The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka Mihirini

Culture, Mind, and Society

The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka

An Ethnography on University Students in Colombo

Mihirini Sirisena Culture, Mind, and Society

Series Editor Peter G. Stromberg Anthropology Department Henry Kendall College of Arts and Sciences University of Tulsa Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA The Society for Psychological Anthropology—a section of the American Anthropology Association—and Palgrave Macmillan are dedicated to publishing innovative research that illuminates the workings of the human mind within the social, cultural, and political contexts that shape thought, emotion, and experience. As anthropologists seek to bridge gaps between ideation and emotion or agency and structure and as psy- chologists, psychiatrists, and medical anthropologists search for ways to engage with cultural meaning and difference, this interdisciplinary terrain is more active than ever.

Editorial Board

Eileen Anderson-Fye, Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University Jennifer Cole, Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago Linda Garro, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles Daniel T. Linger, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz Rebecca Lester, Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis Tanya Luhrmann, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University Catherine Lutz, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Peggy Miller, Departments of Psychology and Speech Communication, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Robert Paul, Department of Anthropology, Emory University Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Department of Anthropology, Utrecht University, Netherlands Bradd Shore, Department of Anthropology, Emory University Jason Throop, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles Carol Worthman, Department of Anthropology, Emory University

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14947 Mihirini Sirisena The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka

An Ethnography on University Students in Colombo Mihirini Sirisena Durham University Durham, UK

Culture, Mind, and Society ISBN 978-3-319-76335-4 ISBN 978-3-319-76336-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76336-1

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Foreword

The University of Colombo occupies a site just south of the city centre, on the edge of Cinnamon Gardens, one of the city’s most exclusive neighbourhoods. Originally, a small cluster of whitewashed high-colonial buildings, looking out to a cricket pitch, the University has over the years acquired an incoherent clutch of newer buildings, many of them unu- sually ugly even by the standards of what we might recognise architec- turally as transnational academic modernism. The two main roads which converge at the southern tip of the campus are not only wide and very busy, but also shaded by beautiful old trees which line the pavements on each side. It’s easy for a casual traveller to ignore the youthful ferment of campus life which goes on away from the road, and in the hostels and boarding houses where the students live. Politically, the layout of the university evokes other histories. The road bounding the north-east side of the Arts Faculty is now offcially known as Stanley Wijesundera Mawatha, honouring the memory of the 1980s Vice-Chancellor who was shot dead in College House by the youthful insurrectionists of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna in early 1989. As Vice-Chancellor, Wijesundera had refused to close down the campus when ordered to do so by the JVP. One of the frst acts in their rising against the state had been the abduction and murder of a Colombo student leader, Daya Pathirana, in late 1986. In their time, the old trees have hidden a political history of unexpected intensity, and occasionally severe violence.

v vi Foreword

By the time that Mihirini Sirisena returned to her old campus in a new role as anthropological feldworker in 2007, the political environment had changed. The insurgent violence of the 1980s was a fading memory in Colombo itself, but the war against Tamil rebels in the country’s north had just restarted and would reach its bloody fnale two years later. That war and the issues that fed into it—the construction of antagonis- tic ethnic identities, the causes and consequences of political violence, displacement and memory—have dominated academic discussions of Sri Lanka for three decades. But while attention has been rather narrowly, if understandably, focused on these topics, Sri Lankan society has changed in many ways. The liberalisation of the economy in the late 1970s has led to the growth of an expanded middle class, heavily concentrated in the island’s Western Province. With this have come new styles of consumption, and shifting ideas about gender and sexuality. The young people coming to the University in Colombo are having to navigate a rapidly changing and uncertain social milieu, one which provides both opportunities for new kinds of self-fashioning and very real constraints, not least from the relentless force of peer pressure. The world of the young, in Colombo as in many places, is often opaque to outsiders. Lecturers prefer to know as little as possible about their students’ lives away from the lecture hall. Students are often living far away from home and therefore far away from the kind of everyday surveillance which is so much a part of growing up in Sri Lanka. There are other kinds of surveillance, though, from fellow students. Building relationships is not easy, especially romantic relationships, and the consequences of failure are felt intensely. New formations of class make all this more diffcult. New technologies like the use of mobile phones create opportunities as well as further obstacles. This is the world that Mihirini Sirisena explores in her original and eye-opening book. In limpid prose, she introduces issues like the eti- quette of gift-giving that ties a young couple together, the idioms in which they imagine their relationships with each other, and the fraught approach to sexual intimacy. In setting out these themes, Sirisena is herself charting often un-navigated territory. Anthropologists have, on the whole, felt more comfortable with the objectifying language of traditional kinship studies, with its analytic charts and abbreviations, than with the warmth (and occasional cold) of actually existing relationships between actually existing young people. In part, this may simply be due FOREWORD vii to the greater academic rigour afforded by this apparatus of scholarship. But just as much is the fact that it is quite diffcult to create an anthropology which brings warmth and emotion back into the study of relationships. Sirisena confronts this challenge with considerable skill, and there are two specifc aspects of her achievement which are worthy of note. To set out the stories she has assembled here requires above all a rare degree of trust, and that trust is something that had to be built patiently and carefully. Here, Sirisena’s position as a sometime insider must have helped, but this would not in itself have created the conditions for her interlocutors to open themselves as they have. For that, the author had to do the work that was needed. The second aspect of note is of course Sirisena’s writing itself, which combines a novelistic attention to detail, with a coolly analytic sense of the dynamics of self-making and relationship-building. It was once said that to be true to its subject, every new ethnography has to create its own genre anew. Mihirini Sirisena has, in this book, done just that.

Edinburgh, UK Jonathan Spencer December 2017 Series Preface

Psychological anthropologists study a wide spectrum of human activity: child development, illness and healing, ritual and religion, personality, political and economic systems, just to name a few. In fact, as a discipline that seeks to understand the interconnections between persons and culture, it would be diffcult to come up with examples of human behaviour that are outside the purview of psychological anthropology. Yet beneath this substantive diversity lies a common commitment. The practitioners of psychological anthropology seek to understand social activity in ways that are ftted to the mental and physical dimensions of human beings. Psychological anthropologists may focus on emotions or human biology, on language or art or dreams, but they rarely stray far from the attempt to understand the possibilities and the limitations of on the ground human persons. The discourse of romance has a long and fascinating history that spans the cultures of East and West, and wherever it is found it links the bodily realities of men and women with the larger structures of politics and economics. In this book, Mihirini Sirisena illuminates how romance has taken shape among college students in Sri Lanka. She shows how a culturally adapted form of this discourse works to mediate some of the contradictions in the lives of these young people, in a world penetrated by new realities of economics, politics and kinship. Love serves to shape and indeed make the self, to provide new modes of belonging, but in its powerful effects can leave the self fragile and vulnerable. This

ix x Series Preface work provides a compelling example of how our cultural expectations and understandings of emotion are central to the ongoing negotiation between selves and societies.

Tulsa, USA Peter G. Stromberg Acknowledgements

Good fortune in my life comes in the form of people. From the time I signed up to study for a Ph.D. in September 2006, which forms the basis of this book, I was blessed to have had so many people who poured in their time, effort, love, care and faith. In seeing the completion of this book, I am indebted to:

Subhani, Chandani, Thilini and Ajith who introduced me to my interlocutors at the university and my interlocutors, who accepted and trusted me and shared a signifcant chapter of their lives with me. Though they remain unnamed in this book, their lives comprise the core of this book for without them, I would not have a story to tell; Jonathan and Lynn who let me follow my heart and guided me with invaluable advice and encouragement from its beginning; Janet Carsten and Carol Smart, who examined my Ph.D. thesis and whose comments and critique guided the reworking of the Ph.D. thesis into this book; Becky, Dhana, Eshani, Harini, Jane, Linda, Ruth and Tharindi for indulging in me with food and care, reading/commenting on various drafts and above all, helping me keep my sanity in check; Buddhini and Janaka for lending a helping hand, especially at the beginning when the ground was shaky;

xi xii Acknowledgements

Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme, School of Social and Political Science at Edinburgh University, Sir Richard Stapley Education Trust and Radcliffe-Brown and Firth Trust for providing fnancial assistance during the Ph.D.; Kyra Saniewski and Rachel Daniel at Palgrave who were accommodat- ing and helpful; The reviewers for their advice and helpful comments; Nilhan, Nirmi and Shanela who were the rocks I leaned on during feldwork, and Gaya, for faith, support and, teaching me to love, question and question love; Vikram, Keith, Christina, Tatyana and Buddy, who were my home away from home during the Ph.D.; Amma, Thaththa and my sisters for instilling ambition in me and helping me chase my dreams with love and unfaltering faith; Simon and Roo for their unconditional love.

Thank you! Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Ruminating on Love and Love Relationships 55

3 Ayyas and Nangis in Love 77

4 Making It Real 99

5 My World in My Pocket: Phones, Relationships and Expectations 121

6 Balancing Between Pleasure and Propriety: Where, What and How 145

7 Sex Games: Pleasures and Penance 167

8 Magēma kenek: On Future and Certainty 185

xiii xiv Contents

9 Serious Relationships: Intersubjective Intermingling, Fuller Lives and Embodied Emotions 207

Bibliography 223

Index 237 A Note on Translation and Transliteration

In this book, all statements and conversations come from interviews and conversations I had with my interlocutors, which I either recorded or wrote down during or after our meetings. The majority of these discussions were had in Sinhala, and all translations given in the book are my own. However, most of my interlocutors used some English in our conversation, and when they are cited, they appear in single quotation marks. Where key terms and phrases for which my translations are approxi- mations, I have transliterated the phrases and/or terms which are itali- cised and given adjacent to the translations in brackets. In transliterating, I follow the common system for Sinhala. Vowels marked in a macron indicate long vowels (ā, ī, ē, ǽ, ō, ū); retrofex consonants are indicated with a dot below (ṭ); sh is written as ś; prenasalised n is written as ň; mūrdhaja na is transliterated as ṇ.

xv People in the Book

Here is a brief introduction to people who appear in this book. They were the key informants, whose stories have shaped the book. Amali Amali was 23 years old when I met her, and she was in her third year of study at the university. She grew up in the suburbs of Colombo, with her younger sister and her brother. Her father was a retired civil servant, and he had passed away when I met her. Amali’s mother was a housewife. Amali sought help from her mother while mending her heart, broken when her four-year relationship to Erantha ended. Amintha Standing almost 6 feet tall with an athletic built, Amintha was an attractive young man who was popular among his fellow students. He was in his third year at the university, studying to become a teacher, when I met him in early 2008. In his mid-twenties, he beamed confdence and self-assurance and took the self-proclaimed position of my ‘key informant’, a role he lived up to well. ‘The university is not my life’, he told me when we frst met, implying that all his energies are not directed into his university education. He already tutored students studying Sinhala literature for the advance level examination. Thus, his fallback was in place. If all else fails, he could become a tuition master in Sinhala. With all the private

xvii xviii People in the Book

tuition classes he conducted, he was building his reputation as a tuition master. Within the university, he was active in student politics and helped organising and took part in sport and literary events at the university. He prided himself on being able to savour all or most opportunities and experiences life had to offer. The older of twin brothers, Amintha was born and bred in the suburbs of Colombo. He catalogued himself as middle class, explaining that money was never a worry while he was growing up. His father was a teacher, and his mother was a housewife, who dedicatedly provided her children with the shelter and guidance they needed. Amintha often credited this cocoon of warmth his mother provided them as an explanation for him turning out to be the good man that he is. Amintha was in a nine-month-old relationship with a girl he met at the university when I met him. Aravinda Amintha’s twin brother, Aravinda offered an almost iden- tical profle to Amintha, in appearance, character and activities. While Amintha described himself as the ‘sporty one’ while Aravinda was the ‘arty one’, Aravinda chose to describe Amintha as the ‘articulate one’ and himself as the ‘quiet one’. Aravinda has been going out with his current girlfriend for over a year when I met him. Anish Anish was 21 and was a frst-year student at the Law Faculty. He is from the south of Colombo and was the youngest of a family of four. His parents were civil serv- ants. He was in a brief relationship with Hiranthi when I met him, which ended during my feldwork. He had doubts about the relationship, he told me, as he considers himself a ‘bit of a player’ and was not sure if he had it in him to work at the relationship to make it last. Bileka Bileka was 25 years old at the time of my feldwork. Born and brought up in Colombo, Bileka’s background was signifcantly different to that of the majority of my research participants. Her father was a businessman; her mother was a doctor, and Bileka was educated abroad. At the time I met her, she was discovering the world of university students through her friends at work, who were People in the BOOK xix

local graduates. At the time, Bileka was engaged to her long-term boyfriend. Bimal Bimal was 25 years old and was the only Sinhala, Christian in the family of my interlocutors. He was a third-year student at the Arts Faculty when I met him. From north central Sri Lanka, he was the youngest child of a family of eleven. He was in a relationship with a woman from his village. Despite having carried on with that relationship for more than two years, Bimal saw no bright future lying ahead in terms of marital prospects. Bindu Bindu was 23 years old and was a third-year student at the Science Faculty. Her parents owned a business in the south of Sri Lanka, where Bindu was born and bred. She was the middle child of a family of fve and had moved to Colombo to follow a computing course before she began her course at the university. It was at this computing centre that she met Nilanga, with whom she had been in a relationship for over two years. When I met her, Nilanga had ended their relationship. Charithra Charithra was a 22-year-old law student in her second year of study. She had moved to Colombo to study and stayed with an aunt in the suburbs of Colombo. Charithra’s father had passed away when she was young. Charithra told me that her brother and her mother, who was a teacher, never made her feel the gap that her father’s death had left vacant. Charithra had just started a relationship with a man she met at the university when I met her. Chathuranga Chathuranga was 23 years old and was from central Sri Lanka. A third-year student at the Arts Faculty at the time I met him, education was the frst thing that was on Chathuranga’s mind. It was not just that education paved the way for upward mobility and security. Being the oldest of three children, Chathuranga knew that he had to take over the responsibility of looking after his two younger sisters, as his ageing, farmer parents found it diffcult to do so. He was not in a romantic relationship when I met him. xx People in the Book

Chinthana Chinthana was 24 years old and was a third-year student at the Arts Faculty. He has moved to Colombo to study at the university, from central parts of Sri Lanka and stayed at the university hostel. His parents were paddy farmers, and Chinthana has an older sister who was married. Chinthana told me that his family struggled to make the ends meet. He was recovering from a break-up of a 6-year relationship when I met him. Dhamma Dhamma was a 24-year-old third-year student at the Arts Faculty. He left his parents and sister behind in a village to the north-east of Sri Lanka, when he came to Colombo to enter into university. His father worked as a clerical assistant, and his mother was a housewife. Dhamma was in a ‘serious’ relationship with a woman he met at the university when I met him. Dhananjaya Dhananjaya was 22 and was a frst-year student at the Law Faculty. His father owned a boutique, and his mother was a housewife. Dhananjaya was the 3rd child of a family of six and had moved to Colombo from central Sri Lanka to start his life at the university. He had been in a relationship with an older woman he met while working part-time in his village, and the woman had ended their relationship when I met him. Dilan Dilan was a third-year student at the Faculty of Law when I met him. He is from southern Sri Lanka and is the youngest of a family of eight. His parents are farmers. He has been away from home since the age of thirteen, living with friends and relatives during which time he looked after himself and indulged in drinking and loiter- ing. When he was 15, his oldest brother passed away, and after that, he decided to focus on his education and do well. He was not in a relationship when I met him. Duleeka Duleeka was 32 and was married to her university sweetheart. She had a child, and they were putting the fnal touches to the house they had built in the suburbs of Colombo, when I met her. Harsha Harsha was 22 years old. She was the youngest daughter of a family of four, and her parents were paddy farm owners. Harsha moved from the south of Sri Lanka to People in the BOOK xxi

Colombo to study at the university. She was a second- year student at the Science Faculty when I met her and was in a relationship with a man she met at the university. Hemanthi Hemanthi and her parents moved from southern Sri Lanka, when she started her course for a bachelors degree at the university. She was 23 and described herself as a modern, independent woman. Her father was a businessman, and her mother was a housewife. She was single when I met her and had recently broken off a relationship she had with a man she met at the university. Hiranthi Hiranthi was 21 years old and was born and bred in Colombo. Her father was a civil servant, and her mother was a teacher. Hiranthi followed her older sister’s footsteps into the Law faculty and was in her frst year of study. I saw the death of her relationship to Anish during the course of my feldwork. Hishani Hishani was 23 when I met her and comes from the suburbs of Colombo. Hishani’s mother had divorced her father, who was an alcoholic, when Hishani was young. Her mother worked as a wage labourer and struggled to make ends meet. As a result, Hishani and her younger sister had a hard childhood. They were estranged from their older brother, as it was the father who had custody of the brother. Hishani told me that her luck begun to change after she had met her boyfriend, with whom she had been in a relationship for the past 6 years. Jayantha Jayantha was 25 years old and was a third-year student at the Law faculty. He is the youngest child of a family of nine. His father worked as a wage labourer in their village in the deep south of Sri Lanka. Jayantha, like Chathuranga, was not in a relationship and didn’t see himself one. Jayantha didn’t want to be distracted by romantic relationships and could not afford one. Kamani Kamani was 23 years old and was newly married when I met her. She had married her childhood sweetheart. She was in her third year at the university but didn’t see her degree amounting to much as she didn’t expect to work. She was the younger of two children, with an older sister who worked for a private company in Colombo. Her xxii People in the Book

parents were retired teachers and had moved to suburbs of Colombo when Kamani started her degree at the university. Now they lived next door to Kamani and her husband. Madhura Madhura was a 26-year-old student at the Law Faculty and was in the fnal year when I met him. Her father was a politician and represented their village, which is to the north-east of Colombo. Youngest of two children, Madhura followed his father’s footsteps into student politics at the university and was rather vague about the business his older brother minded. He was in a relationship with a girl he met at the university. Nayana Nayana was a student at the Law Faculty and was in her second year. She introduced herself as a Sinhala, Buddhist girl from southern Sri Lanka, and was 21 when I met her. Nayana’s parents were teachers, and she has an older brother. Her parents had moved with her to Colombo when she started studying for her degree at the university. She was in a relationship with Nilan, a man she had known since she was a child. Nirasha Nirasha was 21 years old. She was a second-year student at the Science Faculty. Her mother was a teacher, and her father was a civil servant. She lived with her parents and the older sister in the suburbs of Colombo, where she was born and bred. Nirasha was in a relationship with a man she met at the university. Nishan Nishan was a 24-year-old law student in his third year of study. He moved to Colombo from southern Sri Lanka to study at the university. He was the fourth child in a family of seven. His father and mother worked as wage labourers in their village in the south. Nishan was in a relationship with a woman he met at the university. Padmika Padmika was 21 years old and was a frst-year student at the Law faculty. His father was a civil servant, and his mother was a retired teacher. The middle child of a family of fve, Padmika and his two brothers grew up in different parts of the country, when they followed their father as he was transferred from one corner of the People in the BOOK xxiii

country to another. Padmika was not in a relationship when I met him. Sayuri Sayuri was 23 years old and was a third-year student at the Arts Faculty. She is from the central province of Sri Lanka, where she and her older sister grew up in a rather austere environment. Sayuri’s father was a head teacher, and her mother was a teacher, and Sayuri was my only interviewee who referred to her caste status when describing her background. She was in a relationship with a man she had met while she was at school. Susantha Susantha was 26 years old and was a fnal-year student at the Law Faculty. He grew up in a village in southern Sri Lanka with his brother, where his mother worked hard as a wage labourer to make the ends meets, since his father abandoned the family for another woman. Susantha had found love at the university with a woman from the same village yet their relationship could not withstand the pressures of a clash of social classes. Thilini Thilini was 24 years old and was a fnal-year student at the Arts Faculty. She was born and bred in the suburbs of Colombo. Her parents owned a small business in the village she grew up. Being the only child, she was the baby of the family and was not in a relationship when I met her. Other people They too appear here, in their varying roles and capacities. Anura Hishani’s boyfriend. I didn’t meet him. Erantha Amali’s former boyfriend. I didn’t meet him. Jagath Bileka’s fancé. I didn’t interview him. Mr. Karunaratna An astrologer and it was Bileka who put me in touch with him. He enlightened me on the process of matching horoscopes. Mr. Wijetunga My former landlord. Mr. Wickramasinghe A high school Sinhala teacher who advised me with meanings and interpretations of some Sinhala terminology. Narada A TV show host and hosted a talk show on love at the time of my research and it was to speak to about this show that I contacted him. xxiv People in the Book

Nilan Nayana’s boyfriend. I never met him. Nilanga Bindu’s former boyfriend. I didn’t meet him. Sanjeevika A peer from my university days. I spoke to her about love in Sinhala literature. Sarangi Dhamma’s girl friend. I met her a few times, but I didn’t interview her. Shivanthi Aravinda’s girlfriend. I did not meet her. Suren Bileka’s friend. I spoke with him but did not include his story in this book. CHAPTER 1

Introduction

I met Amali just before the lunchtime chaos began to unleash in the gym canteen. It was our frst meeting. She was one of those who sought me out, she later told me, because she needed someone to talk to. Wrapped in a denim skirt that hung loose over her knees and an oversized, foral shirt, Amali looked tired, her cheeks drawn in and dark circles highlighting her sunken, tired eyes. They made her look older than she was, and weary, as if she bore the brunt of the world on her shoulders. By then, it had been seven months since the day she found out that the man she loves had married another woman. We found a quiet corner by the badminton courts, where we were least likely to be disturbed. Once she started her story, she did not hold herself back, and in about two and half hours, she made me privy to all the twists and turns of her relationship. Her descriptions were detailed. She spoke fast, moving from one incident to another, a melange of the happy and the painful, dotting the landscape of her relationship, linking all the events leading to its eventual break-up. She didn’t try to hide the tears streaming down her cheeks, from this stranger whom she had met only a few hours back. Amali was the eldest daughter of a family of fve. Growing up in a rather conservative, Sinhala-Buddhist suburban household, she strongly believed that romantic relationships are not things that should concern school-going children. Therefore, she did not fnd herself in one until after she had completed her school education. She met Erantha at the

© The Author(s) 2018 1 M. Sirisena, The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka, Culture, Mind, and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76336-1_1 2 M. Sirisena garment factory she worked at against her parents’ wishes, after fnishing her Advance Level exams. Though her parents had made it clear to her that they did not want her to be associated with ‘garment’ girls, she followed her friends to work at the factory because she wanted to hang out with her friends. So, it was no surprise that her parents disapproved of it when they found out about her relationship with Erantha. For her parents, Amali and Erantha were an incompatible match. For them, Amali was more educated and from a social background different to Erantha’s. Besides, and maybe more importantly, their temperaments clashed. Amali told me that her parents often suggested that she needed a partner who is stronger, someone assertive, a strong personality. Amali admitted that she is stubborn and is used to having things her way. So, she needed someone who could keep her stubborn tendencies in check and balance her strong personality. Erantha did not ft this description. But, Amali persisted and eventually managed to win her parents’ blessings. Four years later, she found herself facing a grim reality. “It was not like we talked about breaking up and then ended the relationship”, she told me. “I used to fght with him often. I argue over little things. I get angry easily. That’s the way I am. … Since about last May, there was a change in him. He treated me indifferently … He stopped asking after me.1 Calling reduced. … Even if we were to meet, he would not make the same effort anymore”. The uncertainty ended when she found out that he had married another woman. With that began a period of bewil- derment, she told me. Despite the frequent quarrels and the lapses in caring, she had not imagined that her relationship would end this way. She tried as hard as she could to understand what brought it on. Her words fell out like a waterfall, rapid and charged with pain and anger. Suddenly she stopped, stared at me for a few seconds and told me, “I even took Panadol because of this”.2

1 Asking after (hoyala balanava) is understood to be an act through which love is communicated. Lovers often exchanged text messages and telephone calls informing each other of their whereabouts, what happens during the day etc. The absence of this kind of exchanges hinted that one does not care about the person they are in a relationship with any longer. 2 Panadol is a brand name for paracetamol and is synonymous with painkillers in Sri Lanka. Taking Panadol, as Amali used it, is a euphemism for overdosing. Senadheera et al. (2010) report that overdosing on painkillers is a relatively recent method of attempting suicide, which is more popular among young women. 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Years later, I am still haunted by vivid recollections of Amali’s words, posture and the sense of loss that hung over her when she spoke. Amali’s struggle to cope with the end of her relationship still unsettles me. The helplessness I felt as I listened to her annoys me. What is it about these relationships that they mattered so much? That we devote so much time and effort to them? What is it that mattered so much that some of us were driven to seek solace in self-harm when a couple relationship has ended? It was similar questions that befuddled me when I set off to do ethnographic feldwork at University of Colombo in September 2007. I was enraptured in the idea of fnding out about the meaning of couple relationships at the time and chose University of Colombo as my feld site for a few key reasons. My previous experience at the same university had alerted me to some interesting aspects about its student population. When they begin their university lives, most students would have moved out of their parental nests for the frst time in their lives. Living on their own or having no parental fgure watching over them, the university allowed them a certain freedom to interact with members of the opposite sex without adult surveillance. Moreover, by the time they entered into the university, most of them would be in their early twenties and would have begun to think about marriage, preferably resulting from a romantic relationship. Being the preferred channel to marriage, ‘love’ holds a special place in the hearts and minds of these young people, thus making them keen to talk about it. I intended to capitalise on these circumstan- tial dynamics and engage with the university students on a concern that I thought they found relevant at that juncture in their lives as I headed to Colombo University to do ethnographic feldwork in 2007. Amali’s story of unmaking suggested that the end of her relationship brought on a sense of death of herself, so much so that she contemplated and acted on putting an end to a half-alive life. In so many different words and ways, Amali told me that, when her relationship ended, she felt as if she were losing the sense of who she is and what she should live for. Through her descriptions of losing weight, lacking motivation for work or pleasure, she painted a picture of a young woman who was once happy but now has been stripped off of everything she had known herself to be. She described herself as someone left with nothing but feelings of failure and confusion. She was half-alive. For Amali, who was alive for the sake of being alive (jīvat vena vāle jīvat venava), popping over thirty white caplets in less than half an hour did not seem a drastic act, but an obvious one. For her, by doing so, she was not ending herself because 4 M. Sirisena everything that she had once known herself to be had melted away when the relationship ended. The questions and the concerns she brought up boiled down to “whole life is a lie, because [I] was lied to by someone whom [I] deeply trusted” and “how do I face the family and friends who know of us”. Yet, to assume that it is a feeling of being cheated on and/ or she could not face the society because she is compromised by the failure of her relationship that drove her to contemplate suicide is to overlook a whole lot of dynamics that are at play in couple relationships. In this book, I argue that, through couple relationships, which are fltered through sociocultural sieves, one forms affective kin bonds at the essence of which belie our sense of personhood and belonging. In this three-part introduction to the book, I present the theoretical context within which the content of this book is located, socio-historical context of my interlocutors, and the methodology and the structure of the book.

Part 1: Belonging, Love and Relationality

Feeling Selves Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. (Butler 2009: 389)

In recent works, writers such as Butler (2009), Gay y Blasco (2005), Josephides (2005) and Biddle (2009) have pointed out that it is impossible to speak of self/subjectivity without taking our ‘feeling sides’ into consideration. While recognising ourselves as feeling beings and arguing that it is this that distinguishes us humans from other living, breathing beings, they point out that these structures of feelings and emotions are culturally conditioned. To begin with, emotions are “the means by which social and cultural formations affect us, that is, render us feeling beings in a series of complex, intricate ways” (Harding and Pribram 2009: 13). These intricate ways that emotions affect our sense of being could be clustered into two broad levels: emotions become a demarcator of who we are and, through feeling emotions and responding to them in particular ways, we seek assertion or negation of the persons that we are. It is this approach to the link between emotions and self that inform the argument I make in this book. The crux of this argument is, emotions refect who we are. Being individuals of a certain kind, we become 1 INTRODUCTION 5 emotional in certain kind of ways. The categories through which we defne ourselves as persons belonging to a certain class, gender and sexuality guide us on how to envision our emotionality: what we feel as well as how to feel what we feel. As Harding and Pribram (2009: 13), expli- cating the connexion between gender and emotionality, argue:

Gendered subjects are constructed through particular emotion events in which they express or suppress specifc emotions. Gendered subjects must live and feel the specifcities of such emotional occurrences or events, and they must constantly re-enact – relive and refeel – those specifcities as part of the ongoing performance and maintenance of their identities.3

Feeling emotions, it appears here, as a performance, not in the sense of putting on a show, but as a way of being. Emotions, when associated with subjectivity, carry insinuations of awareness. In order to feel as if we are ought to feel as persons of a particular nature, we learn to express and suppress emotions. For instance, to be a womanly woman, I learn to suppress emotions such as competitiveness, which are seen as manly in the cultural context I grew up in. To feel is to act. Supporting the Extended Mind Theory view and considering emotions as that which involve the brain, the body and the world, Scheer (2012) offers the defnition that emotions are “an act situated in and composed of interdependent cognitive, somatic, and social components, mixed in varying proportions, depending on the practical logic of the situation in which it takes place” (ibid.: 219–220). Stemming from this defnition, emotional practice entails habitual dispositions that mediate emotional responses as well as automatically exe- cuted bodily movements. When considering emotional practise, Scheer (2012: 220) suggests that we should recognise:

1) that emotions not only follow from things people do, but are themselves a form of practice, because they are an action of a mindful body; 2) that this feeling subject is not prior to but emerges in the doing of emotion; and 3) that a defnition of emotion must include the body and its functions, not in the sense of a universal, pristine, biological base, but as a locus for innate and learned capacities deeply shaped by habitual practices.

