In short, the secretary implied that the rehabilitation of war victims was a long-term project.
They continued talking for a long time even after their lunch was over. After they had done with their official business they exchanged their views on many different topics, the structure of the state, societal structures, common problems and pre-war and post-war difficulties.
‘When a girl from an Islamic society comes into our area and works hard to help our women, naturally I will give my total support and help.’
Though she was very impressed with the secretary’s way of handling things, as her watch said four o’clock, Thawakkul had to end the conversation quickly and take her leave.
The lunch meeting finally concluded at four in the evening, and Thawakkul had to hurry to catch the Manmunai ferry to the town to Eravur.
As she was about to climb into Azeem’s auto-rickshaw, a little girl’s voice piped up, ‘Akka, is your name Thawakkul?’ A child, possibly ten or twelve years old, stood at her elbow.
‘I’m from Theresa Children’s Home, Akka. An Akka from the Home asked me to give you this letter.’
Thawakkul returned the girl’s smile as she unfolded the sheet of paper. The letter had been written in a neat and tidy hand.
My dear Akka,
My name is Theivanai. I am writing this from Theresa Children’s Home. I have heard that you help women who have been affected badly by the war. I also heard that there was a meeting about it in the state headquarters. I am a girl who has been badly affected by the war. I have lost a leg almost fully and have been fitted with an artificial one. I could not attend the meeting. I am very eager to meet you. I have faith that you can help me. Please come and meet me, Akka.
Humbly yours,
Theivanai
Thawakkul read the letter written in a very legible hand a second time before she folded it. ‘How far is Theresa Children’s Home from here?’ she asked the child. ‘Will you take me there?’
‘Yes, of course, Akka.I live there as well. Theivanai Akka looks after us and helps us like a hostel warden.’ She climbed into an auto-rickshaw with Thawakkul and quickly gave directions to the Home.
Thawakkul was very impressed with Theivanai at their first meeting. She was a poised and self-possessed young woman with a cheerful demeanour and her handicap was barely discernible. ‘When I sent that letter, I thought a busy person like yourself would brush me off with an excuse. I am really delighted to see you’
‘Me too, Theivanai…I can see from your letter that you have faith and self-confidence. You had written in words that could not be ignored. Tell me all about yourself…’
Her approach caused astonishment on Theivanai’s part. ‘Akka, how is it that you talk to me almost as if you know me from before? I don’t know why, but ever since I saw you, I feel I have a new confidence in the future.’
Every word that Theivanai uttered demonstrated her maturity and understanding. Thawakkul grew eager to know how Theivanai had become this level-headed.
Theivanai had been a Tamil Tiger. She had been wounded in the war. Not wanting to be a burden on her family, she had moved to the Theresa Children’s Home and was a kind of guardian to the children there.
‘I’ve been wondering, Akka, whether I should live out my days in this Home or do something more challenging. I hear that you help women who have been affected by the war. That is why I thought I should see you. Forgive me, Akka–by rights, I should have come to see you.’ Her voice was filled with a sense of guilt.
Theivanai seemed to be a person who wanted to be independent and self-reliant.
‘I joined the Movement without taking my O level exams. However, as I have studied to that level, I can manage a certain degree of book-keeping and accounts. I took up a job in a book shop in town but when they realized that I had been a Tamil Tiger they fired me.
‘I rather fancy the idea of becoming a book-binder. If I could get into that business I could get a good income in this village. There are a lot of papers that require binding in the Divisional Secretariat and in the schools here. Everything has to be taken into town to be bound. I believe if I could learn how to do that properly, I could become self-sufficient …’
‘It’s not possible to sit here and get trained, Theivanai,’ cut in Thawakkul. ‘You will need to stay in town because otherwise the daily commute would be very difficult. Will you be allowed to stay outside and get trained?’
‘Leave it to me, Akka, I will talk to the Head and get permission. I learn very fast, you know…I’ll just need two weeks, not more than that.’
‘I’ll try to find out how this can be done, Theivanai. How do I get in touch with you?’
Thawakkul made a note of the telephone number of the Home and left. It had been an orangey twilight when she had come to see Theivanai but now darkness had begun to take over. The auto-rickshaw driver was from her village and she made it a practice to use his rickshaw regularly. With long and easy familiarity, he grumbled about the length of time he had been kept waiting. They had left their village at eight o’clock that morning.
‘Tomorrow we have to go to Vaharai, Azeem…’
Azeem, who was tearing the curtain of darkness with his speeding rickshaw, turned to look at her and smiled.
‘Will tomorrow be another long day like today?’
‘Most probably…If I take the bus, I won’t have enough time to do all my work and get back home through all the recaptured areas. The buses are infrequent as well, which is why I have to drag you along.’
Azeem was always informed well in advance of her travel plans, so that he would not commit himself to another customer. He followed her activities with great interest. He was also well aware that there were those who looked askance at her because of her emancipated life style.
‘You’re a lucky dog, matchan. She only hires you. So, tell us…what kind of a whore is she?’
Azeem, who understood Thawakkul’s dedication to her work and the people she met to achieve her goals, often had arguments with his sniggering friends.
