by Rohini Mohan
‘That must mean I’m here for good,’ Divyan announced at home.
Mugil arranged a reunion party. Sangeeta brought sweet kesari and chicken rolls while Mother made fish kozhambu, saying he must have missed Tamil food. ‘The Sinhalese don’t use tamarind like us, I think.’ Amuda brought a large bottle of chilled Fanta from her shop fridge. ‘Isn’t that someone else’s?’ asked Prashant. ‘Oh shut up, I’ll replace it tomorrow,’ she snapped. Mugil found herself talking endlessly, trying to bring Divyan up to speed with everything. Mother was grinning at everyone and Prashant, for once, did not leave to see his friends.
After everyone had retired for the night, Divyan lay down next to Maran and Tamizh on the floor mats in the living room. Mugil sat next to him. ‘Prashant is behaving very strangely, and he won’t talk about it to me. Can you please tell me? I need to know what happened in the two years you were gone.’
Divyan told her about his time in detention. They beat him, asking questions over and over: where are the weapons, who has left the country, who was funding the Tigers, what are the plans for regrouping, who was his supervisor, what did they train him to do? He told them he had joined when he was twenty, was a fighter for two years until he was injured and put out of action. It was all true, but only part of his story. He had been asked about spies—he had given some names. They had asked about armouries, he directed them to a couple. ‘I said just enough for them to be satisfied.’
‘How old were you when you finished training?’ they asked one time. A month later, they asked what year it was when he finished training. Divyan guessed they were checking for inconsistencies. He stuck to the same story from beginning to end; he did not add or omit anything. He told them his first LTTE name, Dileepan, and not the later ones. He did not interact much with the other inmates, not wanting to divulge details that someone could blurt out during their interrogation. It was impossible to make friends when they were all so vulnerable and being pitted against each other. To his relief, the physical torture stopped after the first year. He explained how he meditated for hours and fell asleep at will. He had to rid his mind of aggression, file away his edges. He thought of the children and wanted to make it out sane.
‘I used to think that this family’s only blessing was that all four of us survived,’ he said on the night of his return. ‘But now, this house … Is this luck? Or is this the dowry payment you escaped earlier?’ He was teasing, but Mugil said it did feel like a gift her Father had given her.
It had been only a year since his father-in-law’s passing, but to Divyan, it felt so deep in the past, an experience reduced to two images: his touching the old man’s feet before surrendering in Putumatalan and Mugil saying that her father had passed away. Only Mugil and Mother, and perhaps Maran, retained the memory of his death. There had been no funeral. There were no ashes to scatter or grave to visit—the one under the barbed wire at Manik Farm was inaccessible.
In the impressive house that was now theirs, Mugil would’ve liked to hang a framed picture of her father on the wall with a garland and an oil lamp, but not a single photograph had survived the conflict. Because Father had died from an illness in camp, he had perhaps not even been counted in the UN estimate of 40,000 civilians killed in the last war. With no evidence of his death, it was as if he had never lived. Mugil held her father’s life and death in her head, carrying on without the healing release of a mourning. Thousands of Tamils had not been accorded that dignity.
‘You have done so much, Mugil,’ Divyan said. ‘I’m here now, I will take over.’
‘Enough, just sleep now,’ she replied. She wanted to preserve somehow this supple promise on his first night back, before it decayed like everything else around them.
Divyan faced the same barriers as Prashant when it came to finding employment, but he fought harder. One word spun in his head, a term of abuse usually hurled by annoyed fathers at their good-for-nothing sons: thanda-sor. He couldn’t simply subsist on his wife’s earnings, and he couldn’t bring himself to sit at home. So he took a bus every morning to a highway under construction and sat with the sarong-clad men at the roadside. A contractor would come by, size them up, pick five or ten of them, state a wage and put them to work for the day. Divyan told people he was a skilled mason, but he did semi-skilled or unskilled labour for 700 rupees a day: breaking stones, pouring hot tar from a perforated tin drum, carrying pails of concrete. Some days he wasn’t picked and came back empty-handed.
