Kandy, Sri Lanka, 2005

Kandy, a part of the central province hill country of Sri Lanka, is famous for its cool climate, soft mountain terrain and for many traditional and cultural festivals. Kandy of course is most noteworthy and world-famous for its landmark Buddhist heritage of the Dalada Maligawa (Sinhala for palace of the Tooth Relic of Buddha) or as is widely known the Temple of the Tooth Relic. The Temple, its origins dating back between the 14th and early 17th centuries AD, houses Buddha’s Tooth Relic brought to Sri Lanka in 313 AD from India. The Temple is said to have been built by King Vickramabahu II - initially as a royal palace. But it had been restored and rebuilt by various kings thereafter and was set apart exclusively to house the sacred Relic of Buddha.

But Buddhism itself came to Sri Lanka as early as 250 BC. Sri Lanka having been administered by the monarchy prior to its capture by colonial powers from the early 16th century, was then situated in Anuradhapura (North Central Sri Lanka) ruled by King Devanampiyatissa, who himself embraced and patronized the spread of Buddhism. Missionaries were sent over to propagate the philosophy in the island by the Indian Emperor Asoka, who himself had adopted Buddhism about that time. The missionaries included his own son Mahinda and daughter Sangamitta who spent over 40 years in Sri Lanka until their death, teaching and making disciples to preach the doctrines of Buddhism far and wide to both men and women. Interestingly, almost six centuries later, the Tooth was carried from India by Princess Hemamali hidden in her hair to ensure its protection and was enshrined in Sri Lanka. The Tooth found its way to Kandy, when the capital of the Sinhala kingdom moved to the Kandy district about the 14th or 15th century AD.


Kandy, known in Sinhala as ‘Mahanuwara’ (or large city) even today, is believed to have got its name after British occupation in Sri Lanka from 1796 onwards. The story goes that the British occupying officers in their travels to pay homage to the Kandyan king at the time pointed to the mountain terrain and making signs to them requested to know what the location in the distance was called. The locals are said to have looked at the mountains the Britishers were pointing to and described them as ‘kande’, referring to the Sinhala literal word for mountain. Since then the British referred to it as Kandy, the closest pronunciation they came to the word used by the locals. As humorous as this may be, the name Kandy that came to stick was not far from the informal name given it by the then administration – ‘kandu-rata’, literally meaning hill country.


The Temple of the Tooth Relic houses not only the sacred tooth of the Buddha, throughout the year luring Buddhist pilgrims from both within and without Sri Lanka and tourists, but is also famous for its ancient artifacts and vibrant murals, now centuries old. The murals, hand painted by specially selected artists and artisans working for the royal court, have used natural dyes and motifs that speak volumes and have captured the culture and customs of its time. Each painting weaving the story of Kandy and a lesson in history where one can relive the life and times of the ancients. The stone and ivory inlay work of the Temple too through its carefully crafted designs graphically relays important architectural information of the period and events of the time. Because the city is steeped in culture and tradition, it earned the prestige of being entitled a ‘Cultural Heritage site’ by UNESCO in 1988.

The Temple in itself has been cause for national pride for centuries and informally stands as the cultural heritage of not only the Buddhists but also the Sinhala people as an ethnic group. About 74 percent of the Sri Lankan population comprises ethnic Sinhalese, while the rest is made up of Tamils, Muslims, Moors or Malays and Burghers or Eurasians – the latter the descendents of mixed marriages between the colonial occupants and the local Sinhala population. Of the 74 percent Sinhalese, close to 70 percent are Buddhists (of the Theravada chapter of Buddhism). Therefore, in Sri Lanka, the ethnicity Sinhala and the philosophy Buddhism are very closely linked and many cannot make the two apart. This has resulted in the popular yet incorrect notion that ‘Sri Lanka is a Sinhala-Buddhist nation.’

However that may be, this popular notion led to the Temple being targeted by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – a former separatist outfit in North and East Sri Lanka) in 1998. Kandy, that had been secured in the past against foreign invaders (with the support of guerilla forces known as the Laskirinne, sponsored by the royal house) such as the British forces no less until their forceful takeover in 1815 and the banishment of the then presiding King Shiriwickremarajasinghe to South India, had come under attack in the post-colonial era and modern times in the early 20th century by its own countrymen, further creating an emotional rift between the Tamils and the Sinhalese. This was perhaps the intention of the terrorist faction, in the first place: to wound the sentiment and emotional attachment of the Sinhalese to the Temple and not merely the physical damage to it. The well-preserved roof of one of the domes of the Temple was severely damaged as a result as far as the physical outcome of the bomb blast was concerned. This was later rehabilitated using pure gold – so sacred and of such national importance was this Temple to its devotees. I suspect this grand display of opulence was a symbolic reply to the intentions of the LTTE – ‘down but not out.’

Growing up, Kandy situated only about 100 kms from Colombo was always a choice holiday destination for us children during the summer vacation. While the inter-monsoonal periods in Colombo saw soaring temperatures of 28 – 32 C, Kandy remained a cool 20 – 25 C back then. It was also a popular midway point for those who liked to travel further to a more chilly and scenic destination – Nuwaraeliya, also known as Little England.

I had family living in Kandy and so much of the month-long school holiday in April each year was spent with cousins there. It was a welcome change from the humidity and bustle of the capital city Colombo, but I appreciate Kandy more now as an adult who can comprehend differences and appreciate them that much more. The April vacation is Sri Lanka’s longest holiday season and the most celebrated one, as it is during this month that the nation celebrates its traditional New Year – by both the Tamils and the Sinhalese. The New Year is celebrated at this time of year, following the lunar calendar when the sun completes its revolution covering the astrological twelve parts of the sky or solar system.

The New Year season has always been a special time for my family because half of it has a Buddhist heritage and past, and so all the cultural festivities were celebrated in all its traditional splendour. All of my cousins, my sisters and I would congregate during the holidays in Kandy and engage in preparing traditional sweetmeats, participate in the traditional games that in themselves have helped preserve our culture and no holiday has ever seen an end without at least one visit to the grand Temple of the Tooth. I have accompanied my Buddhist cousins to the Temple not to observe religious practices but to people-watch and to gaze at the murals and the beauty it encompasses. To this day, whenever I am in Kandy, I visit the Temple if only to drink in the quiet serenity of the place and to observe the simple devotion of people united in their journey to attain a higher sense of being. In a word, the Temple personifies serenity. The Temple is also popular for Buddhist pilgrims during the following month when Buddhists observe Vesak – the observance of Buddha’s birth, death and enlightenment.



However, Kandy’s significance lies not only in it being the residence of Buddha’s Tooth Relic nor for its climate alone. Kandy makes one point of Sri Lanka’s Cultural Triangle. The other two points of must-see value are situated in Dambulla and Anuradhapura towards the north central vicinity of the island.

My father and his brothers schooled at the Kingswood College in Kandy, one of the many famous missionary schools in the hill country. Founded under the Methodist mission by the British, my father has regaled us as children with numerous tales of his adventures at boarding school, pranks played on and quirks and peculiarities of his English schoolmasters. On Sundays the boys were dressed in their Sunday best and compulsorily taken to church. It is in this light that years later, attending St. Paul’s in Kandy at Easter brings on nostalgia for all of us.

As Kandy is situated in a hilly region, most houses are built along mountains. The drive up and around mountains to visit friends and family was mostly a fun adventure, excepting for the odd bout of nausea my disposition was prone to (before my discovery of the wonder-drug Avamin). Apart from Kandy town, much of the district is agricultural and mostly cultivating paddy. In the hilly region, however, paddy is cultivated using the ‘step’ cultivation method, vertically layered, skirting around the mountains separated by agriculture channels between them to provide water. The different hues of lime green of the paddy, contrasting with the white dotted houses against the most often clear blue sky is breathtaking. The views are most enjoyed by locals and tourists alike coming into Kandy by train. The special observation car of the Colombo-Kandy train rarely fails to elicit from within it oohs and ahs in appreciation and wonder of the scenery along the way. As children, taking the train to Kandy, we had hours of fun counting the number of tunnels the train passed under. We would all gather around to get a glimpse of a mountain crag affectionately called ‘Bible Rock’ after its obvious shape from a distance. These mountains would transform before our young eyes into the shapes of giant animals and humans and we loved creating stories about how they came to be frozen in time.