3 Emphasis in the original. 6 M. Sirisena

Scheer’s presentation of emotions as practice invites us to re-engage with Rosaldo (2009), who, while maintaining a strong association between emotions and biology, advocated for emotions to be considered as embodied thoughts. She explained that thoughts and emotions are interlinked and explained that thought is cognition that is “always culturally patterned and infused with feelings which themselves refect a culturally ordered past … thought does not exist in isolation from affective life …affect is culturally ordered and does not exist apart from thought” (ibid.: 84). After having established that thought as culturally located, she elaborates the connection between thoughts and feelings.

The crucial point … is recognition of the fact that feeling is forever given shape through thought and the thought is laden with emotional meaning. … what distinguishes thought and affect, differentiating a “cold” cognition from a “hot,” is fundamentally a sense of the engagement of the actor’s self. Emotions are thoughts somehow “felt” in fushes, pulses, “movements” of our livers, minds, hearts, stomachs, skin. They are embodied thoughts, thoughts seeped with the apprehension that “I am involved.”4 (ibid.: 88)

Rosaldo highlights the refective side of emotions that a feeling is a feeling when it is recognised as such; that we cannot feel without being engaged; and that cognition and interpretation are pivotal elements of the experience of feeling. Lutz and Abu-Lughod (1990) further the debate on emotions and thoughts and present a case for the process of refection on emotions to be considered in anthropological studies. Their argument is that it is emotional discourse that interprets the feeling. While emotions can be seen in social interactions, much of it is verbal and it is through language and exchange that meanings are interpreted/ made. Illouz (2007: 2) adds that emotional practice entails, not action per se and meaning-making, interpretive discourse, but “the inner energy that propels us toward an act”, which is what gives a “mood” or “col- oration” to an act. Emotion thus represents the “energy-laden” side of action, where the “energy is understood to simultaneously implicate cognition, affect, evaluation, motivation, and the body”. The awareness that we associate with feeling likens it to a performance and when they are performed in that manner, become a marker of our

4 Emphasis in the original. 1 INTRODUCTION 7 subjectivities. These dispositions are culturally conditioned as it is the cultural language of emotions that we learn to speak lays boundaries to what we recognise and forego as emotions. In other words, our cultural understandings of emotions colour the emotional dispositions our subjectivities could assume. Speaking of stereotypical emotional dispositions in the USA, Illouz (2007: 3) illustrates that “to be a man of character requires one to display courage, cool-headed rationality, and disciplined aggressiveness. Femininity on the other hand demands kindness, com- passion, and cheerfulness”. This cultural knowledge of emotional dispositions is refected in idioms such as ‘boys don’t cry’. Illouz argues that these emotional arrangements lay the foundation for social arrangements as well, as emotions become a means through which we position ourselves in social relations. They provide the structure through which we assert our sense of self. As Harding and Pribram (2009: 13) suggest, “how subjects act emotionally – that is, how they are positioned as well as participate in the positioning of others as emotional – is part and par- cel of the reproduction of specifc categories of subjecthood and the power relations that constitute them”. As it is pointed out here, through internalising emotional dispositions, we reproduce the dispositional categories that we claim allegiance to as well as the power relations that work through them. What is hinted at in such allegiances is that we also claim allegiance to affective structures, within which we place ourselves, in relation to the others we share our worlds with. Thus, emotions are a means through which we relate and these relationships take different forms. For Harding and Pribram, they are a means through which relationships of dominance and subordination are reproduced. For Smart (2007), they are a means through which connection is established. Either way, what these discussions point out is that emotions are relevant only when they are placed within relationships. Emotions in themselves may not mean much. If we do not have anybody to enact our emotions on and if we had nobody to witness our emotions, the meaning emotions acquire in our lives may be different to what they are given at the moment. It is because emotions are a means of relating that they have that ability to work on our sense of self, through negation or assertion. If I were to return to Amali’s story, I could point out that, even though she was quick-tempered, which is unbecoming of a woman, Amali became a loving, caring woman in her relationship 8 M. Sirisena with Erantha.5 Her relationship with Erantha formed a critical role in the making and the maintaining of the sense of self she held onto when I met her. Thus, when the relationship ended as abruptly as it did, its demise questions this being that Amali became within her relationship. The erasure of the person that she was within the relationship is heightened by the lack of apparent reasons for the demise of the relationship. She is left confused because the abrupt end of her relationship questions the person she knew herself to be in the relationship. It is this confusion that leads her to the void she described herself to be caught in, when she met me. Amali’s story highlights that by being witnessed by the signifcant other to be a person of a particular nature, we too witness ourselves as such. Emotions work on our sense of self, not only because the other witnesses them; we too witness ourselves as being emotional in particular ways and react to emotions in a way that infuences our own refections. Emotions are like a dialogue that we have with our selves just as much as it is a conversation with the other. Negative and positive emotions that we experience through different emotion conversations are not synonymous with the acceptance and denial of ourselves. That is, the rejection that we experience because we feel a certain emotion does not wipe us out. It is the absence of the emotional conversation that undoes us. Biddle (2009) eloquently illustrates this point showing that when facing shame, it is not so much that we see ourselves as having failed. Shame, she says, is a sort of a punishment because we experience shame in terms of what self is, more than what the self has done. “Shame is a direct mimetic introversion of the other’s negation”, for we learn to be shameful of shameful acts through considering others’ response to what we have done. That is, self-failure that we feel after having done something shameful is “an internalisation of the other’s abject rejection” (ibid.: 115). Biddle’s discussion of shame brings into light its dynamic form, because both the person who does the shameful act and the person who witnesses it feel the impact of shame.

5 Amali and her friends and peers described quick-temper as an unwomanly trait. Those who described themselves as quick-tempered spoke of it as a problem that they needed to overcome. A woman, they described, should be patient and collected, while it is the men who got angry easily and were rash in their decisions. Thus, the women who described themselves as quick-tempered were so troubled by it that they sought help with anger management telling me that their quick-tempered demeanour imposed a burden on their relationships. 1 INTRODUCTION 9

It is a form of empathy we feel when we witness someone engage in an act that is shameful that makes us want to turn away. Biddle describes this empathy as ‘contact shame’ and says that it shows the fragility of the boundary between self and other. She (ibid.: 116) explains:

The rejection by the other in a direct shame event makes for a most distinct self boundary, for what differentiates the self from the other constitutes self, dependent as identity necessarily on difference. But self-differentiation is necessarily provisional. The complex recognition of the self in another which ‘contact’ shame evokes demonstrates the ongoing debt to the other, for, and in, recognition.

It is a sense of negation that shame evokes in us. Yet it is effective as the feelings of shame recognises the person who feels shameful as a person who feels. The person who does the shameful act is still there, to be shamed, to be distinguished from the other. Negating too is an act of recognition. It is when the feeling person is no longer there that one experiences denial. It is the absence of the emotion that erases us. Butler argues that loss and mourning are such emotional experiences which bring on a sense of denial. Highlighting our “debt to the other” for existence, Butler (2009) explains that loss and mourning concern themselves with a loss of a sense of self that we experience when we had lost someone. In loss, we experience a sense of dispossession. This dispossession reveals our ties to others and highlights that it is those ties that make us who we are. In Butler’s own words and succinctly put (ibid.: 388):

It is not as if an “I” exists independently over here and then simply loses a “you” over there, especially if the attachment to “you” is part of what composes who “I” am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who “am” I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost “you” only to discover that “I” have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost “in” you, that for which I have no ready vocabulary, is a relationality that is composed neither exclusively of myself nor you, but is to be conceived of as the tie by which those terms are differentiated and related.

Mourning when we lose someone we are close to is not merely about acknowledging the absence of that person in our lives. It is also that, 10 M. Sirisena with that loss, we lose that part of us that we found in that person in the frst instance. That is not to say that this loss marks a defnitive end of ourselves. It marks an end of that self that emerged in relation to the relationship with that person whom we lost and it is the death of that particular self that we mourn. When facing such a death, we are advised to pick up the pieces and move on and this advice urges us to see beyond the immediate daunting feeling of denial. We often move on and so did Amali as she told me a several months later.

Love and Continuity If love with honor affrms the lineage hierarchy, modern love must have recourse to the morality of the forward world against which backward places know themselves. Modern love, that is, only reaffrms the founda- tional split between forward and backward that defnes the postcolonial nation. (Cohen 2011: 695)

The discourse on modern love, as expounded by theorists such as Giddens (1992), Bauman (2003), and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995), suggests that it is an affective state that is symptomatic of modernity and represents a form of intimacy that has transformed with the needs of the time. Their argument follows that intimate relationships were heavily infuenced by individualisation, which is symptomatic of modernity, and are driven by choice and personal satisfaction, and that liquidity, transience and instantaneous-ness characterise romantic relationships. The notion of individuality that modernists allude to assumes that the inhabitants of modernity have the space to focus on their pleasure above everything else and that they enjoy an unhindered choice to pursue it. In this kind of thinking, not only was there no space for pecu- liarities of personal experience, they speak of modernist individuals as if they were free from social ties. This monolithic representation of love has been critiqued by many scholarly works that followed (see Atkinson 2007; Jamieson 1998, 1999, 2011), which have portrayed love to be complex cultural experience. For instance, focusing particularly on choice in love, Busby (1997) refecting on her experiences in Kerala, South India, demonstrates that while emotion and affect may infuence the choices of marital partners, there are broader understandings that inform people of who is marriageable and who is not. Choice and love, in these 1 INTRODUCTION 11 instances, worked in tandem with ideas of compatibility and expectations, highlighting that, as Swidler (2001: 2) points out, “although love is a quintessentially personal, private experience, love is just as profoundly social and cultural”. What Busby, Swidler and other scholars writing on the topic, highlight is that love is a social and cultural experience not only because we make sense of our experiences through social and cultural repertoire; these relationships do not exist in isolation from other relationships that we are entangled with, such as relationships with family and friends as well as work and social position. My interlocutors at the Colombo University brought this to light as, while describing themselves as educated and modern, they showed me how the choices they made of romantic partners were infuenced by their own expectations as well as expectations of their parents and what they at times described as the “larger society”. My interlocutors alerted me that, their romantic partners, as Chathuranga succinctly put it, had to be someone who “suits me and the society” (maṭat gælapena samājeṭat gælapena kenek). Discourses of suitability, expectations and experiences are negotiatory processes for my interlocutors, who simultaneously engaged with global ideas about love, marriage and companionship and cultural expectations that they did not wish to turn their back on. Romantic love appeared in their lives as a negotiation between global and the local, and the future, present and the past. Recognising the negotiatory elements of loving, they pointed out that their worlds are in fux: their needs, expectations and dreams do not stay the same. Many social theorists have spoken of similar negotiations when discussing changes that manifest in social institutions such as family, kinship and marriage.6 Focusing on the experiences of the Western world, these works argue that the temporal contexts that one inhabits shape their expectations as well as the form such social institutions take in their imaginations. Focusing specifcally on marriage, some scholars point out that our perceptions of it have changed; that marriage has transitioned from being a reproduction-centred institution into a cocoon, where subjectivities expect to be nurtured. Acceptance and companionship

6 For instance, the works of Weeks (1995) and Jamieson (1998) elaborate the ways couples in the contemporary west negotiate with notions of intimacy, Weston (1994) explores links between friendship and kinship in a gay community in the USA and Borneman (1996) highlights the issues surrounding the applicability/employability of the concept of marriage in the age of AIDS. 12 M. Sirisena are among the key ingredients of such nurturing marital relationships, and couple relationships have come to occupy a signifcant place in the facilitation of such nurturing marital relationships. Marriages of this nature are glossed as companionate marriages (Swidler 2001). Looking for companionship, I found out as I attempted to understand the experiences of my interlocutors, is not necessarily a Western phenomenon. Amali illustrated the loss of companionship vividly as she mourned the end of her relationship. “It’s the night that is most diffcult. I think of him at night. I don’t get a good night call anymore. We used to talk at night. Not getting a good night call. That’s when you feel most lonely. It’s the loneliness that kills me”. Amali’s words were powerful. They had to be. She was speaking of a common enemy one often evokes, who dominated her world after the break-up of her relationship. Amali suggested, as feeling beings, we fear loneliness. Companionship promised in couple relationships frees one from the fear of loneliness, and commitment contiguous to companionship promises security and stability through continuity. This commitment leads to what some call the “companionate marriage”, in which, the expectation follows, one seeks and celebrates love and feeling, mutuality, and reciprocity and above all, continuity through social and legal seals of approval. Companionate marriage, in that light, is like a perfectly free bond. Bringing love and marriage together as two sides of the same coin, companionate marriage shows us that today, it is diffcult to speak of one without referring to the other, without referring to either the presence or the absence of one in the other. Swidler (2001) elucidates the point brilliantly. Exploring the connection between love and marriage, she argues that marriage is love at work. Likening our notions of love to a reality that forms “the internal contours of our own action”, she says (ibid.: 133):

“Love,” like other powerful cultural concepts, embodies a contradiction central to the society in which it fourishes. The idea of love describes a relationship so right that it can be simultaneously perfectly free and perfectly binding. … The power of the concept of love is continually renewed by the contradiction it bridges. … The unsettling issues that love raises stimulate the production of multiple – sometimes overlapping, sometimes coherent – theories to meet the irresolvable contradictions of institutional incompleteness. 1 INTRODUCTION 13

Loving, Swidler elaborates refecting on what her research participants told her, is free because it is voluntary but it is binding because it is a commitment.

One way of thinking of love is as a voluntary choice. Then the question is whom one loves and why, and what one gives and receives in a relationship. One chooses well; gets a good deal; is more or less contented, satisfed, happy and so forth. The other way to think about love is as a commitment, a bond that is no longer purely voluntary, if it ever was. If love is a commitment then it is unique, irreplaceable, and not fully ration- alizable into a set of benefts given and received.” (ibid.: 26)

Though Swidler attempts to put forth choice and commitment as two key ingredients of love, she points out that one cannot be separated from the other. Having chosen your own partner, one has a greater responsibility to make the relationships work. Thus, choice is binding and could be burdensome. One of my interlocutors, Hemanthi, after summing up the story of her failed relationship for me, revealed the burden on choice when she explained that now, she expects her parents to fnd her a man to get married to. She giggled as she said: “Then, if something goes wrong, I can put it [blame] on them”. It is this kind of burden associated with choice that characterises romantic relationships and make such relationships seem like a perfect free bond. Freeing choice from the modernist association of it with transient pleasure and associating it with continuity and love, the discourse of companionate marriage, as Swidler points out, proposes that real love is the love that lasts, because we are bound to it. In the narratives of her research participants, Swidler uncovers two kinds of love: mythic and the prosaic. Associating notions of mythic love with the kind that appears in fction, Swidler says that the bourgeois love story is one that almost always concerns itself with virtues and ends with marriage. In these stories, usually, the plot revolves around an ‘all-or- nothing’ choice of a unique other, made in defance of social forces, as the story attempts to resolve queries related to the individual’s destiny. Real love, Swidler says, in contrast, is ambiguous, uncertain and gradual. Grounded in everyday experiences, such love grows gradually, as Trawick (1992) describes it, with habituation. Intertwining loving with everyday experiences, Swidler (2001) describes, emerges “prosaic-realism”, which is just as cultural as the mythic version of love. 14 M. Sirisena

Prosaic love is a voluntary commitment, and it is the kind of love that could provide a foundation for marriage. Swidler explains that her interviewees saw marriage as needed because it organises their lives. It is about fnding someone to share your life with, a place to live. While marriage in the way it is organised holds on to these institution like qualities, whom one gets married to has become a matter of personal choice. Swidler points out that the “culture of love fourishes in this gap where action meets institution” (ibid.: 131). It fourishes because:

… while marriage is institutionalized, the process of getting married (or deciding whether or not to leave a marriage) and – in the contemporary period, the procedure for staying married – is not. As marriage has become more fragile, no longer fully settling the lives of those who rely on it, a second culture of love, prosaic realism, has blossomed alongside the old. This new love culture helps people be the kinds of persons, with the kinds of feelings, skills and virtues, that will sustain an ongoing relationship. (ibid.: 131)

While highlighting mutability of marriage, Swidler casts love in the light of a cultural repertoire through which American men and women refect and make meaning of their experience. This cultural repertoire, she says, informs the experience. The experience, in return, informs the notion of love as their interpretations of their experience fashion their understanding of love. In her depiction, she suggests that the way in which her research participants engaged with the culture of love is piecemeal, orienting themselves to their experiences by bouncing ideas off the cultural alternatives. Working with shifting frames, moving on from one repertoire to another does not mean that they had lost faith in the frst,

But simply a temporary abandonment of one craft while one navigates choppy waters in another. … a cultural repertoire remains diverse partly because it contains frameworks for making sense of many different scenes or situations of action, and each scene retains an autonomous logic, independent of other, potentially related scenes. (ibid.: 31–34)

Wardlaw (2006) presents an example of working with shifting frames when she describes how young men and women Huli of Papua New Guinea combine Christian and Huli ideologies in their conceptualisation of companionate marriage as an acceptable form of marriage. These men 1 INTRODUCTION 15 and women associated romantic love and being modern within Christian ideology. Wardlaw (2006: 74) sums of this process, saying:

It was by recovering and creatively resignifying the traditional defnition of marriage as moral, bodily work in the service of social production that they were able to cultivate a kind of conjugality that was affectionate, emotionally intimate, and modern … [which] was an amalgamation of the moral Christian individual and the Huli healthy and pure body.

This idea of shifting frames suggests, as Ingold (2010) points out, that lives are entanglements in motion. We work with different frames at different times and we draw from, at times seemingly contradictory, sources to make our lives comprehensible. In companionate marriage, at least ideologically, the expectation is that it would create an environment in which both the man and the woman could grow to their full potential. This expectation gains prominence and proposes that in contemporary society marriages are about equality, support and companionship. However, its practice may fail to deliver. Yet this is the end my interlocutors, possibly like many young men and women across the world, sought with their romantic relationships. For them, a relationship that leads to marriage (vivāhaya dakvā yana sambandhayak) is a real relationship, one of commitment and companionship and that is what they classifed as a ‘serious relationship’. While discussions on love in the context of companionate marriage allocates the couple in love the centre stage, many other works have pointed out the effects and the impact of other social forces on love relationships. Mody (2009), for instance, describes what happens when love comes between marriage and the other social relationships that marriages facilitate and maintain. Looking at love marriages in Delhi, she argues that such marriages impact upon social organisation, as a result of which other social institutions intervene in the making of love marriages. She argues that love marriages let the young Indians choose their marital partners, which disrupts the formation of kinship networks, which was previously done through marital alliances. This ability of love marriages to work on other social relationships has aroused the interest of state in love marriages and she brings to light the subtle means through which the state intervenes in the management of these intimate social processes. Rebhun (1999) highlights the relationship between socio-economic changes and the birth of the phenomenon of romantic love, illustrating 16 M. Sirisena how, in her study with people living in Northeast Brazil, rapid economic and social change the region faced have impacted courtship and marriage. She argues that these rapid changes in Brazil have made people’s lives and ideas, including those about love, dramatically different to those of their parents. Illouz (2007), similarly, argues that, in the USA, capitalism facilitates a mode of feeling that urges its inhabitants to refect on their feelings and that this has changed the ways in which they experience love as well as their expectations of love. Focusing on social changes brought on through economic developments, Verheijen (2006) argues that telenovelas, soap operas on television, expose rural Guatemalan women to an alternative way of being and that through this exposure, women reinterpret their experiences and expectation. In a similar vein, Ahearn (2000) argues that social transformations resulting from modernisation enabled the emergence of romantic relationships among men and women in Junigau, Nepal. Illustrating another liaison between romantic love and omnipresent forces, feminist theorists in the 1970s pointed out the unromantic side of love, arguing that notions of romantic love camoufaged male domination. Feminist theorists, Heiss (1991: 575) says, accused “romantic love … of being an accomplice in men’s traditional dominance over women in intimate relationships”. Citing Collins’s work, he explains, “the scenario of romantic/nonromantic love in our culture and the social structures built around it constitute one of the main forces keeping women tied into traditional gender roles and subordinate to men”.7 Through abetting the perpetuation of gender identities, romantic love, radical feminist critiques of it pointed out, propagates the gender divide (Illouz and Wilf 2009). Drawing support from feminist histo- rians, these critiques argue that the domestic sphere, to which women were confned, leaned on romantic love to uphold notions of exclusivity, monogamy and possessiveness as acceptable and even attractive. Jackson and Scott (2004: 152), for instance, illustrate this pointing out, “monogamous love entailed individualistic expectations: to be placed at the centre of another’s universe, while building one’s own world around them”. Romantic coupledom revelled in ideas of exclusivity and possessiveness, even when they were seen to be “infringing the other’s freedom, undermining one’s own autonomy and impoverishing wider social

7 Randall Collins cited in Heiss (1991: 575). 1 INTRODUCTION 17 relationships”. This kind of feeling, Jackson and Scott argue, promoted a kind of quantifcation of emotion, which, citing Lee Comer, they explain “. … monogamy has come to be the defnition of love, the yardstick by which we measure the rest of our emotions … Like so much butter, romantic love must be spread thickly on one slice of bread; to spread it over several is to spread it ‘thinly’”.8 Feminist theorists point out that, what happens in such a context is that, romantic love reiterate established gendered norms and power fows in one direction with women being the subordinates of men, for placing all your eggs in one basket only served to enhance the vulnerability of women in romantic relationships. While some scholars have pointed out that this feminist perspective assumes a historicity for romantic love that is always associated with male domination (Illouz and Wilf 2009), a number of other studies have shown that feminist thinking has trickled down to popular Western societies. Cancian and Gordon (1988), for instance, describe that throughout the twentieth century, popular magazines have encouraged women to express love in less gendered ways. Dowd and Pallotta (2000) demonstrate the popular media’s tendency to comment on the death of love and romance, highlighting that dating guides give out contradictory messages to men and women, advising them to be assertive and acquiescent at the same time. Heiss (1991) describes the infuence of feminist thinking in making communication styles between men and women less stereotypical. Combining feminist and modernist critiques of romantic love, Evans (2003) describes that in the west, romantic love illustrates the “democ- ratisation of miseries”, which is consequent of the ever-widening gap between the expectation and the reality. Her argument is that love matters in the contemporary Western society because it is the language through which people in the west organise their sexual lives. In Western imaginations, Evans continues, love has become a valid reason to enter into, stay in or leave a relationship. Likening ideas associated with love to slavery, she says that this modern idea allowed women some leeway in negotiations of marriage, allowing them to think of freedom, liberty, ownership and personal choice in relation to marriage. Yet, at the same time, since social institutions that are entangled in their sexual lives do not change as quickly as individual ideas do, a gap between expectations

8 Lee Comer cited in Jackson and Scott (2004: 152). 18 M. Sirisena and realisation opens. Evans turns to an analysis of the Charles–Diana marriage to illustrate the mismatch between reality and expectation, highlighting that the confict in that marriage stems from a clash of ideas of old and new ways of conducting marriage. Though they live millions of miles away, historically and geographically, people in Sri Lanka still speak of the Charles and Diana wedding as the most romantic real-life event they witnessed. More than quarter of a century later, my interlocutors, especially when they described their dream weddings, referred to fairy-tale weddings like that of Charles and Diana, every now and then. Yet, at the same time, they were conversant in the language of feminism and modernism and recognised the conundrum associated with conventional ways of conducting love and family and ‘liberal’ views found in feminist and modernist discourses. Their discourses highlighted that they inhabited what Evans calls a culture of material aspirations. Embedded in aspirations of personal and emotional fulflment, they too suggested that romantic love is a good reason to marry someone, especially compared to money or social convenience. Yet, as Evans explains quite different to Western societies, my interlocutors expected sexual relations to be managed through marriage. Convention marked a presence in the lives of my interlocutors through all these ‘other’ threads that ran through their lives: parents, friends, money, status, expectations. Intertwining them into and working with them, in their romantic relationships, they try to emerge as loveable selves. The loveable self that emerges in relation to a relationship is sustained through that relationship. The relationship, in that sense, and as Beatty (2005) points out, is a culturally mediated emotional event which constitutes itself as a story of two stories intertwining with other stories in which the protagonist they know as themselves are born. To love, as Beatty (ibid.) suggests of emotion, is not just to feel love. To display or to use emotion words does not necessarily mean that the person who uses them feels that emotion at that moment or that feeling is all there is to an emotion. Emotion is an event that defnes the moment; the emotion describes what the moment entails and hints at how it should be read. It is when emotions are constituted as events when one could tell stories about them. Associating what one feels with feeling norms gives them the syntax to relate it. Thus, on the one hand, love is understood through the syntax of loving. On the other hand, its becoming is in the telling, which, in turn, imbues it with a value and places it within the broader context of life (Skeggs 2010). 1 INTRODUCTION 19

Intersubjective Intermingling “… mutuality of being: persons who are members of one another, who participate intrinsically in each other’s existence. ‘Mutuality of being’ applies as well to the constitution of kinship by social construction as by procreation, even as it accounts for ‘the mysterious effectiveness of relationality’ … how it is that relatives live each other’s lives and die each other’s deaths.” (Sahlins 2011a: 2)

Sahlins (2011a, b, 2013), in his latest contribution theoretical debates on relatedness, offers a slogan-esque defnition for kinship as “mutuality of being” and suggests that fundamental feature of kinship is amity. While the idea of an overarching defnition for kinship that includes a wide array of kinships and places emphasis on the interrelated-ness of subjectivities is appealing, many have pointed out that connotations associated with mutuality overlooks aspects such as confict, exploitation and abuse, which too comprise kinship (Carsten 2013; Shryock 2013). On the other hand, Rupert Stasch (2009), whom Sahlins (2011a, b, 2013) draws from in his rendition of the theory of mutuality of being, focuses on otherness and relationality and retains the ambiguous nature of kinship. Discussing kinship practices among the Korowai, Stasch (2009) brings to light connexions between belonging, possession and otherness, arguing that, “a centripetal element in the feld of otherness, uniting disparate relationships and relational issues into a single plane, is … “belonging”” (ibid.: 262). Belonging for Korowai, argues Stasch, is something akin to a reciprocal holding, which is a wilful assertion of relatedness:

The relation of possession describes the possessor’s subjectivity as being constituted and affected by the relation to the other, not just the possessed other being defned by the possessor, and at the possessor’s disposal … A statement of possession is a succinct, dense claim of intersubjective closeness: there is an emotional, moral dimension to these relations, according to which kin are people who think about each other, are attached to each other in love and affection, care about each other, and feel their life is incomplete without each other. Possessor and possessed belong together. (ibid.: 133–134)

Stasch’s argues, with all its implications, a relative is something a person ‘has’ and that to be somebody’s—i.e. to be owned and known as 20 M. Sirisena owned by somebody—is a desired state, which draw together Korowai categories like ““together, unitary” (lelip), “own, proper” (giom), and “love, longing, affection” (fnop), as well as a wider range of ways in which Korowai express unity or comfort with people, places, and situations” (ibid.: 262). A pertinent example that elaborates this argument is Stasch’s representation of Korowai marriage, which, he argues, is defned by “conjoined closeness and strangeness”. Marital partners are “strangers” prior to marriage, and closeness between the partners is fos- tered through a range of shared activities, specifcally sharing residence, food, sexual intercourse and procreation. These are indexes of marital relations in the sense that they are causes, consequences and parts of the spousal relation. Spousal closeness involves “multiple mediations that poetically complement and amplify each other and … a spousal bond [is] something that happens in time and over time, in histories of acts” (ibid.: 178), and it is the ability to perform these activities that makes marriage desirable. This, however, does not imply mutual assimilation of the partners in marriage, as with such intense sharing comes intense estrangement. While pointing out that Korowai marriage is ridden with conficts and violence, Stasch declares that, for the Korowai, while that distance, disagreement and estrangement comprise part of marriage, these rarely lead to dissolving of marriages. Another interesting observation Stasch makes is that, among the Korowai, “the portrayal of marriage as a bond of shared living across multiple levels of activity is the directness of metonymic transfer that Korowai perceive between category of action and category of relation”, that meaning of relatedness is established through doing—performing an array of interrelated acts (ibid.: 178). Further, that intermingling in marriage is not just of the two people but extends to those who surround them—“a married couple lives under the infuence of other people’s stakes in their relation, and they live in terms of a notion “marriage” that is itself a category of collective recognition and circulation” (ibid.: 176). The story presented in this book engages with these theoretical strands and puts forth an account of affective relating while seeking answers to the question “Is love about creating connection, of which a crucial part is to avoid disconnection?” The book proposed that affective relating is a form of self-conscious relationality, where the inhabitants refect on their individuals and collective needs, expectations and dreams in deciding to further the relationships. They are processual and 1 INTRODUCTION 21 nonlinear and are deliberated as stabilising forces, which are pitched against an inherent quality of life that is uncertainty.