In the beginning, Divyan imagined that the bigger the road, the greater the job opportunity; but the main four-lane highways used machines for most tasks. One day he saw a lumbering contraption with dusters spinning rapidly against the road, and it struck him that he couldn’t even get a job sweeping the streets. The work he did get was hard on his back, which had been injured when he slipped several discs, but he continued doing labour at least twice a week.
When he was not working in construction, Divyan occasionally helped Mugil out with the snack business. She did not dare invite him to join them; he was too proud to partner with women. After her experience with Prashant, Mugil hadn’t counted on a purely happy reunion with her husband, and just as she had predicted, the gratitude exhibited on his first night back was short-lived. Divyan would not cook meals when she was out at work or confer with her on family decisions. Much as she was glad he was home, his return had immediately eroded her independence and authority around the house. Their boys sensed it first; they hardly listened to her anymore. Tantrums were thrown around her, and a doe-eyed love once lavished on Mugil was reserved for their father. In return, Divyan was wonderful with them, spending more hours than she could on their homework and meals. But Mugil knew it would not be enough for her husband; he would not derive his self-esteem from parenting or housework.
The work—or lack of it—began to scrape away at Divyan’s determination. If only he could get a driving gig: it was decent work, his back could take it, and with the great numbers of tourists and NGOs, there was a constant demand. He had done it for ten years in the Vanni, but now he needed a new driver’s licence, for which he required a national ID card.
The women had until then been using provisional IDs that the police had given them. Divyan submitted applications for ID cards at the government agent’s office for Mugil, Mother, Amuda, Prashant and himself. He took Prashant along and gradually the two began to spend all their time together, going to the wood shop to buy a door, to the placement offices and to the bus depot to get annual passes made. He told Mugil he was setting her brother right, giving him mature advice about getting a job and dumping his gang of wastrels. One day, she walked in on them sitting in different corners of the room chatting. Maran and Tamizh were playing around them, and she could only hope the men were not talking about detention. ‘Kathaikarathileye irungal,’ she said smiling: just keep chatting.
Tamizh was nearby. ‘Yengal inatthai azhikkarathileye irukkangal!’ he responded, his eyes glowing mischievously: just keep wiping our race out.
As she heard the words spill from her five-year-old’s lips, Mugil felt punched in the gut. There it was, everything that she had protected him from, dancing in front of her. Divyan and Prashant were grinning as if this was simply an entertaining quip from a precocious child.
Mugil called Divyan outside and told him that this was the most violent thing a father could have taught his son. ‘Don’t you want him to be different from us? Why are you saying this shit in front of him?’ Divyan said his sons were not going to grow up hearing only fish patty recipes.
Mugil walked out of the house and went straight to Sangeeta’s. ‘These men, they’re going to get my boys killed!’ Sangeeta consoled her, saying that would not be so easy as long as Mugil was around.
‘No, but they’ve completely sidelined me,’ Mugil cried. ‘They’re always whispering together and won’t tell me what they are talking about. I mean, it’s not like I grew up wearing bangles and flowers!’
‘It was bound to happen, akka;
they like to take charge.’
‘But why behave as if I’m a good-for-nothing? Did I not protect these children from everything in the refugee camps, did I not take care of my mother, did I not find the bungalow he’s stretching his legs in? Thankless!’
Mugil said they had hardened towards each other, but she couldn’t bring herself to yell at Divyan. ‘He’s never had it easy,’ she said. All his life, he had pursued clear goals, and now the loss of control was making him flounder. The military remained in their neighbourhood because, despite all evidence to the contrary, it was convinced that the Tigers would regroup. Just as she wanted the military to back off and let them breathe, Mugil wanted Divyan and Prashant, too, to rethink some of their Vanni-brand Tamil nationalism and move beyond the battle talk. Hadn’t her community lost enough people, sacrificed enough children? She, too, had once found inspiration in sacrifice, but she bet that today, despite all the bravado about another uprising, few would send their own kids to fight.