Kandy is known for its artisans and the variety of arts and crafts such as wood carvings, painted demon masks, copper and bronze ornaments and semi-precious jewel-studded elephants and silver jewellery. The clothing of ordinary people is also very different and unique to Kandy. The osari or ‘Kandyan saree’ typically worn by the ‘up country’ Kandyans is now synonymous with Sinhala traditional dress for women. Its difference from the usual ‘Indian saree’ is in the way it is draped and the various styles adopted in wearing the blouse or the upper garment. Traditionally, it was worn with long sleeves made of fine traditional cotton lace, also locally produced in Kandy. Another unique feature hailing from Kandyan Buddhist houses, now also seen in old-fashioned Sinhala homes elsewhere in the country is the ‘sesath’. These were historically the hand-held fans that flanked the King on either side at his royal court and in public, portraying royalty and power. Today these are seen positioned in the living rooms of Sinhala traditional homes to portray age-old custom, tradition and heritage.

The Mahaweli – Sri Lanka’s longest river beginning in central Sri Lanka and falling to the sea at Trincomalee – a town on the north-east coast of the island - runs through the Kandy town like a lifeline connecting all its inhabitants. The Mahaweli that surrounds the Temple of the Tooth gives way to a large lake in the middle of the town, so dreamy at evening with light cast from street lamps and from the glimmer of the moon upon it. It is so romantic and serene that you just cannot miss the young lovers holding hands and dreaming of their futures on the benches upon the banks of the lake.

But even the serene and majestic Mahaweli was not spared the horrors of the political upheaval in the island’s past. I remember once hearing from my cousins that a few months before one of our vacations to Kandy how they had witnessed human bodies floating along the Mahaweli – those killed during the 1989 insurrection, yet another bleak period in an already dark past in the country’s modern political history. Standing in my cousins’ garden, high up on a mountain, breathing in the fresh woody air and looking down into the gently flowing river below with cranes hovering on either bank and kingfishers traipsing along the water for their afternoon catch, it seems almost unbelievable; and yet the river hides in its perennial memory dark secrets of human history.

Shutting away, at least momentarily, the darkness that has plagued the whole country and all its people over the last several decades, my thoughts move on to the Kandy market, with its pavement shops full of various knick-knacks, traditional sweets such as the kondakavum, dosi, dodol and aasmi, and the numerous fruit vendors. The genuine leather products manufactured in Kandy are a real treat to visitors. Of course no visit to Kandy is complete without indulging in hi-tea at the Queens Hotel across from the Temple of the Tooth. This olden hotel constructed during British occupation still attracts for its old English architecture as well as the age-old charm of the interiors and its service. The tea at such hotels is served to the right boiling consistency of finely selected quality teas with immaculate tea service and paraphernalia and is just the perfect beverage to enjoy on a rainy late afternoon in Kandy with either a good novel or good company. Of course in Sri Lanka, one hardly needs a perfect time to enjoy a good cup of tea. The delectable cakes, pastries, mini decked sandwiches and biscuits served as accompaniments to tea, leaves one spoiled for choice. Still on food, one of my favourite institutions in the city that I must visit even for a quick stop driving through Kandy is the Devon Restaurant and Bakery. It is easily over 100 years old and yet the aromas, the tastes and the quality of food served here - best for its traditional Sri Lankan fare like hoppers (appa), string hoppers (indi appa) and rice and curry – are consistent and inviting.



The best season to visit Kandy is in August when the event Kandy is most famous for takes place – the Kandy Esala perahera or procession. Hosted by the Temple of the Tooth, this event spans over two weeks, taking on festival-like proportions and equally charged preparations. Thousands of visitors throng Kandy town, calling for special traffic and security arrangements. At this time of the year, hotel occupancy in Kandy is completely saturated and to accommodate guests and visitors to Kandy even private homeowners are known to open their homes to strangers. I have at least two vivid memories of witnessing the perahera – once as a child of about eight high up on my father’s shoulders amidst the thronging crowds, and more recently a few years ago during a workshop in Kandy, playing guide to several foreign colleagues. The perahera is a rich concoction of the best of Buddhist and Sinhala culture. The procession displays various traditional dancers, martial artists, flag bearers and musicians depicting the various pre-colonial districts coming under the jurisdiction of the monarchies both of the ‘up country’ or hills as well as the ‘low country’ or plains of the island. The procession takes on a carnival atmosphere with its stilt-walkers, traditional drummers, whip dancers and fire stunts. These occupations requiring immense skill and perfection are handed down from generation to generation, in service of the Temple. The highlight of the event and what most visitors, specially children, come to see is the procession of decorated elephants. At the last procession there was a display of over 120 elephants, dressed in fine clothing and vibrantly lit up.


The last attraction and the ultimate reason for the procession is to parade Buddha’s Tooth Relic mounted high up on a specially trained elephant, adopted, bred and dedicated to this purpose by the Temple mahouts. Some of the elephants showcased in the procession are owned by the Temple Trust and are cared for with special treatment for the purpose of the perahera. They are sometimes brought out to the Temple gardens for people to touch, as they are considered sacred to devotees. At the end of the three to four hour-long procession, the special guests, the chief reverend monk presiding at the Temple and the Diyawadana Nilame – a revolving sacred and powerful appointment made by the Temple Trust and highly honoured even by the President of the country – parade in their traditional finery. It is the Diyawadana Nilame that would finally undertake the task of taking down the sacred Tooth Relic and offering it for a blessing to the monks of the Temple and then depositing it back in its sanctuary within the Temple. The procession is held to provide a chance to Buddhist devotees who make the annual pilgrimage to glimpse the Tooth and pay homage to it, thereby invoking great blessing upon their lives.

Just out of Kandy, the well-maintained Botanical Gardens and the Peradeniya University, the former a national treasure of plant life and the latter one of Sri Lanka’s prestigious academic institutions, hover as major landmarks of the district. On the way back to Colombo along the Kandy Road is situated the world-famous Elephant Orphanage at Pinnawala. I recall a school class trip to Kandy years ago where my friends and I picnicked at the Botanical Garden, smuggling a boom box hidden in our shoulder bag to dance to. I remember belting out tunes with my Convent School girlfriends at the top of our by-then sore voices and swinging from some of the more-than 100 year old trees in girlish glee, while our good-humoured teachers tried hard to dissociate themselves from us after giving up on trying to tame our rowdy ways. At the end of the day we each took turns making speeches thanking almost everyone we could think of, including passing couples in love (much to their chagrin and embarrassment, which they quite plainly let us know), little children, the mayor of Kandy and the President of Sri Lanka for the lovely time we had had. My visit more recently to the Peradeniya campus was more somber and quieter – to train and deploy a group of new graduates in some field research projects.

But my visit to Pinnawala on several occasions, always accompanied by small children have been nothing short of blissful. The orphanage officials encourage visitors to get involved in caring for the maimed or disabled elephants. The public gets a chance to feed these majestic and yet gentle animals and watch them bathed daily by the animal caretakers. Sri Lanka’s elephant population has been steadily growing as years ago administrators and environmentalists took pre-emptive measures to protect their habitat by reserving sanctuaries and carving out a channel for the free movement of elephants from the southeast of the island right along to the northwest interiors. Back then, the Elephant Pass isthmus bordering Kilinochchi and Jaffna peninsula in the north of the country was so named for this very purpose. However, in the very recent past, Sri Lankan farmers, environmentalists and Park officials have been locked in a three-way debate on the increasing incidence of elephant poaching on the one hand and the death of farmers and the destruction of their crops and homes by elephants, specially during harvest times. Electric fencing resorted to by authorities in the past has not brought about an effective solution to the problem that has brought untold misery to villagers in elephant-prevalent parts of the country who are torn between their love for these animals in their Buddhist practice of ahimsa (non violence and abstinence from cruelty to animals and all living things), and their desire to stay alive and protect their livelihoods and their homes.



Kandy, to me, holds pleasant memories and experiences. These memories and feelings are reinforced by the fact that my times spent up in the hills of Kandy were those in which I felt far away from the ugly realities that unfolded daily in other parts of Sri Lanka. Almost as though in Kandy one could find a different country, not bothered by the threat of war nor shackled by the teeming rat race of Colombo. Simply breathing in the clean air, watching the days go by in serenity and quietude with beauty and a wonderful sense of peace enveloping you on every side.

