people abroad are probably used to a different Ceylon tea, a lighter one that came from the tiniest, youngest leaves sprouting at the tip of the shrubs. Their family always used tea dust, he was saying. He got five kilos free from the factory every month, you see. It had the strongest flavour.
The American smiled apologetically. He was sitting at the very edge of the sofa in Indra’s sister’s living room. ‘It’s just that I don’t take this much sugar,’ he said.
Oh, how good his Tamil was! Seeni, how he said it so sweetly. Unbelievable! If not for his extreme perspiration and red face, Indra would have thought this was a Burgher. The American had even known to take his shoes off before coming into the apartment.
Except for John, who was going on about Ceylon tea, everyone stared at the American in silence. After waiting eight days for news of her son, Indra could not bring herself to ask the questions she urgently wanted answered. Where had he seen him? How had he found him? What had happened?
She was hoping he would broach the subject. She asked him where he learnt Tamil.
‘I learnt on the job,’ he said. ‘I’m with the ICRC. Do you know it?’
John looked away. Indra nodded. ‘Red Cross, I know it; you give medicines, no?’
‘Yes, but as ICRC, we also work with war-affected people, prisoners, missing persons. You understand?’
‘Yes, my son is missing; we filed a police complaint,’ Indra said. ‘But, how did you find us—my number? You called me.’
‘Your son gave it to me. What is his name?’
‘You know my son, but you don’t know his name?’
Indra’s sister Rani interrupted with a bottle of Fanta. ‘You’ll have this, no? Since you’re not having tea.’ She poured the neon orange drink into a glass.
The American said he would start from the beginning. ‘When I went to the Harbour police station a week ago to visit some prisoners we work with, one of them tipped me off about a young man who was quickly hidden in the basement before I got there.’
‘What are you saying? The police have him? Why didn’t they tell us?!’
‘I don’t know yet—I just met your son. He was handcuffed.’
Indra’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Is he okay?’
‘I don’t know, he only had time to give me your number.’
John had walked out onto the balcony. Indra sat back in her chair, confused. The American was showing her a form, saying his organisation would keep an eye on her son. If things went well, he would arrange for her to meet him.
‘They haven’t followed procedure—they haven’t informed the family when he was arrested, and I don’t think they’ve put him on the records. That’s how they do it.’
‘Who?’
‘The TID, Terrorist Investigation Department. So first, we need to go ask them why they took your son.’
‘Then he can come home?’ Indra asked.
The American clicked his pen and looked at the form. ‘Shall we start from the beginning? What is your son’s full name?’
AFTER THE AMERICAN’S visit, John returned to the Nuwara Eliya estate. When he left, he asked Indra if she’d be okay in Colombo’s summer heat. He could’ve said anything else—if she’d be okay dealing with the police alone, if she had enough money, if she’d prefer him to stay—but he had enquired about the weather. Indra told him she did not like wearing her sister Rani’s chiffon skirts, and that when he came next, he should bring her cotton ones.
Every morning, Indra stood on the balcony of Rani’s seventh-floor apartment in Wellawatte, staring at the top of the road as if at any moment her son might appear. Occasionally she ran through the kind of abuse she would rain on him when he turned up. She made a deal with Lord Pillaiyar that if her son returned unharmed, she would break 101 coconuts at the temple. Every day, she added another hundred.
Every form she filled in and every document she signed gave her the impression that she was inching closer to her son. But weeks went by. The American would help her, she knew, but she also understood that all he could do was make sure Sarva was not hidden from his family. The wait was tiring, but it seemed obscene to talk or think about anything else.
They’d all grown so independent, her sons, fashioning lives only loosely connected to hers. They had private jokes, secret friends, well-guarded pursuits of which she knew nothing. She, too, thought it best that way. It was daughters who had to be protected; sons had to be free. Otherwise they’d become weak mamma’s boys, as her brother had warned long ago.
But now Indra wondered if this moment she faced with Sarva, this black mark on their family, had come because she had at some point decided it was okay to look away. She had repeatedly pulled him out of the worst situations a Tamil boy could get into, but perhaps that wasn’t enough. For all the thoughts she wasn’t privy to, all the times she knew he had lied to her, all the missed opportunities, she felt an aching guilt.
She pulled out old photo albums to remember the children they had once been, easier to keep from harm. Most of them were black-and-white pictures of Deva, in the crib, in the rice-feeding ceremony, crawling, walking, crying at the ritual head-shaving, going to school in uniform. Sarva’s pictures were only a handful, but all in colour: a posed family photo taken in a Negombo studio when he was barely a few days old, a fungus-infested picture with his grandparents in the Jaffna house, and a couple of passport-size photos taken in primary school. By the time Carmel, her last, was born, the family owned a Minolta camera, a gift from her brother, who had emigrated to America. These pictures were in full colour, from Carmel sleeping to his dribbling attempt to eat mangoes; from Carmel running in a temple to his riding an uncle like an elephant. Even her sister’s son Darshan, six years younger than Sarva, had baby photos from India, where they had stayed for a bit just after he was born and before his father left for Dubai. Of her grandchildren there were countless pictures, and more filed away on Deva’s laptop.
Of all her children, Sarva’s childhood had been the hardest to record. Her family had been uprooted again and again while he was growing up, their very existence then under question. How many times had she run with him from the battle and fire that raged around them—dangers from which she could not really protect him? They took photos to celebrate, document, and freeze moments worth remembering—but larger tragic events had upstaged so many of Sarva’s milestones. Most of his moments had been unphotographable, happening against a background one didn’t wa
nt to immortalise in a photograph and amid the disarray of their constant migration.
ABOUT A MONTH after Sarva disappeared, someone who worked with the American’s office said they had received permission ‘for immediate family to visit the detainee’. Indra asked if she could take Sarva some food. She got his aunt Rani to make a fish curry the way he loved it. All her emotion, she invested in a lunchbox.
Early on 26 July 2008, Indra and Rani went to the Green Pass police station. They did not notice that it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the July 1983 riots.
In the police station, there were several others like them, the distinct dejection and confusion on their faces setting them apart from other visitors. A social worker, a Tamil from a missing persons’ community group, accompanied them. He said Sarva was being brought here from Harbour police station.
At around four o’clock, a circle of policemen brought in a hunched man. He was handcuffed and seemed unable to walk. The policemen were dragging him slightly. When he lifted his eyes to look around, his swollen left eyelid stayed shut.
Indra rushed to him with a wail. Someone held her back and dragged them both to a bench in the corner. She was feeling everything but the relief she had anticipated for weeks.
‘What is this, kanna …?’ she asked, holding his hands. Sarva began to cry. She had brought him the lunchbox, but starvation did not seem to be her son’s biggest problem. There were cuts on his face, his hands were bruised, his eyes hardly opened. He was wearing a putrid shirt and someone else’s slippers. His feet were turned in.
‘Get me out, Amma,’ he said. ‘Help me.’
Indra looked at the police around her and shouted, ‘Are you animals?!’ They stared back blankly. Across the room, the social worker, who was riffling through some papers, motioned for her to calm down.
