The Seasons of Trouble

by Rohini Mohan

  Mugil sighed. ‘No. They didn’t tell me.’ It was the three-year anniversary of the end of the war. The men were commemorating the death of thousands, including Prabakaran. She shouted to Mother that she had to go. Dragging Maran, she marched to her house.

  When she barged into the living room, the scene was set. Stuck on her wall was a familiar image drawn with her sons’ crayons: a pair of large eyes with teardrops. Under it, in Divyan’s hand, were the Tamil words Eela Tamizh maaveerargale, ungal thyaakam endrum unarvom! Martyrs of Tamil Eelam, your sacrifice will be forever remembered!

  Under it were two lists. On the left, names of their closest colleagues in the Tigers who were no more—Mani, Mugil’s first unit friend, was at the top. On the right were civilian friends and relatives who died in the war—Father headed the list.

  ‘I hope I haven’t left anyone out,’ Divyan said.

  To the side of the lists, Prashant had attempted to sketch Prabakaran’s face, but the only recognisable features were the stern moustache and the camouflage cap. Around the face he had written a lengthy poem about the leader. Another poster showed a hand-drawn map of Eelam in red, black and yellow, with the roaring tiger and AK-47s of the LTTE symbol at the centre. All of them had etched this tiger perhaps a hundred times as children, and it was as accurate as if it were traced. Tamizh was on the floor, setting small birthday candles around three tall ones, ready to be lit. ‘One for each year that has passed,’ Prashant said.

  Mugil had burst in to stop the memorial, but she didn’t feel the parched-mouth panic anymore. In the three years since the war, this was her first remembrance ceremony. The friends on the list, whom she had avoided so much as mentioning all this time, were not simply colleagues but her compatriots from a time that felt more real, more theirs. A year or even a few months earlier, she might not have recalled these times so fondly, but remembering itself was considered an act of terrorism these days and she had grown weary of criminalising her thoughts. She did not want to fight again, but she wanted to cry aloud for the ones they had lost.

  This was not allowed in the country they lived in today. That morning, Divyan and Prashant had been called to the army camp along with other former combatants. It was another head count, a reminder that they lived under surveillance. When, at dusk, they were finally allowed to leave, the men came straight home to defy the rules. ‘If they won’t let us do it publicly, we thought we would just do it in private,’ Prashant said.

  The government had christened 18 and 19 May, the dates of the end of the war, as Victory Days. The anniversaries were public holidays, celebrating Sri Lanka’s second independence, its freedom from terrorism, a moment of glory for the troops. In the army barracks all over the north and east and in Colombo, they installed twelve-foot billboards to memorialise the young soldiers killed in the war, and congratulated their parents with garlands at large public events. TV channels played patriotic songs all day.

  Meanwhile, private funerals for Tamils killed in the war were not permitted, and Tamil commemorations got people arrested. Thousands were aching for closure, but the military police turned down requests for group prayer or community memorials. Any gatherings—political, social or religious—were banned in the north during the holiday, and at whim on other days. The army cracked down on a meeting of Hindu temple trusts in Jaffna organising a special puja on the anniversary. Mugil’s Amman temple priest was told that coconut smashing was not to be performed on 18 and 19 May. A church in Mannar had organised a service on 18 May, but soldiers arrived early that morning to prevent any prayer or service.

  The government was bulldozing graveyards and banning Tamil memorials to the departed as it set up Sinhalese ones. It removed the tombstones from an enormous Tiger war grave near Kilinochchi, turning the land into an army football field. At the Mullivaikal lagoon, the site of the last stage of the war, a memorial marked military victory. On blocks of granite, a triumphant soldier stood holding a gun over which a dove flew. His other hand held the Sri Lankan flag. The granite base was guarded on each side by a stately stone lion, the national animal of Sri Lanka and the symbol of the Sinhalese race. The lagoon was now out of bounds, taken over by the army, which was building a posh eco-resort there.

