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.

July 16 2003 – Galle, Sri Lanka

The shrill sound of babies crying shatters the silence of the birds and trees as I enter into the imposing white building. It is a bevy of activity inside and for just a minute it’s all confusion for me. But I regain my composure fast and look around. My colleagues and I are surrounded by children of all ages, shapes, sizes and forms. Some smile shyly; others hide in the shadows of the attendants now coming to welcome us. We are in the Children’s Remand Home in Galle. This is where the wounded, forgotten, damaged children get hidden away, in case they spoil serendipity for all passers by in this tourist district, also known for the ramparts of Dutch colonialism and a once monumental cricket stadium – both reminders to the offerings of those who forced rule over this country for decades, I think wryly. Galle is also known for its lighthouse and the surfers’ waves that drive most ocean-lovers to it over long weekends. Also soul-searching artsy types to brood in the concoctions of their thoughts until inspiration strikes them to award-winning literature or some such momentary achievement.

A snotty, mouse-like child of about eight tugs on my t-shirt and puts his hand on my arm, as though I were the dial-a-playmate he had ordered over the phone. Not daring to dissuade him, I step up to my marching orders from this little punk, a familiar mushy feeling taking over my usually practical and no-nonsense demeanour – I know, ridiculous for my height of five feet (and two inches, I remind myself emphatically!). Once again I try to avoid pleasure taking over my work, but fail miserably as usual. The child leads me to a circle of other children, engaged in a game of karam. Well, not quite engaged in the game, some scraping the pieces on the board in a board game version of G-force or Voltron, while others sit around squealing with laughter. That moment is bliss for me. Nothing in the world is more beautiful and intoxicating like a child laughing. What a rare thing that is in this monstrous world of ours.

After a few minutes of entertaining the kids with my antics of a clown, I pull out my notebook and pen as naturally as breathing and find a spot with one of the chief attendants to find out about the history of the institution and the variety of reasons for the presence of these children. The lady in question, a hard-nosed woman of considerable proportion, never failed to switch on the look of gentleness towards a child who would distract her for this and that in the course of our conversation. I watch her manage the balance with wonder and admiration. She tells me that many of the children here were ‘secured’ by Probation Officers working for the National Child Protection Authority while on their rounds in the villages, after serial visits to their homes found all the signs and evidences of sexual and physical abuse. Mostly from their parents or close relatives. She tells me this latter bit of information as though she has repeated it to many others before me. Obviously she has. Before police officers, magistrates and department officials. I shudder at the seriousness of her job and silently thank God for the nature of mine, feeling a little guilty for my thought.

Other children are here because their only remaining parent is in custody on charges of neglect, abuse or misconduct towards their child, or for minor offenses like theft or the illicit distilling of alcohol. The primary reason my colleagues and I are here is to investigate the prevalence of child sex tourism in certain locations in Sri Lanka, including in Galle, for a regional report. Our investigations were not as simple as we had expected, due to the covertness of operations going on where child sex and pornography are concerned in this country. Children are embraced by Sri Lankan culture. Still, there are the many exceptions that result in hateful effects on them, which I blame on the curse – poverty stoked by the global economy. Even so inexcusable, I think to myself - more than a little self-righteous and naïve for my 24 years.

I collect my quota of case studies for the report soon after. They bring to me a girl of 14 years. She’s as tall as me, and smiles but it fails to reach her eyes. I make a note of that. She sits next to me and I instantly beam to make her a little more comfortable and in an attempt to appear approachable. That’s one thing most Sri Lankans respond to – a smile. It seems to have done its work, almost. She smiles back weakly, justifiably unsure of what I would want with her. I make a quick self-study to see if I really am approachable. Generally when visiting villages I am very plainly dressed – no jewellery, no make up, my hair tied simply at the back and slippers on my feet. To elicit information from someone else, you must transform into an almost non-entity so that the subject is only aware of his or her story and you are merely the recording device. I do this well, most of the time. But often it is respect, politeness and an elevation of the subject’s person and humanity that is most crucial. I have learned this over the years.

After a few general questions about her school, her friends and her favourite things, I subtly lead to the subject that brings her the most pain – her family and her home. Isn’t it amazing that the place that ought to be the most secure and pleasant for a child is for this girl and many others like her the most feared of all? I am careful to observe how she speaks softly and respectfully of her mother, almost in defense, just in case someone were to blame her for the plight her three daughters are in today. I was informed before the interview that the girl I would be talking to is mentally challenged from birth and slow in comprehension and speech. However, she had gone the farthest in school – up to Grade three, whereas her older and younger sisters were not able to go on to Grade one. The older sister, 17, was kept at home most her life to help with the home chores and learned to sweep the garden and home, to fetch water from the village well and to wash clothes. She is incapable of forming complete sentences or of expressing herself except through her mother. Her younger sister, 12, walked to school with her on most days for company and idled around the school compound until she was done, and on other days she wandered around the village paddy fields.

