by Rohini Mohan
Within minutes, Sangeeta, who was inside the house, heard gunshots. She ran out the door and down the street. Daya was on the road, lying on his side. The bike was on its side, too, still whirring. A few people rushed out of their houses. Sangeeta saw a stunned Madhusan in a stranger’s arms. She threw herself down near Daya. Under his head, a puddle of blood was growing. His eyes were half open, his breathing sketchy but definitely there. She tried to stem the blood, but his curly hair was thick and she was panicking. She couldn’t find the bullet hole, and the red just kept flowing. Under him, under her, under the bike. She suddenly heard the revving of a motorbike in the distance. When it reached them, she saw it carried two helmeted men. They rode around her and Daya, circling like vultures. People made noises, waved their fists. That was when Sangeeta found her voice. ‘Why don’t you shoot us, too!’ The men sped away.
Some of their neighbours took Daya to a hospital, but the doctors could not save him. The police had taken days to respond to Sangeeta’s complaint, and when they finally took the body to conduct a post-mortem, they refused to share the report. The police buried the body, despite Sangeeta’s request for a family ceremony and a Hindu cremation. Madhusan had been inconsolable, speechless for days after and then crying for weeks. His cousin distracted him by spinning a 2-rupee coin, the only way anyone was able to get through to the boy.
That was four years ago, but the experience still haunted Sangeeta’s family. The couple had never worked for the LTTE, but since Daya’s killing that fact mattered little. After the case was transferred to the army for investigation, a team had raided Sangeeta’s house. Locking her in, they had demanded to know who she thought shot Daya. With armed soldiers in her house, she had been unable to say she suspected the army. ‘It’s the LTTE,’ they had insisted, asking her to say the same in a statement. She had refused. They asked her to identify the killers from farcical parades of criminals. Even now, every few weeks she was summoned to the army camp, often after dark. She went with her mother or uncle each time, which some soldiers said they didn’t like. Once, they’d sent her mother home and kept Sangeeta for hours, asking repeatedly about the Tigers but never saying anything about Daya’s murder. Madhusan was on her lap, but they’d said she was still young, and that if she ‘cooperated’ with them, as they put it, they would let her off lightly. After a few hours, she pinched Madhusan hard. His bawling gave her an excuse to scurry home.
Now, as they sat in Mugil’s house, Sangeeta said, ‘Sometimes I think that I’m worse off than a widow. Same situation, more problems, but no help from NGOs or anybody.’ She was used to it now, she said.
In the north, there were around 59,000 households headed by women like Sangeeta, Mugil and Amuda. They included widows, women with incarcerated husbands and several who were not even sure if they were widows because their husbands had simply disappeared.
‘How many women can the NGOs help?’ Sangeeta asked almost to herself. ‘We’d better look out for ourselves.’
She opened the school notebook they used as an accounts ledger, in which Mugil had noted the expenses on the left-hand page and sales on the right. Sangeeta added up carefully, counting on her fingers as always. They had made more than usual, thanks to a new snack recipe Sangeeta and Mother had come up with the previous day. They had stuffed spiced sprats and caramelised onions into sesame-dusted buns. All seventy of these were sold, and they had received more orders. She asked Mugil to start charging 25 rupees instead of 15 for each piece.
Mugil laughed. ‘You plan to become a millionaire with this business or what?’
When Mugil slept on her straw mat at night, with Tamizh splayed on her stomach and Maran snoring softly next to her, she sometimes wondered how things would be if her kids were raised by Divyan, if their roles were reversed. Would Divyan have been able to keep them healthy and fed? Would he, too, feel like he was pretending to be someone else? She asked Sangeeta if she thought her husband would have been a good single parent.
‘I’m dead or I’m in detention?’
‘You’re off. Dead.’
‘Then he’d struggle. Widowers don’t get any compensation or help, do they?’ she asked. ‘Which doesn’t make sense. We know how men are … they are more helpless than us.’
Looking at Sangeeta’s animated face, Mugil found herself wishing again that her own sister were more like this young woman, bright and full of life, engaging in conversation. But there was never a discussion with Amuda that wasn’t peppered with complaints about insomnia or exhaustion. Since they were girls, Amuda had been expected to be weak and Mugil strong.
