‘I called to speak to you about admitting the female cadre to the Home,’ he said without preamble. ‘Although the committee has approved it, the applicant will have to produce some documents – her birth certificate, a certificate from the village officer, an identity card, a medical certificate, and police clearance. If she can bring all that, we can admit her right away – even today.’
‘Sounds okay sir, except for the police clearance,’ replied Thawakkkul her brows knitting. ‘It’ll be difficult to get that for a cadre, sir. Even for ordinary people it takes about a week to ten days to get this clearance. This is a home where you provide shelter to people who have suffered. I perfectly understand that you should be wary of some harm coming to you through them and you have to take precautions. However, this does seem a bit much. The girl is here with my family in order to get a prosthesis fitted.’
‘Oh, is that so? That’s good,’ he paused before continuing. ‘I still think she’ll need some counselling because she is essentially a cadre and we have to be cautious. She’s going to be housed in a Sinhalese locale and we need to ensure that she can adjust to such an environment. She must have been brainwashed to believe that all Sinhalese are bad. If she hasn’t yet snapped out of that, it could be really bad, Thawakkul. Furthermore, because she is a cadre, the committee felt that the police clearance is crucial. Give it a shot and if you can’t get it … then we’ll cross that bridge.’
‘She isn’t in a state that requires counselling. From what I know of her she is practical, clear-headed and self-possessed in her approach. However, this police clearance business seems to be an obstacle. Anyway, I’ll get back to you, sir, if I find I’m unable to get it.’
Thawakkul was certain that whether Sathuriyan came looking for her or not, Yoga would definitely get to the Home in Anuradhapura.
Ever since her prosthesis was fitted, Yoga seemed more self-confident. The news that she was on the verge of securing a place in the Anuradhapura Home made her glow radiant with delight. The artificial limb clinic had assured her that if she required any alterations or repairs for her prosthesis, she could get it done at their clinic. Above all, Theivanai had been told to try and find out about Sathuriyan.
As previously arranged, she called Siththandi Maama and gave him the news of her having been fitted with the prosthesis and asked him to take her home. All the burdens weighing her down had been shed, one by one.
Only one problem prevented her from leaving immediately for the Anuradhapura Home and it was only the previous night that Thawakkul had discussed this with Yoga.
She had her birth certificate and her medical certificate. The village official could easily give her a character certificate. Amma knew him well, and even if Amma refused to help her with it, Thawakkul had assured her that Sahayawathani could be asked to get it for her. There was no problem with anything else. She even had a police certificate; she had been given one when she left the Pampaimadu camp.
All that was left was the identity card.
But this was not shocking news for Thawakkul. When Yoga had told her that she had a police clearance, she had been greatly relieved because she had thought that that was the most critical issue and now felt confident that Yoga’s admission into the Home was as good as done.
About three-fourths of the combatants had lost their identity cards during the civil war. Thawakkul had met many such people who had no identity certification except that they were obviously members of the LTTE.
Yoga decided to ask Siththandi Maama to get one for her. She asked Thawakkul to explain this to him.
Siththandi Maama appeared dapper in a pristine white shirt and dhothi, and looked very youthful and handsome despite his receding hairline. He had a neatly trimmed moustache and thick eyebrows. He had an involuntary habit of stroking his aquiline nose. He was an extrovert and got along with everybody. He was delighted with the change in Yoga’s personality.
‘Uncle, Yoga doesn’t have an identity card. Can you help her to get one?’ asked Thawakkul.
‘Yes, of course, I can,’ he replied with a smile. ‘But why does she need the card now?’ He laughed because it seemed ridiculous to him that someone who stayed at home all the time would require an identity card.
‘No, Uncle, Yoga is going to a Home. They are saying that an identity card is absolutely essential to move in there.’
‘A Home? Why, Yoga, have you spoken to your mother about this? When we have a family as vast as the sea, why should you move into a Home?’