Part 2: Context and People When I returned to the University of Colombo to begin my Ph.D. feldwork, I realised that time had built a wall between me and the life I left behind at the university. Some things had stayed the same. The university premises sprawled on either side of the Reid Avenue, the short stretch of road extending towards Bambalapitiya shielded by a canopy of mæi trees. It was the greenery and the ceramic benches that softened university’s otherwise austere appearance, which comprised of a mélange of make-shift looking and more-modern, functional buildings decorated with large posters and banners written in red, black and yellow announcing all and sundry: strikes, protests and art festivals. Coloured in grey, white, dull green or orange with rough-textured walls and set up like a maze, the university complex, as many have pointed out, looks a lot like a prison. It was this prison-like feeling I could reconnect with from my days at the university, as I made my way into the university to begin my feldwork in 2007. I had been putting this trip off to the university for a while and, in late October 2007, pangs of guilt followed by a sense of urgency to get on with it told me that I could afford to put it off no longer. I had no strategy. I had no meetings set up. I had decided that the best I could do was to walk around in the university and reorient myself. It is the hesitation I felt at the thought of returning to the university that compelled me to go in through the back door, the entrance that leads to the planetarium, which is also referred to as the back entrance to the university. We hardly used this entrance as students. Stepping in through the backdoor, it felt as if I had travelled back in time. Post-lunch lethargy had dawned on the university and painted it with an air of stillness. Two women security guards manning the gate, clad in deep blue saris looked at me disinterestedly, more annoyed than curious, their eyes seemed to suggest that I had disturbed their peace. Distant whirring of the cars driving down Stanley Thilakaratna Mawatha spread miles between the main road I just left behind and the narrow road I was walking down. I started looking around to see what had changed. The faculty club had a new extension. My eyes lingered on the shabby looking, low-roofed, single-storey buildings to my left, which had iron-meshed wooden frames in place of windows. “Nothing 22 M. Sirisena much changes around here”, I thought, remembering Mr. Wijetunga— our landlord from a few years ago. He loved telling us stories of urban Sri Lankan life in the 1940s and 1950s, especially about life at university back then. It was he who once told us that these buildings could be dated back to the 1950s. His version was that these temporary shelter-like buildings were hastily put together, on land taken over from the Race Course to house the fedgling Faculty of Arts of the Colombo campus, in the late 1950s. The offcial version of the university’s history as presented on their website did not offer such decorative descriptions. It just outlined the policy changes, which brought on autonomy for the university. These offcial and unoffcial histories of the university refect the changing times as many Sri Lankans experienced them, intertwining with, relating to and representing the key turns in Sri Lankan social, economic and political histories. The late 1950s, when, in Mr. Wijetunga’s version, these tin-roofed buildings were put together, marked a turning point in independent Sri Lanka when the Sri Lanka Freedom Party government under S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike’s leadership opened a new page in civil service and ethnic politics introducing Sinhalisation policies. So were the late 1970s, when the University of Colombo was established as an independent university, which coincided with the birth of a liber- alised Sri Lanka under J. R. Jayawardene’s leadership. The young men and women I met during my feldwork were born into and out of that context which was shaped by these changes and their consequences. To make sense of the way they positioned themselves as beings of then and now, I need to illustrate these circumstances that fashioned their lives and expectations. Sri Lanka, the little tear-drop-shaped island located to the south- east of India on the world map, gained independence from the British Empire in 1948 and established itself as a welfare state, under the leadership of D. S. Senanayake of the United National Party (UNP).9 The frst signifcant turn in the political landscape of independent Sri Lanka came in the late 1950s, when the country saw the rise of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) into power, under the leadership of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike. In 1956, the SLFP defeated the UNP, which had

9 I present this brief historical account of Sri Lanka drawing from the works of Brow (1996), De Silva (1981), Gombrich and Obeysekere (1988), Spencer (1990), Tambiah (1992), and Wickramasinghe (2006). During the period of my feldwork, the country 1 INTRODUCTION 23 governed the country since independence. One of the most prominent changes that the SLFP introduced was the Sinhalisation drive. A signif- icant act of this drive was the introduction of the Sinhala Only Act in 1956, which saw Sinhala, and later Tamil, being rendered the status of offcial language of the country. It is in the aftermath of the Sinhala Only Act, in 1958, that the country experienced its frst episode of large-scale communal violence in the form of riots and its brutal crushing. In 1971, Sri Lanka experienced yet another episode of violence, this time in the form of an insurgency lead by a group of young men of a Maoist bent, who called themselves the Janata Vimukti Peramuna (Peoples’ Liberation Front). The ruling government suppressed the insurgency. In 1972, the SLFP under the leadership of Sirimavo Bandaranaike introduced the frst constitutional reforms. The reforms meant that the country broke free of its colonial ties and declared itself a republic. The Socialist, Republic of Sri Lanka pursued closed economic policies. Sri Lankans expressed their displeasure at the SLFP policies by handing their opponents the UNP a convincing victory at the election in 1976/1977. In the period beginning from 1977, J. R. Jayewardene’s UNP government brought in several changes, among which the most prominent was the 1978 constitutional reform which saw the birth of a strong executive presidency and economic liberalisation; 1983 saw yet another outbreak of communal violence, this time bringing forth, ever so strongly, the tension that was prevalent between Sinhala and Tamil ethnic groups since the time of independence. Most writings on the ethnic confict in Sri Lanka point to 1983 as the breaking point in communal tension, which lead to the war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). There onwards, the country fell into an abyss of violence and terror. The period between 1987 and 1989, possibly, marked the darkest years of the country’s history as the whole country was enveloped in tides of violence. In the south, the second insurgency lead by the JVP and the government’s effort at countering it created

began to move from a defunct ceasefre to a full-fedged war. From early 2008 until mid- 2009, the government carried on a brutal offensive which saw the death of the LTTE leadership as well as thousands of civilians. The university, the city and the country have been radically transformed since the end of the confict. Some of these changes have been documented in Amarasuriya and Spencer (2015), and Spencer (2016). 24 M. Sirisena mayhem, while in the north and east, civilians suffered new levels of violence at the hands of the LTTE, the Sri Lankan army and the Indian Peace Keeping Forces. In 1989, the JVP insurgency was suppressed after it claimed thousands of lives of the young and the old. As for the ethnic confict, since 1983, many successive governments made half-hearted efforts at solving the confict, which drove the confict further away from its resolution. The country watched many governments come and go, and in 2007–2008, when I was doing my feldwork, it was uncertainty that ruled once again. A coalition government (United National Front) lead by Mahinda Rajapaksa was in power, which in January 2008, offcially ended a ceasefre agreement with the LTTE and declared an all- out war. War and violence penetrated the lives of almost all Sri Lankans, albeit at different levels. Some experienced violence frst hand, some lost loved ones and some were hassled or inconvenienced by the wars and insurrections. The ways in which war and violence shaped the everyday lives of people in the south as well as the north of Sri Lanka have been well documented, from the infuence on identity politics, to psychological trauma, to the impact the war and violence had on family structure and relations.10 It is not just through war and violence that mainstream politics entered the daily lives of people in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan politi- cians and voters exploited the space democracy allowed through political patronage. Who had contact with whom determined who got hired, where they were positioned, as well as which development activities were carried out in which part of the country.11 Free universal education was one of the most prominent steps towards welfarism that the dominion government introduced in the time leading up to independence. In 1945, the government introduced the free universal education act, which not only made education available to all Sri Lankans free of charge, it also attempted to ensure that this free facil- ity is accessible to all children of school-going age by establishing central schools in different parts of the country (De Silva 1981). By the 1950s, the country began to see the impact of this policy (Obeyesekere 1974).

10 For instance, Daniel (1996), Somasundaram (1998), and Thiruchandran (1999) illustrate the ways in which war in the north-east ran havoc in the lives and kin network of Tamil people, and Perera (1995, 1999) elaborate the impact the JVP insurgency had on the people in the south. 11 See Brow (1996), Seneviratne (1999), and Spencer (1990, 2007) for some illustrations of how political patronage operates in Sri Lanka. 1 INTRODUCTION 25

At one level, the number of central schools in rural parts of the country increased, which resulted in the increase in the number of children attending school (Winslow 2003). At another level, it reshaped the aspirations of these children who completed their school education. The university system paved the way for these children to go further as it expanded itself to accommodate the Sinhala-educated youth, who had shone at secondary schools, with the University of Colombo, as well as Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara, establishing themselves as universities in their own right (Matthews 1995). By the 1950s, among the Sri Lankan populace, education had established itself as one of the most certain routes to upward mobility. These dreams were founded on the observations made under the colonial regime, when native, English-speaking educated elite were granted the opportunity to take up white-collar, public sector positions, seemingly by virtue of education. The association white-collar jobs with upper classes and education with white-collar jobs paved the way for education to be seen as a ladder to upper echelons of the society. As a result, the majority of the youth who successfully saw an end to their school education did not see themselves pursuing the trades of their parents. It was not only the prestige that was associated with white-collar jobs that they sought. The stability and security that a steady income from these jobs offered increased their appeal. It is this association, I believe, that allowed education the prestigious position it occupied in the hearts of many Sri Lankans. However, by late 1960s and early 1970s, the young people coming out of the university had found out that the gap between expectation and the delivery of the dream had wid- ened. There were many more graduates than there were jobs, and political patronage had come into play when determining who had access to these fewer job opportunities and who did not. In the face of this, young Sri Lankans chose to express their feelings of dejection in the form of an insurgency in 1971 (see Obeyesekere 1974). Changes that took place in the country in the late 1970s complicated the situation further for the Sinhala-educated youth. Economic liberalisation meant that the private sector began to dominate the economic sector, which also meant that they were the larger provider of employment, when compared with the public sector. In the aftermath of the youth revolts in the southern as well northern parts of the country, advo- cates of open economic policies argued that privatisation of the market would create new job opportunities, which could be flled by graduates who struggled to fnd employment in the public sector. Initially, both 26 M. Sirisena the graduates and the larger public regarded private sector employment with suspicion, arguing that this sector does not offer the same security as the public sector. Along with that, lack of prestige and benefts such as pension schemes made employment in the private sector less appealing. With time, these attitudes have begun to shift as the unemployment rates among youth, especially the university-educated youth, increased. The potential for gaining public sector employment decreased further as the sector shrunk under the pressure of liberalisation. It was the students who studied social sciences and arts and humanities who felt the squeeze of the sector most, when compared to professional studies such as med- icine, engineering and/or law. Entry into the professional studies was rigidly monitored, thus making admission to these departments more competitive. Yet, that ensured that employment opportunities in these sectors were less compromised. Arts and humanities and social sciences, on the other hand, were less regulated, which paved the way for thousands of students to pursue tertiary education every year. Yet the knowledge they accumulated through their degrees, as my interlocutors as well as a large portion of the society believed, was less relevant and applicable when it comes to employment. This combined with the squeeze of employment opportunities in the civil service sector in the aftermath of liberalisation, and nepotism and corruption infuencing these limited opportunities, university graduates began to view whatever jobs that were offered in the private sector in a favourable light. By the time of my interlocutors at the university, they highlighted the perks the private sector offered such as better wages and benefts, and worked to enhance their chances of employment in the private sector by adding value to their degrees by pursuing skills development with professional courses on management, computing and accounting among many other things. The 1970s also witnessed Sri Lanka entering the global electronic media platform. In 1979, Sri Lanka saw the birth of its frst TV channel, the Independent Television Network, which was closely followed by the birth of Rupavahini, both of which came under government control in 1982.12 Images of the world outside seeped into the imaginations of Sri Lankan youth through television screens, popular songs and fction, and their expectations and envisioning of ways of being began to

12 This information on the history of television channels in Sri Lanka is gleaned from the offcial websites of Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (http://www.rupavahini.lk/organi- zation/about us.html) and Independent Television Network (http://itn.lk/about). − 1 INTRODUCTION 27 grow exponentially. Sri Lankan young men and women linked up with the dreams and hopes of youth in other parts of the world following the liberation of the economy post-1977 (Hettige 2001). The new media environment, along with the availability of different goods and services, presented the urban segment of Sri Lankan youth with opportunities to forge new alliances and identities, exposing them to experiences of their peers living in unknown terrains. All these changes facilitated the sentiment that class, status and respectability are malleable. Acknowledging that staying on top needs hard work, class became the relevant marker of status over caste.13 Sanjeevika, a peer from my undergraduate days who volunteered to give me a brief description of the twists and turns of developments in popu lar Sinhala novels, explained that the ‘love’ struggles in Sinhala novels represented the changing times. In novels published in the late 1950s and 1960s, such as Martin Wickramasinghe’s Gamperaliya, the battles of love were fought over caste borders.14 In the 1970s and 1980s, the focus shifted to class, and it was clashing class interests that separated the forlorn lovers, as illustrated in Trilicia Gunawardena’s Gaňga Addara. Sanjeevika explained that in these novels, the plot was formu- laic: the novel would begin when a man of a lower rung falls in love with a woman from a higher rung. The woman’s family would oppose the union, because of rung incompatibilities, and at the end, the hero would achieve the hand of the heroine, by transforming himself into a man of high status, with a good job, a house and a car. Status is malleable, even in the case of caste as Gamperaliya stood proof of. Status is achievable, and in the imaginations of my interlocutors, education enabled this transformation. They saw and described upward mobility as

13 Caste hierarchy in Sri Lanka has been rather loosely defned, and through time, different castes and sub-categories have claimed the top position of the caste hierarchy. For instance, see Roberts (1982) and Jayawardena (2000) on shifts in caste hierarchy. 14 Wickremasinghe’s most famous work, Gamperaliya, was published in 1944 and has since found its way into the lives of Sinhala-speaking Sri Lankans as a flm, a tele-drama and through Sinhala literature school textbooks. Revolving around the lives of a rural, aristo- cratic family, it depicts the story of change, elaborating the slow demise of the traditional aristocracy in the face of changes that arrived with modernity. Nanda’s and Piyal’s love story is the means through which change is refected. Initially, Nanda’s parents opposed their union as Piyal is of a low caste, yet the story ends with Nanda (albeit after a marriage gone wrong and her position compromised due to poverty that struck her family) marrying Piyal, who has established himself well under the colonial administration. 28 M. Sirisena something that they could aspire to and, though diffcult, could achieve. Education was what bridged the present and the desired statutes/ futures. In high education thereby heading towards a better future, my interlocutors regarded themselves as people in transition. In their opinion, education transformed one, not only by helping them reach high statuses, it opened one’s mind to living life fully. This affected all kinds of relationships they had in their lives, and family relationships were not an exception.

A Case for Love Marriage Ran keňden beňdi, atæňgli ekkala ādarayai Pem ræhænin beňdi, situm vasaňga kala ādarayai15

In her low, raspy voice, Nanda Malini distinguishes between two kinds of love: the love that ties fngers with a golden thread and the love that ties enchanted feelings with a thread of love.16 Associating love with marriage, as this popular song does, some argue, represents a relatively modern trend. More often than not, works on marriage in Sri Lanka as well as the rest of South Asia have concerned kin networks rather than individuals (Mody 2002), especially after its institutionalisation, under the rule of the British Empire. The introduction of civil marriage and legalisation of marriage in the British colonies, Mody argues, not only institutionalised marriage, these policies restructured South Asian societies, paving the way to change family structure, propagating the nuclear family as the preferred form of family and encouraging choice, promoting intimacy between individuals who were thus far considered unsuita- ble. The institutionalisation of marriage and making space for choice did not mean that marriage became a strictly private affair. The concerns of

15 Nishan quoted the frst two lines of this popular song, as he classifed the different kinds of love present in society. An approximate translation of the two lines would be “the love that ties fngers with a golden thread and the love that ties enchanted feelings with a thread of love”. 16 Nanda Malini is a singer whose music has been popular for a couple of decades. My research participants often quoted her songs. Nishan explained that she is popular among the students because of her radical politics. He told me that she was sidelined by the mainstream media on more than one occasion, as she was openly critical of the ruling regime. This combined with her music, a combination of popular and classical forms of music, ensured that her popularity did not deplete among the university students. 1 INTRODUCTION 29 the group one belongs to continue to remain relevant in marriage decisions. Majority of the studies on Sri Lankan marriages have discussed marriage in relation to property ownership and maintaining kinship networks, and identify two main means through which Sri Lankans have found marital partners: arranged marriages and love marriages.17 The distinction between these two processes lies in choice. That is, it is who chooses the person one should marry that distinguishes one from the other. In arranged marriages, it is one’s parents who choose one’s partner, whereas in love marriages, couples make their own choice. Caldwell (1999) warns that distinguishing love marriage from arranged marriage may not be as simple as it may seem. Arguing that any type of marriage acquires legitimacy when it is acknowledged as acceptable by the larger society, Caldwell (ibid.: 152) says, “while Sri Lankans regard the difference as important, what is being discussed is not the difference between a completely atomized society where individuals make choices with complete autonomy from their families, and another where families make decisions without consideration for the interests of the young”. With this warning, Caldwell suggests that it may be more productive to deliberate on the choice associated with love as a new way of facilitat- ing marriage in Sri Lanka.18 Offering an analysis of love and arranged marriages in Sri Lanka, De Munck (1996) argues that in Kutali, a predominantly Muslim village in Kurunegala, love marriages stood for things that arranged marriages did not stand for, predominantly, passion. De Munck describes that both Tamil (anpu) and Sinhala (ādaraya) are terms for love, which denote sexual and passionate attraction. He argues that embedded in these terms are notions of a surge of emotion—an intensity of feeling, which indicates that love borders on madness, which cannot be detached from its sexual connotations. At the same time, he suggests that the form of love that is found in arranged marriages is not one of passion but of comfort. What De Munck overlooks in this

17 See, for instance, Tambiah (1973), Good (1981), Yalman (1967), and Leach (1961). 18 However, it may be worthwhile noting that, as Clark-Decés (2011) points out in relation to South India, that arrangements were, in no way, the only means that facilitated marriages in the past. She points out that, while accepting that free choice, consumerism and individualism may infuence young men and women in Tamil Nadu to choose their own marital partners, choice associated with love and modernity in itself is not the only hinge that marriages hang on today. Marriage in South India has taken the form of a ‘new game’, which engages with the old practices with new meanings. 30 M. Sirisena rendition stems from a categorisation of love among the Sinhalese, which I grasped with the help of my interlocutors. Among the Sinhalese, there is a kind of love that is present as an ideation, which is free of desire and all sexual connotations. Amintha called this the pivituru ādaraya and elaborated it, yet again, quoting Nanda Malini. “Prēmaya nam, rāgayen tora, saňda eliya sē pavitrai. Pāriśuddai. Suramyai” (Love is free of lust, pure as the moon light, … beautiful). Yet this kind of love, he soon followed, is boloňdai (naïve). It is the kind of love he wished for as an adolescent. Yet, as he grew up with age and experience, he realised that passion is integral to the form of love found in couple relationships and marriage. Amintha’s revelations suggest that while De Munck was correct when he claimed that it is impossible to conceive of a concept of ādaraya free of passion as Sri Lankan men and women experienced it, it is impossible to fathom that there is a kind of love within an arranged marriage that is free of passion. In addition, my interlocutors suggested that, in contemporary Sri Lanka, love has become a key factor in marriage, pointing out that what constitutes or results in a love relationship is also what constitutes a good marriage: compatibility, trust and understanding. Thus, irrespective of how one fnds their marital partners, to make a marriage work, one needs these virtues, which are associated with love. Often, when they spoke of arranged marriages, my interlocutors told me that the process arranged marriages follow has changed. Thilini elaborated on this when she said, “people don’t just get married. They are introduced to each other, they are given time to get to know each other, get used to each other”. This is not to suggest that love marriages and arranged marriages have become one and the same thing. There could be differences in the way courting is enacted in the two kinds of marriages and the codes of conduct these marriages lay out for the couple, prior to as well as after marriage. Breaking off a courting arrangement brought on through a parental intervention, for instance, may not be as easy as it would be for two people courting out of their own choice to do the same. Yet again, breaking off a courting arrangement is not an easy task in any case. The point I emphasise here is that associating love- like virtues with arranged marriages has made the distinction between love marriage and an arranged marriage less clear. Nayana, for instance, was in a relationship with a man she knew since she was a child, because he was the only son of Nayana’s parents’ best friends. When expressing his interest, Nayana’s boyfriend approached her parents before he spoke with Nayana about his feeling. Most of my interlocutors would consider 1 INTRODUCTION 31 this alliance to be a “proposal”, i.e. a proposal for marriage. Yet, when she spoke, Nayana spoke of her relationship as a romantic relationship and not as a prenuptial courting arrangement, and one day, she would describe her marriage as a love marriage. What is apparent here then is that Sinhalese perceptions of arranged and love marriages are less-lucid than scholars such as De Munck may suggest and that when one says that the incidence of arranged marriage is on the decline, it may be an indicator of this lack of clarity people may be experiencing in the classif- cations of their marriages. Regardless of the process through which they enter into the marriage, marriages, as my interlocutors described them, concerned the individuals as well as the larger social groups they were part of. Marriage, they suggested, is about entrenching oneself in a community. Marriage provides the platform on which my interlocutors enacted an important part of their personhood, the part in which they asserted themselves as men and women.

Men and Women in Domestic Relationships Man: Biriňda magē oba (You are my wife) Woman: nǽ mama obagē biriňda novē, (No, I’m not your wife) Deňgili huyakin beňdi pamanin, mā obe biriňda novē. (Just because [our] two fngers were tied together with a string, I’m not your wife)19

I heard this song on the radio, in one of the many bus journeys I took during my feldwork, and the words to this viraha gītaya stayed with me.20 In the song, the man repeatedly asserted that she is his wife, despite her lack of acquiescence.21 In some way, the fervour with which

19 Tying fngers together with a string is a reference to a ritual in Sinhala-Buddhist marriage ceremonies, where the little fngers of the man and the woman are tied together and showered with blessed water. Baňdinava connotes to tie the ‘knot’ and also means to marry in the colloquial sense. 20 A genre that refers to sad songs of love and separation. 21 The song is about a man and a woman who were brought together by their parents, despite them loving two other people. While the man acknowledged that he too did not end up with the one he loves and, nor did she, he repeats his claim of Biriňda magē oba to the very end of the song. 32 M. Sirisena he asserted her wifehood hinted at the claim a Sri Lankan husband could have on the woman he claims to be his wife. Also, his claim of her as his wife showed that he has accepted their plight that neither of them could be with the people they love and now sought to move on with life. In doing so, he apparently mirrored the popular assumptions about men and women: he displayed masculine emotional demeanour of reason, which is contrasted with the woman, whose sentimental nature makes her irrational, as a woman is expected to be. On a parallel note, with the woman’s repeated rejection of the man as her husband, the song iterated that in traditional seal referred to here in the form of the golden thread that binds the fngers together in itself is not enough to make a woman become a man’s wife, thus insinuating that expectations of marriage in contemporary Sri Lanka have changed. However, it re-presented the quandary that while expectations and what one needs to make marriage work may have changed, the ways in which men and women related to each other in marriages have not to the extent that, whether the women accepted it or not, she remained his wife. Comparing with the plight of other South Asian women, some writers have argued that women in Sri Lanka are relatively well off, for Sri Lankan women live longer, are in better health, more educated and less malnourished (see for instance Caldwell 1986; Langford and Storey 1993).22 Relying for the large part on Knox’s famous work A Historical relation of Ceylon, some of these writers point out that gender relations among the Sinhalese were quite lax, in the era before colonial rulers implemented laws of Victorian hue. It is in the context of rising nationalism, in the period leading up to independence from British rule, that a discussion of gendered codes of conduct emerged, especially in the writings of Anagarika Dharmapala.23 Dharmapala, in what he called an attempt to bring Buddhism into the daily lives of people, outlined a code of conduct for laity (Gihi Vinaya), which included advice on the duties and responsibilities husbands and wives are expected to perform towards one another. In these depictions of men as husbands and women as wives, the woman positioned as the dependent caregiver and the man

22 Again I have to point out here that this is a rather generalised portrayal of women in Sri Lanka. The well-being of women in Sri Lanka, not surprisingly, varies with class and ethnicity, among other things. 23 Dharmapala played a pioneering role in the Buddhist revivalist and the Sinhala nationalist movement. 1 INTRODUCTION 33 as the providing caregiver are strongly established. Casting back to the contemporary interpretations of dhamma, Amintha pointed out that Dharmapala drew ideas of how husbands and wives should relate to each other from Sigalovada Sutta. In this sutta, Buddha preached to young man named Sigala the path to a happy life by honourably engaging with the six directions: north (friends), south (teachers), west (wife), east (parents), bottom (servant) and top (ascetics). Each of these engagements comprises a set of rights and responsibilities. Dhamma related in Sigalovada Sutta aside, Dharmapala’s Gihi Vinaya refected the infuence of Victorian values on propriety and respectability and seeped into the imaginations of many Sinhala Buddhists. Obeyesekere’s (1963: 328– 329) portrayal of the typical conduct of men and women in Laggala illustrates this point:

… [marriage] should occur soon after puberty [for women]… The residence rule is virilocal, with a few cases of uxori-locality. The marriages are arranged by the girl’s parents, the most important criterion being the husband’s economic position-caste and other social status factors being equal. These rules have various implications for the woman. At marriage she leaves the security of her own family of orientation to live with her husband in another village. The fact that her husband and his kin may have been related to her even before marriage does not materially detract from the psychological picture: the security and intimacy of her own village cannot be duplicated or even approached. In the case of the few uxorilocal marriages the woman is better off, as she does not have to leave her natal village; however, she lives in her own nuclear household with a husband who has superordinate status as a male and shares the privileges of other husbands by virtue of his malehood. In the case of marriages within the village, the husband is in a very dominant position, though the woman also has the social support of close kinsmen. But such support often is not much use, because the privileges of the husband are clearly defned so that the woman’s kin would think twice about supporting wife against husband, particularly since the latter is also a known kinsman.

