Love Marriage

by V. V. Ganeshananthan

  This was also the time when the Sinhalese-Tamil problems came to the fore. Bandaranaike had come to power in 1956. But even at the Jaffna faculty, I had Sinhalese friends. Some of them were for parity, that Tamils should have equal access to education and to jobs. Some were against this, but they did not see this as a racial question at all, and I did have some friends who were against parity, but who were really my friends.

  But I had seen what could happen. When I was younger, I was sent to Colombo to live with one of my father's cousins, who was an engineer. This was very shortly after my father had died, and the idea was that his cousin would guide me back to something productive. That if I was unwilling to go to school, I would learn to work. I lived at his house in Wellawatte, which is a Tamil section in Colombo, and I went to the office with him every morning.

  And that summer, there were anti-Tamil riots. One morning the trouble was quite bad, and he told me I shouldn't go to work. But after he left, I followed him to work, because I was too restless to stay at home.

  Sometime after I arrived at the office, a mob formed and surrounded the building where we were working.

  KUMARAN WAS A JAFFNA TAMIL by birth. He had a skinny face and the same toothy, quick, white smile that his father had had, but his smile looked much whiter because he was very dark, as though the steady equatorial sun had imprinted itself permanently on his skin. He had a stocky build and that solid jaw. In Sri Lanka, his entire physical character meant that he was something unusual: he fell into the space between the ethnic assumptions people were willing to make. He was not always recognized as a Jaffna Tamil. It is not that Kumaran wasn't anyone. But all his life he had a shape shifter's gift for being mistaken for anyone. The ease of acquiring language and gesture. Becoming whoever was most convenient. And this was part of what later made him valuable to the Tigers.

  There were three men in charge of the office where he was working that summer in Colombo. One was Charles Gunasekera, and he was a Sinhalese. The other two were Tamil, and one was Kumaran's cousin. Kumaran had watched Charles help them to hide but had done nothing to hide himself, although the whole office could hear the mob coming. They were holding torches, and Kumaran thought about the roofs of faraway Jaffna, some of which were made of leaves and could be easily burned.

  When the mob came, Charles Gunasekera went out onto the steps and calmly said that the two Tamil men, the friends whom he had hidden, were not there. Kumaran watched him. He did not know Charles Gunasekera, but after a moment, he went out onto the steps and joined him.

  Probably the fact that I'm not obviously a Tamil by my physical origin saved me from a beating, Kumaran said slowly. It was foolish. I was a young boy. When we went home, my cousin was furious. He said, I told you not to go. But I had been protected by this cloak of ethnic anonymity.

  Kumaran paused, and I thought: But that was so arbitrary. We look alike.

  Later, Kumaran said, after the riots got worse, the government put the Tamil refugees on a ship that took them around the country to Point Pedro, back north.

  One of the things that disgusted me on this ship was that after having spent a number of days as refugees because they were seen to be Tamils, the Tamils who were on this ship were still following their caste prejudices. So I thought to myself, maybe we deserve what we get.

  I have to tell you that when he told me about his youth, what he said about having no prejudices, I did not believe him. If that was true, why did he try to stop my father?

  BUT KUMARAN DID NOT really think this was true, that Tamils deserved what had happened to them. He remembered his time in England and what it had been like there.

  When I got to the U.K. I had a shock. Very soon I realized that I had become a colored person. Worse than being a Tamil in Sri Lanka, in some ways, because they could pick me out as different on the street. And at first I was unable to find a firm willing to accept me as an apprentice while I was studying.

  At the end of three months, with my money running out, I finally found a place. Initially, I spent my time drinking a lot of beer and chasing a lot of girls and not doing any work at all. I liked this experience a lot.

  At this job, Kumaran met Muttiah, who later married into the family of the current president of Sri Lanka. And so Kumaran had entrée to what was a salon of sorts. He was particularly affected by Muttiah himself, as well as another man to whom he was introduced, an elderly gentleman who was a former member of the Communist Party and an ex-intelligence agent. This man was an anarchist, but did not believe in violence, and Kumaran, riot residue still in his brain, was beginning to disagree. Kumaran was surrounded by this group of people, lived with them, breathed with them. He was still a boy from Urelu, who still remembered everything that had happened to him there, whereas his older friend, Muttiah, had entirely rejected Sri Lanka and the East. This was something that Kumaran had no desire or ability to do. The elderly gentleman edited a monthly magazine. Kumaran began to write for it, and to think very hard about politics. Later he would come to articulate his deep revulsion toward anything race- or caste-based.

  After a year, almost by accident and without a great deal of studying, he managed to pass his courses. It was time to go back.