As he was wholly unaware of the conditions prevailing in Yoga’s home environment, and would have been appalled had he known, this question wasn’t illogical.
Yoga decided that it was time Maama knew the truth.
‘What should I say to Amma, Maama?’ asked Yoga bitterly. ‘I’m an unwanted burden upon her. Akka can’t stand the sight of me. What am I going to achieve by staying there? Kala, who is my only comfort there, is soon to be married and I don’t want her or anyone else to face any problems because of me. It’s better that I exit without a trace from their lives.
‘They’re sending me to your house because they consider me a bad omen here.
‘But, Maama, please don’t tell Amma that I told you all this,’ Yoga pleaded. ‘I’m going to the Home because I honestly believe that I’ll get some peace there.’
‘Che, this is so hard to listen to,’ replied Maama wringing his hands worriedly. ‘I cannot believe that Vathsala acts in such a mean-spirited manner. Pathma seems to have lost her reason with her age.
‘Thawakkul, I don’t know how to thank you, magal. If I had known that this little one was carrying such a burden in her heart, I would have taken her to our place a long time ago. Only God can find a good path for everyone. In our house there are four or five children and many adults. She will be respected and loved there. Please let her stay there for a little while. I know it isn’t possible for her to stay there permanently. From that perspective, I too feel that it is best for her to go to the Home. It would be good for her to be among others with similar problems.’
Siththandi Maama was naturally able to understand the realities of life and was an open and frank person.
‘Yoga, get your identity card as quickly as possible…everything will be alright then,’ Thawakkul patted Yoga on her back encouragingly.
‘Why are you crying as you leave, Yoga Akka?’ asked Sano hugging her. ‘People will imagine we ill-treated you and drove you out,’ she added, with an irrepressible twinkle. Yoga smiled and wiped her eyes.
‘Uncle, why are you called Siththandi?’
‘Sano, what kind of disrespectful behaviour is this?’ Umma rebuked her. Gulfer frowned at her cheeky younger sister although she couldn’t help smiling.
‘Why do you scold the child, ma? The name my father gave me was Poovarasu. I live in Siththandi. It was Yoga who first named me “Siththandi Maama”. Eventually all my relatives in Mavadivempu started referring to me as Siththandi Maama. You can call me however you like – Poovarasu Maama or Siththandi Maama.’
‘Poovarasu … Poo, flower, plus Arasu, king; that means you are the King of Flowers,’ Sano giggled.
‘Sano!’Thawakkul’s tone of voice put an end to Sano’s impudence.
‘Sano is a bright child,’ protested Siththandi Maama. ‘The children of today are all like that and they should be like that. Sano, what are you studying, ma?’
‘I’m a second-year student doing my bachelor’s in arts,’ she replied,
‘Good. Don’t scold the child,’ he said. ‘See how her face has wilted?’
Poovarasu was a colourful character. After he left, Thawakkul and her sisters sat talking about him for a long time.
‘This Shaitan has been shrieking non-stop,’ Nisha came grumbling with Thawakkul’s phone in her hand.
‘Why are you so irritated, Umma?’
‘Those who use phones should be attentive and answer their own phones. I have enough on my plate without having to rush around bringing your
phones to you. In spite of having so many girls in this house, I don’t have any help!’ Umma muttered, thrusting the phone into Thawakkul’s hands and stalking off.
‘Umma always does this. Don’t we help her whenever she asks?’ Gulfer mumbled following Umma out. ‘She doesn’t tell us what she wants us to do and takes everything on herself. Then she gets tired and starts cribbing and carping.’
Sano and Jana chuckled as the same old drama unfolded. Things seemed to have returned to normal in their household.
‘Hey, don’t make a racket! This is an overseas call,’ hushed Thawakkul, as she pressed the accept button and took the call.
With the confusion in her mind over the past few days, she had not switched on her computer to do any work or even check her email. She hadn’t communicated with anyone. As soon as she had decided not to work anymore, nothing interested her anymore.