  All the landmarks of the Vanni as Mugil knew it were either being erased or converted into tourist destinations. In Mugil’s PTK, where former residents were still not allowed to resettle, an open-air war museum had been set up about five kilometres from the junction. Soldiers guarded it, and former residents were told the area was still riddled with mines, so Mugil had never visited. If she had, she would have seen, arranged under a long tin shed, captured Tiger weaponry: torpedo shells, experimental submarines, mid-sized amphibians, GPS devices, smart mines, and assorted guns. Rusted parts of a tank displayed on the dust; a row of ‘suicide bomber boats’ gleaming under the sun. She would not have been able to read the legends under each exhibit because the museum was curated solely in Sinhala. This ramshackle museum was intended to demonstrate to southern tourists the calibre of the enemy their army had been up against for thirty years and had finally outsmarted.

  Beyond the museum, as far as the eye could see, were ruined houses and beheaded coconut trees, the only remnants of a bustling town. Tourists were not permitted to see the demolition, and were hustled to another shrine to victory close by. On the road from there to Mullaitivu, a four-storey-deep bunker used by Prabakaran was one of the first to be open to tourists. Smartly dressed soldiers gave guided tours to Sinhalese groups, pointing to the ‘bulletproof war room’, the bathroom, the tunnel that led to the back of the building and into the forest. Nearby, a less popular attraction was a swimming pool in which the Sea Tigers, the naval wing, supposedly practised diving. ‘Olympic-size pool!’ the guide soldier would announce with a flourish.

  In this environment, a Tamil memorial to loss or silent grief was deemed a travesty, as something unpatriotic. But how long could they pretend that the war killed nobody, stole nothing?

  As Divyan and Prashant sang LTTE songs, Mugil lit the candles. She felt she finally understood why her men wanted to record, cherish, and talk about the past, about the Vanni all the time. They were afraid of forgetting. As survivors, they felt the burden of proof, the need to carry sights, sounds and events lest history erase them. That night, when Divyan and Prashant told her sons stories of the Tigers, she didn’t stop them.

  25.

  August 2012

  OF ALL THE time he had spent as a child at his grandparents’ Jaffna house, Sarva remembered the summer afternoons best. On those languid days, the heat seemed to expand the hours. Lunch done, Paati would clean the kitchen while Thatha would relax in the curve of the wooden easy chair in the foyer; meanwhile Sarva would follow ants and chase lizards in the back garden. Only Paati’s promise of saami kadai—Hindu myths of heroes and gods—brought him indoors. For him, they were great adventure stories and, for his grandmother, the perfect fairy tales to lull a child to sleep. She would lie down on the polished black floor, glassy and cool as the surface of a lake, and her gravelly voice would tell the stories of baby Krishna and his mother, Yashoda; Prince Rama and his wife, Sita, exiled in the jungle; Shiva and his shape-shifting wife, Parvati. His grandmother narrated with her eyes closed, and Sarva listened, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, his head luxuriating in the soft homeliness of her cotton sari. Majestic lions, trampling elephants, verdant forests and cascading waterfalls crashed into the room. Seas were swallowed, mountains lifted like umbrellas. Deer turned into men, horses flew. The quiet house burst with otherworldly magic.

  Paati preferred to tell epic stories of powerful gods and goddesses, but the ones Sarva recalled most vividly when he was older were short tales about minor characters: the giant warrior Kumbakarnan who fell into a sleep so profound an army could not wake him; the demon Raktavija, who could not be slain in battle because from every drop of his blood rose another demon; the boy Ekalavya, who loved archery so much he cut his thumb off for his te
acher. They were not typical gods or heroes, but people and demons whose odd powers and obsessive desires led them into surreal situations that were as riveting as they were tragic.

  One such story was that of King Trishanku, who loved the idea of heaven so much that he desired to go there while still alive. He begged powerful sages for help, but they all said this would breach the laws of the universe. Disgusted at his attachment to physical existence, some of these wise men cursed him to suffer from disease and an early old age. Finally, only the powerful sage Vishwamitra promised to attempt the impossible. He performed powerful rituals and prayers, but the gods were enraged. They told Vishwamitra that a human, however devoted or good, could not be allowed into heaven. The arrogant Vishwamitra defied the gods and started to meditate so strongly that Trishanku began to ascend to the heavens. When he had almost reached heaven’s gate, the gods retaliated. ‘Fall back to earth!’ they said, and Trishanku began to fall, his body upside down. Vishwamitra regretted challenging the gods, but to keep his promise, he stopped the king’s descent midair. And there Trishanku would hang upside down for eternity, between the earth he left and the heaven he craved.

