by Rohini Mohan
When they rushed back to the bunker, the attacks resumed. The children nodded off but woke startled when the cluster bombs rattled.
During a lull, Divyan spoke softly. ‘Mugil, maybe I should just surrender.’
Throughout the journey from PTK, the loudspeakers guiding, instructing and ordering the displaced had also been urging the Tigers among the Tamils to surrender. ‘Give yourselves up!’ the army said. ‘Why do you women want to wear trousers and hold guns when you can wear a beautiful sari, and have bangles and flowers in your hair? Why do you men not want to have a peaceful life of business or farming? Choose peace. Surrender!’
Mugil was sure her husband would consider it. Still, she was taken aback. ‘Why? Are you not able to walk anymore? Is it hurting that much?’
Divyan didn’t answer.
‘Have you forgotten what you are capable of?’ She reminded him that he had once run with shrapnel peppering his body and that, another time, he had stayed on the front line with a busted kneecap.
‘Each time makes you weaker, not stronger,’ he said.
She offered to rebandage his wounds. ‘I’ll carry the boys from here on, or we’ll hire a tractor.’ She was using every argument she could think of.
He shook his head, saying that their leaders, too, had started surrendering or leaving the country. Others were trying to reach the UN through the Norwegian foreign ministry to negotiate a ceasefire. But Divyan didn’t think it would work. ‘No one is coming, even the aid agencies are gone,’ he said.
The bombing had ceased—they could hear loud talking outside.
‘I say you should take a boat and leave for India with the kids.’ The commotion almost drowned his voice. He seemed to imply he wouldn’t join her.
Even as they spoke, people were leaving the island, choosing the dangers of sailing a small boat on a rough sea over enduring the war. A boat journey to India could take days, even weeks, and navy patrols were looking to apprehend refugees. Long stretches of swimming were often required, too, because the boats couldn’t get all the way into shore. The boatmen would not allow food or any supplies on board, wanting to fill their vessels with as many people as possible to maximise their profits. Divyan was weak and would probably not survive such a journey. The circle of red on his bandages had now spread from his thigh to his hip. ‘You take the kids and your parents,’ he said.
‘Is it right to leave at this time?’ Mugil asked.
‘Stop it! None of that matters now,’ Divyan said, getting up. ‘I’m going to ask how much it costs to arrange a boat. Are you coming?’ This was not the man Mugil knew. This man, always the voice of morality in his family, always reassuring with his black-and-white principles in the greyest of days, was too weary even to think through the biggest decision of their lives.
As the night darkened Mugil looked at the mass of people running madly into the warm black sea. The shelling had stopped for a while, but it was on everyone’s mind. They were scrambling onto the nearest boats. Some were toppling over, pushed, pushing. Water flooded everything: their eyes, mouths, bags, boats, engines.
Mugil would have to run to the boats, too, to join those going to India. There were thirty people in a boat that usually held ten, sailing away, fleeing. The going rate was 60,000 rupees per head, but they knew a boatman, a handicapped ex-fighter. She could give him Divyan’s gun, some kerosene she had stashed and 30,000 rupees.
Should she really go? Divyan repeated that he wouldn’t survive a night-long motorboat ride, even to Jaffna. He assured the family that his best chance of survival was to surrender. It was risky, but the army had promised to be lenient to those who gave themselves up. The family should go on, he insisted. After a few years, they would find each other. It wouldn’t do to let the children see their homeland in this state. He spoke fast, but every word seemed to have been rehearsed.
Divyan fished in his shirt for some money. ‘You should go now, while the shelling’s stopped,’ he said. He would take Mother and the others across the lagoon and then surrender.
Mugil couldn’t think clearly; her mind was flying far into the future and yet unable to dig out of the clamour around her. It was the first time she would ever leave Sri Lanka. She would go first to Rameshwaram in India, and then from there to Malaysia, then maybe seek asylum in Canada. People had done it before. When her childhood friend Shakti had decided to leave the country seven years earlier and Mugil had asked her why, the girl could not answer. ‘Perhaps because I have the chance,’ she had said. But later, when she wrote from Germany, raving about the generosity of the people but missing coconut and spice in her food, she had recalled Mugil’s question. ‘I know the answer now, my sister,’ she wrote. ‘Here, I can stop caring about others all the time. I can be happily self-centred.’
