The Seasons of Trouble

by Rohini Mohan

  The army also used the register of returnees as a sort of blacklist. Whenever there was a burglary, a murder, an unlicensed meeting, a skirmish in a neighbourhood, former detainees on the list were called to the army camp or police station. Alibis and excuses were scrutinised and houses searched for arms. The process often took a whole day. If someone didn’t turn up—even for good reasons like illness, travel or work—his or her employers and family were harassed. It was difficult to hold down a full-time job while being watched so closely.

  Government jobs, too, had interminable waitlists that could be overcome only through bribery or political influence. Through a friend, Prashant met and sought help from a local journalist who wrote for the weekly Thinappuyal, known to be run by former LTTE arms trafficker Sivanathan Kishore, now a politician. When Mugil discovered this, she was livid. Kishore was close to state intelligence agencies. She warned Prashant not to trust people like him: former Tiger leaders who had ingratiated themselves with the ruling regime. Some had even joined thuggish political parties like the Eelam People’s Democratic Party or EPDP, a pro-government Tamil outfit, which was riding the construction boom in the north with a lucrative sand-mining business across the Jaffna peninsula. Thanks to the state, the party had a free rein to wreak havoc among Tamils. A typical abuse of power involved the navy restricting fishermen’s access to the sea while the EPDP dug up the beach. The party men—co-opted Tamils and former LTTE and non-Tiger militants accused of crimes such as rape, arms smuggling and murder—bullied poor civilians, kidnapped people for ransom, and worked with military intelligence to spread fear. To seek political help was to enter a murky, opportunistic world a desperate man like Prashant could never fully comprehend.

  Prashant eventually paid a Jaffna placement agency 3,000 borrowed rupees to find him a position as a driver or handyman. Until they called back, he decided to make do with part-time work in a motorbike repair shop, being paid per puncture fixed. It was barely ten rupees a day.

  Mugil saw her brother grow more bitter by the day. Any news about ‘normalcy’ or ‘rapid economic development’ pushed him over the edge. He would throw aside the newspaper and kick the mud. ‘The Northern Revival is improving lives, it seems!’ he would say, spitting the words, referring to the state’s economic plan for the war-torn northern province. ‘Their lives or our lives?’ At other times he moped around the house, no more the energetic playmate of his nephews. He grew unpredictable and moody.

  At dinner one day, as he squished the pink rice pittu with some banana, he reminisced about the simple life they had led in the Vanni. ‘We didn’t have much, but we felt safe, and we were happy, no?’

  Mugil nodded. ‘But it feels like it was so long ago. I hardly think those days will come back.’

  ‘I believe they will if we want it,’ he said. Mugil rolled her eyes.

  Another day, as they were walking back with him from a friend’s funeral, Prashant broke down. He had been carrying Tamizh piggyback and had to set him down on the street. ‘I just can’t go on, I just can’t,’ he said, burying his face in his hands. ‘I had to give away several others, Akka, I had to give names,’ he said. ‘I could not bear the pain.’ He had focused on the future to endure the humiliation, he said, but the future was nothing but broken promises.