‘I guess some people just make better victims,’ Mugil said.
Having finished with the accounts, Sangeeta went to the kitchen to knead the batter for the rolls and crumb some bread. Mother would join them soon, and in two hours the prepared vadais and tuna rolls would be wrapped in newspaper and tied with twine. The house was always quiet at this time, with Maran still in school and Tamizh napping. On such afternoons, time slowed down, and the women worked in silence. As Sangeeta and Mother cooked and the aromas of spice and jaggery peanut balls wafted through the rooms, Mugil tended to things that had nothing to do with being a mother. She combed her hair, did her laundry. She read the grimy day-old newspapers the cool-bar owner gave her—it was a ritual that she felt nurtured the part of her everyone else wanted gone.
Sangeeta cynically called her friend’s reading unproductive ‘timepass’, but it helped keep Mugil’s mind sharp. In some elemental way, it connected her to the world where real life unfolded. Her own existence was a tightly knit routine of work, eat, worry, sleep. Elsewhere, people protested, went to court, fought elections, wrote poems, reunited with their families. Men got visas, women married them to get visas, politicians lied, children died. Even the circus of geopolitics fascinated her: India was confused; China was the new ally; the US and UK were diplomatic enemies of Sri Lanka, passing resolutions against it; the UN threatened the president with an international investigation into war crimes; the president booed and promoted his brothers in government; his brothers looted the country and abused the UN. The newspapers said which areas had been demined, where a new army camp had been established, where Buddhist monks had attacked mosques, where the defence secretary cut ribbons for newly built ‘ancient Buddha viharas’, where a startled soldier had shot a child. In another time, men would have been sitting around in tea shops discussing these events, trashing politicians and sharing news. But this was the era of cameras and spies, so the tea sessions were replaced by brooding silence.
She read out some important stories to Mother. Prabakaran’s childhood house in the Valvettithurai coastal town, which he had left as a teenager, was found destroyed. The house had been badly damaged in army and Indian Peace Keeping Force operations in 1987, four years after the family had left. The army had been guarding it, and the newspapers speculated that the soldiers had been gradually demolishing it, a rumour that grew quickly after the war ended, when southern tourists thronged to see the house. The army denied the accusation, but some generals mentioned wanting to avoid the house becoming a shrine for Prabakaran. Mother said the papers only showed how the country was becoming more hellish, but Mugil wanted to know what was happening. Every day threw up an unforeseen challenge, and she wanted to know how each of these events came about.
If not for the papers, Mugil would not have known why Divyan, who was supposed to come home the previous month, never arrived. What she learnt was that the Sri Lankan prime minister had made a statement to the media that the police in the South Indian town of Trichy had found several lorries full of ammunition, which they had linked to a Tiger sleeper cell. The prime minister had declared this to mean that the LTTE was regrouping, a ‘serious security threat’. Immediately, plans to release former combatants were shelved. A few weeks later, the Trichy police denied finding any such ammunition or LTTE sleeper cells. Soon after, the Sri Lankan prime minister said he was ‘mistaken’. Divyan’s release, along wi
th that of all the other detainees, however, remained cancelled.
Sangeeta often asked when Mugil would go to see Divyan. The couple spoke on the detention landline every other day, but Mugil hadn’t been to see Divyan since she had moved to Point Pedro. The bus fare to Vavuniya was around 400 rupees each way, and there were always other pressing expenses. But the real reason was that she didn’t feel much need to see him. Mugil couldn’t admit this to Sangeeta, who sorely missed her late husband. Days would go by without Mugil once missing Divyan, except perhaps when she wanted to tell him a funny story or use him as a sounding board. Neither of her sons had asked about their father since they left camp.
For two years, Mugil had made all the decisions for her family. And they were not led by Divyan’s obsessions: loyalty, vengeance, duty. Without the structure that stitched these concepts to her life, she was running free. She was doing things her way, and despite the creeping fears and daily insecurity, she felt strong. Her choices were her responsibility; she didn’t have to convince anyone else or follow some moral code. Her home and the relief of coming back to it every day and deciding the shape of her hours were things she had never had before. Not during the war, not before it. These were days of rebuilding. There was much to fight against but also a lot to work for. She was a single parent, and she focussed on her children like never before. When Tamizh had nightmares, she consoled him with a song, but never any songs of the revolution. The old tunes filled her brain, their lyrics enchanting, bleak, romantic. But her sons would not hear them. She kept them, and herself, away from former cadre. Maran was now in the first grade and Tamizh had grown three inches taller. They did not need the weight of the past on their shoulders. The cycle had to end somewhere.