The end of war! (…the start of a long journey towards healing)

May 2009



The war has ended! It took twenty-six years – a whole generation – sapped of its lifeblood in every aspect. Whenever I speak of my country to foreign friends, I sarcastically introduce myself as a child of the war. It is all my generation has known, and that is nothing to be proud of. And now as I hear the mixture of euphoric celebration of those who have known personally the hateful results of militaristic egoism drunk with power on the one hand, and the cautious and calculating ‘diplomacy’ of the many who opine on behalf of a disguised political correctness, as a Sri Lankan who has loved her country – all of it, at all times – I feel like doing nothing else but hiding in a corner and crying…

Crying for 80,000 or more lives lost over two and half decades of my country’s men, women and children; crying for my whole generation that has known little else but the judicious cries of war and hatred; crying for an entire population bearing both the physical and emotional scars that have marked them out forever vulnerable to insecurity, to prejudice, to paranoia and cynicism. And crying also for the many deterrents to forging towards a peaceful and united country and sadistic obstacles put forth by voices who preach unforgiveness, pride in all the wrong causes and those who misdirect the future of Sri Lanka, manipulatively pledging to fight to the end in the name of disunity - because they cannot forget and will not let anyone else either. At the risk of accusations for pontificating, I have come to understand that we humans are too flawed and too fallen and needy of mercy ourselves to take vengeance into our own hands. And vengeance is the reserved right of God alone, because vengeance in the hands of men and women emotionally and attitudinally scarred and wounded can only spread hatred, never justice.

Ah, but many preach, forgiveness and mercy are for the weak and conspiratorial ways in which the powers that be dominate over the powerless. And so, many corners of the world have made it their personal movement to ally with the ‘downtrodden’ and ‘racially subjugated’ peoples of Sri Lanka and, in their half-baked knowledge of Sri Lanka’s personal tragedy, bite the bait of influential propagandists who ‘sell’ their version of Sri Lanka’s reality. It is extremely important that the world lends a helping hand to mending what is broken, but not assisting to damage what is already left fragile.

War can never be justified. The murder of a human being can never be taken for granted. But global interference that only seeks to take the country back to the deadlock it was in for years, to repeat realities that my generation has lived through for the next generation of children is not only wrong, it is an abomination. Sri Lanka needs friends who will help the country rebuild; allies that will help create a more just and equitable society for all its ethnic communities; and guidance in creating a secure environment for an integrated society. What my country does not need at this critical juncture are sentiments that in any way hinder the work of economic and social development of people who need it the most and those who preach a gospel of further division and isolation between ethnic communities.

I have not let my ethnicity bar me from traveling the length and breadth of my country in the height of war. I admit, I have had many advantages as a social worker that many of my generation and my ethnicity have not had. But the point is, what would one do if the opportunity were available? Would one use it to familiarize oneself and learn as much about others as one can, or would one give in to fear of stories about the other and build and fortify imaginary walls of hatred and prejudice? The choice was mine years ago and the choice is presented today to all Sri Lankans, barring ethnicity (and barring location of current residence). It is not one the Government can make for you. It is not one an organization or religious doctrine or even ethnic credo can make for one. It is personal, and the choice can only be made by the individual. The next generation’s hope depends on each individual choice made. Are we going to be ‘connectors’ or ‘dividers’? To simplify – ‘connectors’ build, ‘dividers’ destroy.

I see there is much to be done. I see there is work to be undertaken by all Sri Lankans towards the creation of an integrated, safe and peace-loving and peace-honouring society. There is so much to achieve in terms of building an economy and way of life that rises above ethnic cohesiveness and individualistic gain. For years, my generation has been told to just ‘look after yourself and your own’ or ‘there’s no hope for this country, do what you can for yourself and get out while you can.’ But time for individualism just ran out. Like any nation that comes of age after a bloody war, the only way forward is one in which each serves the other and engages in a collective effort for the good of all.

But, don’t forget, the predominant gurus of our times have preached that sentiments of collectivism and goodness for all are archaic norms and putty sentimentality. Drown out the voices of naysayers! It can be done. It must be done. Besides, building our country back better than it was before is the only path we have left. I often wondered if our economy could survive (note: survive, not thrive) in the midst of one of the worst recessions in almost a century, with one of the bloodiest wars fought sapping billions of rupees from the national income and all national revenue sources, straddled under nepotism, corruption and over thirty percent inflation (!!) and yet rise above the ‘failed state’ many of the wolves in sheep’s clothing about us have secretly hoped it would be, what can possibly be impossible for us now?

Just think - what can’t Sri Lanka achieve in the absence of war, when all her people actually have motivation to strive ahead and work hard and prosper? I believe the impossible is at hand. But it is imperative that we Sri Lankans be cautious of our own attitudes and respect the sentiments of all. It is not advisable or right to be bullish and obnoxious, for that will achieve precious little. Instead be diplomatic and open to the ideas of different stakeholders and yet mindful of a common goal - the development of Sri Lanka as one nation and (here’s a concept reintroduced into our vocabulary – let’s learn it well) – one people.

Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka, October 2004

Yesterday the Sri Lanka Army captured Kilinochchi, the de-facto town capital of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) stronghold situated in the north of the country. This is ten years after the Army lost control of the territory in much of the North to the LTTE, where Mr. Prabhakaran, the Machiavellian leader of the rebel group, is still said to be at large.

My first visit to Kilinochchi in late 2004, when the territory was still under LTTE-control is made of vague visual imagery in terms of memories, but the feelings I felt then are still fresh and intense. A ceasefire agreement was in effect at the time between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE and after the outpost of Omanthai – the last vestige of the Government - a narrow strip of a few hundred meters known as ‘no man’s land’ gave way to the control point of the LTTE in the deep reaches of the North terrain of Sri Lanka. The LTTE made its northern home in the neighbouring districts of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu and parts of Mannar, which together had come to be known as the Vanni region, so describing the once-upon-a-time kingdom of the north central region, but lately had come to be understood as a synonym for rebel-held land in the North.

Even as the Chinese crackers go off in the backdrop in Colombo’s celebration of this ‘victory’ for ‘all the peoples of this country’ as the President addressed the nation hours after the news was broadcast by the Defense Ministry yesterday of the Army takeover of Kilinochchi, my thoughts wandered back to my entry into the district years ago. I remember sitting in my vehicle half numbed by the reality of a seeming impossibility for those of my race at the time – something thought impossible for any of my generation and ethnicity – to enter the northern rebel-held and Tamil-dominated areas. The drive into Kilinochchi was completely uneventful, and the only time I felt the palpitations within me was when I piled into the car to register at the LTTE headquarters, as I was a new entry into ‘their territory’ – the Eelam nation. Hailing from a relatively prominent (in)famous political family in the south myself, I didn’t expect to casually fly under the radar without rigorous questioning of my business in ‘their’ region. I held my breath until the officers at the HQ gave me the ‘all clear’ after seeing my paperwork, with minimal questioning, largely thanks to the suavity and charm (and unquestioning integrity) of my Kilinochchi colleagues. I was surprised by and yet respected the relative independence the LTTE showed towards humanitarian workers in the region.

Upon arriving at the office from my hotel the next morning at the very minute I had agreed to meet with my colleagues to chart out the schedule of the day, I found myself seated at the reception area alone, with only the security guards for company. None had arrived. So I waited; half an hour later, one of my colleagues sauntered into the office. Highly miffed at the shameless display of non-punctuality I asked him with all the sarcasm I could muster in my voice if this was how dedicated the staff were to the work of serving communities in this part of the country? He looked at me completely baffled. Impatiently I went on to explain the fine print of my riddled words – why was he half an hour late for our scheduled meeting? To this he gave me a knowing and audaciously condescending look and laughed. He explained himself before I opened my mouth, considering the change in my temper was transparent in my face. He told me that ‘here we stuck to Kilinochchi time, and not to Sri Lankan time.’ I was flabbergasted! What nerve, I thought to myself. Then it dawned on me the truth of his words – they were not meant to sound chauvinistic. On the contrary, he was referring to the Sri Lanka Government’s turning back the time in Sri Lanka by half hour as some idiotic energy-saving attempt, in a bid to curb to an extent the galloping costs of electricity production for the country some years before then. The sensible powers-that-be in the rebel-held areas had resisted the change in time. So in reality, the real time against GMT was observed in Kilinochchi. (The Government has reverted Sri Lanka to real time since.) However nondescript and non-consequential this little anecdote, I read into this incident a first indication of the seriousness of the ‘struggle’ and the conformity of all to the powers of the region.