‘Your tongues will rot! She believes she must do some good for the society. She struggles hard to do it.’
‘Oh, so this is how she keeps you fooled. Social work, my foot. She goes everyday to a different place – is that what you call social work?’
Azeem complained to Thawakkul about them, but all she said was, ‘Let it go, Azeem. We need to ignore such pettiness. I’ve heard a thousand such stories and I don’t bother to even take notice of these things.’
Azeem was surprised. He had believed that, in general, women give up very easily and would never be able to take humiliation of any kind. He realized that Thawakkul was different from the others.
By the time she reached home that evening, it was eight o’clock.
‘Your ears never can hear the words “come home before dark” no matter how many times I say them,’ her Umma grumbled. This was her usual welcome.
‘I was unexpectedly delayed, Umma…’
‘These are bad times, ma. We are good people but not everybody sees us that way. With so many questions about the security of women, we have to be careful and need to look after ourselves…’
Not wanting the conversation on this topic to extend any further, Thawakkul went in.
She knew that it was totally unrealistic to contemplate breaking the community’s code of conduct but she was filled with anger and dissatisfaction that most of these ‘rules’ solely targeted women. At the same time she did not believe in declaring herself a woman totally liberated from the laws of the society she lived in. All she wanted was to declare herself an independent person within the community and culture to which she belonged.
‘How was Kokkadicholai, magal? Isn’t it considered to be the fortress at the heart of the land occupied by the Tamil Tigers?’ Her father, Habeeb, asked her eagerly. Once he had known every part of Kokkadicholai as well as a local postman would know it, but that day, wanting to see it through the eyes and experience
of his daughter, he sat in front of her.
‘Yes, Vappa. It’s the stronghold of the Tigers. There are several ways to get there but we used the ferry today. It was a great new experience for me to cross the stream in a raft, although, as we passed by the army camp, I was a bit nervous. I had my head covered and they all stood up and stared at me. But the plight of the people in the place is very sad. Widows and orphans – it is impossible to describe their suffering. Many men are prisoners of war. Thousands have either died or gotten lost during the war. Listening to their stories is very disheartening.’
‘The Eelam Movement had demanded a separate state for the Tamil people, but all the Tamils are now left with is abject misery. If they had thought things through, the people would not have been reduced to this state. If this Movement had not started, the Tamils would have won Sri Lanka just by their superior literacy level – at one time the only people in Sri Lanka who had had higher education were those that belonged to the Tamil ethnic group. Then the Tigers picked up arms and brainwashed everybody into believing that they were going to achieve “freedom”. What a farce! This is like getting angry with the water-tank and not washing your bottom!’ Habeeb sighed deeply, and then stretched out his legs and sat more comfortably. As a sign that he was engrossed in the conversation, he began to shake his legs.
‘True, Vappa. There are several thousands of acres under the control of the Tigers. So many good farmlands are now idle and their fertile soil has become putrid. The children living there don’t go to school. Three generations, three decades, they wagered the dreams of an entire society. The people, who had been enslaved by a group that was completely infatuated with the prospect of power, are suffering today and really need all our pity.’
Umma and her sisters tut-tutted in sympathy.
‘Helping the suffering masses in any way is truly noble, magal,’ said Nisha.
‘What you are doing is truly a good thing, Raththa…You should carry on no matter what,’ her sister, Jana, encouraged her.
3
Although Yoga had been hired as a helping hand, she had to do all the housework, work that would normally be done by older servants. The master and mistress of the house went out to work everyday. The man was a senior government official … They had two daughters, both older than Yoga, who were studying in St. Cecilia’s Convent School Whenever she saw them leave for school, the thought of her unfulfilled dreams of an education would open the floodgates of her sorrow. She missed the poorly-equipped class-rooms and the loudly chirping baby-birds within – her friends at school – and her anger towards her present situation, where she was totally unloved, would increase. The deep recesses of her mind were filled with dark thoughts and she rued the day that she was born to lead a life bereft of opportunity and good fortune. Each morning, she was up by five o’clock to help the lady of the house with the cooking. She would then do the dishes, the laundry and then scour, scrub, wipe and mop to ensure that the house was spotlessly clean.
Macabre ghosts haunted her dreams when her insomnia gave way to sheer exhaustion. Whatever problems her parents may have had, was it fair on their part to abandon her like this? Such questions battered her and her young heart grew hard with bitterness. Her rancour towards her parents increased with each passing day.
Amma took Vathsala to Chitti’s house in Batticaloa.
‘How can we take a girl who has attained puberty from place to place? My stomach just churns at the sight of a Sri Lankan soldier. None of the news we hear these days is good. Please let Vathsala stay here…When the conditions are better, I will come and fetch her.’
With the satisfaction that Vathsala was now in a safe place, Pathma sought some arrangement for Yoga’s safekeeping.
Her parents alighted on a plan to send her to a house in Batticaloa as a maid. This decision shocked Yoga, but Pathma felt that her decision was justified considering both the family’s indigence and the necessity of ensuring the safety of the girls.
‘Why can’t I stay in Chitti’s house with Vathsala?’