After they’d come to Point Pedro, Mother had visited Prashant at his detention centre in the Chettikulam school. Mugil still remembered the news Mother brought back for its resounding peculiarity. Her brother had apparently been excited about being assigned kitchen duty, because it gave him access to more chicken than he otherwise got at meals. He had also told Mother that the inmates had been served the auspicious Sinhalese dish kiri bath on the anniversary of Prabakaran’s death. He had sung to Mother the Sinhala-language national anthem, which he had been taught there. After that, he had been sent to take a short ‘leadership’ course in the dreaded Boosa prison complex in the southern city of Galle. The family hadn’t heard from him since then. To Sri Lankans, Boosa was synonymous with torture and indefinite detention, and Mugil worried about her little brother.
It was almost three o’clock and the snacks were cooling in the kitchen. Mugil washed her face and changed, getting ready to pack the vadais, buns and rolls in the newspapers she had been poring over. The packets had to be delivered to the shops by four—teatime. Before Mother left to pick up Maran from school, she told Mugil that she had heard of some neighbours hiring a mini-van to visit the Poonthottam detention camp. ‘You can share the cost and go with them to see your husband,’ Mother said. ‘Boys need to see their father, ammani.’ Mugil nodded and left on her bike. She had deliveries to make.
21.
July 2011
INDRA LAY IN bed watching the fan turn at its lowest speed. July in Nuwara Eliya didn’t warrant fans, but the hum helped her sleep. A childhood in tea estates was not cosy, but it made you a weather snob. Her family complained far too much when it was warm.
The last time she heard from Sarva, he had called from the Riyadh airport. He had just arrived from Colombo, and his first words on the phone were about the tremendous heat. ‘Yes, you’re a prince straight from Ing-Land,’ she’d teased. He hadn’t called again after that, and she had no number for him.
Indra turned to the window. A fog hung low on the tea bushes outside. The purple dawn was turning pink. The steady drizzle was a hush on the kitchen’s asbestos roof. She tried to recall Sarva’s hurried words from that last phone call.
It had been afternoon for her. ‘Each call is costly, Amma,’ Sarva had said. ‘But I am all right, there are twenty-five of us in this batch.’
She had asked him if things had gone smoothly at the immigration desk at Colombo. ‘The officer had been fixed, but I still had to give him 100 dollars extra.’ Sarva had borrowed these dollars from Shirleen, who had waited outside Colombo airport till he boarded.
Indra had asked if he’d eaten. ‘On the flight. I had two non-veg boxes!’ He seemed giddy with expectation. He didn’t know where the group would go next, only that it would be constantly on the move. ‘I’m out of the wretched country, that itself is amazing. Now my luck will change, you’ll see. I’ll come for you soon, Amma. Our time will come.’
She had started to cry, saying she was praying for him. ‘Take care, child. Eat well, child. Your mother is fine, don’t worry about me, think of your health and safety. Everything will be fine, be careful’—she had spoken in loops. He said he had to hang up, others had to use the phone. ‘Try not to cry all the time, okay?’ He was teasing, but that had set off more tears and they didn’t stop all day. She forgot to cook lunch, and when John asked about it, she sent the maid out to buy chicken lunch-packets.
Indra now sat up on the bed. She had been worried about Sarva but wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been gone. On the wall a calendar displayed a grinning tea picker with a big nose ring and bad teeth. Flipping back two months, Indra pressed a finger to 4 May, the day Sarva left. Ideally, she would have crossed out the date as a reminder, but she didn’t want to leave a clue for the TID. She had been careful not to note the date down anywhere. Was that why she had lost track of time?