Throughout the course of the next few days I was taken to observe some of the activities of the humanitarian work in the region. Since the program I was covering had much to do with child nutrition activities, I remember looking out for any and all information in this regard wherever I went. We found ourselves visiting several of the program’s beneficiary families. I was especially interested in seeing the families with children who had suffered various health and physical anomalies as a result of under nourishment and chronic malnutrition. I gathered ample evidence of this state of being among children from my visits.

A child of eight I visited had suffered blindness, while another fourteen year old boy suffered deformity of his legs as a result of under nourishment. The District Hospital doctors and the program’s nutritionists explained to me that one of the possible causes for these kinds of growth defects and conditions could be the lack of adequate pre-natal care and nutrition of mothers during the period of pregnancy. One doctor explained to me that during the intermittent years of conflict mothers had taken to running from aerial bombings and other serial attacks by forces on either side, taking refuge in dense jungles for days at a time.

Added to the normal physical strain on these women in their state of pregnancy, they also had to undergo various other stresses such as the lack of clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, the lack of basic nutrition in their food if food was at all possible in the jungles, and the unceasing emotional trauma of keeping themselves alive from the unrelenting stray bullets, shrapnel and rocket missiles. The constant lookout for hidden mines on the ground they walked on and tolerating disease-bearing mosquitoes can’t have been easy to endure; adding to this the lack of sleep, the lack of emergency medical aid let alone regular check ups for the growth of their babies and their own health conditions would definitely have taken a toll on these young and scared mothers. The consequence representing itself in babies born with severe deformities, under growth and in most cases an acquired under nourished state, the effects of which will stay with them for years to come, only to be overcome with special nutritional feeding and health care.

Therefore, close to half the current child population of under-fives in the Kilinochchi district suffers various degrees of under nourishment. Pre-natal under nourishment and conflict-related stresses of pregnant and lactating mothers had also bred the prevalence of children suffering from heart and respiratory complications, one among them the condition called ‘hole-in-the-heart’, requiring intensive surgery in order to give them a chance at life – the possibility of such treatment and surgery an impossibility to many of the parents in the region due to their acute poverty and the lack of medical personnel and inadequate facilities in the single Government-maintained hospital in the Kilinochchi town. As a result of the high death rate of children in these families, most parents opt to have several children to beat the odds of death snatching their young ones from them. Hence, most acutely poor families have several young children and inadequate incomes to provide for their most basic growth needs, keeping generations to come trapped in the poverty cycle spinning endlessly. It is also this poverty and the lack of economic and education opportunities heightened by all the negative war imagery witnessed by youngsters that easily lead them to enlist in the ensuing ‘freedom struggle,’ apart from the scores more reported to be forcefully recruited.

The pleasantest memories of my first visit to Kilinochchi and of my several subsequent visits until the recent resumption of conflict was each visit I made to the preschools in the district. There were over 100 of them included under the program I covered benefiting over 4,000 preschool kids. That’s an inkling of the love I surrounded myself with at each visit. These little people come bounding into their preschools accompanied by their mothers or grandmothers every day for a period of a few hours with their little bags on their backs and their water bottles hung around their necks. I have rarely seen an unsmiling face among these little ones – they are the epitome of unadulterated and pure joy. However, their parents and grandparents do not bring them to these preschools because of their concern for a steady start to their early childhood years. No, they are attracted to the preschools because they provide at least one nutritious meal during the day for their children free of cost – a meal parents and families can ill afford most of the time. The predominant livelihoods are agriculture and fishing, both severely affected and restricted due to the conflict resulting in lower household incomes and exacerbating poverty.

The LTTE had begun vocational training centers after the Ceasefire Agreement came into effect in 2003. However, these could not have brought immediate economic options to the woes of communities. For one thing, these centers were mostly centered in the Kilinochchi town. But the under-developed roads did not support adequate public transportation to most communities into the town; the great distances separating villages was also a challenge to the many economic development efforts bravely steered by development agencies, the UN, the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka within the district through various means and in the form of various programs. But even after years of investment in such programs in the region, their effect was undermined by conflict and the narrow-minded political agendas of the influential few. It was clear from the beginning to all that no real development would be possible until the district had met its Waterloo and the outcomes could be one of many – either way, it was only a matter of time…

Towards evening, I remember visiting a fishing family at their home by the beach. As I struggled to capture the right composition in the waning light just before sunset for my photographs of the family comprising two children – a boy with polio of about ten and his sister of about six - and their parents, the boy with his sense of humour and his mischievous talk had all of us enthralled. His attitude was refreshing among a community whose’ dignity seemed to have been stripped apart by decades of discrimination, conflict, crippling poverty and fear, dousing any trace of light in their eyes. The boy also had another internal complication with his health and was sponsored by an organization for a critical operation that would bring about a greater sense of normalcy to his life in future. His parents spoke softly, desperately trying but failing to hide their emotion at being separated from their son for a period of several months until he returned from Colombo after his operation. The boy was the only one traveling in the company of a few officials from the organization, as they could not all afford to go along with him. This I suspected was not only because of the unbearable expense of the trip but also and possibly more importantly because they felt a very potent sense of dread at the prospect of living in Colombo several months, with possible threats of arrests and the unjust suspicion among people and security forces of their ‘real’ business in the south, hailing from Kilinochchi no less.

This family, like the majority resident in the district, had never been out of their hometown, and very few if any had ever been to Colombo over the last generation. They were held back by fairly founded fears of discriminatory treatment and suspicion and also by the unjust but politically motivated fear and dread fed into them about the people of the rest of the country and the Government by the administration holding sway over their lives in the district. The LTTE also held tight control over the movements of the civilian population that were allowed out of the district. There are many reasons and theories as to why – it is possible that all or none of them are true.

The boy, oblivious to his parents’ fear and misery at their inevitable separation, was full of hope for his future as he told me about his dreams of becoming a successful and rich businessman someday. He told me through my interpreter how he would buy his mother a fancy house and a pretty sari and his father a big trawler boat to catch lots of fish. I asked him what he would buy his sister, to which he mused that it depended on whether she took care of his things while he was away in Colombo for his operation. The boy was vivacious and an unforgettable delight, and a favourite among my memories of the district.

As the sun set on the coast of Kilinochchi like a watercolour painting, shooting streaks of bright orange and pink into the sky, so did my hope for these children’s future and many others’ like them as the years passed and the conflict raged on. Later on I saw imagery, heard stories and read news articles about civilians being forcefully trained in handling arms and in combat. The reports said that compulsorily squadrons of civilians, including women, the elderly and children were trained in ‘self defense.’ The images I beheld were more than mildly disturbing, and my unwarranted anger at the time was towards the political powers that allowed these goings on, at the degree to which innocent civilians were used as pawns in a game of chess. They were dispensable and their lives counted for naught in the great feat of political actualization.

However, I have since come to understand that my anger, opinions and feelings are not adequately knowledgeable nor comprehensive enough to make a difference to the status quo in this part of my country. I am but still tracing the whys and the hows of the roots of this conflict and have been engaged in this conquest for the past ten years of my own life. My own findings and understanding are superficial and incongruent with the depth of the issue. The conflict’s origins are over two generations old and perhaps even longer, and my half-baked insights drawn from history books and prejudiced story-telling can only result in dangerous oversimplification of the pain of generations and of whole communities. I am no political analyst and so refrain from opining. Instead, I am at heart, deeply bothered by the plight of the people of Kilinochchi bound by forces greater than themselves, stripped of the right to independent thought, the democratic exercise of choice and the accessibility to opportunity and options that other Sri Lankans seem to enjoy elsewhere at least to a greater degree than they, if not absolutely. And for this there can be no excuse.

I look forward to a day when the lack of nutrition of the children of Kilinochchi will become the whole nation’s problem and responsibility; when young boys and girls can dream big and have access to the opportunities of basic facilities and services to enable them to realize these dreams; when we as a nation come to cherish and appreciate each others’ differences and yet not be threatened by them; when all people of all ethnicity can freely travel and feel a part of the land extent of the island in its entirety without having to justify one’s existence to another.