I gather from the simple and slow sentences the girl manages that a year to date her father had been laid off from work at the local factory, at which point the drinking became far worse. She recalls him being intoxicated most days and nights. (Galle and most parts of the western and southern coastal areas are infamous for the production of illicit hooch; Sri Lanka in the mid-nineties also had the enviable dual-title of being the country with the highest rates of both alcoholism and suicide!) He would stagger home in the night and pick a fight with her mother whenever she asked him about work or about the household finances. The ensuing fights would always end up with him striking her mother, one particular night she recalls her father dragging her crying mother by her hair, slamming her into the only room in the wattle and daub house and shutting the door from the outside. He turned on her older sister next just because she stood with her partially blind eyes fixed on him, not able to understand what was going on. The rest of these nights are a blank for her.

The attendant sits by me and whispers that the father had needed money for his drinks one evening and had asked his friends from the factory. One friend had made a suggestion to him, which he had accepted without a second thought, or so it seems. The girl relates how her father came one evening obviously drunk and, after inquiring of their mother’s whereabouts, dragged his eldest daughter with him out of the house and into the woods nearby. She had heard nothing after that. Apparently, her sister had been rented for an hour or two to one of his factory buddies for Rs.20 (US 0.20 cents) for sex. In this case, rape of a minor, not just any minor, one who is not aware of what is going on. This practice had gone on for some months, well hidden from their mother. She only found out when they had to sell whatever little furniture they had to find money for an abortion when the eldest was found to be pregnant (abortion is illegal in Sri Lanka). The experience of forced sex by strangers may have been harrowing enough for that young girl, but the trauma of undergoing an abortion has sent her into such deep shock that since she has stopped talking to anyone, even her mother.

It was the abortion that had led probation officers down the track to discover the racket, in the meantime however, their father had successfully lured both her and her younger sister into the shameful sale for sex among his former workplace buddies. The girl had only undergone this harrowing experience just once, before she spilled the beans to her mother ignoring her father’s threats to harm their mother. But before their mother could do anything about it, the child protection officers were onto them and had instantly remanded the father, but as a matter of law in this complicated case, had also separated the girls from the mother for a short period of time until their security could be assured.

I am a second child and one of three girls. My father treats each of us as though we were princesses (although I have always harbored the secret knowledge that I am the most special to my dad). It is inconceivable to me that a father could be so un-fatherly. Didn’t he help to create these three young lives? Weren’t they conceived in love? Did he not take on the responsibility to protect their mortal bodies and their honour with his life? How can the protector be the offender? How can your own children be the prey? How can a man allow it?

And yet, this happened. In Sri Lanka. I heard it from the mouth of the prey. When the two sisters were brought out to share more information if I needed any, I myself had lost the ability to talk. This was personal to me. It hurt and as I write, it still hurts. Of course, I have lived to see many days since and have had to open my ears and eyes to more dark human realities in the course of my work. But I will never forget their eyes. I remember handing a sheet of paper and a pencil to the second girl and asking her to write about anything she liked. I assured her that I would help her write it. She took the pencil and stared at the paper for a long while. Then as though there was nothing else she could write about, she wrote and underlined the heading of a brief essay, as her gift to me. She wrote the word in Sinhala: “mother”.

I don’t know where those three girls are today. I never returned to the Remand Home to follow up. But I have prayed for them often and have wished better days for their future. I pray no girl has to ever go through that kind of brutal deception and betrayal from her father. The title of ‘parent’ is one that must be deserved, desired and consciously adorned, not bestowed on one for the sake of engagement in the act of procreation or a as a matter of social obligation. There are, as in this case, many other elements that have resulted in the sad outcome related here – poverty, job insecurity and the lack of technical training and education, alcoholism and the lack of social awareness of the rights of children and the disabled. Even so, whichever way you try to understand it, our reality is blighted now, our peace shattered and our hope for the future of the children of this country disturbed. And with each experience, the more I confront my paradox: the conviction of the dire need for humanitarian response to poverty alleviation and social injustice as in my life’s calling and mission, and yet also the conviction that the impact of what I do may never be enough to put the world right. And whenever I get to the end of that sentence, ‘every effort counts’ I always tell myself…and believe.

FIELD NOTES: My perspectives of Sri Lanka

Disclaimer: The recorded briefs are purely subjective thoughts and are heavily dependent on the senses and the emotional influence they have had on me (as well as the weather at the time). However, what I do guarantee is nothing but absolute sincerity in them, which at times may disturb those who look forward to literary appeal and artistic expression. I neither confess to nor promise either one. I write as my brain, heart and senses prompt me and so the recorded briefs are not chronological in order. Even so, time is not of the essence here.