The days were a blur, the events embarrassingly fuzzy. For a month after Sarva left, plainclothesmen had visited repeatedly, demanding to know where her son was. Fed up, she had gone to her aunt’s house in Jaffna. She had planned a round of visits to temples and family but was instead mired in a dispute with the tea estate company over a house lease. She was drowning in debt from Sarva’s trial and departure. Waiting for a bus one day, she had suffered a stroke and been hospitalised for weeks. Her aunt had helped with the bills, but eventually John had Indra discharged before she had fully recovered. They could not afford more expense, and hoped rest and prayer would heal her. She was on stronger blood pressure medication now, but did not trust her health anymore. She called it a cursed time. Body, mind, spirit—all were failing.
It was early July now. Two months and not a word from Sarva. Indra went to the kitchen, grabbed some holy ash and smeared it all over her forehead. She prayed furiously, ‘Pullaiyar appa, Pullaiyar appa,’ rocking back and forth. Her eyes were shut tight. She chanted till the words drowned out her fear, till her blouse was drenched in sweat.
She finally leaned back on the kitchen counter. Her shoulders slumped. All the energy seemed to leave her body, dissipating like the fog outside. She was sure something had happened to her son. She sensed a dread, solid and pulsating in the pit of her stomach, calling her to action. It was all too familiar.
JOHN OFTEN SAID Indra spent more time saving Sarva than raising him. It wasn’t easy to rear a good child in bad times, she would reply. She had rescued Sarva from disease, riots, the police, and the ravages of a country always on edge. But there was one incident she rarely brought up, although the memory of it had plagued her since Sarva’s detention. It was the unspeakable reason for his arrest in 2008, and it continued to be an obstacle in her attempts to prove his innocence. All the NGO men and women she met had asked about it, noticing a gap, something that didn’t add up. She had answered them vaguely, remembering what not to say.
It was 2002, the year of the ceasefire. Sarva had just finished his naval engineering exam. While he waited for the results, his brother Deva asked him to help at their video centre in Negombo. Deva was due to get married in a few months and wanted Sarva to fill in for him while he was busy with the wedding plans. Indra was relieved; if Sarva had stayed in Nuwara Eliya, she would have had to foot the bills for his aimless motorbike trips.
The
Negombo video centre and Internet cafe was in the main market, and was doing reasonably well. The brothers shot weddings, parties, store openings, and child-naming ceremonies. The month after Sarva joined, another young man, Sujeevan, turned up asking for a job. He was from Vavuniya—a cousin of a friend of a friend of Deva’s—and was on the run from the LTTE’s clandestine conscription drive during the ceasefire. He begged them to help. He didn’t want to be snatched off the streets by a white van, he said, and be forced into training. He was the same age as Sarva, twenty-four.
‘We can’t afford him,’ Deva said. ‘We can’t save everyone.’ But at Sarva’s coaxing, Sujeevan was employed at half salary as a camera assistant. He turned out to be a fast learner and, as a bonus, cooked fabulously. The brothers congratulated themselves on this perfect hire.
After three months, Deva went off to prepare for the wedding. Sarva joined him a week later, leaving Sujeevan in charge of the shop. On the night after the wedding, Sarva received a phone call from the tea vendor near the video centre. ‘Your cameras and computers are being taken away! Sujeevan says you asked him to do it. But he’s loading them in a car, so I felt suspicious.’
Sarva rushed to Negombo, but it was too late. All the equipment, worth about 800,000 rupees, was gone. His brother squarely blamed Sarva for the robbery—he was the one who had convinced Deva to hire Sujeevan, befriend and stupidly trust him. He was the one who left a thief in charge.
Sarva filed a police complaint and a few days later the police used Sujeevan’s vehicle registration to track him down in a lodge in Negombo. When Sujeevan opened the door of his room, the Tamil inspector swung hard at his face. ‘Stealing from your own, are you, you ungrateful bastard?’ In Sarva’s presence, Sujeevan confessed that he had sent the equipment to someone in north Vavuniya. He said it was to pay for his freedom from the Tigers. As soon as he mentioned an LTTE connection, the police made excuses and backed off. ‘This is not our jurisdiction,’ the inspector said. Sarva didn’t entirely understand what Sujeevan meant by ‘payment for freedom’, but he took the man’s details—name ‘Thiru’, dark, fat nose, short, sometimes wore spectacles, close to LTTE commander Paulraj—and decided to go retrieve the equipment himself.