  It was only these episodes that gave Mugil some indication of what her brother might have suffered in the camp. His only instruction on his return home had been for his family not to ask him about detention. He sometimes said he could never forget or forgive the treatment meted out in the first year, but rarely elaborated. Instead, he kept a diary. He wrote in a thick college notebook every afternoon after lunch, the words flowing so swiftly from his pen that the dots and lines of the Tamil characters were forgotten. Long sentences, many exclamations, words furiously underlined. Nothing scribbled out or corrected. Sometimes it was as if he couldn’t see the blue lines on the page: the sentences drooped with the fatigue of remembering. On one page, he drew the missiles the LTTE engineering department had taught him to design, perky arrows labelling the illustrations. On another, he listed all the artillery shells that he had identified in the war zone. He squeezed rhyming couplets into the margins. Every day, he picked a fresh topic to write about: the disabled, the former combatants, orphans, disappearances, the president, the army, Tiger turncoats, prayer, mothers. ‘Detention’ was the most extensive section, running for almost twenty-four pages. It began thus: ‘If I had to explain how I felt in front of him, I would use this word: eunuch. No one will believe me, but I know. I remember, and it twists inside me like a knife mauling my organs.’ He referred to the entire army, the Sinhalese people, state representatives, all with the single disrespectful male Tamil pronoun avan. Him, he, his. ‘He is not capable of mercy’; ‘He gave us food, but we were empty shells with full stomachs’; ‘It was his plan to keep me away from my family so that I see no hope’; ‘He is teaching me carpentry but his repetitive questions about hidden weapons continue’; ‘He gives me two choices in a leader: the evil general who gave orders, and the evil mastermind.’ And the line that occurred repeatedly: ‘It is his plan to finish me.’ It was fiercely personal, yet Prashant seemed conscious of an unknown reader at times: ‘You should have seen the toilets—they were not fit for dogs, perhaps that’s why they gave them to Tigers.’

  He was on his fifth such diary when Mugil found them all hidden in the back of the kitchen cupboard. She read some of his writings on and off, but it rekindled too much of what she was trying to forget.

  Prashant wanted to submit his diary as testimony to an independent committee that he hoped would investigate war crimes. Global civil society organisations, the Tamil diaspora and the UN had been demanding such an unbiased investigation since the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. Assuming it would be similar to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Prashant wrote a diary entry lauding the format of the TRC but questioning its method of redress: the criminals of apartheid were shown mercy, but he did not want to forgive his abusers. ‘All my generosity has died with the thousands of victims. It might be petty of me, but real justice is punishment for all.’

  When he read it out loud to Mugil, she argued with him. She wanted severe penalties for the politicians and upper ranks of the military but forgiveness for others. ‘Think as a Tiger soldier yourself,’ she told Prashant. ‘We were foot soldiers, teenagers. Should we be punished for what our leaders asked us to do?’

  Prashant insisted that the Sri Lankan army was different. He recalled videos of soldiers shooting the naked bodies of suspected Tigers, laughing about the shapes of women’s corpses as they piled them in the backs of trucks. ‘They enjoyed killing us,’ he said.

  ‘Lower your voice, I don’t want the children hearing this.’ Some days earlier, when Maran had asked to go to the beach, Prashant had asked him to bring his toy gun along to ‘shoot the navy base down’. Mugil did not want her brother’s venom poisoning her sons.

  ‘Don’t overprotect them,’ he said.

  ‘They’re babies!’

  ‘They should know anyway. They’ll be feeling the humiliation soon.’

  ‘Be practical about the justice you’re asking for,’ Mugil continued. ‘If we ask for all of them to be killed, the government won’t even start an investigation.’

  ‘They’ve started, no? A practical, useless committee.’ Ignoring the calls for an independent probe, the Sri Lankan government had launched a domestic investigation into the events of the last phase of the war. Called the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Committee (LLRC), it was made up largely of retired government employees, including some who had publicly defended the state from allegations of irresponsibility during the war’s final stages. Since May 2010, the panel had been sitting in several districts in the north and east, calling for testimonies. People were speaking on record about Tiger atrocities and forced recruitment. Some NGOs wrote letters detailing the army’s illegal shelling of no-fire zones and hospitals, but without witn
ess protection, most individuals were afraid to accuse the military openly while still living under their authority. It was clear from the beginning that the circumstances under which the LLRC was set up would skew the findings in favour of the government. In the two years since the war, after Rajapaksa had been re-elected and his coalition voted back into parliament, the state had become more autocratic. It had removed presidential term limits and any remaining independence from the police, provincial governments and human rights commissions.

  But Prashant was especially hurt by Tamils who pointed a finger at the Tigers. ‘The army may have destroyed the Tigers, but our people are destroying the Tigers a second time,’ he said. He had been to see Prabakaran’s childhood home in Valvettithurai—there were rumours that Tamils had helped demolish it. ‘Where is their sense of respect?’ he asked, his pitch rising further. ‘And why all this talk about forced recruitment? They are talking the government’s language.’