As Obeyesekere describes and works of those like Yalman (1967) cor- roborate, women in many Sinhalese households were the domestic goddesses, who took care of domestic duties of rearing children, maintaining social relationships with kin and neighbours.24 Setting up gender

24 See De Munck et al. (2002) for a description of gender stereotypes. 34 M. Sirisena relations positing man as the provider and the woman as the dependent, Tambiah (2004) points out, positioned the woman unfavourably. They were further constrained by concerns about propriety and purity, where notions of female respectability were marked through premarital virginity, marriage, motherhood and sexual chastity. The status quo suggested that a woman who is sexually compromised would have to forego her chance of marrying, which may put her in a vulnerable position for life.25 The three-decade-long war and violence the country experienced since the late 1950s gradually refashioned gender relationships. At one level, women’s position was compromised further as they became targets of violence (see Tambiah 2004). At another level, women were pushed to the forefront into roles which were hitherto played by men. Tambiah says that as a result of the war, “the collapse of familiar support systems has propelled women into authoritative roles by default, including acting as primary breadwinner and head of household and making associated decisions” (Tambiah 2004: 81). However, this does not mean that there was a support structure women could lean on, when assuming and carrying on their new roles. Thiruchandran (1999) and Perera (1999), for instance, elaborate on the obstacles women face, when they attempt to manage this new type of family, pointing out that female heads of household did not have the support of administrative structures as well as their kin networks. Militarisation, on a different note, changed the appearances women assumed in Sri Lankan society. Clad in army fatigue, women soldiers in the north and the south contrasted the image of the conventional, proper woman (Tambiah 2005; De Mel 2001). This was seen as something out of the ordinary or abnormal. For instance, Balasingham describes this jarring experience when he says:

[for] conservative Jaffna Tamils, the sight of young, unmarried women in military fatigues patrolling the Jaffna streets with rifes was in stark contrast to the historic image of demure, longhaired, Tamil women in saris or dresses, and thus signifed a death knell to tradition and a threat to their culture.26

25 McGilvray (1988) suggests that attempts at repressing female sexuality by subjecting it to strict moral rules are a result of an attempt at sanskritising Sinhalese lives, which also propagates norms such as wifely submission. 26 Cited in Tambiah (2005: 250–251). 1 INTRODUCTION 35

Recruiting women to the military and their engagement in military activity, however, did not change the role they played as the second-fddle of society. De Mel (2001), for instance, points out that though women formed a signifcant portion of the cadre body, during both JVP insurrections and the confict in the north and east, the roles women played in these settings resembled their domestic duties: cooking and washing up. Yet another development that the Sri Lankans experienced since the 1970s of migration of female unskilled labour, mainly to the Middle Eastern countries, made a mark in gender relationships. Gamburd (2000, 2004) points out that the income jobs in the Middle East brought changed the way in which women conducted themselves in their households, where they claimed an active role in decision-making processes in the household (Gamburd 2004; Kottegoda 2004). Reversing roles, as Gamburd (2000) points out, left at home while women were out making money, men, while indulging in alcohol and idleness, had to assume feminine duties and responsibilities of caring for the children.27 I have, thus far, presented a snapshot of the changes that shaped the form Sri Lanka cocooned itself into, since independence. War, insur- gencies, political patronage, nationalisation and then liberalisation were some of the threads that wove this cocoon to the shape that my research participants found themselves in. Further, dynamics and perceptions about marriage, being women and men, and conduct in heteronorma- tive relationships, which I outlined in the previous sections, infuenced my interlocutors’ subjectivities. Some of them were refective in the way they positioned themselves in this sociocultural cocoon and some others were not. In the following section, I present the ways in which they positioned themselves in this context and how that fashioned their ideas and aspirations.

Situating My Interlocutors Futures necessarily belong to the present: they are what we imagine ourselves now. The present is itself only made visible against a past, and if I have used a past tense to describe certain ideas, it is not because people no longer think them but because the range of other ideas with which they can think them has altered. (Strathern 1992: 5)

27 Mainstream media are critical of these developments and often present cases of domestic chaos that had unleashed as a result of women migrating. 36 M. Sirisena

My interlocutors at the university came from north-eastern, central, western and southern provinces of Sri Lanka, and inhabited different socio-economic contexts. Some told me that their parents were wealthy. Some said they were well off and some others described that they lived in abject poverty. Some of them still lived with their parents, and the others lived in university hostels, or with relatives in the city or shared rooms with friends. The most prominent features they shared with each other were that they were in their early to mid-twenties and their lives were governed by their visions and dreams of future. While their focus was on the future, time spun an enchanting web around my interlocutors’ lives, for they were negotiating with their pasts and presents as they were forming lives towards their futures. Their lives and concerns were a melange of the past, present and the future for they could not speak of a future, without referring to the present and the past. These temporal dimensions of their lives fell, rather neatly, along the spatial dimensions they inhabited. Their views of slow and traditional village and the fast and modern city suggested that wheels of time turned differently in different places. Having moved from village to the city, they belonged to different times and different places, at one and the same time. Rebhun (1999) in her work The heart is an unknown country speaks of young Brazilians living in the north-east of the country, whose views of life, as a result of the rapid change the country witnessed in the recent past, were quite signifcantly distanced from the views their parents hold/held. Rebhun describes that her interviewees tread the waters between convention and modernity self-consciously, “continually classify[ing] behaviour and beliefs, as well as styles of dress, artwork, speech, morality, and sentiment, as being either traditional or modern” (ibid.: 2). Moving between the village and the city, my interviewees treaded carefully and self-consciously, fnding ways to bring together hues of different times in their self-representations. They often told me that one should not forget the village ways of being. Village ways of being represented your roots, thus was an essential element of who you are. Jayantha, for instance, refecting on the prospects his future offers, told me that change in lifestyle is inevitable. Studying to become a lawyer when he spoke with me, Jayantha described that once he has fnished his education, his life would be different to what he has known life to be before. “As a lawyer, I would get to go places that I have not been to before, mix with people from high class backgrounds. I would have 1 INTRODUCTION 37 to adapt to these new things”. Jayantha located himself in a niche in the closet of rural poor in the Sri Lankan social echelon and like most other university students saw education as offering a ladder for upward social mobility. Higher social status was attached to many things and upward mobility, in one way, meant leaving behind some of your village ways and “becoming more city like”. Nishan found himself in a similar situation and rather philosophically ruminated that changing with the time and place one inhabits is a necessity. “It’s the way of the world (lōka dhar- matāvaya)”, he told me, “If not, you would get wiped off like the ‘dino- saurs’ did”. Nishan comes from a rural village in southern Sri Lanka and had been in a relationship with a ‘high class’ woman from the city. Faced with different lifestyles and conficts arising from these differences, he told me that it is a necessity that he adapts to the expectations of the new place and time that he resides in, at the moment. Nishan turned to Martin Wickremasinghe’s famous work Gamperaliya to elaborate on what happens to those who resist change. He believed that the moral of this story was that those who resist change would disappear along with the times that are going out of fashion. In these accounts, time and place were almost interchangeable: village ways and being rural were described as both traditional and anachronistic when compared with lives in modernity. The city represented modernity. Moving from the village to the city, in this light, was a journey towards modernity, progress and all good things that were associated with this new temporal zone. Yet, change is a complex process. My young interlocutors often told me that they walked a fne line between adaptation and erasure. They were highly critical of those who forgot their past, which they brought into the city in the form of village ways. The village, its ways and their lives in the village were critical components of who they thought themselves to be. Thus, its erasure is equivalent to erasing a part of themselves. This kind of thinking found a voice, especially in nationalist discourses where modernity was associated with immorality. The nationalist argument was that, as Tambiah (2005: 249) points out, “to be modern is to be culturally lacking”. Seeing change as some sort of a deracination, for instance, Hemanthi was very critical of those who forget their village ways when they move to Colombo.

I don’t like those girls who come to the city and change. They try to become mod (‘mod’ venna hadana), do their eyebrows, put make up on, shave their legs and dress in strange ways. They start speaking in a funny 38 M. Sirisena

way (amutu tāleṭa katā karanna paṭan gannavā.) I don’t like those girls who change like that. It’s a pretence. It shows. Whatever you dress in, however you speak, you can’t erase/hide who you are.

The change Hemanthi spoke of was one that was associated with a sense of falsity, as if it were a cloak of pretence. This change seems superfcial. It connoted change with no meaning, as this change implied that it was more about appearing to ‘ft in’ rather than a meaningful adaptation. It is when I began to refect on what may constitute a meaningful adaptation that I realised that Hemanthi was not criticising change, be it of appearances or values. She was criticising a process that she saw as adaptation that lacked meaning. Being a “village girl” herself and draped in the robes of modernity, she was not criticising “do[ing] their eyebrows, put[ting] make up on, shave[ing] their legs and dress[ing] in strange ways” per se. Her criticism was twofold. On the one hand, she implied that one should not appear to be modern, if one cannot embrace the values that come with modernity. On the other hand, most importantly, she insinuated that one should not try to be modern at the expense of one’s past. The life Hemanthi approved, as did many other interviewees, was one of the middle path: a life that encompassed elements of the village and the city/tradition and modernity. New appearances are acceptable as long as one does not forget their past and the values and traditions that were associated with that past. “You should not forget the village ways of being (gamē vidiya)”. Village ways essentially represented one’s roots and those cannot be and should not be erased. Jayanta elaborated on this for me once and said “whatever you do, wherever you go, you should be able to go back to your village and eat with your friends like you did (eka bat patin kāpu yāluvo ekka ē vidihaṭa inna puluvan venna ōna)”. The sharing of a meal connotes familiarity and sharing of commonly held practices and values. Through these accounts, my interlocutors informed me that the kind of adaptation that they welcome was one that assimi- lates change, not one that rejects one’s past. It is about being both modern yet ‘traditional’. If one were to privilege one over the other, one runs the risk of either not being able to withstand the pressure of change or being transformed into pretence. Yet, change necessitated a careful engagement and this tightrope walking manifested loudly in the way my interlocutors engaged with expectations and role-playing of gender. The signifcance of gender in relation to tradition and modernity and the 1 INTRODUCTION 39 complex ways in which they infuenced my interlocutors’ lives and expectations form a thread that runs through this book. Life in-between different times and places was not unique to the people I met at the university. Hewamanne (2008), in an aptly titled chapter “FTZ clothes, Home clothes”, described how women working in the Free Trade Zone in Katunayaka, Sri Lanka, donned behaviours that were deemed appropriate, when visiting their parental villages. For my interlocutors, the contention resulting from engaging with times representative of different locations refected how they engaged with the research and me. Rebhun (1999: 2–3) explains that these kinds of contentions are characteristic of life in the late twentieth century. She says:

People speak as if each city generates its own fgurative temporal wheel, forming the proudly modern centre of a circle that grows more old- fashioned the further out you travel from it. The countryside becomes transformed into an imagined time-space continuum, with the cities’ mod- ernizing wheels ranked against one another in size and degree of modernity. And yet, although styles do vary geographically, those parts of the landscape imagined to be backward do not in fact live in the past, nor are the cities building the future. Rather, the entire countryside displays what Garcìa Canclini calls “multitemporal heterogeneity” in which “traditions have not yet disappeared and modernity has not completely arrived.”

Placing her research in a temporal geography, Rebhun elaborates the complexities of the lives we engage with. She points out yet again that the lives we work with are grounded in plural realities, which, with all their contradictions, are part of a complex, ever-changing process. In a similar vein, I see the lives of the people I peered into during my research as ever moving, between different times and locations, those that I am aware of, thus acknowledge as well as those I may fail to notice. People move in and out of these contexts and draw different elements from them to create what they see as their present reality. This reality, they self-refexively told me, is dynamic. In this light, to speak of their lives with constraints of time and location is to commit the crime of freezing them in a time and a place. Thus, while acknowledging that the lives I speak of are fuid, I turn to references to time and place to get a sense of who they are, for I felt that the way they engage with their geographical and temporal contexts gives them a sense of historicity, belonging and a sense of where they are going/where they would be in terms of a future. 40 M. Sirisena

It is in the space that they occupied at that moment that my interlocutors found a foothold, from where they could look towards a future. It is within this framing that it becomes relevant to speak of the atmosphere in the country and the city of Colombo at the time of my feldwork and how my interlocutors situated themselves within it. Beginning from the failure of peace talks in October 2006, both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Government gradually reverted to violence. There were many attempts at assassinations of political fgures as well as sporadic bombings at the time, which caused fear and uncertainty to creep back into the lives of the populace living in the non-war-affected parts of the country. With the government’s declaration to return to war in January 2008, many abandoned the language of reconciliation. Ardent Sinhala nationalism returned to the Sinhala society, especially through media urging a stringent conservationism, which this time positioned in direct opposition to ethnic (Tamil) as well as religious (Muslim) identities. As for my interlocutors, it seemed that myopic nationalism was very much a part of their political life for the majority of them were involved in students’ politics at the university, which openly supported government’s effort to crush the ‘Tamil problem’. Yet, in one-to-one encounters, like the ones I had with them, hard-line nationalism was not something they chose to profess or claim to have an allegiance to. They often found it uncomfortable and unsettling to share their views on the confict or issues related to ethnic and religious identities. When we broached the subject, they qualifed their positions pointing out that, though their university education has broadened their knowledge and understanding of ethnicity and religion and the politics of it, the ‘reality’ of the society is such that one can rarely fnd harmony in an interracial or interreligious marriage.28 It is tele-dramas such as Yashōrāvaya and Sura Asura that formed the frames of references for failure of interethnic marriages for my interlocutors.29 They pointed out such tele-dramas highlighted well the complexities interethnic marriages meet with in the face of family and society and that, even if one did not hold a negative view of

28 It is often marital mixing of Buddhists with Muslims and/or Hindus that my interlocutors proscribed. While they did not openly sanction mixing of Catholics, Christians and Buddhists, they bore a more tolerant attitude towards such alliances they encountered in fction and life. 29 See Silva (2003) for an account of representations of interethnic marriages in tele-dramas. 1 INTRODUCTION 41 interethnic alliances, they would fnd it diffcult to withstand social and familial pressures. Refecting on all the changes that took place between the time of my research in 2007–2008 and now, I would not be surprised, if they were to speak of their concerns of interethnic marriages candidly, had I spoken to them now.

Life in the City The city forms the backdrop for the relationships I describe in this book. Leaving parental nests and coming to the city, some of them for the frst time, from different corners of the country, they cannot help but be touched by the difference. On Mondays or the frst day after a long weekend, Colombo University’s version of cosmopolitanism was put on display. On Mondays, the university becomes a hive of activity occupied by tired, yet revived young men and women. Perched on my plastic chair at the gym canteen, I watched groups of young men and women, excitedly swapping tales over packed lunches, sweetmeats or snacks that they had brought from home. I unashamedly eavesdropped on their conversations, trying to glean bits and pieces that would tell me something about their lives and this other place that they called home. Colombo University is often described as a city campus, a non-residential university. The larger portion of its student population comes from different parts of the country outside Colombo. Majority of them lived in university hostels or private lodging houses, where they shared rooms with up to eight others. A few of them lived with parents, who had moved with them to the city or relatives. Whichever the case may be, privacy was a luxury they lacked in their accommodations. It was the life at the university, and by extension in the city, that afforded them this privacy and it took certain shapes. It was many things: a space of opportunity, loneliness, love and pain. The ways of the city did not constitute an inevitable phase in their lives that they would leave behind to embrace village life once their education was complete. Nobody spoke of going back to their villages to fnd work. They regarded their experience of the city as an integral part of their lives, which would fashion the persons they will become in future. Being aware of the perks the city offered in terms of work and other opportunities contributed towards this perspective. It is this sense of possibility in relation to the city that prompted Susantha to see the city as providing an opportunity for a new life. When 42 M. Sirisena

I met Susantha, his girlfriend had broken off their relationship, giving into parental pressure. He believed that the main reason for its failure was because they were both from the same village. Susantha had been in a relationship with this girl for about four to fve months when it was found out by her mother. At frst, concerned about Susantha’s social standing as Susantha is from a very poor family, her mother suggested that he distances himself from his own family. Since he was studying to be a lawyer, he had good prospects, thus they found him acceptable but they did not want to associate with his family. Susantha experienced this as a reality of village life. The importance of one’s village resides in the fact that all members of that village would be aware of your background. If he were from another village, her family would not have been aware of his background, and even if they had been, it would have mattered less as the rest of the villagers would not have known of Susantha’s poor family and its history. His status would have changed with his profession, and nobody would have cared about his background or rather, discredit him for either being poor or of a lower caste. However, when they are from the same village, everybody knows of each other’s background, which makes the pressure greater than that able to be withstood through any form of upward mobility. In the city, Susantha told me, “these things matter less because no one really knows you”. Though the city is a place where one frees oneself of the shackles of the village, it is also lonely and alienating. My interlocutors highlighted the loneliness in the city, contrasting their city lives with the comfort of the village. Being on their own, they needed to forge meaningful bonds with others, especially those who might be undergoing similar experiences. They needed to recreate the webs of nuclear and extended family, kinship and friendship networks and a sense of ‘belonging’ that is associated with a village space to achieve some form of equilibrium in their lives. Dhamma articulated it in this way:

Everybody needs love. When we come to campus, we are alone. We feel lonely. At that time, we need somebody who feels some responsibility towards us, somebody who would help us see our weaknesses, fx them, somebody who would ask us to go for lectures if we skip lectures.

It was not flial love that Dhamma was looking for; this description of the love he sought in the city is not a love one would feel for a parent or an older sibling. Dhamma was describing what he sought in a romantic 1 INTRODUCTION 43 partner. He was not alone in this thinking. Hemanthi echoed Dhamma when she said:

We need love. We look for protection. We don’t want to be alone, so we look for love. Maybe I think of it like that because I am a woman. See, I have this friend. She says she is lonely and she’s ready to get into a relationship with any man who wants a relationship with her because she doesn’t want to be alone anymore. … We are away from home. We live alone. We want somebody to look after us if we fall ill, go shopping with us, walk us home if we stay late at the campus.

In Hemanthi’s echo is also the realisation that they are at a life stage where they are not to seek this form of protection from parental or other care-giving fgures of their past; they are to seek it from someone who could be their marital partner. While the fgures of the past are substi- tuted by those available in the new space, the emotions and nature of exchanges sought are similar to what is known from relationships they have had before, while the role that these new fgures play in their lives is different to the ones from their past. It is these known emotional structures, specifcally that associated with comfort, that help romantic relationships transform the cityscape from one of loneliness and alienation to one of familiarity and comfort. With love, the strange city landscape becomes a place of safety and comfort. Through relationships, trees, benches and other nooks and corners of the city are transformed and mapped into their memories as their spaces: places where certain love acts took place. Like Dhamma’s bench, the places they frequented came to be known as their places rather than the sites that lie within the alien and harsh city landscape. It is within such a context of a mixture of hopes and dreams and places and times that I could make meaning of Amali’s predicament and her actions.

Part 3: Making of the Book

Conducting Fieldwork on Love Stories were what I had envisioned to constitute the backbone of my research. During the time I spent in Sri Lanka, I met more than ffty students and spoke with thirty-two at length, both men and women, coming from different parts of the country, studying different subjects. It 44 M. Sirisena was a friend of a friend who was well placed within the Career Guidance Unit at the university who introduced me to the frst set of my interlocutors. On that day I walked back to the university to meet them, I felt like I did on my frst day at the university, almost a decade ago when I walked through the narrow, wrought-iron gates manned by two security guards to start a course for my bachelor’s degree. I was anxious, excited yet almost crippled by the fear of the unexpected. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into a small, cramped room on a top foor of the unit to fnd ten young men facing me. When I was planning the research, I had said that I would attempt to speak to both men and women. Then, I did not imagine walking into a room full of men, who were also my potential research participants. Since that frst meeting, I did not have too much trouble locating research participants. As I had planned, I met with friends of the frst set of my participants, who introduced me to other friends. As I continued with the research, I received a few text messages and phone calls from others I had not met with, volunteering to take part in the research. Interviews as well as lengthy conversations formed the bulk of my research material. Majority of them were carried on in Sinhala, with a splattering of English words. The translations used in the book are my own. The English words that were used in our interviews have been retained in the text of the book, when citing these interviews. I have used single quotes to highlight that these terms were used in English and not translations from Sinhala. When I conducted interviews, I recorded them when my interlocutors consented. A majority of the quotes I have used in this book come from recorded interviews. In the case of a rare few, like Dhamma who was not keen on that I recorded our conversations, come from notes taken during the interview. “How they met each other” stories proved to be good conversation starters. Providing something like a logical point of entry, they worked like invitations with which I urged my research participants to invite me into the houses of their relationships. It is quite common to ask and relate stories of “how they met each other”, and there is a narrative structure in place that my interlocutors could rely on: where they saw each other frst, signifcance of the eyes meeting, the chase and the victory. Thus, it was not strange nor did it seem to create any discomfort when I asked my interlocutors to relate stories of how they met each other. For me, their sharing of these stories also marked a beginning of a relationship of comfort and trust. Later, in the processing and writing 1 INTRODUCTION 45 up of the research, I realised that there was another side to it. “How they met each other” stories also provided my interviewees with an opportunity to narrativise their lives, giving them an opportunity to position themselves outside their current realities from where they could look in. It also afforded them a safe distance from which they could refect on their own stories. This, I believe, made it easier for them to engage with me. Having started with the “how they met stories”, I let myself be guided by their inherent fow of events. That is not to say that I was a passive recipient of a process that spun out of control. I chose to follow the riches these stories offered, rather than look for answers to a set of questions I sought answers for. When a story brought me face- to-face with a situation I had not imagined, rather than be thrown off guard, I took change in my stride. It is as a result of that, during the time of my feldwork, we ended up discussing a range of themes such as expectations and realities, past, present and futures, hopes and despair, fears, trust, gifts, desires as well as compatibility. While I was conducting the research, I found these conversations to be enriching, as they exposed me to a multitude of themes and viewpoints. Yet, there were moments when I was overwhelmed by the lack of a structure and it left me feeling confused. There were a few themes that stared back at me whenever I looked through the research material: notions of reciprocity, trust, time, future, expectations, commodifcation of emotions. Yet, they appeared patchy. It was almost two years into the process of trying to make sense of my research experience that all these began to fall into place and I then realised that all these were parts of one long conversation. It seemed as if the stories that my interlocutors narrated spoke to one another. They fed on one another. They elaborated or built on something someone else had said elsewhere. A signifcant event in a story made sense when it was compared to or contrasted with a story that seemed mundane at the outset. One story provided the context to the other. All the stories I gathered, it suggested, were part of one story. Refecting on the information I found, the way they related to each other and made sense made me realise yet again that feldwork is a process. It begins before we enter the feld and continues well beyond the geographical boundaries of the feld. This book presents the stories I collated in that period of eleven months in the form of thoughts jot- ted down on scraps of paper, word fles, notebooks and a half-heartedly done blog, novels, self-help books, chats with flm-makers, novelists, 46 M. Sirisena

TV presenters and most importantly narratives generously shared by my interlocutors. This book relates such a narrative of affective relating, drawing from stories some students studying at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, told me about their love relationships—ādara sambaňda. My feldwork with students at the University of Colombo showed me that the signif- icance of couple relationships they were involved in at that stage in life stems from the depth to which they embed themselves in these relationships, turning such loving into processes through which they make and unmake themselves.30 In the stories my interlocutors related, love appears as a youth need, which could be converted into real love and a love that lasts, when one invests oneself in it, by pouring in time, effort, trust and commitment. This investment, if it were to bring the desired consequences, should be reciprocated with similar effort, if not more. All acts of giving and taking that takes places within the relationship such as gifts, telephone calls, text messages and the like are manifestations and processes through which one invests in the relationship. Such giving and taking is also an investment of oneself, because doing these things they do, they become certain persons who, in turn, rely on the relationship for affrmation to be the persons that they become. Out of such effort and embedding, couple relationships are born, which lay the foundation on which an ideal marriage could be founded, which, in turn, facilitates a journey of life that is worth living. This story highlights that love relationships are a process of affective relating, a social and cultural process, which infuences and is infuenced by the world within which it takes place. As such, it is not an individu- ated and transient love like the love that appears in modernist accounts such as Giddens (1992), Bauman (2003), and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995). Nor is it a new thing or a new way of doing an old thing. It is a thing that refects new and old things, sometimes supporting or contradicting what is said and done, wished for and received. It is an embedding: cultural, social and personal. Love relationships are also an ambivalent process that embroils the good, the violence, the control, the rejection, the commitment, the risk and the cost. As Berlant (1998: 281)

30 I use the term ‘love relationship’ to refer to the subject matter on occasions as that is the term my interlocutors used to refer to their relationships. However, I prefer to use the term ‘couple relationships’ as it encapsulates different dimensions of the relationship at the base of which lies intimacy. 1 INTRODUCTION 47 points out, it is impossible and improbable to overlook that such love relationships too ‘… meet the instabilities of sexuality, money, expectation, and exhaustion, producing, at the extreme, moral dramas of estrangement and betrayal, along with terrible spectacles of neglect and violence even where desire, perhaps, endures’. In the narration of the making and meaning of couple relationships, Chapter 2 presents my interlocutors’ ideas of and about love and the process in which they would engage in, when looking for love. The frst part of the chapter describes how my interlocutors distinguished idealist romantic love from what they sought, a compatible love on which they could build ‘serious relationships’. The second part of the chapter describes the process of turning attraction, which began with the sighting, into a relationship. The chapter shows that, pitting the strength of compatibility against idealist love, my interlocutors highlighted that a love relationship is a process. Focusing on the practice of calling one’s male partner ayya (older brother) and the female partner nangi (younger sister), Chapter 3 illustrates how my interlocutors positioned themselves within their relationships as women who nourish and men who protect, among other things. The structures of feeling that were associated with these terms helped them communicate the new roles they have founded for themselves to each other and well as the world who was witness to their relationship. Implanting the terms in the relationships and embedding the roles they found in the terms helped them ward off the generic-ness of forms of address such as ayya and nangi. When embedded in love relationships, such the terms did the exact opposite for they became strong signifers of the relationship and the roles these young men and women took on in these relationships. Chapter 4 discusses the practices and meaning of gift exchange (tǽgi) in relationships. The discussion highlights that things that enter relationships intertwine with lives at personal, situational and temporal levels. Focusing on emotional work that goes into tǽgi practices, the chapter highlights that such practices allow occasion to concretise protecting ayya and demur nangi positions lover inhabit in their relationships. The chapter closes with the suggestion that things that come into relationships in such a manner give couple relationships a sense of tangibility. For my interlocutors, trust, understanding and commitment were the key pillars of love relationships. Being there for one another was an important means through which these pillars were nurtured in the 48 M. Sirisena relationships. Chapter 5 focuses on the practices of being there, particularly the use of mobile phones, which my interlocutors relied on to extend themselves beyond the time and the space they occupy at the present moment. Being with the one you love beyond your physical ability through sharing mundane moments of your life has become a defnitive feature of relationships as well as a strong means through which the love felt is expressed. Chapters 6 and 7 present an account of the cultural codes that are expected to manage sexual intimacy in pre-marital relationships and the ways in which my interlocutors attempted to circumvent them. The young men and women posited nature against culture when they recognised sexual intimacy as a bodily need, yet it was culturally regulated for the sake of propriety. Since they themselves endorsed the same codes of propriety, they sought to carve out least transgressive forms through which they could become intimate. Stability in the form of certainty was a key requirement of love relationships, which my interlocutors deemed as ‘serious relationships’. The argument was that life is full of contingencies and that certainty in itself is a contingency. Chapter 8 presents these two sides and highlights the ways in which these discourses helped my interlocutors understand the events of their love relationships.

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Ruminating on Love and Love Relationships

I was catching up with my feld notes at the gym canteen, when Hiranthi tapped on my shoulder.1 “Akka busyda?”, she asked and not waiting for a response, continued to introduce me to her friend, Dulanga. Nudging Dulanga, Hiranthi said “hers is an interesting love story”. Dulanga looked hesitant but seemed unable to say no to her insistent friend and sat down for a cup of tea with me. Dulanga told me her “love story” began at the Science Faculty canteen, where she used to go to with her friends to have lunch if the gym canteen were busier than normal. It is there that she noticed Saman for the frst time. She thought he was ‘cute’. His fair skin and “baby like face” appealed to her. Since that day, she schemed in every way she could to go the Science Faculty canteen whenever she could, in the hope that he would be there. It is with a glint in her eye that she told me, she soon worked out that he comes to the canteen at lunchtime and managed to convince her friends to go to the Science Faculty canteen as often as she could. Her friends quickly caught on with Dulanga’s secret and became willing facilitators to her

1 Gym canteen was where I spent most of my time during feldwork, conducting interviews, meeting up or whiling my time away. Each faculty within the university, with the exception of Law Faculty, had their own canteens—large warehouse-like buildings fur- nished with metal and plastic tables and chairs. While these spaces became packed over meal times, they were relatively quiet at other times and I found out that I was not alone in thinking these are good hangout places, if one had time to spare.

