In a Time of Burning

by Cheran

  Since that time, Cheran’s poetic oeuvre has continued to reflect Sri Lanka’s political vicissitudes. As he explains: “Someone who reads my entire poetry will have a clear picture of what happened to the Tamils from 1980 up until 2010, it’s a kind of snapshot. […] It’s not like a political statement, because I lived through it […]. In a sense I am a poet as a witness, a witness to history”.4 When the war broke out, Cheran had finished a degree in Biological Sciences at Jaffna University and had begun to work as a journalist for the Saturday Review newspaper. In the year 1986, during the height of the war, he survived a helicopter attack, an incident that inspired his poem titled ‘21 May 1986’. In 1987, the Saturday Review office was bombed. In the same year, Cheran left for the Netherlands and stayed there for two and a half years. During this time, he finished his Master’s degree. He then went back to Jaffna, where the intervention of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in the war had changed the lives of many people. After moving to Colombo, he helped to start the Tamil newspaper Sarinihar published by the Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality. When in 1993 one of the journalists disappeared, and the paper was in trouble, Cheran managed to receive a scholarship to pursue his PhD in Toronto, Canada. He has lived in Toronto ever since. From 1987 until 2005, he contributed as a journalist to various newspapers and magazines such as the Tamil literary magazine Kaalachuvadu, the German political magazine Südasien, the Singapore Tamil newspaper Tamil Murasu, as well as to Toronto Tamil television and the BBC World Service radio. He has also written essays and stage plays in both Tamil and English. After finishing his doctoral degree, he pursued an academic career focusing on the study of ethnicity, identity, migration, and international development. He is currently a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.

  His life in Canada and his travels to various other countries are reflected in several of the poems here. We read of the loneliness of exile and of the many instances of racism experienced. On 26 December 2004, while visiting with his sister in Sri Lanka, Cheran survived the tsunami that hit South and Southeast Asia with devastating force. His most recent poems reflect on the final years of Sri Lanka’s war, a period that many have come to see as an outright genocide of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. After the apocalypse, Cheran writes, the very sea has drained away, Tamil is without territory, and kinships have no name. On 18 May 18 2009, the Sri Lankan government officially declared the war to be over. But what does it mean for such a war to be over? Several of Cheran’s poems presented here attempt to fathom the consequences. To this day the question remains open: When will there be a forest-healing?

  And what of all the fire? The fire has written its message upon the clouds, as Cheran says in one of his poems. What is it that remains of this message, now that the war is over and for readers who may live thousands of miles away? Karthigesu Sivathamby put it this way: “With the sincerity of expression and the depth of the wound, Tamil poetry is truly becoming ‘international’, if not universal. And with writings of this nature, we are now knocking at the doors of the Hall of World Literature.”5 It is the saddest reason for a poet to find new readers, when you come to think of it. But it is a reason, nonetheless.

  Sascha Ebeling

  1 For a more detailed discussion of Cheran’s life and work and a comprehensive bibliography of his writings, see my essay ‘Love, War, and the Sea Again: On the Poetry of Cheran’, in: Peter Schalk (ed), The Tamils from the Past to the Present (Uppsala: Uppsala University, and Colombo: Kumaran Book House, 2011), pp. 57-104.

  2 Interview conducted with Cheran in July 2010.

  3 K. Sivathamby, Being a Tamil and Sri Lankan (Colombo: Aivakam, 2005), p. 17.

  4 Interview with Cheran in 2009.

  5 K. Sivathamby, Lutesong and Lament: Giving a Voice to a Generation (Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies, no date), p. 6.

  In a Time of Burning

  âK‰¶ ªè£‡®¼‚°‹ «ïó‹

  ñ¬ö

  (A RAINY DAY)

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   c»‹ êñ£‰îóñ£Œ ...

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  ܉î ñ¬ö?

  A RAINY DAY [1976]

  (ñ¬ö)

  Do you remember

  that rainy day?

  It began with yellow sunshine,

  that evening,

  and ended with rain.

  You rode your bicycle beside me,

  some distance apart,

  but our shadows, for some reason,

  moved alongside us, entwined,

  as the sky darkened

  and the dust died away

  in the boundless rain.