  BECAUSE HE STILL DID not have very much money, he decided to make the trip overland. It turned out to be a pilgrimage of sorts. It was just before this trip that Kumaran fell in Love. Because he was Kumaran he fell in Love Twice. The first time began in a bookshop. A few days earlier, he had heard from a friend who was very upset. The friend had met a beautiful girl in a bookshop. But she would not give him her telephone number, and now he could not find her, although he had gone back to the bookstore for many days, hoping to see her again. Not long after talking to this friend, Kumaran went into this bookshop himself to buy a copy of a political journal. He saw a girl matching his friend's description standing in the magazine aisle. She was fair-haired and she wore boots that made her seem taller than she was. She had a sculptured face, a face he might have seen wandering in a museum. Her mouth was shiny, red, and slick. She wore rectangular-framed black glasses on the bridge of her nose.

  Kumaran went up to her and introduced himself by telling her who she was. (You're Justine. I know. But who are you? I don't know you.) In the course of one conversation with her Kumaran persuaded her to go to India with him. Later his persuasive abilities would be of great use to the Tigers. He was not yet in Love with her, although he liked her shiny fair hair, her serious black glasses, and her red mouth, which was the opposite of serious. She had been reading a magazine to which he subscribed. He thought she was someone with whom he could be friends.

  A few months later she asked him to go to Paris with her on the way to India. She was French and wanted to go home. His friend, the man who had seen her in the first place, did not come with them.

  At Heathrow, a brusque customs officer stopped her.

  Where are you going?

  To Paris.

  With whom, madam?

  My boyfriend.

  What is his name? Where does he live? This gentleman?

  But the agent already knew Kumaran's name. Kumaran was standing right there. Justine took a deep breath.

  Don't you have any English friends? Why don't you travel with them? the customs agent was yelling. It's people like you, madam, who are causing a problem in this country.

  Love turns Political sometimes. From the airport, Kumaran called up a left-wing newspaper to tell them about the incident. The story made a small scandal. Someone in London saw it, clipped it, and anonymously sent it to his family in Sri Lanka. Vani opened the envelope and read it and pressed her lips together. In Paris, Kumaran found a letter responding to the article, a letter saying Go back where you came from.

  Political Love. Or rather, Love under the strain of politics. Kumaran was fed up with London, with Paris, with Europe. He could not stop himself from wanting home.

  KUMARAN THOUGHT HE MIGHT be falling in Love with Justine himself. From Paris they went
to Geneva, and then to Venice. They took a boat to Istanbul and talked about politics. He sensed in her a willingness to be radical. She sang to herself in French on the deck of the ship, and when she went below deck with him, her hair kept the fragrance of the salt wind. He thought she might like to go home with him. She was French, and they were in Love. She decided to go to Sri Lanka with him. He had felt guilty about none of this so far, but now, when he thought of his childhood sweetheart, Meenakshi, waiting for him, he felt conscience stab him. He thought about writing her a letter and didn't.

  They took a boat from Istanbul to Erzurum. Then they rode a bus to the Iranian border. From there they hitchhiked on lorries to Tehran. In Tehran they met some Albanian men who were driving to Pakistan. They agreed to share expenses and hitched a ride. Then they took a train to the border of India, where the customs agent looked up and down scornfully at Kumaran.

  Who are you going to see?

  My mother.

  And this answer prompted the customs agent to ask why Kumaran was taking a white girl home to see his mother. Kumaran did not say anything in response, but inside he was furious and mortified: the customs agent was still speaking in English; Justine understood everything. He hoped she was not too offended, because he really did want to marry her.

  FROM THERE THEY WENT to Delhi, where they were delayed for nearly a week as Kumaran tangled with the Indian secret police, who suspected that he was a Pakistani spy. In retrospect, this seems less ridiculous than it did then. When the matter was finally cleared up, by way of apology the police booked them berths to Madras. From Madras to Rameshwaram, and from there to Thanushkodi. Back then to get to Thanushkodi you took the ferry, and as you crossed from India to Sri Lanka you could see the very big rocks that rise out of the sea. In mythology it is supposed to be the rest of the bridge built by the god Hanuman to rescue the damsel Sita.

  But Justine stopped at Rameshwaram.

  How long has it been since you have been home? she asked him.

  About a year. More or less, he said.

  I think you should go alone, she said. I'll wait here for you. You can send for me after a while.

  He shrugged. He needed to get home.

  When he arrived alone in Jaffna, he saw that his mother and Vani were glad to see him, and he was happier than he had realized he would be to see them. After Jaffna he went to Colombo to visit Kalyani. His older sister was angry to see him. But this was not because of Justine. She alone knew about Justine, but her anger ran deeper.

  You have no right to come here after going away for so long, Kalyani said.

  BUT HE HAD ACTUALLY become more Sri Lankan by going away. Once, in London, Kumaran had met a woman who was not yet an MP in Sri Lanka, who was a student at a British university. They were at a party at the Sri Lankan ambassador's house, and Kumaran, who would never learn to Shut Up, managed to silence the crowd by telling her that her father, then a racist Sri Lankan Cabinet minister, deserved whatever trouble he got. She was taken aback by the young man with the shock of dark hair who was so vehemently damning her. Kumaran was once a fighter, but even when he became physically violent, he still fought best with words. His time in England made him a scrapper, a plotter: a negotiator. And he did not die of a war wound, or in the political line of duty.