  ‘It is not a lie, though,’ Mugil said softly.

  Prashant’s eyes flashed. People must be getting paid off to trash the LTTE and court the military, he said, and if Annan were around to see Tamil women talking and flirting with the army, he’d have them shot on the spot. ‘You would not have been spared for speaking so ungratefully, Akka,’ he said.

  Mugil listened, astonished at how easily he insinuated that she flirted with the army. Did all men speak this way? No, Sangeeta’s brother was exasperated, too, but not vengeful. Why was Prashant struggling so much harder? What had they done to him in the rehabilitation camp?

  When combatants surrendered in droves, their families worried they would all face trial and execution. But when the government spoke in softer terms, of disarming, demobilising and integrating former combatants into society, they had expected some psychological and employment help. However, the Ministry of Defence ran the rehabilitation camps to privilege security concerns over counselling. No distinction was made between the leaders and ordinary cadre—all were interrogated repeatedly about sleeper cells, weapons stashes, and global underground networks. For the heavyweights in detention, cooperation was proportional to freedom. Some had found places in the cabinet. For lower-rung cadres like Prashant, rehabilitation was plumbing and welding workshops and Sinhala patriotic song lessons. One nationalism to stamp out the other.

  Prashant was still itching for a fight because he had not had the opportunity to adapt. Straight from the war zone, he had been slammed into detention, prodded and thrashed for information for more than two years, treated as a terrorist, punished as a national shame, and then sent home. It wasn’t a surprise that he blinked in the glare of the real world. He could not accept that life had changed permanently, that they could not go back to PTK, that they would never be able to demand the equality they had once dreamt of, certainly not as they did in their uniforms in the Vanni. There was no battle, no leader for him to cheer, but the conflict raged on the streets every day. He had come home in a climate of increasing militarization—surveillance, accusations, threats. There was a trigger for his outrage, a reminder of his impotence, at every corner.

  When he spoke of politics, his body quaking with frustration, Mugil’s greatest fear was that he would rip through their family’s veneer of calm. They had toiled hard to move on, battling the same challenges that defeated Prashant. He resented being vulnerable to arrest; but instead of lying low his instinct was to provoke. In the evenings now he didn’t lounge in the side yard with his nephews but hung out with men of his own age, who were also struggling to find work. Somebody was always coming to Mugil’s gate, calling for Prashant. ‘What do you do with them?’ Mugil asked once.

  ‘We have things to discuss. We share the same pain,’ Prashant replied.

  ‘And what, your family won’t understand? Tell me what it is, I’m your older sister.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it to you,’ he said.

  ‘Someone told me they saw your group walk right past a soldier in the market. Just cross the street and walk on the other side, no? Why are you challenging them?’

  Prashant didn’t say a word.

  She walked up and put a few rupees in his shirt pocket. ‘I know it is not easy, da, it is tough for me, too. Every few days, something happens to my head and I want to explode, and punch their faces, but I remind myself of my boys, of you all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t want to get into trouble.’

  He looked in her face with absolute incomprehension. ‘Is that all you think about?’ He seemed to be searching for more words, but a friend called him again. ‘We’ll talk later,’ he said and walked out the gate.

  Mugil knew that he was with an idle, discontented group of returnees from various rehabilitation centres. Some had a new drinking habit, but Mugil didn’t worry about Prashant taking to drink. Her brother had railed against alcoholism more than anyone she knew. ‘The soldiers try to corrupt us by inviting us to drink with them!’ he would fume. Raised in the prohibition years of the LTTE-controlled Vanni, Prashant thought of drinking as a solely Sinhalese vice. To his mind, the growing alcoholism among Tamils after the war was a symptom of cultural erosion. Mugil was concerned about the resultant domestic abuse and what a waste of money it was, but as long as Prashant’s stereotypes kept him sober, she didn’t bother asserting her views.