  During similarly languid days in Bolivia, suspended between his destination and the country he had fled, Sarva thought of Trishanku and his regret. Jehaan and Madhavi had warned Sarva about the perils of trusting a smuggler, but he had not listened. How could he have known there would be no end to his bad luck? That his life was doomed to suffer setback after setback? Amma had paid another million rupees to Siva’s associate in Colombo. That was in July 2012. It was August now, and Sarva was still in Santa Cruz, not New York or even Mexico or Arizona. ‘Things are not as easy as you think,’ Siva said. Circumstances had changed, the US government was stricter about immigration, he needed another million from Sarva. Meanwhile he brought other men to the apartment, fresh off the flight from Colombo, their hope still unbroken. Sarva despised their optimism. When they spoke with him, he could not help telling them about his long journey, Siva’s frequent demands for money and the starvation penalty for speaking up. He described the night with Siva’s creditors, exaggerating the size of the guns involved. The next time Siva came to the apartment, the new men surrounded him, refusing to pay upfront for anything until he showed them a clear plan of action. Sarva saw them panic and lose their cool. He felt like a wolf among pigeons.

  A life in the shadows had taken its toll on Bharati, too. Whereas once he’d stood on the threshold of a new life with a boldness that impressed Sarva, the long months of waiting had whittled away at this young man’s resolve. He hardly ate or slept and missed his parents with the intensity of a toddler. The burden of their having sold their house, pinning all their hopes on him, hung heavy over his head. It prevented him from changing his plans when all he wanted was to go home. He told Sarva that if he had understood what leaving Sri Lanka really meant when he boarded the plane, he would have taken in more of his native country, committed his house and street to memory, inhaled the smell of the sea more deeply. He craved the flavour of tamarind fish; it was unbelievable that he would miss that taste forever. He had not gone to his favourite Rio ice-cream parlour in Jaffna before leaving, not hung out enough in the union room at university, not said goodbye to all his relatives and friends. He had lived in Jaffna all his life, and was he never to see it again? How could that be?

  As Bharati teetered on the edge of making the dangerous decision to fly back to Sri Lanka, his concerned parents sent money through the agent, asking their son to live more comfortably, to eat better, to work fewer hours at the deli. Siva delivered only half, around $400. And Bharati used all the money to purchase a smartphone and a SIM card. He began to speak to his aged mother every day. She read the paper out to him, telling him about suicides among Tamil youth in Sri Lanka and about the absolute military control over his university, whose dean was now a government appointee. She spoke about how his aunt in the Vanni lost her tobacco farm because the government did not recognise the deeds to her property. She said his father had been smart to have sold his land early, before it was seized by the government for the ‘northern revival’ development projects. Long-displaced Muslims were coming back to Jaffna, and Sinhalese to the other northern districts, his father said, but almost half of Bharati’s classmates had left or were in the process of leaving. There were no jobs, a former military general was the governor of the north, and disappearances were at an alarming high. Bharati was soon cured of his desire to return to Sri Lanka.

  Thanks to the new phone, Sarva, too, was now able to call home more regularly. He spoke to Amma at least once a week and to Malar every day. She was already becoming a distant memory, the ghost of everything good that was slipping out of his grasp. They always discussed the same things: the moment they would meet again, their simple wedding, how they would live, how many children they would have, how they would love a daughter more than a son. She told him about the pressures at home: she was twenty-nine, nearly five years past the average age of marriage for a Tamil girl. Her father had shared her photo and astrological chart with marriage brokers for prospective grooms, and she was afraid one of them would be a match. Sarva would ask her to trust the strength of their love; it would prevail over everything, he said.