  AFTER VISITING KALYANI IN COLOMBO, Kumaran wrote to Justine and told her not to come to Sri Lanka. He returned to Jaffna and its university. Then, in 1976, he was gone. No one ever heard from or of Justine again, although it seemed for a time that Meenakshi's mournful face was everywhere. She was a classmate of Vani's, but Vani never spoke to her, although after she was killed, Kumaran's whole family went to her funeral.

  NEARLY TWENTY YEARS LATER, a doctor who was sympathetic to the cause told Kumaran that he had terminal cancer. You cannot escape your blood. And after being told this news, Kumaran was finally ready to leave the Tigers, to follow the family he had not seen in so long. To leave the country. Victor provided him with false identification papers: a humane gesture from a man who should have forgotten how to be humane by this time. And Kumaran went to Canada, where he lived in hiding, but not alone. He brought his daughter with him.

  He wrote letters to his family, not caring, finally, whether they were traced, whether he was found, knowing only that he wanted to see them again. He did; they came from all over the Western world to see him. Kumaran machan. Kumaran Anna. Our Kumaran, our darling, our dear. Is it really you? He was clean-shaven again for the first time in years and did not look like the wartime pictures of himself, those photographs in which he had always been in the periphery. They did not speak of the war; he did not want to talk about it. Tell me about yourselves, your husbands, your children. He was already beginning to lose weight and hair, his bones emerging from his body like an omen. They were with him, around him, when he died: his sisters.

  Shortly after his death, the Tigers turned down an offer that was just short of what they wanted: not secession, but a northern government with greater autonomy. His sisters barely paid attention, barely noticed, because Kumaran was dead. As Vairavan's murder had been an introduction to violence, this was a farewell: this, the cancer stripping Kumaran's bones, his blood, his vision going in the final days. They had no eyes for the news, only him, their amazing vanishing brother.

  My father, Murali, deals every day in people who will die. This is his business. My father's patients die. They die, and he has not lost the ability to be moved by this, as some doctors do. His patients die. They die young, not from bombs or guns or wars, but by themselves, by their bodies' betrayals. As Kumaran did, in the end. If one of his patients dies, my father will go to the funeral and transform himself from a doctor to a mourner. This is not a person (formerly). He passed that test long ago. Look at the body and make it no one. No. Not anymore. This is a body he has tended to as though his own, a body he has known, not in a sexual way, but in a paternally intimate way. More than a body. He is older now, and he has chosen to make the bodies he treats back into people, knowing already the burden this carries.

  Choosing to die in a certain way is a mark of honor in some cultures. This is not difficult to understand. Martyrdom is something crusaders secretly dream of: to fall, with honor, with a name. Anonymous martyrdom, on the other hand, is something very different. Kumaran died without a name, without choosing the manner in which he would die. Just a man, no longer a soldier. Whether he is a martyr or not: I cannot say.

  THE INTERSECTION OF WAR and love is a strange place. No one outside the Tigers ever knew who Janani's mother was, because Kumaran did not tell anyone. He had a year with us before he died, and he said barely a word. I suppose he had had in those twenty years a lot of practice in keeping secrets. Perhaps he wanted to keep her to himself. Perhaps he saw her in his daughter, and that was enough.

  Janani: from the beginning, she was uncannily like two people: her father, and me. She was four years younger than me, but except for being paler and considerably thinner, she was almost identical. She was fluent in Tamil, less so in English. She spoke a little Sinhalese. She never actually asked for her mother, but I felt noble, sharing mine. My parents helped her plan her wedding, and her father's funeral.

  Even now, in the middle of this, in the middle of all this: parents conducting the concert of Arranged Marriage. Parents want nothing more than to prevent their children from colliding with inevitability: that in a different world, there is a different kind of marriage, in which you do not and cannot marry a family. Parents Tamil and Sinhalese watch helplessly as their children cut themselves free of the need to please their ancestors. They walked out of their country to give us opportunity, but this was not the opportunity they intended us to take: American Marriage. We live by our own wits, our own hearts, and our own histories; there is no other way to survive here, and so we have learned to love people who do not worship our gods, eat our food, or share our blood. Our children are children of two races, sometimes of two religions, often of three countries.

  In
his last years of life, Kumaran privately renounced his ties to the Tigers, but he was still one of them. He told my parents he was sorry for what he had done to them; sorry for the letter he had written my father, threatening his life; sorry for everything.

  And still, in this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak of only two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first toward the second.

  Most of us. Not Janani. In Toronto, she passed through crowds without acknowledging those watching her—afraid of nothing, moved by nothing. She was among us, but still not one of us.