2004, Mannar, Sri Lanka

To the northwest of Sri Lanka lies the scenic and enchanted district of Mannar, or as is known in Tamil, Mannaram – so named because of its mythical link to the Indian subcontinent. The story goes that in ancient times when the gods walked the earth, the god Ram, the central figure in Valmiki’s - the Indian poet and epic writer variously dated 3rd or 4th Century BC – Ramayana, comes to the island of Sri Lanka, known as Lanka then, in search of his wife Sita, who has been taken away captive by Ravana, who’s abode is the island of Lanka. In order to get to the island crossing the great Indian Ocean, Ram builds a bridge from the southeastern tip of India, now known as Rameshwaram (also indicating the point at which Ram began his journey to rescue his wife) to Mannaram. Myth or reality, several years ago there were reports that NASA satellites had captured the remnants between these two points that may indicate there was a connection between India and this point of Sri Lanka at some point in history. Fact or fiction, this part of the island of Sri Lanka, remains sacred to Hindus both in Sri Lanka and the world over – at least to the parts of the world that know where Sri Lanka is even on the map!

My first entry to Mannar was very different to that of Ram – while his journey was in search of his ladylove and to engage in inter-national conflict in order to win the day for the gods and to restore conjugal relations, mine was nowhere near to such political and historical proportions. Significantly though, it was undertaken at a time when the warring factions of our own times and of a home-grown variety had come to a form of agreement to hold fire temporarily, if not as a prelude to a more certain peace. I entered this magnificent location with some trepidation disguised by the busyness of my profession. I, accompanied by an army of journalists, made our way to tell our stories of the progress in the no-war-no-peace times. Our aim was to capture whatever we could of the rehabilitation in the aftermath of several decades of a bloody war that had wounded us all. No small task this, considering that the last times journalists had attempted to enter this territory over the last two decades, they had paid with their lives, and very few, if any, escaped with their lives in tact.

But by the time we entered in the latter half of 2004, many of the refugee families that had fled to South India to escape the ethnic repression and tyrannies engineered by misguided political powers over the years, had returned relighting the fading hope they had had of being embraced as citizens in their own country once again. Some, I later found out, had returned because they couldn’t bear the indignity and inhuman treatment at Indian refugee camps, which they compared worse than being homeless and running from multi-barrel and mortar fire in the jungles of their own homeland. Whatever the case may be, there we were, spending almost a week taking in the rising and setting orange suns from the coasts of Mannar.

Once we had driven off the main town areas haunted with bullet-riddled and partially bombed out buildings that stood as a reminder of how hateful war is, we soon came to the large acreage of land that was demarcated for new housing by the Government, funded by bilateral and multilateral donors through the North East rehabilitation programmes instituted for this purpose alone. It was evident that some work was in progress, as the completed foundations and walls of several houses were visible. The houses themselves were incomplete, as they were built on a three-phase scheme where the government reimbursed percentage installments of grants to families in the programme upon completion of a stage of the house. In this way, the family was responsible for the construction and engaging themselves as labour in the building of their own home. This was meant to be a participatory programme, so that home owners could take responsibility and ownership to manage the grants accrued to them in an accountable manner. There were all the signs that this scheme had paid dividend – it was a dream for a family which had spent over ten years living off foreign governments or in ten by six temporary huts to own what was closest to something ‘permanent’. A ‘home’ or a ‘country’ gives one more than shelter or nationality, it gives a sense of belonging, a sense of freedom to be. In that freedom and belonging lies human dignity, invaluable to our existence, allowing us space and ability to breathe in a strangely reassured way. This visit taught me then how much I took both of these for granted.

We were escorted by villagers and aid workers to speak to some of the home owners. Of course it was in the middle of the day and most of the men folk were in the fields. Before the war, from Mannar came Sri Lanka’s largest exports of rice to other parts of the country. The fertility of the soil and the amazing resilience of the water table to the effects of salinity being so closely situated to the sea were the factors said to have made the large production of rice possible for the district. However, I realized those factors may have certainly helped, but what was clear was the pride most people took in hard work in this part of the country. The sun shone down on this large tract of land, situated in the dry zone of the country, and yet the farming population worked on undeterred, unlike in many of the more naturally endowed parts of Sri Lanka.

However humble their homes, the people of Mannar certainly knew how to plan and decorate their territory in an eye-pleasing manner. The first signs of a village from a distance were the maze-like patterns made from woven dried palmyrah leaves. These were used for the fencing around each home plot. It was a pretty sight to behold. I remember standing in front of a few homes surrounded by the palmyrah fencing and imagining waking up to such a sight each morning stepping out into my garden if I were to live in one of those houses. Yes, they were very pretty indeed. And not to forget extremely economical – using local resources aplenty in this part of the country.

The fine white sand made for the ground we walked, even so, it was amazing to many of us just how well kept the gardens in each home plot were. Each plot was an area of about 800 – 1000 square feet, half of which was utilized for garden space and around the house for drainage. Each plot we visited, and we certainly visited a few, had gardens growing vegetables and fruit, all sorts of pretty flowers suitable for the climate and green leaves. I knew there were drives among women’s rural development societies by the agriculture department and NGOs to promote home-grown fruit and vegetable cultivation, but in many of the homes we visited the lady of the house had made it her special hobby to cultivate these plants and roots out of habit and as tradition to supplement household nutrition. Home gardening is very popular in any part of Sri Lanka. I suppose this is because Sri Lankans are as a people very close to nature and cultivation runs in their veins. The women folk especially are found to be very resourceful and industrious in this regard.

One of the women I spoke to, Lakshmi, a war widow with two teenaged sons, had returned from India just a year before then. She had had no other relatives to rely on - many killed in the war and others migrants to Western countries in search of hope and prosperity. She expressed her gratitude to the organizations that had assisted her in constructing a home, especially after quite a fight for land rights, as most land titles were written in the names of the male of a family, and so with their husbands deceased, women had to prove their entitlement to their husband’s land. Lakshmi had been fortunate that her entitlement went undisputed; not so for many other women whose’ in laws sometimes filed litigation against them to get at their sons’ lands after their death – so widowed women, especially with little children, and often unemployed and too poor to fight the case that extended over many years, would have little choice but to either live with their parents or migrate. Sometimes, remarriage was resorted to for purely economic reasons. Whichever way, I remember thinking at the time, with all the rights and privileges Sri Lankan women enjoyed unlike in many other neighbouring nations, there were certainly large chunks of our social customs and the legal system that required a massive overhaul, such as these practices.

Lakshmi’s story had a happy ending…at the time at least. She had managed to complete the construction of her home, and had supported her two children as they acclimatized to a new school and to a new life by making and selling take-away food that she sold at a small stall outside her home in the evenings. She also sold sweets made of molasses from palmyrah and other local produce. Lakshmi had set her goals high – to own her own food shop in the town some day, to educate her two boys until they finished their higher studies and to develop their economy as much as possible. No small dreams for a lone Tamil woman, recently returned and with no support from anyone else. She, I determined at the time, was definitely one of my heroes. She was bright-eyed and full of hope as she showed off to us the fruit in her little orchard – papaya, lime, banana and mango. In another corner by the newly constructed common well she had also planted chilli, vegetables and green leaves. She had founded a chit-system – where each member in the group of six women contributed a tiny sum of money each month and they each took turns at taking a loan from the collection. There were conditions. The money could only be used for economic activity and it had to be an investment with a clear profit in view. Here were examples of sound micro-financing born from local initiatives – these had the highest success rates it was evident.

Thinking back on Mannar – it is impossible to forget the sumptuous feast of Tiger prawns we had the privilege of enjoying on our visit. The meat in these gigantic prawns was soft but chunky and very very juicy! They were cooked just the way Sri Lankans liked it – with several kilograms of especially hot chilli thrown in! That is the litmus test for true nationalism in Sri Lanka – your ability to stand the hottest degree of mouth-burning spice and the mother of all spices – chili – a spice very close to our bellies. (And for most of the male Sri Lankan population there’s also the test of manhood – the ability to consume copious amounts of the local brew toddy or the more refined arrack. Between chili and high degrees of alcohol, a healthy male will be able to keep his insides pickled enough to kill any germ that may aspire to irritate his system – very valuable in virus-prone tropical climate and terrain no doubt.) But coming back to the prawns – they were certainly one of my favourite memories of Mannar.

One afternoon we visited the fishing community in Pesalai – a bustling coastal village in Mannar. As the sun dipped in the horizon, lulling the waves to seeming inactivity, the men and women of Pesalai were busy on the beach. The men were preparing to launch out to sea on their motorboats for the shoreline catch and the more traditional boats for the distant catches. The women, in the meantime, were busy washing and drying fish already caught in the day catch – ready for pickling and preparing for other dry fish assortments. Most of the fresh fish would be frozen in large ice boxes or the dried varieties bottled and sent to Colombo – the capital city – and to other markets in the country.