Perhaps this was not a bad idea. Mother was encouraging her to go, Amuda said she had been considering it herself, Father reminded her of extended family in India. Prashant, however, threw a fit. ‘How can you leave?’ he yelled. ‘You’d abandon your people?’
His indignation cleared Mugil’s mind. ‘I have children, Prashant,’ she said calmly.
‘You’ll be a traitor if you leave,’ he growled. ‘If all of us leave, there will never be an Eelam. All the people who died for it will have died in vain.’
‘This is not the time …’ She stood up to go to the water’s edge.
‘Then when? When you’re sitting on a sofa with your belly full, in an air-conditioned room in America?’
Amuda tried to help. ‘Look, we’re all so hungry.’
‘Food. All you people can think about is eating! What about all those years when Annan fed us? Are you going to turn your back on the people who cared for you?’ He looked at Divyan, who was quietly packing a polythene bag. ‘Divyan anna, why aren’t you stopping your wife?’
Mugil took the bag and started to walk towards the sea. Maran followed.
Prashant grabbed Mugil’s elbow. ‘Is this what you’ll teach your son?’
‘At least he will be alive!’ She was almost running now, with Prashant following.
‘If you try to go, I will take a rifle and shoot you, you throhi!’
Mugil felt the water lap at her feet, and Maran holding her finger. Her parents rushed to her with Tamizh. Amuda followed behind them. Divyan watched in silence. If Mugil left, didn’t it have to be with all of them? Did this make sense? Leaving Divyan behind with the army? Taking on a long journey they might not even see through to the end?
Prashant continued to curse her. ‘Traitor! Go! That’s what you were anyway, a traitor! Go, all of you! Go then! Where is my rifle?’
Mugil had done as she was told for most of her life; she had sworn on the Tamil soil perhaps a million times. She had worked for something she loved and hoped that it would make sense later. By the light of faraway bombs, hundreds were running haphazardly towards boats bobbing in the water. The horizon was bathed in darkness. It made her stomach churn. It felt endless. Circuitous, spiralling. A tiring, nauseating forever. Guilt-ridden, she turned back.
PART TWO
claustrophobia
13.
April 2009
IN PUTUMATALAN, MUGIL was unable to tell which way the war would swing. There was every sign that the Tigers were losing, but their supporters remained hopeful. What stood out, however, was the new, quiet confidence of the army. It frightened her.
As thousands of Tamils crossed the Nandikadal lagoon, Sri Lankan soldiers came to help them out of the water into Putumatalan. They took the children by the hand and carried the elderly. People filled the narrow beach, sitting with barely an inch between them. Soldiers distributed food to eager refugees. ‘We will take all civilians to a camp until the battle is over,’ they said over the loudspeakers. ‘But anyone who has spent even a day in the LTTE should surrender to us first. We will take them to another camp. Come of your own accord, it will be better for you.’ They didn’t say Kottiya, or terrorist, as they usually did.
Every
one was given bananas, biscuits, a meal packet, and a cup of black tea. There was rice, the tea was hot, the bananas were ripe: luxuries after five months of living like animals. It seemed to promise an end to their trials.
The young soldier ushering them around referred to Mother as amma and Father as ayya.
‘These boys are so respectful,’ Mother said, at once suspicious and pleasantly surprised.
‘They give you tea, and you instantly change sides, old woman?’ Father scolded. ‘The real test is how they treat their enemies.’
From every batch of civilians the army received in the no-fire zone and brought to the refugee camps, it first sifted out the combatants. Many men and women gave themselves up. As the families sat on the ground under the eyes of the army, the former combatants hugged their relatives, stepped away from the crowd and placed themselves in front of a soldier.