© The Author(s) 2018 55 M. Sirisena, The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka, Culture, Mind, and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76336-1_2 56 M. Sirisena adventure, encouraging and accompanying Dulanga to the canteen ever since. “I just wanted to look at him. I didn’t know what else to do. All I knew was that he was a Science Faculty student and that he was frst year too”, Dulanga told me. A few months later, one of Dulanga’s friends who was friends with a friend of Saman—the boy from the Science Faculty—told him Dulanga comes to the canteen to look at Saman. Two days later, Saman asked Dulanga whether she would like to begin a relationship with him and they have been together for a little over a month when I met Dulanga. Dulanga smiled sheepishly as she told me, “we hadn’t spoken a single word to each other before he asked me”. While what attracted Dulanga to Saman was his looks, Dulanga was happy to fnd out that they have similar dispositions, that they both were carefree, happy and do not “worry too much about problems”. The next time I met Hiranthi, she asked me how my chat with Dulanga went. To my non-commital response “it was fne”, she replied “māra love story ekak ne.2” Hiranthi did not need much encouragement to launch into why she thought was a “māra love story”. She described that Dulanga has a lot of freedom because she lives with her uncle in Nawala, suburban Colombo. Though relatives are expected to maintain the same kind of surveillance over unmarried children, par ticularly women, Dulanga’s uncle does not watch her like one’s parents would do.3 “She is ‘free’ and ‘fun’ and, ‘mod’. She hangs out with us, who are all from Colombo and are a lot different from other girls who come from villages”. Leaving aside all the questions that invaded my mind about distinctions between village and city and the freedom that Dulanga may or may not be enjoying by having escaped from her parental nest, I decided to focus on ‘free’ and ‘fun’. I have heard the combination of ‘free’ and ‘fun’ used to refer to girls before and have been alerted to the connotations associated with this phrasing. So, I followed up and asked, “do you mean to say, is she ‘irresponsible’?” choosing my words carefully not to allude to the hues of risqué behaviours which I thought

2 The closest translation I could offer to this phrase would be, “isn’t it a crazy love story?”. Māra is an adjective that carries connotations of crazy as well as amazing. 3 Dulanga told me that she is very close to her parents and she discusses everything with her mother quite openly. They joke when talking about things like romantic relationships and her mother was aware of her relationship with Saman and all that lead up to it. She described her uncle’s non-interventionist approach to her life as trust, which was an extension of the close relationship she has with her mother, who was her mother’s brother. 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 57 was implied in ‘free’ and ‘fun’. “No, not ‘irresponsible’ but she is kind of happy-go-lucky (joliyen inna tamai balanne)”, Hiranthi explained. “Akka, see this relationship, it’s not a serious relationship, no? It’s like a story from a Hindi flm. They saw each other, fell in love and now they’re in a relationship”. Hiranthi explained that Dulanga knows nothing about Saman and they had not spoken a word to each other when they started going out. Hiranthi ended her almost breathless appraisal of Dulanga’s relationship, putting emphasis on the fact that Dulanga had not spoken to her boyfriend before she started going out with him, and, that cannot be the beginning of a serious relationship. In her evaluation of Dulanga’s relationship, Hiranthi unveiled the indices of love my interlocutors alluded to, in their lives as well as those of others. One common trend among all my interlocutors was that there was no confusion between liking and loving, for loving involved acting. Irrespective of the terminology used, love was often followed with the verb karanava (to do), as in ādaraya karanava, prēma karanava or ālaya karanava, whereas liking (kæmati) declared a status of desire, which at times carried connotations of unfulflment. Mama kæmati kenā (the one I like), for instance, did not necessarily mean that the feelings were mutual.4 They often used terms such as ‘prēmaya’, ‘ādaraya’, ‘ālaya’ and ‘love’ to refer to a sentiment that founded a relationship. They seem to be interchangeable for many while a few thought each term bores different yet overlapping connotations. Of these interchangeable terms, ādaraya alongside ‘love’, were the terms my interlocutors most frequently used to refer to what they were feeling. Nishan was among those few who drew a distinction between ādaraya and ālaya. He thought ādaraya was a generic term for a feeling that could occur between a parent and a child, siblings, kin as well as between a man and a woman who are attracted to each other. As he saw it, ālaya is a feeling only those who are physically attracted (kāika ākarśanaya) to each other. Nishan giggled as he quoted a comical old song to illustrate his case: nōnage ālē, gēmæda sālē, api dennge ālē, kussiya mullē (madam’s

4 I had previously thought kæmati also has a distinct use of being applied to refer to preference for objects. For instance, one would say mama ē potaṭa kæmatii if they wished to say, “I love that book”. However, Mr. Wickaramasinghe brought to light that certain distinctions are made when referring to one’s relationship with inanimate, yet changeable objects. An example would be, api parisarayata ādarei (we love our environment) and not api parisarayata kæmatii (we like our environment). 58 M. Sirisena love is [enacted] in the living room, our love is [enacted] in a corner of the kitchen). “Now, akka if the term ālē didn’t have other meanings, if it were simple love (sarala ādaraya), there won’t be a need to speak about it like that, no?” he justifed, highlighting that the enactments the song hinted at were about acting to fulfl one’s sexual desires. While I could not fnd defnitive distinctions between the kind of loves the terms prēmaya, ādaraya and ālaya refer to, my interlocutors generally used ādaraya to refer to a generic sense of love while ālaya more so than prē- maya referred to erotic love. Whatever the terminology they used to refer to it, they hinted that, primarily, there are at least two ways of experiencing love, as a young man or a woman. While these are not mutually exclusive, Hiranthi spelled out that the two ways of experiencing love are to be the love that affects one and the love that one feels/cherishes. Saying so, Hiranthi, as did my many other interlocutors, suggested that to get affected and to feel are two separate things.5 The love that affects is a trance-like state, all consuming and enrapturing, which some also described as “youthful love”. It celebrates attraction and pleasure. This is the kind of love that is defned, determined and driven by affect, which my interlocutors chose to call ākarśnaya or ‘attraction’. The other kind of love is what was named as “serious relationships”. Serious relationships are future- orientated and favour stability and security. The key difference between the two kinds of love is that the frst kind is almost instantaneous, in the sense that there is no delay between the feelings of attraction and acting on these feelings, to whatever extent possible. The second kind of love is processual. It is a kind of love that is developed through assess- ments of compatibility, cautious engagement and habituation. My interlocutors distinguished both these types of love from ideal/unspoilt/pure love—pivituru ādaraya. In this chapter, I will trace through these notions of love, beginning with a discussion of pivituru ādaraya and then moving onto love as a force of affect and love as a feeling.

5 Ahmed (2010) in an analysis of happiness, suggests the opposite of what Hiranthi proposed, where Ahmed locates affect associated with happiness as a happening that results from being close and/or associating with happiness-giving objects, whereas happiness as a “feeling appears very precarious, easily displaced not only by other feelings, but even by happiness itself” (ibid.: 33). As the book progresses, it becomes apparent that Hiranthi’s distinction between affect and feeling is less coherent, as love in serious relationships becomes what is and what affects. 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 59

Pure Love and Passionate Love Standing almost a foot over the average Sri Lankan man, Amintha carried himself confdently and his personality exuded whatever he said and did. It was with a certain pride and self-assurance that he agreed to help me out with my research. He told me that he has read a lot and thought about things a lot. On top of that, he had experience on his side. His current relationship, which he described as a ‘serious relationship’, was over nine months old when I met him and this was his second, long- term relationship. “Love is a beautiful thing, a necessary thing…. Love is a beautiful state of mind, no? It’s something we all need” Amintha began, and after pausing for a moment, he added, “especially at this stage in life, when you are young. For me, what I feel when I’m sitting next to my ‘girlfriend’, when I’m cuddling her, I can’t get from anything else. I can’t get from that anything else. People need it”. The love we need, Amintha explained, is different to notional love or pivituru ādaraya, which one may fnd in Sinhala literature. “We grow up believing that love is this pure thing. I don’t know if akka has heard this song. Nanda Malini sings it. She says “Prēmaya nam, rāgayen tora, saňda eliya sē pavitrai. Pāriśuddai. Suramyai” (Love is, free of lust, pure as the moon light, … beautiful). We grow up thinking love (prēmaya) has nothing to do it passion (anurāgaya). But that kind of idea is naïve (boloňdai)”. Amintha told me that it is that kind of a beautiful ādaraya that is pure and devoid of sexual desire that he dreamt of when he was young but as he matured with age and experience, he realised that passion is very much a part of romantic loving:

Mister Sucharitha Gamlath had made an analysis of love.6 He says that love is a beautiful state of mind that is founded on physical pleasure (kāya san- sarga rasasvādaya mūlika koṭa gat ati ramanīya manōbhāvaya prēmayai). That is love is something that is founded on the need for physical union (kāika ekvīma). Then when I was doing law entrance, they taught us law. In law, they say that the sustainability of a marriage is not based on love but sexual relations (liňgika sambaňdatā). When I look at these things, I am grown-up now (dæn mama lokui). I’m 23 now. Now I feel, in love, in

6 Sucharitha Gamlath is a renowned scholar and activist, among whose key contributions was introducing Marxist literary criticism to Sinhalese audiences. Gamlath’s work Amintha referred to, though may not be amongst Gamlath’s acclaimed works, seemed to be popular amongst the university student population I worked with during my feld research. 60 M. Sirisena

love, it is not just love that is there in it. It’s not just lust (rāgaya) either. What you have in love is passion (anurāgaya).

Amintha explained that that we often confuse passion with lust:

Passion (Anurāgaya) is, when you say passion, as I feel, for us, for me, I need a woman’s touch. I want to have sexual intercourse with her. Then I pay and go to a prostitute. I don’t love her, no? I don’t feel for her. I hit her and make her suffer and get the maximum pleasure I want (mama eyāva talala pelala maṭa avaśya satuṭa ganna mama balanne7). Then what is there is lust (rāgaya). When the lust is gone, when it is satisfed, what is left is disappointment. Disappointment. But passion is not like that. In passion, when two come together in love, by the love they feel for one another, they need certain physical interactions. When those needs are fulflled, you don’t feel disappointed. You feel happy and you love more. The other things is, from a prostitute, though we look to get maximum satisfaction by treating her badly, in love, we don’t try to get our satisfaction like that. We think of what each other needs (dennaṭama avaśya pramānayaṭa), see what she needs, we try to come together like that (ekatu venna balanne). We think of feelings, this and that and everything. When you think of love, the true lover doesn’t rush sexual intercourse. There is nothing like we have to get it done soon. We are grown up now. I am grown up and so is my girl. We have needs. We are young. Some of the others who are our age have got married. But to this day, we have not gone to a ‘room’ or done things like that.8 Even if we go to a room, we won’t have sexual intercourse. We don’t do things that are below that either. If we go, we would cuddle, we would give a kiss, we would take our satisfaction. So, now I see love as a combination of both. It is not lust, it is passion. Passion is physical need (kāika avaśtāvaya) that arises out of the psychological bond (mānasika baňdīma) that is between the two. This is what I think.

7 It is not within the scope of the book to consider the theme of treatment of paid sex workers. 8 “Going to a ‘room’” or “going to ‘balcony’” were euphemisms for sexual intercourse. “Going to a ‘room’” referred to instances where couple rented rooms at guest houses in and around Colombo on an hourly basis, to make out. “Going to ‘balcony’” was to go to the balcony at cinema, which are less busy and dark, where they made out. I will return to this theme later in the book. make out. What happens is that young couples. 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 61

Amintha’s opinion was that it is because of associations of love with lust that society considers love to be a precarious thing, which borders madness and gives rise to senseless acts such as suicide or killing. In the frst instance, the dichotomies Amintha set up in his defnitions of lust and passion positioned lust as an unrefned feeling whereby one fulfls their desire in spite of the other person and passion as a nurturing feeling where needs and desires are met with consideration for one another. He maintained the same kind of cultural judgement as would Sinhalese media towards lust, for he elaborated lucidly that satisfying lustful needs as one would do by going to a prostitute would not bring a sense of fulflment but dejection. His mission was twofold: he wants to free love from its tentacles of lust and to confrm that physical needs (kāika avaśyatāvaya) are a human need that should be satisfed within a fulflling environment of passion.9 One of the ways in which he pursued this goal was by placing emphasis on the context of feeling. That is, according to Amintha, it is time and place that distinguish lust from passion. Amintha began explaining all of this to me by pointing out that both lust and passion result from human need for physical intimacy. His frst reproach was that the Sinhalese society does not acknowledge these needs, let alone provides safe spaces within which such needs could be fulflled. He continued that, as there are no spaces for acknowledgement and discussion of physical needs, children learn about sex from asabhya (dirty) books and flms.10 This was Amintha’s prelude to what was wrong with Asian societies. However, though he claimed that Sri Lankan society should encourage and engage with young people openly and discuss physical needs and sexual intercourse, Amintha maintained that young people should not overstep the cultural boundaries by suggesting that sex should take place in the “correct” context of feeling—the right time and the right place, which differentiated good fulflment from bad fulflment of physical needs.

9 In Amintha’s rendition of anurāgaya, it appeared as a basic, bodily need in the same sense that eating, shelter and security are but it differs from the well-acknowledged basic needs in the sense that there are fewer cultural constrictions managing their fulflment. 10 Footnote on sexual repression Asabhya or kunuharupa (flthy language) were words Amintha used to refer to X-rated literature, which he described formed the primary source for sex education for young men. His criticism followed that solely depending on these literature to learn about sexual intercourse, young men develop unrealistic expectations, which he believed to lie at the heart of sexual repression prevalent in society. 62 M. Sirisena

“Being grown up” is the right time to talk about physical needs and an apt relationship provided the proper place within which these needs should be fulflled. Amintha framed his ability to acknowledge a need for physical intimacy within a milieu of age appropriate behaviour. Being 23 years of age, Amintha saw himself as “grown up now” and he granted himself the licence to speak about his physical needs as it is appropriate for his age, which also suggests that he may not have acknowledged that he desired physical intimacy if he were younger. This suggested to me that, when Amintha told me that pivituru ādaraya devoid of sexual desires was what he felt as a young adult, rather than that is what he felt, Amintha was stating that pivituru ādaraya was what he was allowed to feel at that point in life. This is not to say that it is culturally endorsed. Most Sri Lankan middle-class families discourage teenage romantic relationships just as they frown upon premarital sex. Yet, Amintha and some of my other interlocutors found it acceptable to say that they were “naïvely in love” when they were in their tender teens, while no one admitted to sexual relationships or desiring sexual intimacy at that age. If I had pushed, Amintha may have admitted that young adults too feel desire and have needs, just like he does at the moment. After all, that is what he suggested when he claimed that “we all have physical needs”. Yet, he acknowledged and subscribed to the idea that not all of us have a right to acknowledge them, let alone to have such needs met, unless we are in the correct temporal and relational contexts. He took these cultural sanctions a step further. Amintha took his licence to speak of physical needs as he was at an apt temporal location determined by age—“grown up”. While loosely associating this location with chronological age—“I’m 23 now”—Amintha hinted there was more to that stage, which he referred to as an age of knowing things, and it is because he was of this age of knowing things that he could see that what he felt was not lust but passion.11

11 Durham (2000) and Panter-Brick (2002). Amintha’s use of chronological age, however, asserts its signifcance to understanding one’s own life experiences. His reference to age was part of a political mission to reposition the locale of appropriateness for sexual intimacy from within marriage to an age category, which he marked with “I’m grown up now” and “I’m 23”. However, he was less clear about what ‘grown up’ means and implied that it is something that happens after leaving school and is marked by being able to make decisions for himself. 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 63

While Amintha was in the appropriate temporal location, he was not at the right place where he could legitimately satisfy his physical needs. Unlike some of his friends who are of similar age, Amintha is not married. While his married friends could fulfl their physical needs within the culturally appropriate location of marriage, Amintha cannot. Here, Amintha preserves his and his girlfriend’s sanctity by shifting the interpretive boundary of sexual intimacies. He did not deny engaging in sexual intimacies but told me that he and his girlfriend “do things on this side of sexual intercourse” (sexual intercourse eken mehā dēval). Sexual intercourse appears as the ‘real line’ one should not cross, if they were not married to each other. Amintha’s suggestion was that, as long as they do not cross that ‘real line’, and since they are in a relationship that has a long-term vision, it is fne to celebrate passion and meet their needs and desires to whatever possible extent. Consideration for each others’ feelings and needs, long-term vision for the relationship and staying within limits distinguish what Amintha feels from lust, thus enjoyable. Amintha’s account of elements of love were pristine, which appeared as if he had carefully and thoughtfully distinguished interpretations of lust (rāgaya) and passion (anurāgaya) and their consequences. Lumped under a generic term of ‘ādaraya’, Nishan’s muddled account of the sentiment found harmony with most of my other interlocutors’ ideas of love. “‘ādaraya’ hari ‘complicated topic’ ekak” (Love is a very complicated topic)”, began Nishan, and in the next half an hour or so, presented me with an account that touched on attraction (kæmætta), desire (āsāva), affection (haňgīma) and connection (baňdīma). At times, these elements appeared as if they are on a continuum—as in what begins as an attraction would grow into a connection—or as unrelated, disjointed events, where attraction could lead to nothing or where one could desire someone whom they are neither attracted to nor have a connection with. Nishan used ‘ādaraya’ to refer to it all, and the meanings and implications of what he was referring to had to be drawn from the context where the term was placed in. His allusions of ‘ādaraya’, especially when they were associated with kaemaetta and āsāva, hinted at a sentiment that is raw and uncontrollable. “Akka, I could fall in love even if I were lying on my death bed. If a beautiful woman, a nurse, comes into look after me, I could fall in love with my nurse at my death bed”, Nishan exclaimed trying to display the uncontainability of this raw emotion. Here, love seems like a happening, an event that unravelled in spite of you, for nobody wishes to fall in love with a woman they cannot have, in 64 M. Sirisena their death bed knowing that life is slipping away and that that is a desire that would never be fulflled. Nishan also insinuated that there is no right time or right place to be struck by this kind of love. Yet, this does not mean that one always acknowledges that sentiment or acts on it. Nishan drew the lines between unfulfllable and fulfllable love and fulflling and unfulflled love, for not all love is fulfllable nor fulflled. Nishan too, like most of my interlocutors, spoke of fulfllable love as a long-term process, something that relied upon a connection and was an amalgamation of attraction, affection and connection—a ‘serious affair’.12 Both Amintha and Nishan distinguished this kind of relationship from love that appears as a youthful need. A serious ‘affair’ could be borne out of a youthful need, yet it is more than a youthful need.

A Youthful Love With a wry grin, Amintha read out these lines to me. “Mitura, buddhiyat avaśyai. Namut mituran æsuru kirīmaṭada prēmayē suva vindīmaṭada amataka nokaranna” (Friend, we need wisdom too. But don’t forget to hang out with friends and experience the pleasures of love). “I was cuddling (turulvela) nangi at the library when I noticed this”, he explained, almost suggesting that he didn’t need to be reminded to enjoy the “pleasures of love”. He had copied them for me, when he noticed them carved on to a wooden desk at the library. Amintha’s view was that we all need love in all stages of our lives, yet the loves we need are different at different points of life. “When you’re an infant, when you’re young, then you need a mother’s love. Then as you grow up, you begin to need father’s love, and siblings, kin and friends. When you get to this age, when you hit the youth (taruna kāle vena koṭa), then you need a girlfriend or a boyfriend.13 Then, as an adult you need to love your children, and you grow older loving those children and your grandchildren. This is the circle of life (jīvana cakraya)”. Amintha turned to human biology to explain the need for prēmayē suva (pleasures of love) in youth,

12 The term “affair” is often used to refer to relationships, and these don’t have the same connotations as they do in Western context. The relationships referred to may not be pub- licly acknowledged, and while “affair” is used to refer to what one may be involved in, this is no acknowledgement that one is involved in a sexual relationship. 13 By no means was this an allusion to homosexuality for any references to homosexuality were markedly absent in Amintha’s discourse and those of my other interlocutors. 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 65 reasoning that, with puberty, we become sexual beings and become aware of sexual needs. Though his explanation did not cover the almost decade-long gap between puberty and his current station of life, for most children enter puberty in early teens and Amintha was 23, he reasoned that love, with sexual needs, is part of a biological and innate process as the need for procreation drives humans towards each other. While opportunity presented by being away from parents, thereby having the freedom to unreservedly interact with members of opposite sex, has more to do with the advice Amintha found carved on the desk, the association of love and youth is quite common in Sinhalese cultural works of all form. My interlocutors often delved into popular culture, Sinhala literature as well as Sinhala Buddhist history, to fnd me examples of youthful love. A typical example of stories I was told is the story of Saliya—Asokamala, where history coalesced with literature. Saliya was a prince, a son of great king Dutugemunu, who falls in love with a low- caste girl named Asokamala. Overcome with his love for Asokamala, despite her pleas, Saliya leaves his kingdom behind to be with Asokamala. The stories my interlocutors related of their own love lives favoured a narrative structure, as did the story of Saliya Asokamala, which highlighted involuntary, all-consuming nature of youthful love. At the same time, such love was a site of hope, hope of a beautiful future. My interlocutors often cited Unmādavū prēmādarē to stress that youthful love is maddening, blinding, full of pleasure and hope. The frst few lines of this song, which was sung or recited to me on a number of occasions were:

Unmādavū prēmādarē Samanala vasanta yauvanayē Sansārayē suba prārtanā Dedulana denayana saṭahan vē14

Resonating similar views, Narada told me: “youth and love are words that go together”. Narada is a TV presenter, and his work ranges from being a talk-show host to a producer. Among one of the many things he does is hosting one of the premier talk shows on love, Avakāśaya, which then was aired weekly on Wednesday nights on Derana—a privately

14 Translated roughly, the verse means ‘maddening love makes beautiful eternal promises in [our] bright eyes in the futtering, summer of youth’ featured in Sapta Kanyā, a flm directed by H. D. Premaratne and screened in 1993. 66 M. Sirisena owned television channel. Avakāśaya (space) was dedicated to discussing issues that concerned love, not in the sense of an advice corner, but more as a discussion forum. Hosted by Narada and Rozan, the show invited societal personalities such as musicians and beauticians to refect on and discuss their ideas, expectations and experiences of love. Invitees to the show were diverse and cut across age, occupation, gender, ethnicity and religion boundaries. The only thing that these invitees had in common was that they were seen to be popular among the young, Sinhala- speaking population. Drawing from the experience of hosting this show and the other work he does with mainstream media, Narada likened his work to ‘working with youth’ and saw himself as well-positioned to be a commentator on youthful matters. It is by refecting on his own experience and the wisdom he has gained from working with youth that he told me that “youth is a passage. It’s a ‘carefree time;’ a time to enjoy life, the pleasures of life … and love is one of those pleasures”. However, Narada explained “we don’t get the space to talk about these things, and that’s why I asked the guys I knew at Derana if they want to do a show on it”. The show was called “Avakāśaya” as it is meant to highlight that it is a space to discuss youth issues openly. “When we look for guests, we try to get people who could speak to youth because they are the ones concerned about love. It [the show] has a new ‘format’ as well, like a talk show, and it appeals to youthful ‘taste’. We don’t try to teach them things. We’re not educational. We try to get them to think about these things and encourage them to talk about it”, was the introduction Narada gave me to his show. When I watched the programme over the period of feldwork, I realised that Narada’s show was tactful in its approach to the boundaries it wished to push and the ones it wished to maintain. The themes and questions that were asked guests seemed carefully chosen so as to not offend the guests as well as the audience. For instance, the show skirted around themes of sex or any other form of intimacies, never directly engaging with it. While Narada chose to describe his show as something that defed convention, content of the show appeared conservative where the hosts guided the discussions around guests’ life experiences and the audience remained viewers as the show was not interactive. However, Narada’s show took an avant-garde approach when it came to treatment of its guests. Once, for instance, the show featured a musician whose stage name was Chilli. When asked if he drew from his experience when he wrote lyrics for his love songs, Chilli responded that he had never been in love. Both the show’s hosts did not 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 67 hide their scepticism of this claim and they spent better part of the rest of the show interrogating this claim and mocking Chilli for lying on air. The hosts’ reinstated position was that, being a young man, it is impossible to believe that Chilli has not been in love. Later, in a separate conversation, refecting on that occasion, Narada told me that his guests on the talk show often lie about their relationships. Adding “it’s not normal to not have been in love”, Narada explained that the image-conscious young celebrities hide their relationships from the public eye for two key reasons. One was that young celebrities believe a lack of romantic experience makes them appear ‘innocent’, childlike and thus appealing.15 The other more calculating reason Narada suggested was that maintaining a semblance of availability increased popularity among fans of the opposite sex. As I saw it, the need Narada and his co-host felt to fnd reasons for why young celebrities concealed their relationships from the public suggested the extent to which ideas of love and youth-hood were interlinked and entrenched in the Sinhala popular imagination.16 Yet, contrary to what Narada suggested, the reasons which prevent young people from wanting to go public with their relationships, I believe, may lie in public perception of youthful love. While youth is seen as a time to celebrate love, youthful love itself is often associated with insinuations of lack of depth, in the sense that that love is believed to be orientated towards pleasure. The suggestion here is that youthful love is hedonistic, because it is predominantly based on attraction, and being so, it is less serious as it is an ephemeral experience associated with a stage of life. This was the criticism Hiranthi had of her friend’s relationship. For Hiranthi, Dulanga lacked a serious engagement with her relationship. Thus, she lacked serious intentions for it. Hiranthi and most of my other interlocutors believed that not all youthful loves have to be ephemeral or less serious. A youthful love could be made into something serious by “investigating and investing”. In their imagination, love found in youth

15 Associating lack of experience or knowledge of sex and desire with innocence and childlike-ness seems to have a particular kind of an appeal, especially in relation to propriety. Often, more women than men claimed such childlike innocence. I elaborate on this later in the book. 16 This does not imply that young people were encouraged to have romantic relationships. Many young men and women faced different obstacles during their relationships, ranging from unfavourable star alignments to parental displeasure as one would see in this book. What I intend to point out here is that, in the imaginations of the broader Sri Lankan public, love and being young were two things that went together. 68 M. Sirisena lays the foundation for a future. In youth, through love, they build for a future that featured in their dreams of a good life. My interlocutors dubbed these loves as serious loves, and discourses of such serious loves reminded me of happy objects Sara Ahmed (2010) writes about, where certain objects are imbued with a capacity to facilitate happiness. Serious relationships promised certain things at certain times, a direction and the ability to envision one’s futurity “in terms of reaching certain points along a life course” (ibid.: 41).

A Serious Love Dhamma’s love story gives a lucid illustration of the beginnings and the makings of a serious love. Dhamma was a student at the Arts Faculty. He had a very serious demeanour. In his mid-twenties, he had already mapped his life path towards a good life, which fell alongside a good career. He had put himself on the road to a good career through many avenues. He followed a course for a Bachelor’s degree at the Colombo University and at the same time, followed a management course and found the time to study to become a lawyer at the Law College in Colombo. Coming from what he described as a sub-rural area in the north-east of Sri Lanka and having tasted hardships once in his life, security and stability were primary components in his visions of a good life and a stable; well-paying job was a key part of that vision. His parents were hard-working farmers, and he thought it was unfortunate that there were so many things that were out with their control such as the weather and politics that affected their livelihood. He told me that he knew his hard work, as well as his parents’ efforts, would pay off once he found appropriate employment. The other piece that completed his vision for good life was a stable relationship. The path to that was laid during the ‘rag’ season, a year after Dhamma entered the university.17

17 ‘Raggin’ is a form of induction or initiation of new students into university, whereby new students are subjected to an array of verbal or physical abuse of varying degrees by ‘seniors’. While not everyone sees these acts as violent, ‘ragging’ is considered to be a means through which shape and control the sociality of new students by instilling in them norms prevalent at the university. See Ruwanpura (2011) for a detailed account of ragging at Kelaniya University, which is located in the suburbs of Colombo. 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 69

I was sitting at the bench near the mango tree, you know, the one by the small gate? I was sitting there when I frst saw her. I thought she was beautiful but I didn’t tell anybody what I felt. I didn’t get anybody to speak to her on my behalf. I don’t like to get anybody else to do my dirty work. I don’t want to ask somebody else to tell her that I like her. If I had done that, I would have belittled myself. It shows that you don’t have guts. It damages your personality. At that time, I didn’t think too much about what Sarangi thought of me. It didn’t matter if she liked me or not. I wanted to tell her what I felt. So I spoke to her and asked for her phone number. I talked to her on the phone a lot. We didn’t talk much when we were at the university. This happened sometime later. When I met her, she was different. She has changed a lot since then. I can’t believe that she is the same person. She was so proud and didn’t seem the type to get affected by what others would say or do. Most of these girls would be relieved to be approached by a senior during the rag season. You know? They start going out with seniors, so that they wouldn’t get ragged. It’s like, they want to be protected. They come here, leaving home for the frst time, not knowing their way around the city. They look for someone to look after them. But she wasn’t like that. … One day, I was sitting on the same bench near the mango tree, and she came over and asked me if I smoke. I said no. Then she asked me if I drink and I said no. Then she told me, if you drink or smoke, that is going to be the end of this. To end, we have to have something, no? That is when I realised that she felt something too. Girls don’t say what they feel frankly. That was how she told me that she loves me.