  Some of Prashant’s friends were also planning an escape to foreign countries—borrowing from moneylenders against ancestral property or at heavy interest, leaving aged parents or young wives to repay their debts for years while the men settled down with visas in faraway countries which their families could not even find on a map. Prashant had not yet brought this up, but it was only a matter of time. He was a ticking bomb now. She would rather he were gone. If this was how the men returned from detention, she would have her work cut out for her with Divyan.

  23.

  September 2011

  AT THE RIYADH airport, after he had called his mother, Sarva called Malar. There were tears, blown kisses, assurances, encouragement and a rehashing of their dreams of freedom. Outside an airport bookshop, he had stared at a world map in the window display: the big and small countries, great expanses of ocean, squiggling rivers, red-dot cities and the blue roads that joined them.

  He had then flown a great distance—far enough for the language and the shape of people’s faces to change, for the air itself to feel different, for the women to be as beautiful as they were back home but more knowing. He wondered at how a red-eye flight could introduce him to a populace with skin only a shade lighter. The final destination was America, he knew. But he had not even dreamt of the worlds in between. A couple of air tickets, a bus perhaps, some tolerable struggles, and then a stealthy dash across the Mexican border: this is what he had imagined. He had heard of the Indonesia boat route and the Nepal flight route, but not the less common route he was being led along.

  For months after Sarva left Sri Lanka, he couldn’t tell where he was when he opened his eyes in the morning. That it was South America was all he grasped. He was made to shift houses every few days, travelling to different towns, each divided by a short bus trip from the next. The agent’s ‘chaps’—there were so many, all seemingly recruited for their apparent lack of scruples—took Sarva to neighbourhoods whose jumble of poverty wasn’t too different from the tea estate slums he had grown up around. People from all over the world were jammed into tight neighbourhoods of disrepute; here anyone could slip into safe anonymity.

  The dingy apartments he was put in were packed with runaway Sri Lankan Tamils, from mousy fishermen to urbane students. They all had a depressing reason for leaving and a vague dream of success abroad, neither of whose details Sarva wanted to know. Early on, he decided he didn’t want a fellowship of misery; he switched to what he thought was his arrogant face and stuck to monosyllables. It was bad enough that they smelled each other’s fear all day.

  On some mornings, a chap arrived with a box of food, usually a type of burger, chicken dish or
subdued biryani. On the days he didn’t come, they starved. Most of the time the men slept or daydreamed. The new sobbed into their arms at night; others chatted nostalgically about their childhoods. If there was power, they watched TV, a feature surprisingly present in every house. They stared at the local programmes that looked just like Tamil and Sinhalese soaps, dramatic and emotional, but with actors and newscasters speaking rapidly in a musical foreign tongue. To avoid the TV and stretch his legs, Sarva sometimes paced the building corridors. The man in the one-bedroom downstairs said he spoke Portuguese. The old woman next door said she spoke Spanish. Just like back home, he thought.

  It was funny how much he thought of home when he was running from it. When he left Sri Lanka, he felt as if he might go anywhere, to a trillion possible future homes. Yet, a squalid room once again became his universe. If he left it, anything could happen. Unknown police could subject him to unknown laws or ask him the two questions he had to avoid at all costs: ‘Where are you from? Do you have a visa?’ He yearned to phone home but had no local currency. He considered speaking to some locals but didn’t know the language. He wanted to go on the street, but stories of deportation had worn away his courage.

  The agent Siva rarely came, and when he did, he subjected everyone to the same wilful neglect and pretentious care. ‘I’ll get fish for everyone tomorrow, okay?’ he’d say. ‘I used to be like you all, so I feel your pain,’ or ‘One must lose something to gain something.’ It mattered little that Sarva called him anna, knew Siva’s relatives in Negombo, or that Sarva’s brother was Siva’s friend. The discount Deva had wrangled from Siva actually seemed to cause some resentment. ‘The money won’t go far,’ he would often say. ‘Your brother thinks I owe him something, but expenses are going up, so I’ll do what I can.’