Mugil watched, knowing her husband, too, would do this soon. She sat next to Divyan, who held his thigh with one hand and Tamizh with the other. His mind was made up even before they reached Putumatalan. As hundreds surrendered now, he seemed to be talking himself into it once again. Mugil searched the soldiers’ faces for the expression she had seen in the mango orchard, when they kicked the LTTE girls. She looked for signs of hate or condescension, but she saw only fatigue.
The battle continued within earshot; the Sri Lankan armed forces were still fighting the Tamil Tigers. To change sides, the combatants had to overcome a reality formed over generations in less than a day. Mother supported Divyan’s decision to surrender. Like many at this time, she no longer trusted the Tigers to take care of them. Those who had been beaten up by the LTTE cadre while trying to cross the Nandikadal shook with disillusionment and anger. ‘Those we knew and trusted have failed us!’ a man cried. ‘What do we have to lose now?’
‘I don’t want to say it, but everything is over anyway,’ Father said softly. ‘We should accept this defeat.’
He said he didn’t remember the last time he had felt cornered like this. The Tigers were behaving like thugs. So many Tiger leaders had died. Innumerable stories were doing the rounds: about where Annan was, what he was planning, whether he was alive. But none of them were credible. And now their bravest were giving up. What could this be if not the end?
Prashant, too, decided to surrender along with Divyan. ‘Why should I hide?’ he said. ‘There is honour in surrender.’
Mugil was taken aback at his hypocritical turnaround. When she had wanted to leave on the boat to India, Prashant had demanded adherence to the LTTE at any cost. ‘Oh, now it is honour!’ she shouted. ‘What happened to your great loyalty?’
‘Do you want me to be ashamed of having fought for Eelam? Why should I hide it?’
‘You just want to be a big hero!’
Prashant shrugged.
‘You are the traitor now,’ she said.
Prashant smiled cloyingly. ‘Go and tell that to your husband first.’
Mugil wanted to slap the smirk off his face. ‘You are small, tiny, an insect in front of Divyan. Don’t use his name!’
‘Let him go, akka,’ Amuda said, pulling her away. ‘If he doesn’t surrender, he’ll be found out in two minutes.’
Father was saying that Divyan and Prashant could look out for each other. Perhaps it was better there were two of them now.
‘Yes, he’ll give keep me company on the way to hell,’ Divyan added, as a weak joke.
‘If they’re going to shoot all of you point-blank, just push this idiot in front of you,’ Mugil replied. They laughed nervously. This was the way they used to banter before an operation—belittling imminent danger, belittling their own fears.
Finally, Divyan pushed Tamizh to Mugil, looked her straight in the eyes and said, ‘Look for me if you hear nothing for a long time.’ He then walked up to the soldier, and Prashant followed.
Mugil would recall that moment for years. The sky glowed orange on the horizon, a woman’s voice behind her pleaded with someone not to go, and Tamizh was digging his nails into her neck. Divyan’s instruction filled her with dread. Find him if she heard nothing.
Prashant’s words, too, left a bad taste in her mouth. He didn’t want to hide who he was. But she would have to hide. As the surrendered combatants were taken away, Mugil joined the wider stream of families being led by the military to buses that would take them to the civilian camps.
She was going on as a civilian with her sons, while Prashant and Divyan would be the soldiers of a cause, even though they had surrendered. This is how it would go down in history: she was the parent; they were the fighters. She understood why she had to do it, but nevertheless her indignation was as real as the wound festering in her leg. They claimed honour in surrender. She would have only the ignominy of hiding.
MORE THAN A month later, on 19 May 2009, a day that would change her life forever, Mugil skipped the camp’s afternoon queue for lunch and hung back in her tent. In summer the camp was so hot a broken egg would fry on the ground. Although May temperatures were not new to her, never had she felt so helpless before this onslaught. It was like something immovable, solid and invisible, weakening not just body but soul, too. She didn’t know which was worse: the shaded slow cook inside the oven-like tent or the blaze outside. Red dust coated everything: the grass, the tents, the food, even the people. When Mugil licked her dry lips, she felt the soft grains on her tongue. The halo of Amuda’s unruly curls glowed red. The ends of most children’s hair were blond, their eyes a dull yellow. With their rust-red dry skin, they looked like small mud devils.