‘There are already four or five children there, how many mouths can they possibly feed? They are financially tight because Chitti’s husband is ill, and can’t go to work. Your Akka has attained puberty, so I can’t send her to work in a stranger’s home. The times are dangerous. Don’t worry. They won’t ask you to cook or anything. Just some simple tasks. Eat properly and stay safe, alright?’
Although the decision to send Yoga for domestic work upset Subramaniyam, there wasn’t any other way out for the poor family. All their relatives were also evacuating and seeking shelter almost like refugees.
Pathma consoled Subramaniyam saying, ‘Have we sent her to work so that we can get the money she earns? We have to struggle and move to a different place every week. We are hungry, starving. Let her stay there, doing some little jobs and eat well…’
As Kala was a mere child at that time, she would stay on with Amma. Though her younger brothers were also little, they were still able to run errands and were able to bring in ten to fifty rupees as income. One worked in a cycle-repair shop. Another sold ice-lollies. The third, the sixth in the family, was only six years old. In Yoga’s reckoning, he and Kala were lucky. Whatever the circumstances, she found it most desirable to stay in one’s own hut, with one’s own family. In those unfamiliar times, she constantly longed for this journey to be over soon. She wanted to be back under the cool shelter of their thatched hut; to check every morning to see if the ginger she had planted in the wet ground under the banana tree had sprouted; to count the little green fruits of the mango tree and stake her claim on the branch with the most number of fruits, to pick the ripe mangoes that the squirrels had nibbled on and discarded, to eat cashew fruits roasted on an open fire. She began to worry that those times were never going to return… ever!
‘What’s happening? Why can’t I stay in our own home? Why do we have to keep moving here and there? I know they say there is fighting going on, but why should they fight? What are they fighting for?’ She couldn’t understand it at all and was unable to get answers to the questions that plagued her. She gradually grew numb with adapting to the rapid changes.
It was a month since she started work. She had lost weight. The disappointment that her parents did not come to see her weighed her down. Even Akka, who was living in the same town, had not bothered to visit her.
Outside Yoga’s little world, catastrophes were unfolding. The war was spreading like wildfire. In Batticaloa District, the areas that had a Tamil majority were under the control of the Tamil Tigers. Bomb attacks were daily events; there were planned assassinations, and the people were in the grip of panic. Beautiful towns and ancient monuments that had been the pride and joy of the denizens became the objects of attack. Villages were split according to ethnicity. Land-mines filled the bowels of the earth. Many roads were blocked and travel was nigh impossible or inordinately delayed. Army check-posts mushroomed everywhere and normal life was wholly disrupted. The culture of violence and terrorism was now the order of the day leaving destruction, devastation and heavy loss of life in its wake.
The struggle for power turned into a war and damaged not only lives and property, it also depleted the nation’s ethical and cultural values.
On the news Yoga saw that the hapless Muslim communities that had lived and thrived in the districts of Mannar and Musali from time immemorial had been forcibly evacuated at gun-point without any kind of camp being set up for them. This peaceful community owned large farmlands and orchards. Mannar was flanked by the wide expanse of the sea on one side and a river on the other. The Muslims and Tamils had co-existed in peace until then. Like evil spirits doing the bidding of sorcerers, the Eelam Movement drove the Muslims out perceiving them as a disparate group, instead of another minority community with a separate identity. Violence was perpetrated against them with the full approval of the Eelam authorities. Uprooted Muslims had no place to flee to, no camps were set up for them. The news channels deplored this act.
The roads from the north to Anuradhapura and Puttalam were filled with thousands of Muslim refugees. This had become a most distressing and unforgettable episode in Sri Lankan history.
Although people lamented the loss of their property and belongings, some consoled themselves with the thought that they had been allowed to live.
The Movement had begun with the justifiable objective of securing the Tamil people’s basic rights and for promises made but not kept. The situation had deteriorated to this extent because the Movement had sought to flex its muscles under international limelight. The massacre of the Muslim minority and the acquisition of their farms were stratagems to achieve their ends. The fight for ‘social equality’ became a Movement that threatened the entire population of Sri Lanka, crossing the borders between the north and the east before spreading to the rest of the country creating chaos and panic everywhere.
It was perplexing to thirteen-year-old Yoga, who couldn’t understand why the Movement had to fight or kill people. She wondered how many other families had been rendered helpless and homeless like hers.
After what seemed like eight months of solitary confinement in the government officer’s house, silently carrying out her menial duties as an unpaid servant who was given food and sometimes a set of clothes, her unanswered questions continued to weigh heavily on her mind.
She was horrified to find herself bleeding from her vagina. The blood trickled down between her legs. Certain that she had contracted a fatal disease and that this was the end. On some level she was glad that death was imminent and her meaningless existence would soon be over. What sort of disease is this, she wondered. But surely this will be the cause of my death. She prayed, her palms pressed together to God to take her away.
Her cramps became unbearable, like a thorny bush within her writhing to escape. She had to keep running to the bathroom to change her skirt or check for stains. In desperation she mentioned her ailment to the lady of the house.
‘I do not understand what it is … my stomach aches, blood is flowing out and I am frightened…’ she hesitantly told the lady of the house.
Ummath Page 3