Suvash scolded her for not replying to any of his emails. Thawakkul explained the situation to him including the threats on her life and told him how depressed she was because she had had to give up everything and stay cooped up in her house. At a cultural exchange function that she had attended last year in Malaysia, she had met Suvash, who was from Nepal. Their friendship had developed through their email and telephonic conversations.
Suvash had studied law. He was the chief advisor in a human rights organization.
‘This problem isn’t restricted to just your country, Thawakkul, it’s all over the world,’ he sighed. ‘The women who have fought against it are able to stand, their head held high. However, it isn’t easy and you need to be very courageous. You cannot wait around and analyse what different kinds of opposition turn up and from where. It could come in any form. You’re a brave girl. Don’t destroy yourself by debating between society and freedom. Take care and if ever you need any kind of help, talk to me, and I promise to do whatever I can.
‘If you cannot work in your village, do you plan to remain a prisoner in your own house forever? You’ll be doing yourself a grave injustice. If your village opposes you, aren’t there other places in the country? Go somewhere else and work. See what further studies you can get into. There is so much in the world, Thawakkul, there are so many things to learn. You need to get out of that place. You don’t have to oppose society, but neither do you have to give in. Maintain an in-between position. But you need to raise yourself to a new level to live like that. Put aside everything else and study, Thawakkul. There, I’ve told you what I thought I should, the rest is up to you. Please think about it.’
She had no doubt that Suvash’s advice, given with friendship, affection and genuine concern, was very valuable. He had suggested something that no one else had. Most people were willing to get involved if a problem concerned them, but when it concerned somebody else, they became judgmental; this was a bizarre but incontrovertible fact.
‘Everyone sees me as a mere girl,’ thought Thawakkul. ‘This society has no desire to accept me as a person, a human being.
‘But that doesn’t mean that I should have no aspirations and not even try to pull myself up. Why should I just stay rooted to the ground until I die? What Suvash says is so true. If I leave the village, don’t I have other places I can go to, in this country or in this world?’
‘Raththa, you said it was an overseas call, and suddenly I find you deeply immersed in your thoughts,’ Jana came and sat beside her.
‘Jana, it was my friend Suvash who lives in Nepal. I was only thinking of how right he was in the things he said.’
‘Raththa, for you to stay indoors because of your problems is only a temporary solution. It’s certainly not a permanent one. Whatever decision you make now is something that will affect the rest of your life.’
‘How clear Jana’s thoughts and speech were,’ thought Thawakkul in wonderment. After all, it is from confusion that clarity comes!
Everyone was seated at the dining table.
Nisha had made the family favourite: wheat-flour pittu, egg-plant curry and scrambled egg dry curry.
Everyone in the house loved wheat-flour pittu which was made by stir-frying wheat-flour until it turned golden and steam-cooked with grated coconut. Nisha would cook this menu at least twice or thrice a week.
‘Thawakkul, what did you do all day today, ma?’
Thawakkul’s fingers were busy mixing the pittu with the egg-plant curry. She didn’t say anything, but just smiled at Vappa.
‘I was thinking about it,’ said Vappa softly. ‘It’s very difficult for someone like you who has worked outside the home to stay cooped up indoors. If you wish, go and work in Colombo. After all, Colombo is a place that you’re used to.’
‘Oh, I thought of the very same thing,’ exclaimed Nisha. ‘I find it difficult to see my child caged in the house. Let her go and work for a while in Colombo. Time will fly. After that if we get her married, everything will be alright!’
Like every mother, through the ages, Nisha obsessed about giving her daughter in marriage to a good man.
‘I’ll think about it, Vappa,’ replied Thawakkul, pointedly ignoring Umma’s remark about her marriage.
After her experience with Sufiyan, Nisha had noticed that Thawakkul no longer participated in any talk about marriage and remained totally silent on that topic. Only love can make a person foolish enough to dwindle into an old maid just because of one bad experience. Nisha prayed silently, albeit fervently, that her daughter should not be one of the fools who did that.