Michael and Rajan – preparing their boats for the all-night vigil in the ocean – kept friendly chatter with me and some of my colleagues about their fishing careers and the profitability of their daily catch. They told us, although the Mannar coast was one of the more fish-rich coasts of Sri Lanka, they had a string of woes that were threatening their livelihood. Although a ceasefire existed between the Government and the LTTE, the Sri Lanka Navy patrolled most of the coast throughout much of the night to curtail surprise raids by the LTTE gunboats, some of the time creating a tense environment for their trade. However, they emphasized taking on a more angry tone to their voices, this was not what bothered them the most. They went on to tell us about the rogue fishermen who made their escapades from off the coasts of India, trespassing the maritime borders that separated the Sri Lankan fishing terrain from the Indian. Lately, they said, the Indian fishermen had been getting even more aggressive in pursuing fishing in the Sri Lankan waters – many of them armed with knives and other weapons to injure and wound Sri Lankan fishermen in order to get at their fish resource. They appreciated the Navy’s involvement in sounding the fishermen against the trespassers, however, the aggression had only increased at the time and they had formed groups to defend themselves. This disturbed me, I remember thinking. These communities had just begun to start the closest thing to normal lives after decades of interruption than had only created an environment of violence and aggression that modeled the male psyche. Finally they had a chance to live in a violence-free environment and the Indian fishermen did no good turn to these men and their families in restoring their lives and healing their minds.

Mannar was made up of an island connected to the mainland by a large causeway. Within the larger territory of the mainland, in Madhu, under the control of the LTTE until very recently, life was not very different – re-development was evident in the form of tarred roads and housing for returnee refugee families, dug wells and slowly developing community markets, obvious to us however not to the degree it was evident on the Government-controlled island. (The Sri Lanka Army has recently taken Madhu, taking over much of the land area in the command of the LTTE and pushing them further north.) One of our guides in Madhu took us to visit two landmarks – the Madhu Catholic Church – one of the oldest churches in the North and famous for its feast in August, attracting hundreds of thousands of devotees each year from all over Sri Lanka, India and other parts of the world. It was a fact of wonder to me that these crowds made their pilgrimage even amidst the fiercest fighting surrounding the Church. Special provisions were made between the conflicting parties to ensure that devotees were able to make their pilgrimage to the Church and worship at leisure. The Bishop of Mannar and the Madhu Church have stood as symbols of the greatest beacons of peace in the North over decades.

Another landmark we were taken to see was equally memorable, but very different to the grandeur of the Madhu Church. Our guide took us to visit the mass gravesite dedicated to hundreds of fallen LTTE cadres who had sacrificed their lives for the cause of separatism. It was a newly-opened gravesite at the time, and one that stood as a proud monument to remind the cadres’ families that their sons and daughters had not fallen in vain. It was also a less than subtle message to the Tamil population of Mannar that the ‘cause’ was never to be forgotten or taken lightly. Each gravestone was identical to the other – indicative of the LTTE’s staunch practice of equity between men and women, between adults and children and among those of varying lengths of service to the cause. What was impressive was that each tombstone erected was made of white marble – a grand display of royal burial rites to the heroes of the cause – probably the only purpose for which the faction broke from its customary practices of absolute austerity. It was chilling to behold for someone mostly protected from the country’s harsh past, but the sea of graves was eye-opening as well to the number of youngsters who had dedicated themselves to a movement – either for the lack of options or because the status quo had convicted them that this way was necessary to enable better options for generations who followed them. Either way, one cannot look on on so many graves at one time, many of them not much older than myself at the time if death, and not feel a great sense of sorrow and loss – loss of Sri Lanka’s potential for greatness, perhaps a different kind of greatness.

Leaving Mannar, we felt we had lived and grown decades in experience and perspective. It was a rich and a rare visit. Our hosts were warm-hearted and extremely generous folk. We piled into our vehicles laden with a rich assortment of tokens to remember Mannar by – various knickknacks – hats, baskets and such woven from palmyrah as well as dried and pickled fish in bottles. I did not carry many of these; I gave into my weakness – the assortment of traditional sweets made of palmyrah molasses and sesame stacked away in my backpack were to last me for most of my meals for at least a few weeks after I reached Colombo. Looking back, I muse to myself, it’s a wonder my teeth are still in tact.

Mannar with all its charms has today also become an oil exploration site, as research has indicated Sri Lanka may have an untapped energy source off the northwestern coast. Oil or no oil, to me, Mannar is rich in a variety of other resources far more valuable than mere minerals – her people and their ways, her scenic beauty and her breathtaking coasts and of course her succulent Tiger prawns!

September 2003, Trincomalee, Sri Lanka

Still in Trincomalee, the scenic coastal town to the North East of the island, there are so many small anecdotal events I need to relate to the interested eye. While driving into the interior villages, for example, it is difficult for me to express in only a few words the brief encounters of wonder I beheld. I remember insisting my driver to stop the vehicle to capture through my camera lens the pair of school boys in their school uniforms (blue shorts and white short sleeved shirts, half tucked in and half hanging out of their shorts, a justified and most appropriate appearance at the end of a school day, each no more than two and a half feet high, probably third graders) standing by a tree bark with their note books and pencils out, teaching the two Army soldiers how to read and write the Tamil language. The Sri Lankan Army is made up of mostly Sinhala recruits, exclusively so for duty in the war zones. Most Sinhalese do not know their other national language – Tamil – because they have never had the inclination nor the opportunity to learn.

I got down from the vehicle with my colleagues and after exchanging pleasantries to put them all at ease, started chatting with the soldiers, who instantly warmed up to someone speaking a familiar language, probably after months of lone languishing by this tree bark along the highway, separating great big jungles on either side, their makeshift security post. It turns out the ‘little teachers’ were conducting their lesson for the soldiers as they have done for the past so many weeks to then.

Getting into the groove of conversation, I could tell they were thankful for the brief distraction to their duty, if only to talk for awhile about their loved ones back in their villages. One young soldier, sheepishly told me about his girlfriend, blushing all sorts of colours despite the sun-darkened skin after months of standing out there in the harsh sunlight, with only the trees, the skies and their archaic guns for company. They were engaged to be married, he told me. I inquired when the wedding was to be, he looked down, scratched one boot with the other, and told me, his smile half fading, that it depended on when he could get leave from duty. I could tell how exhausted these troops were, with added tension during the so-called ceasefire.

The other soldier told me that what he missed the most was helping his old and ailing father in the family farm. This year, a drought persisted, he said, which meant the loss of yet another harvest. Wryly he added under his breath that his father’s ailments were brought on more by the pressure to pay back his growing debts after the purchase of fertilizers and insecticides at exorbitant prices and not so much from physical reasons. He said that is why he had opted to enlist with the Army, as he could support his father to some extent with their debt repayment. He also told me he had started saving for his two younger sisters’ marriages in the future.

The ‘little teachers’ had stopped their lesson for a play-break. The soldiers’ mirth returned at the display of the boys’ pranks and we left them to their antics. Driving off I remember saying a quick prayer that these little ones would not grow up to borrow the racial hate and prejudices fostered by their elderly predecessors as my generation had had to, and that instead they would grow up to a nation where each respected the other – where the old could learn from the young, where joy existed between people despite their ethnicity, and where humanity came together to fight the more potent evils threatening mankind – poverty, hunger and the daily struggle to survive.

Everyone loses in war…some more than others:

Driving through several villages on our way back into Trincomalee town, we made another stop at a Sinhala village hidden amidst acres of paddy fields. Our book research before heading to Trincomalee had indicated that this particular town was cited as a possible location rich in ‘case-studies’ for the purpose of our own field research. We found that sadly, we were right. Making casual inquiries from random villagers in their farms, we soon found our way to a tiny mud house by the side of a deserted field, with no sign of life for miles around it. As we tapped on the wooden plank that was positioned for a door, an elderly woman in a traditional ‘redda’ (cloth in Sinhala) and ‘hette’ (blouse in Sinhala) came out. Her eyes looked young, although we were surprised to see the lines that had forced their way onto her otherwise pleasant face. She seemed to be alone, however, as was expected of all village folk in Sri Lanka, she smiled at all of us and invited us in after we briefly explained to her the purpose of our visit. I shivered on her behalf as to how trusting she was of all of us. We could tell what a lot she had been through in such a short time in her life.