Dhamma’s story, like many love stories that begin at the university, revolved around places, tactics, values and needs: the sighting, the signifcant bench, the chase and perseverance, and commitment. The girl and the boy come to the city: they are lonely; they feel unsafe; yet they appreciate the opportunities the city offers. The boy notices the girl, makes her aware of being noticed. The girl holds back, at times. The boy perseveres and, almost always, it pays off. Dhamma approached this process with care. First of all, he managed his conduct in the pre-relationship stage with a view of demarcating his position in the relationship as a position of authority. By not getting anyone else to approach his potential girlfriend to inform her of his interests, he showed her that he can take care of his affairs. Whatever Dhamma had learned from his previous relationships, Dhamma applied to the making of this relationship. “We have feelings at this stage (haňgīm). The world needs a man and a woman to unite for the world to continue. What we should do is 70 M. Sirisena to fnd someone who is compatible to be with … We have to know if the person suits us, our background, family. You can’t give up on your family because of love… We have to think of ourselves and the society, where we ft in, if we could live together easily (api dennaṭa pahasuven ekaṭa inna hækida balanna one)” he explained. For Dhamma, the right kind of love lays the foundation for a stable life. As a young man or a woman today, one has many opportunities to meet new people and increased chances of getting involved romantically. The trick is to sift through these many opportunities and fnd the one that one could turn into a life-long relationship. Like other long-term relationships one gets entangled in, the right kind of love relationship helps self-fulflment by helping them become complete persons. Pursuing this logic, through the trials of loving, Dhamma sought something concrete. The relationship he has found himself in at that moment was concrete in such a way that he saw it “leading to marriage”: vivāhaya dakvā yana ādarayak. Dhamma attributed a sense of permanence to his relationship by linking it to marriage. Dhamma was not alone in this search for life-long bonds. When my interlocutors spoke of couple relationships, they always spoke of them with an end in mind, marriage, no matter how far or close they saw it to be an eventuality. Associating the relationship with marriage, they gave love a touch of solidity, a solidity that outlasted the passing stage of youth and the ephemerality of a need. Associated with marriage, love links domains of family, kinship and expectations. Though Dhamma as well as most of his friends and colleagues wished a relationship that would lead to marriage, and sought one within the university, they knew that the majority of couple relationships they entered into did not reach this end. To make sure that it is a relationship that survives university life and to establish those links with family, kinship and expectations, Dhamma and his friends took a few further steps before they entered the relationship. One such important step was assessing compatibility. My interlocutors argued that compatibility is an important concern as that is what laid the foundation for a good understanding between the two people in the relationship. Veiled in references to one’s ascribed as well as achieved status, they told me that two people who are compatible share a view of life and the world and it is this shared view and access to a world that laid the foundation for them to understand each other better. Compatibility did not imply that the two people should share same-ness, in terms of socio-economic background as well as personality traits. It is about complementing each other, in such a way 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 71 that it brings out the best out of each other. In their discourses, choice and love worked in tandem with ideas of compatibility and expectations, highlighting that, as Swidler (2001: 2) points out, “although love is a quintessentially personal, private experience, love is just as profoundly social and cultural”. Romantic relationships work with and alongside other relationships that we are involved in, such as relationships with family and friends as well as work and social position, asserting that “love becomes an intimacy with what the other likes and is given on condition that such likes do not take us outside a shared zone” (Ahmed 2010: 38). My interlocutors spoke of compatibility as if they would of a sieve, with which they could sift through the potentials until they found that piece of the jigsaw that fts. The ways in which they engaged with compatibility concerned the now and extended itself to the future, as if to suggest that compatibility now brings stability in future. They assessed compatibility in the here and now comparing whatever that concerned their status: education, socio-economic background, regional identities, religion and ethnicity. Here, what they sought was the ability to speak the same language. Pursuing tertiary education, social status, for these young men and women, was tied to the ideas of what they could be and who they could become. They spoke of status, as Brow (1981) does, as if it were an ideological practice; it is not just an ideology or a demarcator that one could ascribe to, it is something that one practices, cre- ates while being created by it.18 It is in that light that the importance they placed on education made sense. Education, as I pointed out earlier, meant a portal to better employment and, by extension, a better life. Yet that is not all that it was. Education distinguishes the educated from the common man. The young men and women I met often referred to themselves as “the educated” when they refected on their lives and expectations, distinguishing themselves from the “common man”. Amintha, for instance, was critical of his friends whom he saw as exploiting the vulnerability of women in romantic relationships and told me that his disappointment stems from the fact that his friends who are educated men, yet who behave in such ways that they were no different to “common men”. He argued that education alters a person by exposing

18 As many have pointed out, imagination of class is never straightforward and what I present here is a simplifcation of these ideas. Gamburd (1999), Gunathilaka (1995), Hewamanne (2008), Hewamanne and Brow (1999), and Yapa (1998) outline some of the dynamics that shape/d the Sri Lankan class imagination. 72 M. Sirisena them to different ways of thinking. Explaining that learned behaviour is expected of learned people, he said that it is important to take one’s level of education into consideration, when one attempts to gauge the compatibility of potential partners. Others described this in terms of forming of a certain mind set, which would help them communicate with one another at one level. Being able to communicate at one level and able to grasp the world in similar ways, educated men and women would help each other to bring out the best in each other, both now and in future. Looking far into the future, they added that this shared mindset that education instils in them that enables them to build an affable environment in which they could bring up their children to be worthy citizens. Charithra, similarly, described why it was important for her to have a partner who has had, at least, a similar level of education, if not higher.19 She elaborated her point with her neighbour’s life story. Her neighbour was a graduate teacher, who married her childhood sweetheart, who is now a trishaw driver. Despite the length of their relationship and the extent to which they knew each other, their marriage is far from stable. Charithra described the man as a “control freak” (bala pissuvak—literally translated as power crazy) and explained that it was his sense of insecurity that made the man suspect his wife needlessly.

This akka who lives next door, she’s suffering a lot because she married someone who is not compatible. She’s a woman, a graduate teacher. And she married a trishaw driver. They had been in an ‘affair’ for a long term, since they were children, at school. He dropped out after ‘O/Levels’ and she went on to university. They have been married for a while too. Despite all that, and having known each other for a long time, theirs is a bad marriage. She suffers a lot. He doesn’t trust her. He’s so insecure.20 She can’t get even a minute late after school. He gets suspicious. He wants her to

19 Both men and women often pointed out that if anyone in the couple were to be of a higher status, it should be the man. It seems to remain, as Yalman (1967) says that marriage is ideally a union of equals and if anyone is to be of higher status, it should be the man. I believe this is linked to role expectations of men and women in couple relationships, and I will elaborate on this in Chapter 3. 20 What I translated here as ‘insecure’ is hīnamāne, which could also be translated as inferiority complex. Usually, insecurity and need to control fgure greatly in references to inferiority complex, amongst Sinhalese. 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 73

leave the very minute the school fnishes. He doesn’t understand that she might have other duties and that her work might not end the minute the school fnishes. He’s very controlling and unreasonable.

Charithra explained the man’s insecurity referring to his compromised status as the breadwinner of the family. He is neither the sole nor the stable breadwinner of the family. Charithra drew support from two sources for her claim on compatibility. First, the common image of a household is one in which the man’s income is either the sole or the main income of the family and whatever the woman earns is a supplement. Moreover, and maybe most importantly, the head of the household position the man occupies insinuates that it is the man who makes the decisions regarding the lives of family members, with or without con- sulting the others. The ability to make decisions is infuenced by levels of education. Thus, when the woman is educated and the man is not, as is the case of her neighbour, there is a struggle, even when the woman actively does nothing to create an imbalance, because of the perceived inferiority of the man as his position within the family hierarchy is compromised. The second is that, in incompatible alliances, when the partners do not see the world in the same light, it is almost impossible for them to grasp each other’s life styles, as, yet again, as was evident in the lives of Charithra’s neighbours. The man could not imagine justifable reasons that would prevent his wife from leaving the school immediately, for when the school ends so should her work. It is beyond his grasp to fathom needs such as socialising and any other need that might prevent his wife from leaving the school right after. While I felt that this on the one hand is expecting too much of education, as it almost assumes a transformation of oneself as one becomes educated, and on the other, it undermines those who do not go into university lumping them all together into a category of “uneducated”, for my interlocutors, the association between worldview and education was quite clear. For them, a shared experience at a university helps them form a shared worldview. For most of my interlocutors who had moved from rural villages to the city, assessing compatibility by looking at the potential partner’s education, ethnicity, religion and/or class was sometimes not enough. Dhamma summed up what most others rather embarrassingly hinted at when he said it is important to fnd out about history and background of a girl, before getting into a relationship: 74 M. Sirisena

You can’t fnd anything out about a person just as you start the relationship. You get to know the person with time. But before all that, you have to fnd out about their ‘character.’ You can fnd out about them from people who know them. We all do it. Go to the girl’s village and ask around. When you come here, you can be whoever you want to be, so it’s good to know what they have been before they come here.

Dhamma ran history and background checks on Sarangi while he was courting her over the phone. It was not diffcult as he knew someone from Sarangi’s village. He inquired about Sarangi’s ‘character’ and her family from his friend and upon receiving a good endorsement, Dhamma visited Sarangi’s village and walked around her house. Responding to my raised eyebrow, he said, “to see what kind of people they are. All the boys do it”. Dhamma described that history and background checks are primarily about previous relationships and intimacies they may have engaged with, in previous relationships. He explained away his actions as important as such checks revealed a woman’s ‘character’ and her respectability. Respectability, Dhamma, his male friends as well as female colleagues suggested, is more a question of and for women, and it is an important facet that raised its head at the beginning and remained important throughout a relationship. His logic followed that one’s past cannot be erased and what one would have done will create problems later. He refused to elaborate what kind of problems these will be and when I pressed on, uncomfortably declared that what one was, they will always be; that if they were licentious before, there is no guarantee that they will not be now or in future and concluded that if so, it is better to know sooner rather than later. What puzzled me was that background checks seemingly remained a male preserve, for none of the women I spoke with claimed to have ever taken the initiative upon themselves to investigate a man’s background and/or his past. Some women said that their parents did similar checks on their boyfriends when the parents found out about their relationships, yet a woman never seems to have done something similar on her own. Not feeling the need to take the initiative or never admitting to having taken the initiative, I believe, stemmed from a discourse of women’s position as needing to be cared for and taken care of, which took the responsibility out of their hands even when what is at stake is their futures. This kind of thinking about needing protection, among other things, facilitated an edifce within 2 RUMINATING ON LOVE AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS 75 which men and women positioned themselves as men and women in couple relationships.

References Ahmed, S. (2010). Happy objects. In M. Gregg & G. J. Seigworth (Eds.), The affect theory reader (pp. 29–51). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Brow, J. (1981). Class formation and ideological practice: A case from Sri Lanka. The Journal of Asian Studies, 40(4), 703–718. Durham, D. (2000). Youth and the social imagination in Africa: Introduction to parts 1 and 2. Anthropological Quarterly, 73(3), 113–120. Gamburd, M. (1999). Class identity and the international division of labor: Sri Lanka’s migrant housemaids. Anthropology of Work Review, 19(3), 4–8. Gunatilleke, G. (1995). The economic, demographic, sociocultural and political setting for emigration from Sri Lanka. International Migration, 33, 667–697. Hewamanne, S. (2008). Stitching identities in a free trade zone: Gender and politics in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Hewamanne, S., & Brow, J. (1999). ‘If they allow us we will fght’: Strains of consciousness among women workers in the Katunayake free trade zone. Anthropology of Work Review, 19(3), 8–13. Panter-Brick, C. (2002). Street children, human rights, and public health: A critique and future directions. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 147–171. Ruwanpura, E. S. (2011). Sex or sensibility?: The making of chaste women and pro- miscuous men in a Sri Lankan university setting (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh. Swidler, A. (2001). Talk of love: How culture matters. Chicago and London: University of Chicago press. Yalman, N. (1967). Under the bo tree: Studies in caste, kinship and marriage in the interior of Ceylon. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yapa, L. (1998). The poverty discourse and the poor in Sri Lanka. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 23(1), 95–115. CHAPTER 3

Ayyas and Nangis in Love

After about a month of meeting Dhamma, I was introduced to Sarangi, Dhamma’s girlfriend. I was sauntering out of the university, after a couple of interviews, when I ran into Dhamma walking into the university with a woman by his side. After exchanging pleasantries about the day, Dhamma turned to the woman who was by his side and said, “nangi (younger sister), this is Mihirini akka (older sister), the one I told [you] about. The one who is doing research on love”. Then, turning to me, he said, “This is nangi”. I nodded knowingly for this is not the frst time I heard my interlocutors trading off proper names for generic kin terms, particularly ayya (elder brother) and nangi (younger sister), when referring to their girlfriends and boyfriends. For my interlocutors, the normative relationship a man should have is with a woman who is younger than him, not to say that relationships in which the woman was older was non-existent. For me, at a frst glance, ayya-nangi address refected this difference in age—the man is referred to as ayya, because he is older and vice versa. Later I discovered that the actual age difference between the two people did not matter as, even when the woman was older than the man, she was referred to as nangi. Susantha, whose former girlfriend was a year older than him, told me that he used to “laugh at her and call her akkā” (older sister) in private but retained nangi to refer to her in public. While jesting in private allowed them to acknowledge the upended age norm, Susantha chose to address his girlfriend as nangi, possibly wiping off any discomfort he may have felt about fipped over age norm.

However, later in conversation with Susantha, it became apparent that nangi was not a mere reference to an age norm in relationships, it also referred to a status, which positioned his girlfriend in a lesser position that made it possible for Susantha to advice and reprimand her as if he would “do to his own nangi” (mage nangiṭa wagē avavāda taravaṭu kalē). A majority of anthropological works on kin terminology in South Asia converse with Dumont’s structuralist interpretation of Dravidian kinship terminology (1953, 1957) where he divides kin terms into terminological kin and terminological affnes after refecting on Dravidian marriage system. While agreeing that the Sinhalese kinship system resembles the Dravidian system, Yalman (1962, 1967) points out that the latter, however, is less structured and more putative and fctional, where kinship can be denied or created when needed, and important social relationships could be channelled into kinship idiom when possible. However, when it comes to terminology and its relationship to sex and marriage, Yalman seems to agree with Dumont, describing that Sinhalese kinship terminology, which favours bilateral cross-cousin marriage, is prescriptive, thus is “an essential agent in the preservation of marriage rules” (1962: 556). According to his view, marriageable kin are those who fall into the categories of nǽnā and massinā and to marry out with these categories is wrong. According to this view, kin terms are not interchangeable, and it is wrong to use them interchangeably because that leads to confusion and inappropriate marriages. However, Yalman glosses over a confusion between terms of address and abstract meaning of kin terms, and it remains unclear if he were referring to the ideology or the practice of it, when he says that wrong use of kin terminology leads to inappropriate marriages. Stirrat (1977) focuses on the practical use of Sinhalese kin terminology and shows that there is ambiguity and doubt in the use of kin terminology, that they are non-prescriptive and, there is slippage where consanguineal terms are used to refer to affnal kin. Stirrat (ibid.: 276) illustrates that, on occasion, “the terms baeaena and leeli are dropped being replaced by puta and duva respectively; maamandia and naen- damma and maama and naenda are replaced by taata and amma; [and] massina is dropped and is replaced by ayiya and malli, the loku massina becoming the ayiya: the podi massina becoming the malli. Similarly, naeaena is replaced by akka or nangi”. What I noticed while doing my research was that, slippage happens in other ways as well, where kin terms slip out of cognatic relationships into non-kin relationships. 3 AYYAS AND NANGIS IN LOVE 79

For instance, one would not fail to notice that often parents of friends, friends of parents and other non-kin older women and men are referred to as ‘aunty’ or its Sinhalised version aenṭi and ‘uncle’ and aged women are at times addressed as amma or ācciamma (grandmother), while men are often addressed as mahattaya (sir). People around me used akka and ayya to refer to and address women and men older than self and nangi and malli to refer to those who are younger. In these instances, akka and ayya were used as an appendage, which followed one’s proper name, as in I was Mihirini akka. However, it is almost always as an unnamed nangi or an ayya that the young men and women I met referred to and addressed their girlfriends and boyfriends. At times, I was left confused, unclear whether my interlocutors were speaking about their romantic companions or siblings or cousins, as it happened once with Hishani. Hishani was estranged from her older brother, when their parents got divorced while they were young. Hishani and her younger sister had recently reconnected with their brother. Once after an interview, Hishani told me that she is going to meet ayya, and reading the look of confusion in my face as she has just had told me her boyfriend had gone home for the day, she added with a laugh ‘ē ayya nemei. magēma ayya’ (not that ayya. My own ayya). Like Hishani, many of my interlocutors used possessive pronouns such as mage/apē (my/our) or offered extra information such as mata prēma karana nangi (the nangi who [passion- ately] loves me), nǽdǽ vena ayya kenek (an ayya who is related/cousin) to distinguish between their siblings, cousins and romantic companions, whenever confusion arose in our conversations. This practice of using the same kin terms to address or refer to cognate kin and romantic companions suggests, as Stirrat (1977: 283) says, we should try to understand kin terminology in relation to “meanings actors impose upon both individual terms and upon kinship terminologies as wholes”. Whenever I heard a non-cognate older person being referred to as an uncle or an aunty, I understood it to be a relationship defned by respect. That is, to use proper names to address an older person, especially someone of the same generation as your parents or older, seems inappropriate, for while growing up, I had come to learn that we use proper names to address equals and those of lesser status. To refer to a familiar person as a Mr. X or Mrs. X would imply that one is imposing a distance between the self and the addressee, which is to insult the addressee, albeit, in an unintended way. Thus, appending a name with a kin term appears as a way of indicating proximity one feels to another and, maybe more 80 M. Sirisena importantly, using these kin terms in such ways seem to provide a frame within which to position oneself, which roots them in an appropriate relational context. Kin terms, in such use, present themselves as moral concepts (Bloch 1971). They situate persons which determine the relational context between the persons, outlining values and expectations. Carsten (1995), describing sibling relationships among Langkawi, says that older brothers and younger sisters have affectionate relationships and that provide a “model for the relations between husband and wife” where a married couple is expected to use the terms “older brother” and “younger sister” to refer to each other. She argues that “these terms capture the ideal of affection, equality, and respect on which marriage should be based” (ibid.: 226). In a similar way, the terms ayya and nangi in practices of addressing one’s lover are referents of and for an affective framework derived from values and expectations associated with relationships between siblings. As such, these terminologies facilitate a discourse within which positions are generated for the couple in the relationship to occupy as a man and a woman and refect on and perform their femininity and masculinity, duties, expectations and their very being. In such usages, ayya and nangi are presented as moral concepts, for what is highlighted is not the consanguineal connotations associated with these terms but moral ones, which imply obligations and expectations. As Bloch (1971: 80) says, I found ayya and nangi to be a “part of the process of defning a role relation between speaker and hearer”, which implies more than merely establishing of a kinship-line of communication. They are part of a much wider tactical characterisation which may have little to do with kinship in any strict sense of the word. On the frst instance, this kind of usage appeared to give a structure to the emotional relationship by providing something like a blueprint for relating, which informs those involved of what to offer and to expect.1 Secondly, it is also a recitation of gender roles (Butler 1990, 1993) as ayya-nangi address estab- lishes a regulatory frame through which the couple conducts themselves in a gender appropriate manner, which, in turn, is reinstated through a

1 I rely on Williams (1973) in my interpretation of an affective relational structure, where I am generalising Williams’ reference to structures of feeling that arise out of hegemonic cultural confgurations that justify and maintain productive forces and relations between them and the resistance against these cultural confgurations. My argument here is that kin terminology refects such structures of feeling—cultural confgurations that manage, justify and facilitate favoured affective relations. 3 AYYAS AND NANGIS IN LOVE 81 normalised process of repetition. In this chapter, I explore the relevance of these ideas in the context of my interlocutors’ couple relationships.

An Ayya to Protect and a Nangi to Nourish It was Susantha who drew me an elaborate picture of what it meant to be an ayya. Inadvertently, in the middle of a conversation about what he liked and disliked about his former girlfriend, he told me, “She had her weaknesses. I have told her to change. I told her not to go overboard, not to be touchy-feely (ata pata gānna) with men. I told her not to do things like putting her arm around boys’ shoulders. I told her what I would have told her if I had a younger sister”. I smiled a knowing smile, for by this time, I had heard many such claims men made over women’s bodies, advising them how to conduct themselves or told them what to or what not to wear. As if he read my mind, Susantha went on to tell me that, while it is triggered off by jealousy, it is not jealousy alone that drove his intervention. Like many other men and women suggested, Susantha thought that jealousy brings in a healthy dynamic to a relationship, as it keeps the relationship alive through rekindling feelings of possessiveness and showing that you care. That aside, when Susantha chose to “advise” his girlfriend, he did it to protect his girlfriend from harsh criticisms of society. His view was that she does these things because she does not know better. “Nangi does not know how boys talk about girls who behave freely with men. She does not know how the society looks at women who are touchy feely with men”. The implication was, as a person who is aware of these things it is up to him to put her on the correct path and show her right from wrong and, for Susantha, that is protecting her. In Susantha’s rendition of roles attributed to ayya and nangi in a couple relationship, ayya occupies a position of authority and nangi takes the place of a carer who is cared for. The image of a nangi, Susantha and many other men painted, is often of someone acquiescent (lāmaka), docile (ahinsakai) and naïve (boloňdai), someone who is less aware of the ways of the world, thus needs to be protected and guided.2

2 Many women I met did not ft this representation of a lāmaka, for the innocence associated with lāmaka insinuated dependency. Majority of the women I met were capable of and were fending for themselves; however, they resisted being labelled independent and tried to ft in with this expectation of being lāmaka, through yielding control over their business to close men, when possible, such as letting a male friend walk them home, if they offered. 82 M. Sirisena

Protection and providing overlapped in our conversations, and men I spoke with told me that they provided safety and security for nangis they care for in many ways. These ways ranged from walking them home or to their hostels, travelling with them when they returned to their villages, spending on expensive gifts or entertainment such as cinema tickets, buses and other needs such as books, auxiliary professional courses, clothes, phone bills or even giving her money for daily expenditure.3 Providing for her now in this way is important because doing so, he proves to his girlfriend and her family that he can look after her and their family in future. More importantly, providing in such way is an expectation and display of manhood. Dhamma connected the dots between expectations and performance, claiming that “as a man, there are things expected of me and one is the ability to maintain her (nadattu). I must have the ability to look after her. I don’t expect to be maintained by her”. He sounded declarative and assumed an air of arrogance as he explained that though it would have been better if his girlfriend was of a lower socio-economic class, this was not something he was too concerned about. Looking towards a future, he explained that his indifference towards his girlfriend’s socio-economic background stems from the fact that he does not look to depend on her for fnancial sustenance. Dhamma’s account left me disturbed. His candid admission that he wished his girlfriend were of a lower social status was troubling. The air of arrogance he assumed when he told me he is not bothered by it because he knew soon he would be better than her, with a university education and a job, where as his girlfriend, despite her university education, would be a housewife who will be completely dependent on her was worrying. Most of all, his choice of the word—nadattu—was sin- ister. I have always associated the term nadattu (maintenance by doing the needful) with the upkeep of a machine or an establishment, where the thing that gets maintained is a passive recipient of the beneft of being maintained and the benefactor maintains it to enhance its use- fulness. This signifed a one-way relationship, defned by use. It is the acting benefactor who oversees and who decides what, when and how

3 These acts and expectations highlight that as Zelizer (2007) argues, intimacy and money/economy are not incompatible and competing phenomena as most social theorists assume it to be, but that monetary exchanges form an important element in relational work most individuals engage in intimate social transactions. 3 AYYAS AND NANGIS IN LOVE 83 the process of nadattu should be carried out, which highlighted a claim that they have on this benefciary. Dhamma’s use of the word nadattu in the context of Susantha’s admission to controlling the woman’s conduct highlighted that providing, as my male interlocutors did, is a process of acquiring a claim over the bodies, conduct and lives of the women they claimed to love. The intricate workings of social subordination in intimate relationships are not a novel theme.4 The works on the theme have been complimented with a myriad of extensive anthropological studies that exposed how migration, war and increased opportunities for female participation in labour force among other such dynamics have affected household politics. The young men I spoke with were exposed to these discussions and realities, both at home and at the university. Some, like Susantha, were brought up by single mothers, who had chosen to leave their alcoholic, abusive husbands and to make ends meet through hard and harsh labour, oppression, abuse and the threat of sexual exploitation. They had witnessed for themselves that it is not always protection a male companion brought into family and that women who lived on their own lived, despite whatever harshness everyday life brought their way. Yet, when it comes to living their lives, their aspirations and expectations, it is an archaic sense of household politics that my male interlocutors reverted to. There was a sense of a “natural hierarchy”, which was brought back into their imagined families through a reassertion of the role of the male breadwinner. They argued that women needed to be educated, because that enabled them to communicate at the same level and, more importantly, because women are the primary carers/infuence on their offspring. Some argued that though not ideal, women may have to fnd salaried work, as in today’s world, one needs two salaries to live a comfortable life. Yet, ideally, they would have preferred, if their wives were stay-at-home mothers, as the most primary and defnitive role of a woman is that of a up bringer of her children. Amintha and Aravinda, the twins who appeared to have embraced ‘modernity’, on different occasions claimed that they turned out to be the [good] persons they are

4 While Collier and Yanagisako invited anthropologists to analyse social wholes with a view of questioning the universally assumed difference between men and women and its implied association with gendered hierarchies, works such as Abu-Lughod (2000) and Rajeha and Gold (1994) point to intricate workings of compliance and defance to gendered restrictions managed and maintained through kinship networks. 84 M. Sirisena because their mother was at home, who was “there when they needed her and who had taught them right from wrong”, implying that bringing up children is the true duty of a woman. For some of the young men I spoke with, the pressure of ftting into the shoes of the provider is such they thought twice about their ability to provide for their potential girlfriends before starting a relationship. Chathuranga, for instance, decided to hold himself back from a relationship as he thought it was better than being unable to play the expected role of a provider. He was a quiet, shy, soft-spoken, young man. Hair parted towards the left of his forehead and combed fat, and in a light blue shirt tucked into grey trousers, for me, he painted the typical picture of a ‘village boy’, those like Hiranthi spoke of, when I met him the frst time. Still dependent on his poor, farmer parents, Chathuranga was the oldest of three children, with two younger sisters. He worked hard towards a stable future. He was one of those university students who looked to build other skills while at university. He studied economics at the university, while following courses in management and accounting outside university. He followed English language courses too. It is not because he did not feel the need that he held himself back from relationships; he simply could not afford the cost of relationships.

Even at the university, there was a girl who I liked. But, erm, because of economic constraints (ārtika bhādaka), that is, I found out from my friends, they spend a lot on their girlfriends. That is a problem for me. If I started a relationship, I couldn’t afford to spend money to buy even one gift. My parents send me money to live on, so I stopped myself almost forcefully (balen vagē). So I don’t even think beyond that.

While for Chathuranga “not being able to buy at least one gift” is a display of his inability to provide, not everyone imagined playing the role of the provider the same way. Yet, when they transgressed, it was not without consequences. During my research, I met men who were involved with women from families who were fnancially better off than them and women who were involved with men from poorer backgrounds. In such relationships, these men and women resorted to different means to assert the man’s role as a provider. Chinthana and his well off, former girlfriend worked around the issue of his fnancially compromised position. “I didn’t have money. She gave me money to pay for us for the bus. I had a season ticket. But if we’re going somewhere, we take the ‘private bus,’ 3 AYYAS AND NANGIS IN LOVE 85 because it is easier. … I decide which bus to take, which one we should get into, where we should go”, Chinthana said, describing the system they have in place to get around the issue.5 When he spoke of depending on his girlfriend for money, he did not seem troubled. Nor did it appear that he felt compromised. The system Chinthana and his girlfriend had in place was not about keeping up pre- tences in the public eye. For Chinthana, even if it were not his money, he manages it as he is the person who makes the decisions on how to spend it, thus, being a proxy for a provider. On another occasion, he explained to me that having to depend on his girlfriend for money “didn’t bother him” (avulak nǽ). In the process of arming himself with a degree, thus advancing his prospects for a better future, he saw this as a temporary arrangement, because when he completes his degree; he could be earn- ing more, while occupying a prestigious post.6 Nishan, in similar circumstances, too banked on his prospects to overcome the obstacles of the present. He saw his present status as transitory. Studying to become a lawyer, he was certain that he has begun his journey towards the upper economic and social strata. This is not to imply that men who found themselves in Chinthana’s and Nishan’s position thought their circumstances were unproblematic. Chinthana once admitted to me that his ideal match would be a woman who is of a slightly lower economic status, lower level of education and a woman who possesses a “personality” that is weaker than his. “If not”, he told me, “I would have no control over her” (maṭa eyāva pālanaya karanna bæriva yanavā). However, in the relationship he was referring to, the relationship’s balance was maintained because the woman was brought up the way he liked his woman to be (eyā mama kæmati vidiyaṭa hadicci kenek): meek and never questioning his decisions or actions. This was yet another fortunate dynamic that did not complicate the already compromised position he found himself in at the time.