  To Bharati, however, he admitted he was numb with the prospect of losing Malar. ‘What do I have to offer? A broken body and this apartment with Siva?’ Sarva had to act before more eligible men came along for Malar. He needed to make a good life and bring her over. As soon as possible, he had to leave Bolivia, and get somewhere close to where he had set out to be.

  Bharati had a suggestion. ‘Why are we stuck on America?’ he asked one day. When Sarva said that was the agreement with Siva, Bharati clapped his hands. ‘That!’ he shouted. ‘That is what is going to change now.’

  Bharati’s parents had met the family of one of his friends from university who was on the army blacklist. The young man had fled the country with an agent around the same time as Bharati did, but his agent had sent him to England. In six months, he had been granted asylum. Since Bharati’s reasons for leaving Sri Lanka—political instability, fear of persecution and attempted kidnapping—were exactly the same as this friend’s, he thought he, too, might stand a good chance of finding asylum in England. He suggested Sarva join him.

  ‘And who’s going to take us there?’ Sarva asked.

  Bharati’s mother had already spoken to his friend’s agent, Kannan. For 1.2 million rupees, Kannan was ready to take Bharati and Sarva to London.

  Sarva was not sure how they could leave Siva. But Bharati said Kannan knew Siva and such transfers happened all the time. Kannan would ‘buy’ Bharati and Sarva from Siva. ‘Like slaves,’ Sarva added. Amma encouraged him to go ahead. Deva had not said a word or paid a rupee; he had not acknowledged any responsibility for his friend Siva and his brother’s year of torment.

  ‘It’s just the two of us now,’ Amma said. ‘We should go ahead with whatever seems best to you.’

  Once the move was decided, it was simply procedural. Siva did not care about losing them, as long as he got his money. Over the next month, Amma sold all of her gold jewellery, which made enough money to pay both agents. Siva got the half-million rupees paid by Amma to his associate in Colombo. Another 600,000 was handed to Kannan’s man, the rest being payable after they reached London. ‘This Kannan seems to be more honourable than Siva,’ Amma said.

  The dream shifted continents. Bharati and Sarva were taken to a house near the airport. Kannan’s people brought food every day. Sarva tried not to think that another year might be lost to anticipation.

  AS SARVA CHANGED his plans, Malar found the courage to tell her family about their relationship. She built him up to be the whole package, selling him on the basis of his good family and British dream, but not mentioning the torture, the Tiger years or the jail time. Her parents were concerned about her age and Sarva’s unpredictable future. Yet, a love marriage held some appeal: if the groom loved the br
ide enough, there might not be a dowry.

  ‘You will make sure your mother doesn’t ask for much, no?’ Malar asked Sarva.

  Sarva was not sure if he could; a dowry was unavoidable. But he suggested that Malar meet his mother. ‘You both live in Nuwara Eliya,’ he said. ‘She was impressed when you last met. If she likes you enough, maybe she will not ask for much.’

  ‘Does she know about us?’

  ‘No. But it will be fine.’

  The next Sunday, Malar spent the afternoon at Amma’s house. That evening, she told Sarva on the phone that his mother had been sweet to her; they discussed Sarva’s situation and had tea and pakoda; they parted with smiling hugs.

  When Sarva called his mother after a few days, he knew immediately that Malar had been a victim of his mother’s misleading civility.

  ‘So, she came, that girl. On Sunday,’ Amma began frostily. ‘To have tea with me.’

  ‘Yes. Malar. Good. What did she say?’ He kept his voice upbeat.

  ‘She must have already reported it to you, no? You talk every day apparently. She seems to know more about you than I do anyway.’

  ‘Aiyo, Amma.’

  ‘I did not expect this from you, Sarva. After everything I have done, you just want to torture me again.’

  ‘Why? How am I torturing you? She will be perfect for me, for our family.’

  ‘Your brother’s wife also thinks she is too good for me. I should at least have one daughter-in-law I can be close to.’

  ‘You can be close to Malar, Amma. She is caring, she is a family girl.’

  ‘I have protected you from all sorts of things. After everything, don’t think I will let you get swept away by some love affair.’

  ‘What are you saying, Amma? What does this have to do with all that?’