There was hardly a piece of furniture in the tiny sitting room of the one-bedroom house. But returning from the room she brought with her one wooden chair and a mat that she placed on the floor, inviting us to sit. She perched herself on the hard floor and asked us more about the purpose of our research and about ourselves. When she was satisfied with our responses, she began to relax a bit more. With the encouragement and the assurance of one of my colleagues, she began to tell us about her daughter. She was smiling as she spoke. With carefully selected words, she relayed that these sorts of things were now expected after so many years of war. She told us that her daughter had been raped, believed to be by a soldier, when she was returning from the field, having served her father his lunch. The girl was 16 years old and had just sat her first level secondary school examination. She had come crying home and collapsed into her mother’s arms. They had decided not to relate the incident to her father, for fear of the consequences of his irrational but protective anger. She softly told us that he loved his children, and was especially proud of his daughter, who was as a simple farmer. He had used to call her ‘mage pahana’ (my lamp in Sinhala.)

Several days before the examination results were due, the girl had committed suicide. It was then that they had realized the emotional and psychological weight their young daughter had been bearing all those months. The experience had destroyed her innocence, her peace, her freedom (for she had needed her mother to go everywhere with her after that) and her hopes for the future. They received word from her school soon after that the girl had done extremely well in the examination and was eligible to study in the science stream of the senior class so that she had a good shot at entering the university (Sri Lanka’s free education system enables free entry into one of the 11 universities in the country, only based on merit, annually increasing the competition among students to obtain an enviable spot among the limited capacity for intake into the local universities.) These were, however, hopes and aspirations that had died along with the girl. She was, among many, just one of the casualties of war.

While we were struggling with our own thoughts, especially us girls among our group, to think of the right thing to say to this grieving mother, she had called to one of the passing villagers and had asked him to bring by two bottles of a local soft drink. She ducked back into the kitchen outside the house and brought with her an assortment of four glasses to pour the drink into. She handed the glasses out to us, with apologies that she could only afford two bottles. We struggled even more. Here was a woman and perhaps a family on the brink of starvation with a failed harvest and a violated and dead child, and she was apologizing to us for her lack in serving us. But we knew from our travels that to refuse the hospitality of a villager anywhere in Sri Lanka would be considered offensive and unkind, and so we accepted her hospitality with sinking hearts. I have always and continue to marvel at the generosity and selflessness of all Sri Lankans no matter where I traveled in this tiny island.


Life and times in a refugee camp…

Back in town, we stopped at a refugee camp (the politically correct term being ‘welfare center’) close to a predominantly Muslim area. The camp had been in existence for 13 years at the time. Refugee camps, by definition, are temporary locations of refuge, where people are housed for a while until they can return to more permanent shelters where they may regain some amount of normalcy and conduct their lives. Not so in many locations in Sri Lanka. And definitely not for the now more or less permanent residents of this refugee camp in Trincomalee town, located a stone’s throw from the main Police station and many other imposing government buildings.

We were led through the narrow alleyways that separated rows and rows of mini shelters made up of boards and plastic, with some woven dried palm leaves placed on top for roofing. It was a bevy of men, women and children walking hither and thither. Children did not go to school most of the time and the men did not go to work. They were fisher folk, displaced from their original homes during the war years. Even though they were now resident close to the beach, the Navy restricted them from seafaring due to the threat of LTTE gunboats that tried to encroach into government terrain every so often, erupting in a sea battle. This meant that able-bodied men were sitting at home, walking about aimlessly with no hope of a livelihood to sustain their families independent of government support. No doubt, the frustration, the seemingly endless uselessness that boiled inside of them must have been great. We were informed by our local NGO guide that this was one of the main reasons the residents often got into brawls between them – underneath the superficial conflict over relief supplies or water, lay the need to vent deeper feelings of anger, emotional tension and fear of a bleak and hopeless future for them and their families.

Children rarely went to school not only because the kids in the camp were made to feel unwelcome and unwanted by the children in the regular schools in their adopted location, but also because parents had to stay behind to fight for the weekly dry food rations and supplies of water, kerosene and cooking oil that were supplied by the Government. There were no specific dates of delivery and so they could not risk not being at home to collect their rations, which were supplied upon inspection of the refugee ration card given to each family.

While my colleagues were questioning a few families, I walked around with a Tamil colleague of mine, playing with the children who gathered around us curiously. My eye suddenly caught sight of one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen in my life. She was slender, of average height and sported flawless and gleaming brown skin. She wore a loosely fitted bright red printed dress. She had just had a bath and had her long dark hair tightly folded into a large bun with a towel at the nape of her neck. She was wringing some washed clothes. She saw me and smiled – a shy smile, but with mischief dancing in her large, black and beautiful eyes.

I made my way towards her with my colleague and asked her her name. She introduced herself merrily and inquired of us. After we had in turn introduced ourselves, I asked her her age, she replied she was 18. She looked much younger. I asked if she lived with her parents, at which she gave a throaty laugh and said she was living with her husband. I was speechless. I could tell she was not surprised at how shocked I was. Pointing to her stomach, now presenting a slight bump under her dress, she told me she was pregnant with her second baby. I was not sure which I was more shocked at – the seeming years of experience of adult life for such a young age or the fact that she had acquired an aura of wisdom and fearlessness about her that seemed to have left her undeterred by the inquisitive questions of an older, yet unwise city girl like me.

She went on to relate that she had moved to the camp when she was only five, and that at 16 she had fallen in love with a boy who was also a resident in the refugee camp. They had ‘married’ a year earlier and now they were having their second child. I could not believe what I was hearing. Here was a girl, younger than myself, who had literally lived her whole life in this camp and had met, fallen in love and married within this camp and now had given life to the next generation, who perhaps will spend some or all of their lives in this camp as well. It was painful, sad, shocking, amazing and intriguing all at the same time.

But I remember jotting down in my notes the realization that what seemed to me like just a refugee camp that sheltered the displaced and homeless affected by the war, was also an active microcosm of life. People experienced the joys of birth, found romance and made love, celebrated marriage, brought up children, quarreled as neighbours, as husbands and wives, and fostered friendships built in community living, and at times also sorrowed over the death of their loved ones inside this camp. Life existed in this ‘refugee camp’ as in any other village or town elsewhere in the country. What was temporary and a blight to the landscape to passers by was a permanent way of life and the only reality known to those who lived inside the camp. Thirteen years of communal living meant that a community, an identity, a way of life was born and fostered through the years. The only way they could cope with their reality was to accept their transitional status as real life and to transform it into everyday living. I was awash in wonder as I said goodbye to that girl and the members of her ‘community’.

These are only some insights I had in the beautiful district of Trincomalee, but they have left me and my perception forever changed and I am so thankful that I encountered them along the caravan stops of my life over the years. Perhaps in letting me in on their realities, they have let me share in their experiences and keep with me a little of the strength, the purity, the wisdom and love they have acquired through their trials and their lives. And for this, I am forever indebted to them.

September 2003, Trincomalee, Sri Lanka

My first entry into the great district of Trincomalee situated in the north east of Sri Lanka was extraordinary. It was again on a research tour that I made her acquaintance, and it has been a flirtatious, passionate love affair since. The short-lived ceasefire agreement between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) was still on then and this made travel into hitherto inaccessible parts of the country, such as the ones controlled by the LTTE, possible for many of us of a different ethnicity.

The Trincomalee Harbour – the only natural harbour in Sri Lanka, and in this part of the region I think, did not fail to take my breath away on first view. She looks onto the great blue-black and exotic Indian Ocean, rich in uncommon sea creatures and a perennial wisdom that only the ocean and sky share between them.

The purpose of our research found eight of us, my colleagues and I, balancing on a narrow boat suspended on overhead ropes for support on either end. We were crossing a lagoon known for sucking in human beings to satiate her appetite and perhaps a kind of protestant anger towards the atrocities committed by us humans for decades on either side of her banks against one another. We all let out loud sighs of relied once the boatman got hold of the bank to tie the boat onto a pole on one end, feeling not-so-wanton and ridiculously brave all of a sudden.

We made our way through patches of freshly cut jungle, scattered here and there with structures that took the form of probably houses at one time, ages ago. Many were just cemented flooring with a moldy concrete wall or two, overrun with foliage, entirely bullet-riddled. Even the inanimate structures such as these seemed to be weeping in pain, almost as though they were watching us with accusatory eyes. It was, to me, a mixture of anger, sadness, pain and despair, and strangely, even suspicious hope that perhaps the Sri Lankans living on this piece of serene beauty had at last knocked some sense into their heads.