5 Buses are the cheapest mode of transport in Sri Lanka. There are state-run buses as well as those managed by private operators. While there is no great difference in cost of single tickets in state-run and private-run buses, private-run buses tend to be more frequent but do not support concessional fares such as season tickets. 6 My interlocutors did not seem fazed by the fact that most university students did not manage to secure employment, let alone prestigious employment after the completion of their degrees. In their imagination, as did most Sri Lankans, tertiary education appeared as a ladder for upward mobility. The logic seems to follow that, ‘for us, it will be different’ and they enhanced their employability by acquiring other skills and trainings. 86 M. Sirisena

Though there were many relationships that went against the norm, it did not mean that they were seen in a favourable light, both within and outside the university. Susantha brought it to daylight when he told me that his friends often mocked him. Despite knowing that he “truly loved” his girlfriend, they frequently described his relationship as a case of data galavanavā, i.e. extracting a tooth. This metaphor, for me, bore rather confusing connotations. Whose data were they referring to? Though the implication was that Susantha was removing his girlfriend’s tooth, by depending on her wealth, it suggested that his girlfriend removing Susantha’s tooth too, by ridding him of the role of man as the provider. Either way, it appeared that data galavanavā is a painful process in which the pain felt is greater later than while going through it. The implications thus suggest that, if the man were to fnancially rely on the woman, he would suffer more later in life, as he would not be able to assert his place in the household as the provider, for he has already failed to establish his position through providing for her. Further, the damage of the event is irreparable. Losing a tooth is a tragedy in the sense that, as with losing any other part of your body, it does not grow back. Most importantly, the mark of the damage it leaves is visible. What is irreplaceable here was the compromised position the man is put in; in his failure to prove himself as the provider, he compromised his manhood (pirimi- kama), thus self-respect and dignity. The rudiments of ayya-nangi address seep deep into couple relationships and, recited and reasserted values and expectations that hover over the ayya, the nangi and the relationships. For instance, a nangi is reminded of her position of a nangi by treating them in childlike ways. Bileka pointed this out to me when we were talking about different ways in which lovers showed their feelings for each other. For Bileka, the way one addresses the other is a signifcant show of love. She elaborated on this and told me:

Janith is not somebody who shows love that much. He tries to show love by, [he] just huratalfes (cajoles)… Like, you know, just, treats me like a child. But I think a lot of guys do this. I know Chamal [her sister’s boyfriend] does it, cajoling. [Like] he says, “oh darling,” “oh baby,” “how are you baby [pætiyo].” That’s how we talk to a child, no? Like that. “Oh my golden gem” [rattaran mænika] He says things like that. Like that, they talk to you. 3 AYYAS AND NANGIS IN LOVE 87

Bileka observantly pointed out that addressing one’s lover as if they would address a child was not unique to her relationship. Quite a few young women I met with during my feldwork used such words when self-referencing, while describing conversations they had with their boyfriends. These terms that are frequently used, such as pætiya (kid/baby animal) and babee (baby) bear unembroidered associations with children. Overtones of such literal references open up access to another set of terms associated with loving one as if one loves a child. Explaining what she meant when she said Janith cajoles her, Bileka described, “teasingly, he mollycoddles, he calls me aliya [elephant]; he calls me batale [sweet potato]. He says things like that, in a coddling way”. Quite plump, Bileka did not seem to mind the negative connotations of aliya or batale. She did not receive these terms as a criticism of her looks. Rather, she associated this act with the way children are loved. She pointed out that children are often teased in such ways, where their body shape as well as the childlike things they do are highlighted and lovingly mocked. Embedded in a kind of thinking that suggests one could make deroga- tory remarks about the way one looks out of love, this practice of teasing children about their appearances does not allow space for the acknow ledgement of the deprecating potential such teasing carries. Rather, what is highlighted is the love that supposedly underlies such remarks. This kind of teasing, I have heard in other contexts, suggest, though incongruous, an acceptance of the way a child looks, and at the same time, subtle hints of need for change. Siding with the notion that teasing means acceptance, Bileka, at a different point, told me that Janith likes her curves, providing me the context for her claim that his teas- ings were terms of endearment and not name-calling. Bileka standard- ised this practice, explaining that all men who are around her tease and mollycoddle to show their love to their girlfriends. Her explanation followed that men experience love and learn to love as children and these are the feeling structures they turn to when trying to demonstrate their love. She consolidated her case citing that, Ajith, a man she was infatuated with at that moment and who was infatuated with her, calls her sudu (the fair one) or pætiyo. “He asks me, “mage suddi kohomada” (my fair one, how are you)”. Sudu literally translates as white or fair. Calling a person sudu, if they are not lighter skinned, presents the other side of the coin of commenting on appearances. Fair skin is associated with beauty in most parts of South Asia and if the number of Fair & Lovely 88 M. Sirisena and other ‘fairness cream’ advertisement I saw on television were to stand as proof, Sri Lanka presented no exception.7 The use of sudu piv- ots on this understanding that fair is beautiful and suggests that the one who is addressed as sudu is beautiful. Bileka spoke of sudu, along with other terms of endearment such as pætiya and babee, which were brack- eted together with cajoling and childlike things. Speaking along the same lines, Himasha and many other women I spoke with pointed out that sudu could also be used as an adjective, as in sudu babee or sudu pætiya. What was highlighted, when these terms of endearment were referred to, was the love behind the use of the term, along with the insinuation that the addressed were likened to children or made to feel like children. That is what I found out when, pursuing the obvious, I asked Bileka how she feels when Janith addresses her in this way. She laughed and stated the obvious: “It makes me feel like a child”. When I asked her if she likes being treated like a child, her response was:

Sometimes, but there are times when it’s annoying. And then I tell him to stop. Sometimes it’s ok, like you know, it adds to it. I mean you know it’s not like you’re talking to a child, you know, you’re talking to an adult. But it’s with a lot of love. More than the intention of thinking of talking to a child, it’s like, like we try to show children that we love them. [It’s] That [kind of] love. They try to show that love.

With this association of romantic love with the kind of love one feels towards children, what Bileka reiterated was that men learn to love and show love through their childhood experiences. With her reiteration, at one level, she seemed to agree with Das (2007) who argues that we learn the meaning of love through the doing of it, that is those acts that are performed alongside the claims of love get known as love. At another level, Bileka hinted that in Sinhala society, since open demonstration of love towards children is acceptable, similar demonstrations of love in public too are acceptable, even if they are not directed towards children. She also brought it to the fore that that kind of loving was not what she always wanted or needed.

7 Fair & Lovely is a brand name that has become synonymous for “fairness cream”, which promises lighter tone of skin as a result of its frequent use. For as long as I remember, in Sri Lanka, this particular brand carried out rather brutal advertisement campaigns, which portrayed women with darker skin being denied of diverse social privileges—such as marriage or jobs—because of the colour of their skin. 3 AYYAS AND NANGIS IN LOVE 89

When I asked Bileka if she too mollycoddles Janith, she responded, “I use similar words. I don’t go to the extent of hurathalfying [coddling] them like, you know but I used those kinds of words. I say things like pætiyo. You know, it is that closeness that enables you to say those things”. While Bileka claimed that she did not mollycoddle Janith the same way, a gamut of scenes I had witnessed at the university—of women feeding men, men resting their heads of women’s knees while they gently stroked his hair, etc.—alerted me that women’s love resembled coddling yet with a different set of insinuations. It resembled caring and nourishing as if a mother would care for her child. I was told often during my feldwork that the need to protect the ones we love is a natural impulse. This sense of protection was associated with physicality, as in the protection of the body, and the underlying assumption was that this is a male domain. Both men and women I spoke with suggested that protection meant safeguarding one from physical harm and that it is women who mostly need such protection. These ideas of protection premised upon the belief that, frst, that a woman is a vulnerable being who is unable to protect themselves and that any man, other than the man a woman is with, is a source of potential harm. These beliefs were bolstered by numerous horrifc tales of incidents women were subjected to at the hands of men such as groping in buses, indecent exposure, verbal abuse (sometimes camoufaged as eave teasing) and physical abuse, which, in the eyes of my interlocutors, confrm that men are ‘natural’ sexual predators and that they attack women because of their vulnerable disposition. Both men and women expected men to battle other men to protect the women they love. These deliberations on protecting one’s nangi hinted that nationalist discourses on women’s bodies—where emotionally charged nationalist sentiments are mapped on to women’s bodies which render women’s bodies into territories that need to be protected—have seeped into personal imaginations.8 As in the case of the motherland that needs to be protected from predators, women’s bodies appear as if they are territories that men have claimed, thus needed to be safeguarded from other men, who are instinctively predatory. A woman who is with a man appeared

8 See Yuval-Davis (1997), N. De Mel (2001, 2008), and R. Menon, and Kamla Bhasin (1998) for engaging discussions on various ways women’s bodies are acted upon in milita- rised contexts. 90 M. Sirisena as if she is plot of land with a fence around her, which indicated to other men that trespassing is not allowed. Thus, a protective man is ought to be there for his woman, especially at vulnerable times, such as when the darkness begins to fall, during long journeys or if she were to venture into unfamiliar terrain be it going to a place she has not been to before or doing something she has not done before. As such, protecting was rendered a typical male activity. For Sayuri, however, protection is multilayered and multidimensional. While men play the leading role in providing protection in and from the outside world, she argues that women protect men from within. Often when Sayuri spoke of her relationship, she referred to it as a shield that protected each other. She has been in a relationship with Malintha for over 5 years. They met while at school, got to know each other, began a relationship, and they have followed each other to the city. For her, he always protected her with his love and so did she:

We can’t protect them from the outside world but we too give them protection. We protect their respect (nambuva), we protect them from pain (duken ārakśā karanavā). We can protect their hearts. We give them protection (rækavaranaya) when they fall sick, to cook for them, wash their clothes.

What my other female and male participants saw as caring, Sayuri saw as a form of protection. Women saw this kind of protective caring as a way of showing their love, while it is something men sought in a relationship. For men, this kind of caring was a part of the package they expected from māva balāganna kenek (someone who would look after me). “During our A/L days, nangi was the one who wrote notes for me. She buys books, puts covers and writes notes. We don’t keep notebooks, no? We write on pieces of paper” Chinthana illustrated, “when she gives me those books, [I feel] I have someone to look after me”. Looking after entailed diverse acts such as inquiring after them (their health, if they had eaten, their emotional well-being, about work, etc.), writing essays for them if they are at the university or taking down notes for them if they followed the same courses at the university, bringing them food or cooking for them—the list could be endless. 3 AYYAS AND NANGIS IN LOVE 91

Genes Versus Education The rendition of roles in couple relationships I was presented with was rather troubling, because I had expected something different when I decided to speak with university students and one afternoon, while hanging out with Aravinda who was killing time between lectures, I broached the subject. In response to my “what do you think about gender studies?” he exclaimed, “‘Useless’ akka. ‘Theory’ is good but it’s like playing the violin for deaf elephants (bīri alinta vīna vādanaya karanava vage)”. Elaborating on this, Aravinda turned around and pointed a fnger at the larger Sri Lankan women population, claiming that it is not men alone who are responsible for perpetuating this state of affairs:

In the girl’s mind, there is this idea that a man has to be like this. It is not something we build. It is something the society builds for us. It is the society that has built it for her. It should be like this. If it is a man, he has to control things. It is like this and that. If I were strict with her, then she thinks, now this is the man who can protect me. Because, now in a ‘foreign country’ that wouldn’t happen because the woman too takes on the risk of protecting oneself (tamange ārakśāva tahavaru karana avadānama gannava).9 It’s not like that in our countries. In our countries, women don’t study self-defensive martial arts. They don’t go forward and talk against injustices and say that this shouldn’t be like this. Our Asian women hold on to the idea that a man should come forward to help her and protect her all the time. Now for generations, it’s in their genes. … The girls want their men to protect them … Now it is not that I didn’t protect my earlier girlfriend, I go places with them. I go to drop them home. I look into everything. But they think, when I am with them, that I can’t provide them safety. That is not because of a physical handi- cap because when I compare myself with other boys of the same age, I am taller and well built. My physique is good. I am at the upper end because those who were born in 85 are not tall and big made. But she doesn’t feel that I can provide her with safety. She doesn’t feel that because I am too lenient. I smile a lot. I am very polite. I talk. I laugh. I listen to even the smallest thing she has to say. She thinks “He’s backboneless (koňda pananǽ). He can’t protect me. He can’t do anything.” I have done chīna adi (a form of martial art) for four years. I can do any sort of fghting. But

9 Sinhalese use the coinage ‘foreign country’ to refer to overseas countries, more often than not, Western countries. 92 M. Sirisena

she doesn’t feel that. [As she sees it,] Ayya can’t. If some sort of a problem comes up, ayya can’t protect me. I’m not too strict. … One day sometime back, one girl I know, she had liked me. I didn’t know that. Once when she got her Mahapola [her government scholarship payment], I went over and grabbed her money as a joke and said “I’m not giving it. How much do you need? You need of only Rs 100 to cover expenses tomorrow, right? Here’s your Rs. 100.” She told me that she likes a boy like that!

When Aravinda locates the cause of unchanged gender status quo in genes, it is not the incapacitating culture that he focuses on but the woman who has internalised that culture to such an extent that now it is ‘in her genes’. Aravinda’s words took me back to a Hiranthi’s troubling admission about wanting to be the ‘second best’ in love: “I don’t like becoming second best in anything. I always want to be the smartest. The brightest. But that’s different in love. In love, I want my boyfriend to be better than me. It is only in love that I want to be the second best (ādareidi vitarai mama second venne)”. Aravinda declared that these gendered expectations and dispositions have been recited for so long that now bodies and cultures have merged. Pointing that those cultural dispositions have now seeped into one’s biological compositions, he highlights the immutability of it all. His monologue did not acknowledge the challenges a woman may face, if she were to sidestep or criticise this status quo. On many other occasions, as I discuss throughout this book, women described the importance of maintaining a womanly disposition, especially in public. Some told me that they were dealt diverse derisive remarks, if they were outspoken. They feared being catalogued as ‘forward’, and ‘fast’ by extension of their outspoken temperaments, which suggested moral laxity. The underlying assumption here suggested that to be outspoken is to be like a Western/Westernised woman and such women are morally ‘loose’.10 Aravinda drew the same parallel between “our women” and “western women” but focused on the fip side where he hypothesised that “western women take the risk of looking after themselves while our women don’t”. Yet, by categorising acting to protect oneself as a risk, he acknowledged that it is an intervention that bore

10 E. S. Ruwanpura (2011) presents similar accounts of women’s experiences where they encounter social criticism if they had countered social expectations of womanly dispositions. 3 AYYAS AND NANGIS IN LOVE 93 costs and consequences, and that necessitated for women to step outside the “ordinary”. Aravinda placed emphasis, however, not so much on what is debilitating a woman’s ability to act but on the expectations of male disposition and conduct. Particularly, it was the expectation for a man to be koňda pana æti, that he was critical of. Koňda pana æti implied to have a certain strength of character, which revolved around notions of a man’s ability to control. In everyday use, koňda refers to back, backbone or the spine. Pana denoted breath or life, and koňda pana æti hinted at something akin to having life in the spine. The ideas encapsulated in the label of koňda pana æti seemed like another manifestation of Jeganathan’s (2000) baya næthi kama. Jeganathan (ibid.: 52) presents baya næthi kama as “a practice of masculinity that produces a space for violence in Sinhala society”, which abets violence rather than produce it, in the sense that violence is an underlying condition of it rather than at the forefront of it.11 The notion of koňda pana æti appeared similar as it is a masculine temperament, which is demonstrated as one’s strength of character, and this strength, which enables him to take control and exert it upon somebody else, opens a space for violence in the context of couple relationships. As Aravinda described it, “being strict” necessitated that he becomes “controlling” and as he saw it, it is problematic because he saw this as exerting his will upon another. He highlighted the contradictions it entails, pointing out that one is expected to constrict the person one claims to love. He wanted to be different but found it diffcult, and added that he found a happy compromise by trying to mindfully engage with gendered ways of being: he became a modern [manly] man (‘modern’ pirimiyek). He asserts his manliness by behaving like a man in love is expected to: loving yet in control of the relationship:

Now when I love her, I love her. Then I’m like that. When I am frank (kelinma kiyanava), then I’m like that. At certain times, I frankly say, now one Saturday she has come to the university. She has fnished her classes and come to the university. [On Saturdays] it is those who do external degrees who are here. Then, it is ok to be at the university, but it’s not those you know who are here. In my earlier relationships, I’d say ok, you go there, study and go back. Yesterday, when she called me and told me

11 I will return to the topic of baya næthi kama and its associations with violence in Sri Lankan society later in the book. 94 M. Sirisena

that, I said “Don’t stay there. Don’t stay there. Ok, you came to eat, no? Eat and go to the hostel straight.” She was going, “But ayya …” and then I asked “Can’t you listen to what I say? Can’t you listen to what I say?” Then, she said “Ok, ayya, ok” and nicely went to the hostel and gave me a call. After calling, I get a text message saying ayya I love you. Ok. That’s the frst. Now if I said, it’s ok nangi stay back, study and go back home, if I said that, I think, then that controlling is not there, no? Then she thinks that I am useless.

This was a rather conficting admission from Aravinda, because it appeared as if he were still trying to justify why he did what he did— there are strangers at the university of Saturdays, which makes the university an unfamiliar, unsafe place, thus she should not hang out there—while saying outwardly that he did what he did because it is expected from him rather than him believing in that kind of conduct. Aravinda’s attempt here was to point out to me while he did not want to live up the expected masculine conduct, he was compelled to comply, thus ending up with becoming a victim of sorts, of female expectations.12 What is of further interest is that, in doing so, he also highlighted that this system is predicated upon acquiescence from women, a disposition which he criticised while speaking of “Asian women who are incapable of safeguarding themselves” and that he expected that of his girlfriend. It also explained why Bindu declared without an iota of doubt that her quick temper got in the way of her relationship with Nilantha and why Dhamma needed to highlight how Sarangi was transformed by their love. Sarangi, Dhamma described, was confdent/assertive when he met her: “She was proud and tough (daradaňdui) and did what she wanted to do. Now she’s different. She’s acquiescent (lāmakai)”. Their relationship transformed the very nature he appreciated in her, for Dhamma was proud that she was not like other girls, yet, he seemed to be happy about this transformation. When we spoke, almost all my interlocutors said a successful relationship is one in which the man and the woman are equal, where both would have an opportunity to follow their dreams like Nayana, who saw

12 Aravinda’s sense of victimhood seems quite similar to that which Chisholm (2014) describes, where she cites a range of case studies to illustrate that masculinities are diverse and that men could become victimised through the prevalence of a single omnipotent sense of masculinity and the expectations out of it. 3 AYYAS AND NANGIS IN LOVE 95 no space for compromises and sacrifces in her relationship. Whatever one gives, she said, should be given freely, and both the man and the woman should have to make an equal effort to make the relationship work. Speaking of life, relationships and expectations in this way seemed to be a sign of modern-ness and learnedness, and resembled companionate marriage in which self-expansion, companionship, disclosure and equality are the defning ideals (Swidler 2001). Ideally, in such companionate unions, it looked as if there was space to accommodate divergent views and dreams. However, when expectations and ideals were con- fronted with lived realities, cracks opened and the dwellers of those relationships reverted to conventional models of power and acquiescence, as Hemanthi’s story stands as proof. Hemanthi told me that the mistake she made in her relationship, which she did not regret, was her attempt to assert herself as the provider. Hemanthi comes from a wealthy family from southern Sri Lanka. In her third year of study at the Arts Faculty, Hemanthi had her eyes set on a career in the media. Her temperament, she told me, is one that is “forward looking”. She described herself as ‘progressive’, and that is why she did not see providing fnancially for her former boyfriend as problematic.

We were a bad match. He’s from a rural, poor family. And I was not. I’ve always lived a comfortable life. And I saw no problem in giving him money when he needed it. He was fne to take it but then started getting insecure. He tried to tell me what to do and what not to do. It was a real tug of war (kamba ædillak). I don’t like being told what to do and he would always try to tell me what to do.

The war ended when she decided to assert herself and ended the relationship when he came between her and her dream of working in the media. Hemanthi’s story is not atypical. Refecting on these stories, providing appeared to me, on the one hand, to be a form of obligation. On the other hand, it was a statement of power. Providing and being the provided for were gendered roles, which faced obstacles from within and the outside, when they were upturned. Yet, being exposed to academic discourses on gender and being the learned portion of the Sri Lankan population, it is not that all my interlocutors found such crystallised casting of gender roles unproblematic. They negotiated with being pulled in different directions. They acknowledged that some aspects of the roles that they played in romantic relationships mirrored ‘traditional’ 96 M. Sirisena expectations of genders, as the roles of the man playing the role of the provider and the woman that of the provided. They worked to bring in their learning into relationships by seeking gender-neutral ways of engaging with these domains that they recognised to be gendered. However, at times, going against the grain proved to be a Herculean task and on such occasions, as Hemanthi did, giving up seemed an easier option, which highlights, most of the time, success of couple relationships is predicated upon what Aravinda called the “practices of conventional gender roles” (sampradāika gæhænu-pirimi kriyākalāpa).

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Rajeha, G. G., & Gold, A. G. (1994). Listen to the Heron’s words: Reimagining gender and kinship in north India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ruwanpura, E. S. (2011). Sex or sensibility?: The making of chaste women and pro- miscuous men in a Sri Lankan university setting (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh. Stirrat, R. L. (1977). Dravidian and non-Dravidian kinship terminologies in Sri Lanka. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 11(2), 271–293. Swidler, A. (2001). Talk of love: How culture matters. Chicago and London: University of Chicago press. Williams, R. (1973). The country and the city. New York: Oxford University Press. Yalman, N. (1962). The structure of the Sinhalese kindred: A re-examination of the Dravidian terminology. American Anthropologist, 64(3), 548–575. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/667927. Yalman, N. (1967). Under the bo tree: Studies in caste, kinship and marriage in the interior of Ceylon. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yuval-Davis, N. (1997). Gender and nation. London: Sage. CHAPTER 4

Making It Real

I was a few minutes late and Nayana was waiting for me when I got to the gym canteen. Knowing that she disliked waiting on her own, I was relieved to see she had company. Nayana introduced me to Charithra, her friend who sat by her side and invited me to join in their conversation, saying “Charithra and I were talking about what she could get her boyfriend for his birthday”. The conversation glided, exploring all possible options—shirts, ornaments, perfumes and pens, and settled in on books. Charithra explained that they both like reading and that books were one of the frst topics they talked about when they met each other. They compared notes on what they had read before they met each other on that day and were happy to fnd out that they shared their taste in genre. She felt confdent that she could choose a book that he would like, and Charithra contentedly set herself on the way to MD Gunasena, a large bookshop situated quite close to the university. Following the prompt Charithra offered, I asked Nayana if I was correct in thinking that gifts play an important role in their romantic relationships. ‘Of course,’ she responded and assuming an air of authority explained:

Giving a ‘gift’ is something more than ‘wishing’ him in the morning [of his birthday]. I too like it if somebody gave me a ‘gift,’ whoever it is. So,

the other person, he too likes it. You give gifts because the other person ‘means’ something to you. Giving a ‘gift’ is ‘symbolising’ the ‘affection.’

Nayana continued on to say that tǽgi (gifts) exchange is not foreign to local culture—“we always give each other gifts at Sinhala Avurudu or when we go visiting relatives or friends. You never go visiting empty-handed. That’s our ‘tradition’”. Conversations I had with my interlocutors brought out that there are at least two kinds of gift giving. Writings on Sinhalese gift-giving practices mostly focus on dāna (charity/donation). Dāna comprises an important component of a lay Buddhist’s life, which is seen necessary for a person’s ethical development and is oriented to the other worldly to the extent that giving is seen as “an antidote with the capacity to cure the illness of egoism and greed which it is the ultimate objective of all Buddhists to overcome” (Simpson 2004: 842). While the “quality of the donor’s motive, the spiritual purity of the recipient, and the kind and size of the gift” measure the weight of the act of dāna, the three most effective ways to give are dāna pāramita (donation of worldly goods), dāna upa pāramita (donation of bodily organs) and dāna paramatta pāramita (donation of life itself) (ibid.). Outside this realm lies a less explored domain of tǽgi— exchanges of clothes, money, food and the like that takes place within families, among neighbours and kin at culturally signifcant occasions such as Sinhala Avurudu (the Sinhala Tamil New Year). Within families, parents as well as older employed siblings are often the donors of tǽgi; on these occasions, reciprocation is not a necessity. On the other hand, platefuls of sweetmeats exchanged with neighbours on special occasions are mutually reciprocated and are considered to be a show of mutual appreciation. It was the latter practices Nayana was referring to, and while showing me continuity that could be associated with tǽgi giving, Nayana borrowed terms such as ‘meaning’, ‘symbolisation’ and ‘affection’ from English language hinting that the age-old practice of giving tægi has acquired new meanings in intimate relationships, which could only be encapsulated in terminology borrowed from a global language representing a global culture. With this borrowing of words, Nayana took me back to what I had noted about Valentine’s Day celebrations, where gifts seem to take centre stage. Television channels found space in their tightly packed sched- ules for ‘Valentine special’ programmes, which came in different forms and with different objectives. Some programmes discussed the history 4 MAKING IT REAL 101 and purpose of Valentine’s Day. Some discussed ‘love’ in contemporary Sri Lanka. Some advised, particularly men, on ways of showing love: giving gifts, choosing cards or advising men to telephone their partners/ girlfriends at work to ask her if he were speaking with the most beautiful woman in the world. Billboards popped up, in different parts of the city, announcing the coming of the Day, which were sponsored by commercial giants, such as Stones and Strings, a dominant costume jewellery retailer. Shopping malls, such as the Majestic City, which is approx- imately a 10–15 minute walk from the university, had become a sea of red hearts, balloons and streamers. Within the mall, shops, especially jewellers, greetings card shops, novelty shops and chocolatiers, advertised ‘Valentine’s promotions’. As with other times of festivities, there was an unending stream of people, walking in and out of Majestic City. Among the crowd, young men and women walked, hand-in-hand, peering into the shops, through brightly decorated glass walls. At Unik Creations, a greetings card shop, shelves were taken over by little bears clutching red hearts and red cards with golden inscriptions. The forists at the mall too were advertising special bouquets for a range of prices, with higher prices refecting the grandeur of the bouquets. Looking at the range of fower arrangements, I remembered a friend who exclaimed one day that the price of a red rose reaches a peak of Rs. 250 (approx. £1.25) per fower, during the season. The display windows of jewellery shops were packed with heart-shaped pendants, rings and earrings. Red, these seemed to say, was the colour of love, heart was the shape, and the red rose was the fower. The conversation that followed with Nayana and the racket that was made around the Valentine’s Day revealed not only that gifts take a central position in their worlds, these gifts, as Mauss (2002) argued, seemed to be deeply personal. At frst sight, my interlocutors’ gift exchange practices resemble an embryonic form of commodity exchange as they seem to follow similar principles to those found in modern commerce of give and take (Laidlaw 2000). Yet, at the same time, these exchanges that revolve around gifts form a sort of a connexion in which norms of appropriate giving and obligations of receiving with respect enfold the giver and the recipient in cycles of reciprocity. Embedded in personal and relational contexts so deeply, quite similar to ways Cheal (1987) and Carrier (1991, 1995) describe, the gifts that inhabited the lives of my interlocutors appeared as vested gifts, which were given with a purpose of com- municating a message or a feeling: “you are special to me” or “this is a 102 M. Sirisena symbol of my love”. As such, the things that are given become entangled with and in the lives of the givers and the recipients, and their relationship to one another, “inextricably link[ing]” the gift transactors and the gifts and “express[ing] and recreat[ing] the relationships” (Carrier 1991: 131). My interlocutors’ discourse also highlights that, composed of material, biological, social, cultural, psychological and cognitive strands, gift exchange is an entanglement, which form lengthy yet invisible links between the giver and the recipient and is sustained by “embodied rou- tines”, which demand the investments of labour, resources and time (Hodder 2011). These entanglements, as Thomas (1991) points out, cannot be understood if it were devoid of its political and historical and personal contexts. This chapter illustrates this entangling nature of gift exchange through a narrative that explores the life of the vested gift in couple relationships. Highlighting the ways the vested gift established situational and temporal links with the recipient, the giver and their relationship, the chapter suggests that gift exchange practices composed a crucial element in couple relationships, which propelled the relationship forward.