The men didn’t think alternatives existed, but they did, albeit imperfect ones. Some Tamil parliamentarians demanded greater political autonomy for their northern province, for the president to promote reconciliation by sharing power. Mere elections were not democratic enough; the Tamil-dominated province should be allowed the autonomy to legislate with regard to land, law and order and economic development. Equal rights and more autonomy—for both the Tamils and the Sinhalese—had been intrinsic to the separatist movement. For decades, negotiations had failed because the Sri Lankan and Eelam leaders refused to compromise. Finally now, the federal language, earlier silenced by militancy, offered the possibility of peace. Tamils referred to such moderate politicians as samadhanavaadhis, but some also considered them compromisers, cynics, Western mouthpieces, Indian stooges or anti-Eelam weaklings. Because the president and Parliament would not even discuss demands for autonomy lest doing so became a step towards the bifurcation of Sri Lanka, people like Divyan thought it futile to work through the system for great equality and freedom.
‘You know, I think he does not see our boys as children but as future little warriors. How am I going to change his mind?’
‘Just give it time, akka.’ Sangeeta’s back was turned, but Mugil saw the slumped shoulders. ‘For now, at least you have someone to share responsibilities with.’
Mugil slapped her forehead and held her friend’s hands. ‘Sorry, Sangeeta, I didn’t mean to make you feel … I am lucky he’s alive, it’s true.’
‘Chi, akka, not like that! Are you mad? I’m not missing a husband ordering me around!’
Sangeeta’s smile was taut. Mugil wanted to kick herself for coming here to whine about her problems, but who else did she have? In the years without her husband and brother, it had become their habit to turn to each other for comfort. Mugil thought Sangeeta was the strongest fighter she knew—she was the kind of woman the Tigers used to say were equal to any man—but it had nothing to do with battle or training. She was able to keep a cool head despite being so alone, raising three children, being harassed by soldiers, living with the nightmare of seeing her husband killed in broad daylight. She had not put a foot wrong in her life, and yet she had perhaps suffered more setbacks than Mugil. She broke down with Mugil sometimes, agonised by the lack of closure in her husband’s death and her vulnerability. She often wondered what would happen to her children if she, too, were bumped off one day—not a far-fetched concern given the times. But she never let it detract from her resolve to forge ahead.
If Mugil had to design a poster for a Tamil fighting force today, she thought, she would have it feature a photograph of Sangeeta, with her daughter and son standing next to her and the baby on her hip. Behind them she would put Sangeeta’s brother, the supportive man behind this powerhouse of a woman. For the poster’s background, she would use the image of the white dove that hung from a calendar in their living room. ‘Suthanthira paravaigal,’ she would write under the picture, and pin it on trees and walls: birds of freedom. These were the warriors she felt her community needed to admire today: the people toiling to make peace work.
Sangeeta had lately stopped coming over as often as she used to. Mother guessed that she didn’t want to be seen as the lonely widow meddling in a happy family’s affairs. Mugil narrowed the reason down to that dumb movie night. Some weeks earlier she had gone to watch the Indian Tamil movie Singam with Amuda and Sangeeta on a borrowed laptop at a neighbour’s house. While Mugil was lost in the movie, Divyan had called her phone repeatedly and she had not heard. When she returned home, he had charged towards her, bellowing, demanding to know where the hell she had been. She had turned her face and lifted her elbows up, sure that he would slap her. Later that night he had admitted to being angry—it was her fault for having been careless—but he was hurt that she thought he would hit her. ‘Don’t you know me?’ he asked. She couldn’t tell him that she didn’t anymore. His temper had eclipsed everything else about him.
After Mugil told Sangeeta about this, the younger woman stopped coming by for meals or a cup of coffee or to bathe her children by the well. An air of formality had crept into their relationship.
In her house, as Sangeeta feigned normalcy, Mugil sensed that their friendship was hanging by a thread. They were good business partners, and perhaps that was all they could be now. Mugil shouldn’t bring her household problems here anymore. This was not the family reunion Mugil had waited more than two years for. With the returnees, love too had hardened, turned brittle.