Mugil’s family was taking shelter in Ramanathan zone, better known as Zone 2, in a white tarpaulin tent with eight other people. That morning, like every morning, her parents, sister and all the four children had woken to hunger an hour before breakfast time and left to secure a place in the line. And now it was lunch. The queue would be unbearably long.
With 76,000 people when Mugil got there, Zone 2 was the largest and most overpopulated of the eight zones that made up the 700-acre Manik Farm camp run by the Sri Lankan army just outside Vavuniya town. Much of the area was once forest, and growing up, Mugil had known it as Karadipokku, the Route of the Bear. Not a tree was in sight now, all hacked down to shelter thousands of Tamils pouring out of the combat zone. From the Vanni, the army took people to closed camps in Mannar, Jaffna, Trincomalee, and mostly to Manik Farm. In just the last ten days of April 2009, about 110,000 people had entered Zone 2. Soon they replaced the vegetation entirely. Mugil had rechristened the place ahadi-pokku, the Route of the Refugee. ‘How long will we be here?’ Amuda had asked a soldier less than a month ago when they entered the camp. He was writing their names down, and they had realised that the camp was ringed with barbed wire. Their induction took place at the end of a long disorienting bus journey with the army from Putumatalan. The official had continued to fire questions about their native town and the size of the family. Another refugee behind them had repeated the question in broken Sinhala. ‘How long here? How long?’
When they had boarded the bus in Putumatalan, they were relieved to say goodbye to the shelling, displacement and starvation. But as they drove through destroyed villages occupied by army battalions and a desolate shoreline of discarded bicycles, chairs, bags and slippers—so many slippers—they felt nauseous with something like guilt. When they were stopped at five army checkpoints—the same checkpoints the Tigers had used earlier—for full-body searches by uniformed soldiers who had just hours before rained ammunition on them, Mugil felt the first sting of humiliation.
‘You’ll be here just till we figure everything out,’ a soldier at the camp office had finally replied, with a weak smile. ‘What, what did he say?’ someone behind them asked, his question echoing among the other arrivals. The soldier’s manner was reassuring but his words meaningless.
The real answer—and it was likely even the soldier did not know it—was this: beyond getting the Tamils into the camps, there were no plans. Mugil learnt this only two
weeks in, on the day Aunty Sumathi visited her from Vavuniya with some fresh clothes for the family. As they waited their turn outside the visitors’ centre—shouting across the barbed wire (‘How are the children? Is it very hot? Have you eaten?’)—Mugil noticed a middle-aged man in expensive clothes. He wore sunglasses and stood near his imported SUV, a few steps from the press of visitors. Other inmates seemed to have noticed him, too, and they craned their necks to see which internee he might have come to visit.
When it was Mugil’s turn in the centre, she barely listened to her aunt from behind the wooden bars. Only waist-high tin sheets separated the inmates, and a private conversation was impossible. To Aunty Sumathi’s left was the well-to-do SUV man, speaking to an elderly woman on Mugil’s side. He addressed the old lady as amma, and from the way he spoke about her grandchildren, in tender respectful Tamil, Mugil guessed he was her son. But how could it be? The old lady looked like she was squeezed dry, her sparse grey hair leaping off her scalp and her hands shaking involuntarily. Her sari was faded and tattered from the Vanni months. A bloody bandage covered her ear. Like most other inmates, she was barefoot.
The son cried softly as his mother babbled about having been in the toilet when her name was announced over the loudspeaker and how she had almost missed hearing it and seeing him. He then looked at the soldier standing by and asked in authoritative Sinhala about the procedure to take his mother home to Colombo. The soldier waved his hand in the air dismissively. No one could leave, he was saying. Not even if they had homes and family outside.
That was when it finally dawned on Mugil; it would not be a few weeks or months here. They would keep them in this enclosed space patrolled by armed guards for as long as they could. Many requests of transfer to relatives’ homes in Jaffna, Vavuniya, Colombo and even abroad had been rejected. The camp for civilians was no different from an open-air prison.