  We sheltered from the rain

  in a hut nearby, and wiped our faces;

  our hands were dripping.

  Do you remember

  that rainy day?

  Sodden with rain, the ink running,

  our lecture notes

  were never to be re-written.

  Hurtling through palmyra palms,

  beating down the portia leaves,

  the wind that day joined the very sea.

  And how it rained!

  You beside me,

  a dampness filling the hut.

  Through the dense, sobbing darkness of the rain

  in a single line, lightning

  wanders the sky, vanishes.

  A lightning-streak, you exclaim,

  but it’s gone when I look again.

  As we wait for the next one,

  thunder roars.

  Upon your rain-streaked face

  a single strand of wet hair

  falls to your neck;

  a lamb gone astray.

  The rain slows to a steady drizzle;

&nbs
p; we return to our journey

  along the street.

  Human devils will stare at us

  their gaze falling like arrows

  like spears piercing through us.

  Yet the street shatters and falls away

  when we are beside each other.

  Once more, the drizzle;

  you and I, side by side, sheltered

  beneath the darkness of rain-clouds.

  Do you remember

  that rainy day?

  èì™

  (THE SEA)

  ܬô â¿ŠH ¸¬ó îœÀ‹

  è¬óJ™

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  âù‚°œÀ‹ MKAø¶,

  èì™.

  THE SEA [1977]

  (èì™)

  Against the shore

  waves rise, foam-crested,

  arms extending

  to embrace the land.

  From eye-grazing horizon

  to nearest shore tumbled with sand

  a pale blue veil slides,

  glides, disappears.

  Sometimes, utterly still,

  the vast expanse spreads,

  looks upward to sky,

  downwards to earth.

  In the darkening evening,

  like palmyra palms

  lifting and tossing their heads,

  waves rise high,

  embracing darkness.

  Embracing darkness

  waves rise high.

  Even at such times

  boats sway landward,

  oars splashing,

  scattering flakes of light.

  Waves lap along the shore,

  spreading

  within me

  the sea.

  HKî™

  (PARTING)

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  ñ…²,

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  ªè£‚°

  îõI¼‚°.

  PARTING [1979]

  (HKî™)

  Jasmine hung in clusters upon the vine,

  water-lily buds spread everywhere upon the lake,

  all along the boundary hedges

  the thorny ironwood had flowered.

  As I stood gazing,

  “This is how spring should be,”

  you said, and left. That day.

  Today

  on the branch of a copper-leaf tree

  a solitary bird shivers

  ruffling its feathers,

  a cloud

  is set for a lifetime’s wandering,

  and along the shores of the lake

  standing on one leg

  a lone heron

  practises austerities.

  è£ù™ õK

  (A SEA-SHORE SONG)

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  ♫ô£¼‹ õ‰î£JŸÁ.

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  ïŠîh¡ õ£ê¬ù.

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  Þó¾.

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  裈F¼

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  𣘈F¼

  àù¶ Ã‰î™ ªõÀˆî

  H¡¹‹Ãì.

  A SEA-SHORE SONG [1980]

  (è£ù™ õK)

  Once again

  they have all assembled:

  the uncles, Maama and Chitthappa,

  Cousin Mani, and my father

  leaning back in his chair,

  fingers straying amidst

  the forest of hair on his chest

  while smoke from his cheroot

  billows.

  Once again those promises of land.

  The smell of moth-balls

  which have slept too long

  with the engagement sari

  and infected it.

  Sarasa, my beloved Sarasa!

  What will you do?

  As for those inside,

  they will haggle over your price

  for ever.

  It is night now;

  the moon moves like milk

  or like water falling,

  filled with magizhampu flowers.

  You will sit by the well,

  knees drawn up, eyes shut,

  throwing stones into the water,

  guessing at your future.

  “This time, at least…”

  Wait there.

  These people will bring

  – just for you – a ‘pure Kshatriyan’

  in a chariot drawn by seven horses

  golden feathers glinting in his hair.

  Keep watch

  until your hair is white

  and long after that.

  âù¶ Gô‹

  (MY LAND)

  Cø°õ¬ô MKˆî ðó¬õ‚ èì™

  «ñ«ô Í„ªêP»‹ 裟Á

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  â‹ «õ˜ c‡´œ÷¶.