We were welcomed by a cadre in civil clothes, who seemed to both smile warmly and yet regard us with so much distrust, all at the same time. I didn’t blame him. With very few words and mostly nods and gestures he led us to a tiny little hamlet that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. There was only one formal structure, and there seemed to be no houses in sight at all, although in an area of about 500 square feet there were a lot of people, mostly urchins, hovering about with makeshift play things, armed with sticks and old tires for amusement.

We approached the hamlet cautiously. The purpose of our visit was to visit a young girl, a 14 year old, who had been harassed and violated by an adult homeowner at whose house she was working as a maid. I can’t imagine why I would have taken the information so casually, as it completely threw me off balance as I beheld the girl in person and as my Tamil-speaking colleagues translated the ordeal this young thing had been through in less than one year.

Before our eyes lay the girl on a dirty and tattered piece of cloth on the floor in the center of a rectangular plot of land. She did not seem to be quite conscious of our presence. In fact, she was writhing in so much pain, holding the large bump on her stomach, the muscles on her face stretched in pain. Her elderly mother was sitting on the floor as well beside her daughter. The girl’s younger brother, about nine years, was standing by a tree close to them with one leg on the tree trunk, chewing vigorously on a reed that he held to his mouth. All three of them were incredibly thin, sporting bulging eyes and stunted bodies – signs of the lack of nutrition and possibly severe under nourishment.

Not too far away from the girl on the ground and her mother, was a makeshift space that could only be assumed to be their home, if it could even be called that. Shockingly, it consisted of four sarees tied together to four jungle poles erected on the hard ground, with a large plastic sheet for a roof. Inside this incredibly flimsy hut were some dirty pots and pans. To the left of the hut were some stones covered in ashes in the center – the family hearth.

I asked the mother in my non-fluent Tamil how many children she had altogether to which she responded she had nine in all. If I was shocked out of my senses, I struggled hard not to show it on my face. I knelt down on the ground next to the girl, facing her mother, held her hand and asked softly what had happened to the girl. The mother took my hand in hers and looked at my face long and hard. Then as a tear rolled down her left cheek, she explained that since she hardly had any work in the fields due to the ensuing drought and due to the tension and fear in Trincomalee that prevented rural folk from venturing into the towns in search of other coolie work, she had to depend on her younger children to increase their income. This was inspite of Sri Lanka’s well-established social welfare system – which include a free education system in which primary and secondary education is free of cost and compulsory by law until 14 years, as well as a well developed but poorly administered social security system that includes monthly dry rations, livelihoods loans and compulsory savings for the 30% of Sri Lanka’s families that live below the poverty line (defined at families with a monthly income of less than Rs.2600 or roughly US $25.)

Her elder children were married and lived in the vicinity, but as they had children and families of their own, she could not burden them with dependence. She pointed to a frail and thin man a distance away, dragging on a beedie – a local cigarette – sitting on his haunches on the ground next to a few other younger men, talking. She identified him as her husband. She told me that he had a bad back and could not do any hard work anymore and whatever money he earned doing this and that would all be swallowed down in the bottles of poison he consumed daily. She threw a sidelong glance of disgust at him, accompanied by another big tear down her other cheek.

She went on to explain that although her daughter and younger son were both in school, her daughter voluntarily dropped out of school so her younger brother could continue his schooling and took up a job as a maid in the house of an assistant school principal in Trincomalee town. She was resident there.

Several months into her work, one day while the mistress was away, the assistant school principal called her to his bedroom to delegate some chore. However, as she entered, he had closed the door behind her and had raped her. He had slapped her mouth shut so that her screams were muffled. She was scared and beaten so hard during the entire horrific episode that when he was through with her, she had lain there completely traumatized and motionless. He cleaned himself up and sneered at her, telling her to keep her mouth shut, since he knew that her family was the most important thing to her. She dragged herself out of his room and cried until the mistress of the house returned.

Upon her return, the girl went running in tears to retell the entire sordid story. She was unprepared for what ensued – the mistress hit her hard against her cheek and told her to stop spreading such lies and to go back to work. The girl never told her mother, afraid she may lose her job and more afraid that her younger brother may have to quit school and start working instead. Therefore, she obediently stayed on. It baffles me still whenever I think of this part of this incident the amount of familial love, kindness and immense sacrifice that exists among families, regardless of economic circumstances. Human love wherever it exists is still the greatest miracle of all.

By this time, I was clutching the mother’s hand so tight, my knuckles were turning white. Then she told me that her daughter had attained age some years ago, but that she was so innocent in her ways, she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary when she started missing her period over some months. It was only when she was getting dizzy spells and nausea that the mistress in the house had figured out that this child was pregnant. Without a word, the girl was paid her last salary and sent back home.

It was at this point that both she and her mother knew that she was carrying a baby in her womb. The girl that lay before me was eight months into her pregnancy. In my head I could hear a voice reverberating ‘No way! She’s fourteen! She’s ONLY fourteen! She’s just fourteen! She’s a child! She’s a child!’ Tears stinging all our eyes, we forced ourselves to concentrate.

The girl had never been to see a medical officer; the local public midwife had visited them once several months before and had given some useful advice on how to keep her rested and fed with a consistent and healthy diet. But in a family that managed barely one meal a day, that too consisting of some rice and a vegetable, they were unable to provide the girl with any remotely nutritious food, let alone what the midwife had recommended. The girl’s will to survive and even manage a weak smile at me, somehow gave me hope that her child will also fight its way into this world, even against all odds.

We had to leave this family as time was running out for us and we still needed to cross the lagoon and make our way through a dirt track along two and half hours’ drive into the town where we would compile our report. I remember we took much longer to get into town, as we were forced to detour from the normal route to avoid traveling past an LTTE training camp, on the off chance that those of us from the south turned informer to the Sri Lankan Army.

We were poorly paid researchers, however, we emptied all we could from our stipend and managed to secure a couple of kilograms of rice, sugar and milk packets from the only grocery in the vicinity, to hand over as our contribution to the family. This seemed a better alternative to giving them money, which would probably have been snatched away anyway by the head of the household to sustain his habit.

As I look back on my frayed notes of that day, many years later, I notice the scribbles on my notepad of my observations of the environment around the girl’s home. The drought and water scarcity was so severe there that the red earth had large cracks running across it. Next to no vegetation existed on the dry bare ground, excepting a few large trees and some thorn bushes. The cruel sun beat down on the earth mercilessly, leaving every living thing parched below it. As though poverty and neglect from the powers that be were not hard enough to suffer through, the climate and environment were forces that seemed to have little sympathy on these communities as well.

That young girl’s face and her plight are burned into my memory. I remember wondering what that strange and horrible world we had entered into was, upon reaching the location where the girl lived. I remember wondering how this remote, dry, barren area could be a part of Sri Lanka – so rich in resources and full of life in most parts? With such a well-administered health care and education system across most of the country, how is it possible that within just 65,500 square kilometers of area consisting all of Sri Lanka, we could have missed this village, when a young girl and her family suffers with such burning need? At the time, with the existence of a ceasefire agreement, however shallow and short lived, what were we doing without getting much needed help to those who needed it the most? How could we ever forgive ourselves?

Today, we are back at war, but communities in the deep reaches of the country remain chained and suffocating from a more sinister enemy than what we have made each other out to be – cruel poverty and debilitating hunger have encroached our villages and the neglected patches of our beloved little country. Every child shackled with the fierce effects of malnourishment, every mother stretching herself to protect her children from a worse fate than hers, every father drinking himself to death every night punishing himself for his inability to provide for or protect his family from all the monsters that roam freely in our world, every young girl whose childhood is stripped from her and is forced to reckon with a reality she never chose, every young boy with a storm brewing in the deep crevices of his heart, furious at the injustices all around him, the ever-fleeting inaccessible opportunities to dream bigger and freer, ensnared into the only real option of violence to occupy some space to live and breathe – theirs is a world that to many of us don’t even exist, a figment, a tall story, a reality in a distant land unknown to us. But the truth is closer to home, in fact, is right here in our home.

Sometimes, sleeplessness, restlessness and deep discomfort that lead to proactive action are perhaps the only antidote to right the wrongs that we have collectively, globally, contributed to create and breed. We may never be through in a lifetime, but at least we would have started.