MARAN DECLARED THAT he wanted to go ‘out’. This was code for him to go to the beach after sunset with Mugil, just the two of them. They held hands and crossed the main road, across which stretched yards of white sand and moonlit ocean.
There was nobody else around. Mugil sat on the sand while Maran dug holes he said were bunkers for crabs. He never went into the water, so she let herself relax, staring into the purple sky streaked with retreating orange. It was late in the evening, and she heard fishermen launching their boats beyond the sea wall, heaving and pulling between rhythmic grunts and song. It was May 2012, exactly three years after the end of the war, and the fishing restrictions had finally been lifted in this area. Hearing fishermen call out after all this time and seeing their boats bob in the distance on the waves was reassuring, a return to an ancient profession and the beginning of hope for some.
When Maran was done playing, they went to a nearby shop and bought cotton candy. Maran always ate two: the first one flattened into a finger-sized ball and swallowed like a toffee and the second eaten in all its fluffy glory, the pleasure drawn out till they reached home, before Tamizh could see his brother’s treat and throw a tantrum. It amazed Mugil to see how much joy and contentment just two rupees could buy.
They were walking down the long street home when Maran spotted his grandmother ahead. Mother was returning from the bus stop where she now sold rolls and buns from four in the afternoon till the last minibus stopped there at eight in the evening. The snack business had slumped several months earlier—the items cost more to make than the shops were willing to pay. Since the women didn’t make enough profit for three, Mugil quit. Since then, Sangeeta cooked and Mother hawked at the bus stop closest to her house. She sat beside the plastic stool on which stood her basket of snacks, next to another woman selling tea from a flask. This was clever teaming: a bite of a spicy roll made the customer yearn for a glass of tea, or the sweetness of the tea would call for a salty bun. They made about 200 rupees a day, but it upset Mugil to see her aged mother become a street vendor.
‘Paati!’ Maran yelled and ran to his grandmother. He took the stool she was carrying. It was his height, but he lugged it home chivalrously. When Mugil caught up, Mother handed her the last oily tuna roll.
‘Apparently that tea lady’s daughter found a husband in England,’ Mother said. ‘She is enrolled in English classes now.’
‘Is he a citizen?’ Mugil asked, smiling at Mother’s revived interest in neighbourhood gossip.
&nb
sp; ‘She says he got asylum eight years ago. Looks genuine, but you never know.’ Mother was wary of weddings that doubled as emigration plans, especially after her niece had gone off with a one-way ticket to marry a Tamil man in America, only to discover that he was an illegal immigrant.
Mugil asked when the wedding would be.
‘This fellow can’t come back to Sri Lanka, so the girl will go after three months, have a wedding ceremony there and stay in England.’
‘Lucky Aunty can go to England for the wedding.’
‘Where? She can’t afford to go. This is as usual, give your daughter away, get a photo album.’ When Tamil refugees abroad got married, parents in Sri Lanka made all the arrangements, often also choosing the bride, but could rarely afford to attend the wedding, which had to be conducted in the foreign country because the groom couldn’t re-enter Sri Lanka. The parents would receive pictures of the celebration by post or email.
‘How much is she giving as dowry?’
‘One and a half million only, because the girl is fair, quite pretty. Also, they bluffed that she knows English already.’
They reached Mother’s house, and as Mugil waited for her to pack some leftover gooseberry curry for dinner, Amuda hobbled out of her nearly defunct shop in front of the house. The solar panel was shot and her fridge ruined by sporadic power cuts and wildly fluctuating voltage. She kept the store open now only to sell off the dusty stock of stationery and biscuits and to show the loan NGO that she was trying—and failing—to repay the debt. Seeing Mugil in the yard, Amuda looked surprised. ‘Why aren’t you home?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Divyan Atthaan and Prashant are holding a memorial at your place. I thought you were also part of the plan. They came and took lots of candles and chart paper from me.’ Mugil still looked confused, so Amuda repeated herself. ‘They are holding a memorial for, you know—today is 18 May. You didn’t know?’