That night, their dinner time was normal and relaxed. The family sat around chatting for a long time, and although Thawakkul wasn’t as vivacious as she usually was, she sat at the table with everybody. She seemed to be brooding and not very interested in anything. Habeeb was talking about buying a piece of land which was about one and one third acres. Although he wasn’t rich, he was a very hard-working man who wanted to make sure that he left his wife and daughters with enough to live comfortably after he was gone. Most importantly, Habeeb was a modern and idealistic father who was determined not to give any dowry for his daughters.
He had given his children an education and good cultural values. They had good general knowledge and were aware of the world. Only an idiot would buy grooms for them.
He was indeed a very ordinary man. He was not a man with great spiritual insight, or one who had mastered the works of Karl Marx and Gandhi or read and assimilated the radical ideas on women’s rights and revolutionary theories of a Bhaarathiyar or a Periyar. Nor did he have any idea of who Che Guevara and Lenin were. Having grasped the realities of life, he was able to understand the nature of human beings in the context of his circumstances and experience and he believed there was nothing wrong in making changes which were realistically possible.
Nisha was the same. She hated the idea of dowry from the bottom of her heart. She had no hesitation in arguing that it was totally against Islamic values and had profound contempt for men who took a dowry to get married.
Therefore, it was needless to say that their children had all vowed that they would not marry anyone who demanded a dowry. To them, buying a man with money and property was such an abhorrent practice that they couldn’t even think of living their life with a man like that.
Habeeb believed in putting aside a little bit of his earnings and eventually investing this cache in land and valuables for his children as that was something that would help them later on in their lives and they would remember and praise him in the future when he was no longer around.
He wished to buy this particular tract in Sano’s name. Sano, always sprightly and frolicsome, was delighted with this notion, and crowed that she had become rich.
Everyone teased her.
‘You would be a rich girl, my dear,’ said Gulfer, ‘only if you had worked hard, earned the money and bought the land yourself.’
Sano pouted, sulked and snuggled up to Vappa who couldn’t help smiling at her antics.
‘Although they have grown so much, they still behave like babies,’ he chuckl
ed.
‘It’s almost midnight,’ Nisha broke up the gathering. ‘Everyone get to bed!’ If they slept late, she knew that waking them up for the Morning Prayer would be like having to move a mountain.
5
Sathuriyan was dead!
Theivanai wasn’t really shocked at this news.
The number of combatants had dwindled to mere thousands from the lakhs of rebels at the start of the campaign – obviously because of loss of life.
Theivanai’s brother-in-law, Shakthivel, had discovered that Sathuriyan was dead when he had conducted a thorough search for him upon Theivanai’s request. He had also unearthed information in full detail about Sathuriyan’s mother, his older sister and his younger sister.
It turned out that Sathuriyan had been the chief investigation officer of the Tamil Tigers’ intelligence wing.
When Shaktivel started his efforts to dig out details of Sathuriyan, he learnt that no one knew his real name. This was not unusual because the combatants seldom used their given names and Shakthivel had not had much hope in finding him. Recruits were given a new identity when they joined the LTTE – sometimes several new identities for each individual to use on their various missions.
They also did not know which section of the LTTE he had belonged to and what role he had been performing. They did not even know when he had joined the LTTE.
As they had no information at all about Sathuriyan initially, they began their quest using only guesswork.
However, because of Theivanai’s great regard for Thawakkul Akka, who had entrusted her with the task, and because she had met Yoga in person and realized she was another combatant like herself who had been affected adversely by the war, she could not and did not want to wash her hands off this task. Furthermore, she had developed great respect for the mysterious Sathuriyan, stemming from the fact that he had come forward to marry and rehabilitate a physically challenged person.
In a society where men consider it beneath them to marry an undowered girl, Theivanai felt that there could be no doubting the love Sathuriyan had shown for Yoga, an impoverished, destitute amputee.
Ummath Page 27