A Different Kind of Gift “I love giving gifts”, Bileka exclaimed when I asked her what she thought of giving gifts to loved ones. She was quite keen on telling me about a new kind of gift that she had recently discovered. It was Suren, a close friend at work, who initiated her into this new form of gifts. She had asked Suren for advice on what to get Jagath—her fancé—for his birthday. Acting out the conversation that followed for me, Bileka said:

So I asked him, “What shall I get? Shall I get a shirt?” I was just asking. And he was like “what shirt? DO something for him!” … Like make [him] something … Give him something to remember you. Something sentimental. That was the frst time I even thought about that and then I actually did. I wrote him a really long letter. I put it into a nice envelope, sealed it with a kiss and put kisses all over and then I got him one of those [she pointed to the wind chimes hanging from the window frame] chimes, so that he can hang it like that and when it’s like that [the crosswind that blew through the fat left the wind chimes pealing melodiously], it reminds him of me. And, you know while I was doing that, you know it was not something very creative. Not creative in the sense, it’s just a letter. I felt 4 MAKING IT REAL 103

like, you know, I was really doing something for him. … It’s different. It’s different to going to the shop, buying something, wrapping it and giving it. It’s your creation. I loved doing it. It was more valuable to me [than a watch or a shirt]. (vaṭinava)

Bileka had recently got engaged to Jagath, whom she has been in a relationship with for over four years. She was quite confdent of her ability to choose gifts that Jagath likes. “I know how to choose good stuff for Jagath. Like if it comes to clothes or accessories, I know I can choose stuff that suit him well or ft him well or whatever”. She told me that knowing what he likes is what she banked on to make Jagath feel special on all occasions important to their romantic life such as birthdays, anniversaries and personal achievements. Bileka used to put her efforts into transforming the commodity object into a gift object by wrapping it up, “ritually hiding the object and so setting it off from the same object as a simple commodity” (Carrier 1990: 30). Suren’s suggestion of “doing something sentimental” alerted her to another form of gifts, a form of giving which is “more personal” than the kind she is used to. This new kind of gift served a purpose that is different to the one that she was used to. Before, the gifts she gave were things that Jagath could use, things he needed or wanted. Quite differently, the new kind of gift is a gift with a personal touch, and while it may not be something that Jagath could use, it is a powerful token of her love that would remind him of her and her feelings for him. Bileka put a new spin on the meaning of value (vaṭinākama) explaining that the value that is associated with this kind of gift lies not in its artistic, utilitarian or monetary elements but in its ability to embody a sentiment and convey it to the recipient. Bileka did not see herself as a creative person, but her lack of creativity did not hamper her effort, for what was important was to communicate what she felt for Jagath in an intimate way. She transformed the mass-produced wind chimes that she picked up from a store into something personal by combining it with a letter that was decorated with kisses, which expressed her love. The object in itself—a wind chime that was made in China—is alien and has no meaning. It symbolises nothing. The meaningless, alien object that is the wind chimes is a blank page, onto which Bileka wrote her sentiments. The letter that accompanied the wind chimes is the voice that speaks the meaning of the transformed object. Transformed with sentiment, this set of chimes stand apart from other wind chimes like it and stands as proof 104 M. Sirisena of time, effort, energy and emotion that have been invested in it, thus making it signifcant and powerful.1 Bileka described this transformative process of emotional investment as “being ‘sentimental’”. In her world, “being ‘sentimental’” had broken loose from connotations of soppiness or being overly romantic. “Being ‘sentimental’” instead represented an emotional disposition which strengthens the relationship. In gift giving, the gift imbued with sentimentality made it a “better gift”, placing it at a higher position within a hierarchy of gifts in an array composed of shop-bought gifts and handmade gifts with the handmade gift, requiring more time, energy and effort, taking the place of best form of gift.2 However, relying on restrictive resources of creativity and material for its origination, handmaking their gifts was not an available option for many of my interlocutors. When creativity or other resources hampered their efforts, as it did with Bileka, my interlocutors turned to other means of personalisation. Bileka attached a love letter through which she transformed the wind chimes into something that would remind her fancé that the ornament was a celebration of their love. In choosing a book as her frst gift to her boyfriend on his birthday, Charithra sought to remind him of their shared interests and tastes. As illustrated in these efforts, personalisation of a gift involved entwining it with the recipient and the relationship she or he has with the giver, in which shared sentiments, values and meanings are highlighted. It is this alteration that distinguishes the gift object from many other similar things and transforms it into a thing of signifcance. The personalised gift impacts upon both the giver and the recipient. For Nayana, personalised gifts marked a celebration of her relationship with Nilan as well as a celebration of the person that she is in the relationship. Nayana knew Nilan from the time she was a toddler. He was the only son of her parents’ closest friends, and they grew up with each

1 I did not get an opportunity to fnd out Jagath’s response or reaction to this gift, except for what Bileka told me. She explained that the new kind of gift both of them positively and said ‘he was surprised when he got it. It’s so different to the kind of gift I get him. He said he loved it. … He plays with the chimes whenever I call him’. 2 As Yan (2005) points out, sentimentality is not a theme frequently touched upon in discussions of gift exchange in non-Western societies. Bileka’s references to notions of sentimentality here highlighted that it is a relevant and topical theme within gift exchange, pointing out that emotions associated with gifts make them deeply signifcant and personal, distancing them further from commodities, even if the gift object in question is/was once a commodity object. 4 MAKING IT REAL 105 other. When Nilan expressed an interest in Nayana through his parents, for Nayana’s parents, all that mattered was what Nayana had to say. Having known him while growing up with him, Nayana could not think of a better partner.3 She knew him to be a loving man, and there was no room for unfortunate surprises. When they began their relationship, he made her feel loved in every possible way. Giving her gifts was one such way in which he showed her that she is ‘special’ in his life. Personalised cards always accompanied his gifts. A creative man, as Nayana described him, Nilan made the greetings cards he gave her.

Ayya can write. He writes beautiful verses … He makes cards or buys blank cards and writes his own verses in them. Sometimes, actually, I don’t know if I am someone who is ‘vitally important’ to his life. But he says that on the card. Then I feel good. I’m not lying, we are lay people. As lay people, we like being appreciated. If he, not my looks, if I have good qualities, and if he has ‘identifed’ them, I like him writing about them. That is, I like it that he sees it that I have those good qualities. He writes things like that. He writes these things as if they were true.

The glint in her eyes told tales she tried to tell in a roundabout way. It was not the card that she laid emphasis on, but the words imprinted on the card. The card could be handmade or bought, but the words were always his own. As such, the words were unique and were a true refection of the person she is rather than an approximation as one would fnd when trying to relate to borrowed words. Nayana smiled indulgently when she said Nilan writes “these things as if they were true”. Her tone was draped in incredulity, awe and gratifcation. She suggested that she blossomed in this love, where Nilan notices and appreciates the person that she is and the words in the card, which communicates this message is a crystallisation of his love for the person she is, in both his eyes and hers. Sometimes, inferred qualities or attributes associated with things became self-references. Sayuri, for instance, told me that the kind of clothes her boyfriend buys her are ‘mod’ clothes: short skirts, denim jeans,

3 As it was pointed out in the introduction, most would describe this as an ‘arrangement’ where the woman and the man are introduced by parents. However, Nayana chose the categorisation of a ‘love relationship, explaining that their parents’ involvement was minimal in the making and the maintaining of their relationship. 106 M. Sirisena fgure-hugging tops and matching jewellery. These that her boyfriend buys her show that he sees her as a stylish, modern woman, who cares about her appearances and looks after herself. And she does. She “‘shaves’ her legs, ‘tweezes’ her eyebrows” and makes an effort to maintain the appearance of a ‘stylish’, ‘modern’ woman. Works of Miller (2010), Leitchy (1995), Wulff (1995), Schade-Poulsen (1995) and Sansone (1995) have pointed out myriad ways in which material objects are drawn on in performances of identities, through which their users declare belonging or allegiance to a certain way of life. Exploiting similar dynamics of self-refection through objects, my interlocutors saw in gift objects they received ‘qualities’, which refected a bit of themselves, as would a mirror. The process of transforming the gift affects the giver as well. After explaining that the gift of wind chimes touched Jagath deeply for “he couldn’t believe the effort I put into doing it”, Bileka refected on the effect making of the gift had on her.

Bileka: … I really, I was really happy that I wrote that letter. I was happy that I sent it. I was happy that I bought the chimes. It didn’t cost me much. Otherwise I would have to spend like what, a watch is £30. Chimes are what, Rs. 300. And I felt happy and even now when I talk to him, sometimes I can hear the chimes. Even if there’s no wind, he shakes it. So it makes a noise … I like this kind of gift-giving. It’s an expression of your love. Me: Do you think buying something for him is not? Bileka: It is. It is obviously but it is not so evident I think. This is your own words saying something, where that’s you know, something is representing your words or emotions. You know, nice shirt is representing your love but here it is actually your love.4

In Bileka’s mind, the chimes have become intrinsically entangled with the letter that accompanied it. The words in the letter refected her thoughts and feelings, which imbued the ornament that accompanied it with a speck of herself and rendered the gift invaluable. Here, the process of personalising somehow seems to have merged the objects, sentiments, persons and relationships for Bileka spoke of the

4 My emphasis. 4 MAKING IT REAL 107 elements—chimes, letter, words—of her gift interchangeably. What stood out was that it was not a representation of love, but it is love, which seems to suggest that Bileka was endorsing the Maussian claim that “by giving one is giving oneself ” (2002: 46). Both Bileka and Nayana emphasised that this kind of personalised gift refects a bond between the giver and the recipient, which established an empathic identifcation with one another: to see, feel and value in the same way. It was as if they were speaking about an empathic identifcation which, like Goffman’s “identifcatory sympathy”, enabled them to experience life events from shared affective locations, and gift giving was a public enactment of that empathic identifcation. As expressed in gift giving, empathic identifcation refects a mutual feeling and, at the same time, is also an impression of a deeper understanding entrenched in a shared emotional state, hopes, dreams and expectations. It is a show and a statement of like-mindedness and compatibility of the two individuals to see and value the object in a similar way. A discourse of taste underlies the process of the creation of the personalised gift as it is appropriated and adapted to refect personal needs and circumstances. The commodities that were chosen to be transformed into personalised gifts were also representatives of both giver’s taste and the recipient’s taste. Taste classifes (Bourdieu 1984) and my interlocutors were privy to it. Thus, as Miller’s (1987) housewives in North London did, my interlocutors endeavoured to choose the right thing that could communicate the love they felt. Navigating the deluge of things carrying diverse meanings and diverging tastes, my interlocutors adhered to two key guidelines. First was that the object should be capable of refecting the extent to which they “know” their partners: giving a gift that their partner needed or desired demonstrated that they were aware of their partners’ needs, desires and taste. The second was that the gift object needed to reveal that the taste represented through the object is mutual. Thus, being able to choose something one’s boyfriend or girlfriend appreciated stood as proof of their compatibility. It was a combination of these that Bileka was referring to—knowing his likes and dislikes and sharing the taste for things—when she prided herself in being able to choose things her fancé likes and those that suit him. As Bileka found out following her conversation with Suren, the blending of knowing and compatible taste with personalisation turns gifts into signif- icant gifts. My interlocutors refected on these undercurrents that shaped the personalised gift in a language of meaning. 108 M. Sirisena

Meaningful Gifts For Nayana, giving a gift alone is not enough. If it is to convey her feelings appropriately, the gift she gives must be ‘meaningful’. Meaning manifests differently in different objects: “when I choose a ‘card,’ I read the ‘verse’. I choose ‘cards’ that say what he means to me. … If I choose something for him, I look for something that ‘symbolises love’, something that is special to the two of us, something that’s ‘worth’ it”. Nayana’s description of a meaningful gift pointed out that, for something to be considered worthy of being a gift, it must possess the ability to relate or establish a link with the giver and the recipient and their relationship. It is this potential to relate that Nayana and my other interlocutors assessed when they considered if an object would make a worthy gift, and within this process, they implied that the vaṭinākama (value) of things given lies in this meaning that they are attributed and try to communicate. Months after this conversation with Nayana, I ran into Chinthana, who by this point was compelled to break off his relationship with his girlfriend due to parental pressure.5 He was bemoaning this unexpected turn of events, as, for Chinthana, this was the perfect, ‘serious’ relationship. Our conversation was splattered with claims he made about his girlfriend: “she never took a step wrong”; “she knew me”; and “We understood each other well”. One of the examples Chinthana gave to elucidate these statements was the surprise trip his girlfriend had planned to celebrate the occasion of Chinthana getting accepted to study at the university, which he described as one of the best gifts she has ever given him. When she heard that Chinthana got into university, his girlfriend has got parental permission and money to travel to the Dalada Maligawa (Sacred temple of tooth in Kandy). A devout Buddhist, Chinthana could not think of a more auspicious way to celebrate the event than by worshipping at this scared shrine and acquiring the blessings of the triple gem. Chinthana revelled in her choice of a gift: a vædagat trip to celebrate a vædagat occasion. While Nayana used ‘meaningful’ to refer to this aspect of a gift, Chinthana and many others chose vædagat when they spoke of it. Vædagat carries connotations of important and/or distinct, which distinguished it from the mundane. It attributed the objects it was associated

5 Note on circumstances of the break-up. 4 MAKING IT REAL 109 with a certain value, which made it stand apart from everything else. In that sense, meaning was the relatability to the object, established through a recognition of a shared value.6 It is not a meaning that is intrinsic to the thing, but a meaning attributed to it by establishing a relationship with it. The meaning embeds the things deeply in personal contexts, thus making the value, the meaning and the thing unique and non-transferable. This makes the thing with meaning more valuable than a thing that might cost you more to get, and like Bileka pointed out earlier, the wind chimes personalised with a letter which cost about Rs. 300 is more valuable than a watch she could buy for £30. Be it a good luck charm, a trip to the temple before a big exam, or in a shirt, behind the thing what is recognised and re-asserted is a value that is perceived and valued in similar ways. While meaning is not a quality inherent in the object but has to be drawn out or inject into the object, choosing the most appropriate to be transformed remains an arduous task, which is intermeshed with intentions and acts of care, effort and compatibility. As it was refected in the conversation Nayana and Charithra had with me about choosing a birthday gift for Charithra’s boyfriend, my interlocutors seem to consider myriad aspects when deciding on a gift. In that conversation with Charithra, she considered not only aspects such as what object to choose or would he like it, but also questions such as is it right for this stage of the relationship, would it show more commitment or less commitment and/or would it lead to any misunderstandings. The care, concern and effort demonstrated during these conversations suggested that going to a shop to look for a gift was an act of love rather than a shopping expedition. Some of my interlocutors, like Bileka, said that sometimes they would spend hours walking around in shops, looking for inspira- tion, if they were stuck for gift ideas and looking for ways to make them meaningful. My interlocutors recognised the powerful and continuous effect of the gift on their relationship pointing out that a thing that is given as a gift needs to be treated with due ‘respect’. The ways in which gifts were shown respect depended on its context. Bileka eloquently described the

6 Highlighting that it is not self-evident, intrinsic or simply economic, works of Appadurai (1986), Kopytoff (1986), Greary (1986) and Miller (2008) have brought it to our attention that value is a value-laden concept, which is shaped by the cultural and political environment it inhabits at a given moment. 110 M. Sirisena respect she expects in the treatment of gifts she gives: “if I give Jagath something he could use, I want to see him use it. If it is an ornament, I would like to see it displayed. It kind of makes me feel I got it right, like, I know what he likes”. The respect she expects, thus, is a sort of reciprocation, not in terms of giving a gift back but by returning a sentiment that accompanied the gift. Respecting the gift by using it or displaying it is also an affrmation of shared taste, compatibility and the knowledge of knowing each other’s likes and dislikes. As Appadurai (2011: 517) highlights about the Maussian analysis of gifts, the “obligation to return lay in the spirit of the thing given …, which in turn provided a dynamic and forceful connection between the giver and the receiver” for there are certain codes of conduct to stick with, if one were to maintain the relationship. In such a context, returning or exchanging a gift is terrain that needs to be treaded carefully. Standing in contrast to expectations of reciprocation in terms of sentiment, a returned gift suggests rejection and incom- patibility. My interlocutors were not forthcoming with stories about returning gifts they received in their current relationships. It is not surprising that they did not do so, because to do so would be to suggest that a gift was returned because the giver got it wrong, because they did not know or understand the recipient well enough to buy something that the latter appreciated. Rather than speaking of it as returning or rejecting a gift, they spoke of times when they had to exchange gifts like when Sayuri told me of occasions when she had to exchange clothes her boyfriend bought her, because the “ft was not right”. Explaining these occasions, Sayuri, frstly, informed me that getting it wrong is an inevitability, especially at the beginning of the relationship when the man and the woman are getting to know each other. She then went on to describe that in their relationships, returning and exchanging gifts happened under various guises. On those occasions, how one deals with it and how serious the implications are depended on what the giver got wrong, for instance, “it’s ok to exchange a piece of clothing that doesn’t ft … but if it the style that you don’t like, that’s a problem. That shows that he doesn’t know you, what you like and don’t like”. While most take returned gifts in their stride as they see it as an inevitable stage in the process of getting to know each other better, their narratives highlighted that discourses of taste and values were embedded in the broad-reaching sentiment that “those whom we fnd to our taste put into their practices a taste which does not differ from the taste we 4 MAKING IT REAL 111 put into operation in perceiving their practices” (Bourdieu 1984: 243). The primacy of the meaningful gift is that it refects this shared language of taste and appreciation and at the same time stands as confrmation that “two people can give each other no better proof of the affnity of their tastes than the taste they have for each other” (ibid.). Being such a charged object, the meaningful gift refects a bond that interlocks the giver and the recipient as well as their self-perceptions. Rendered powerful, the personalised and meaningful gift continued to mark its presence in the lives of my interlocutors, beyond the point of its making and giving or receiving. Once in the lives of the recipient, the gifted object interjected various infuences of the relationship on the life of its recipient. It situated itself in the moment of giving and the circumstances that surrounded the giving. Implanting itself in a specifc situation, the gifted object continued to impact upon its recipient’s life.

Gift and Its Locus Sayuri and I were sitting across from each other, at one of the many yellow plastic tables dotting the foyer of the newer wing of the New Arts Building. It was rather quiet, with all sat at tables peering into books. “It’s the essay submission week”, Sayuri said by way of explaining the solemn air that hung over the foyer. Every now and then, a noisy group of students would come to have lunch, who soon would be forced into quietude by stern glances that were thrown their way. Sayuri and I kept our voices low, partly because neither of us wanted to be hushed and partly because we did not want anyone to overhear us. Sayuri had just told me that her parents did not know of her almost fve-year-old relationship. For her, parental approval was paramount, if she were to proceed with the relationship. Yet, odds were stacked against her, for her relationship was a caste mismatch and she knew that caste compatibility was important for her father. Sayuri’s family belonged to govigama, which govigamas consider as the highest-ranking caste and her boyfriend comes from a salagama family. Salagama’s position in the caste hierarchy is ambiguous.7 Her father, who was a principal

7 While govigama people place their caste at the top of it, some scholars have pointed out that caste hierarchy is a contested domain. See, for instance, the works of Roberts (1982) and Jayawaredna (2000) who describe the sociopolitical contexts that enabled the rise of the Karava caste, who at times claim to be the highest caste. 112 M. Sirisena at the local primary school, who blamed “what they inherited from caste” (kulayen uruma una dē) when children, whom he claimed are non-govigama caste, misbehaved at his school. For him, such children’s behavioural misadventures are the consequences of their genetic predis- positions, which are boosted through upbringing. She feared that irrespective of her boyfriend’s demeanour and his well-to-do social status, her father may not be able to look past his caste. Despite the odds, she hoped that her parents would respect her choice. She was optimistic that if she approached them at the right time and place, all would end well. After sharing this story, Sayuri stifed a sigh and leaned back to rest her arched back. I followed her cue and silently began to consider the implications of what she had just said and what that meant for their future. Sayuri stared down at her thumbs, twiddling on their own accord and seemed lost in her thoughts. A few minutes later, as if woken up from sleep, she began to look through the notebook she had with her. I watched her distractedly, still trying to digest what she had told me about a certain future built on shaky grounds. Now entering a new world where she did not seem weighed down by worries of caste mis- matches and struggles for parental approval, Sayuri pushed a bookmark towards me, her face half-lit with a smile. “This was a ‘surprise,’” she said, launching into the story behind the bookmark. It began at a time when she was copying notes from her friend, seated in the same place where we sat. The place was quite busy. Her boyfriend sat beside her, waiting for her to fnish so that he could accompany her to her annex, which she shared with her sister. He seemed bored, and she saw him scribbling something, on the back of a bookmark that she had left out. Happy that he had found a distraction, she concentrated on her work. A moment later, he pushed the bookmark towards her, its back facing upwards. Written on the back was a verse he had written for her, in which he requested that she stays with him forever. She was surprised and amazed that she could inspire such creativity in him, in the midst of all the chaos that was unravelling at that moment. The verse read:

Net māne dævatī, sita gāva goluvī, suvaňda mal kækulī, inna sæmadā magē vī. (Fragrant bud, caught in my sight, leaves me speechless at the door to your heart. Stay with me forever.) 4 MAKING IT REAL 113

Reading the verse printed on the back of the bookmark imprinted in neat, calligraphic handwriting, I thought that the wording itself was simple. This verse was quite different to elaborate, lyrical and lengthy renditions of emotions I have seen published on public notice boards at the university. Yet, its simplicity rendered it poignant. The words, uncomplicated and familiar, seemed as if they were carefully chosen and seemed to effortlessly convey the message intended: a simple request to be together forever. What was intriguing about this simple request was that it was vested with such a power that it could offer Sayuri the reassurance of his love and commitment, so much so that she could entrust it to bring her comfort in times of distress. Sayuri told me she takes the bookmark wherever she goes, and it did not seem as if she dug the poem out to dis- tract me. We were both aware of the hurdle she faced in her relationship. Though she wanted to appear confdent that her parents would approve her choice of a partner, she could not deny the reality that convincing her father to overlook caste on this occasion would be an uphill struggle. When her mind was clouded over by thoughts of struggle and uncertainty, Sayuri sought the tangibility of his love, embodied in the personalised bookmark, to comfort her. The bookmark spoke from its location where Sayuri’s boyfriend inscribed it with his love, and the memory of it, its meaning and their implications, offered Sayuri a sense of a reassurance. Things offer comfort, carrying around with them stories, histories, emotions and bits of identities (Miller 2008). What vests things with such power to infuence is, as Sayuri’s bookmark revealed, that they assume the dynamics of situations out of which they have arisen and have the capacity to reach beyond their locus and infuence the lives of those whom they have come to inhabit. The dynamics surrounding the particular situation out of which the thing emerged on this occasion was rather uncomplicated, in the sense that there were no conficting emotions, which affected the way in which Sayuri received the bookmark when her boyfriend handed it to her. Thus, in Sayuri’s mind, the bookmark’s ability to stand as a representation of her boyfriend’s emotions and commitment is unchal- lenged. When the object comes into signifcance out of situations where emotions involved are complicated, my interlocutors responded to these mixed emotions in different ways. At times, they imbue the object with a transformative power, with the help of which they move beyond the stress and distress of the moment. Sayuri’s mobile phone charm was one such fortunate thing that transcended the unpleasantness that dominated 114 M. Sirisena the situation when it entered into her life. The bright little doll fgure that hung at the end of the red code was an attempt her boyfriend made at apologising for his part in an argument. Sayuri and her boyfriend walked into Beverley Street, after a heated argument, to buy a birthday gift for a mutual friend. Though arguments were not a rarity in their relationship, this one seemed to have had its sting. She never told me what they argued about, yet when telling me the story, she relived the anger and the frustration she felt at having to do these things together while still angry. Then, shifting to a softer tone, she described how he took her by surprise when he gave her the mobile phone charm as they left the shop and apologised for his part in creating the unpleasantness, which by now was fast receding to the background. Telling me the story of the charm, she relived the range of emotions that are associated with the event: the anger at the argument, frustration at not having enough time or space to deal with her anger, surprise at the attempt at placating, the guilt at being angry and feeling loved and feeling lucky to be loved in that way. On this occasion, among this range, it was that of feeling loved that left the lasting impact, for Sayuri ended her story of the mobile phone charm saying, “my heart warms whenever I see it. No matter how many times we fght, I love him and I know he loves me too”. On some occasions, the thing fails to break away from complex- ity, inconsistency or the unpleasantness of the situation within which they arise. In these instances, my interlocutors pointed out that the thing becomes embedded in the unpleasant events that preceded it and embody it, thus becoming nothing more than an ugly reminder of the unfortunate event. The CD her former boyfriend gave Hansika after a prolonged ‘fght’ was such a thing, which could not break its association with its antecedent. The seeds for the sordid fght were sown quite a while back, when Asanta—Hansika’s former boyfriend—discouraged her from pursuing a career in media, saying that he did not like the environment in which she would work, if she were employed in media. He disliked the way media personalities dressed and their comportment— particularly women who interacted freely with men and spoke the macaň language.8 Asanta also disliked it when she interacted with men when he is not around. For Hansika, his concerns stemmed from displaced fears that she would meet a better-suited man. Thus, she did not pay heed

8 Macaň language refers to speech splattered with a lot of Sinhala slang, which is considered impolite. 4 MAKING IT REAL 115 to his “unreasonable” arguments and enrolled for a day’s training conducted by a privately owned television channel pursuing her lifelong dream to become a TV presenter. Asanta retaliated by volunteering to help out a fellow student with some computing lessons she had missed. The woman he offered to help was someone both Asanta and Hansika knew to be attracted to Asanta. Furious when she found out about it, Hansika protested saying that he was giving the other woman ‘hope’ when he volunteers to stay after lectures to help her out. He retorted saying that he was doing the same thing that she was doing—freely hanging out with people of the opposite sex. The argument deterio- rated into a sordid ‘fght’ of verbal abuse and continued for a few days until she put an end to it by refusing to talk to him. The day after they stopped talking, he came over to her hostel and gave her the CD. In the CD was a collection of songs that Asanta chosen to express his love and regret at what happened. Hansika agreed to resume the relationship but threw away the CD for she could not disassociate it from the fght. She saw the CD as a lame effort Asanta made to wash off his guilt. For her, an honest apology would have been him admitting responsibility for causing the fght. Over and beyond the fght, she wanted him to see irrationality in objecting a career in media. What she wished for was his support to pursue her dreams. Thus, contrary to Sayuri, who had not envisioned a path for moving beyond the argument at that moment and was taken by surprise with the gift of a mobile phone charm, Hansika had certain expectations that needed to be fulflled in order to move beyond the unpleasant incident. The thing that followed the incident did not meet those expectations, thus became an eyesore, as it was a reminder, not of resolution of the incident, but of unfulflled expectations.

Haunting Memories Things that entered into my interlocutors’ lives located themselves around the circumstances within which they arose in such a way that they seemed to “store and possess, take in and breathe out” the contextual and emotional dynamics of the moment (Miller 2008: 38). Encounters with the thing thereafter evoked those stored memories, both of the situation and the emotions that are entangled with the situation. On the occasions my interlocutors referred to, the memory embodied in the gift object also stands as an objectifcation of “subjective 116 M. Sirisena experience of relationship” and “coordinates the different life trajectories and perspectives of the donor and the recipient while creating a new point of orientation from which to develop their relationship” (Battaglia 1992: 5). Sayuri’s recollections of the embodied memories instilled faith in her relationship, that she and her boyfriend possess the wherewithal to move beyond fghts, arguments and fallouts that their relationship is destined to encounter. For Hansika, getting rid of the painful reminder of the sordid fght did not end her disappointment. The memory of Asanta’s act of making a CD stood as proof of his failure to meet her expectation and, by extension, their incompatible views of their relationship and life. It is that realisation that propelled Hansika to eventually end that relationship. Situated things carrying such embodied memories moved relatively freely alongside my interlocutors’ lives, offering them, more often than not, solace and hope. Like Sayuri’s stories of the bookmark and the mobile phone charm, stories of things intruded into conversations I had with them, adding layers to or diverting us away from what we were discussing. Like they did for Sayuri, things reinforced with memories had become a sort of fnding one’s way through the world. Being surrounded with things embedded with memories, therefore meaning, my interlocutors indicated that they enjoyed a sense of being loved, cared for and appreciated, especially when in doubt. However, the effects of affect associated with things are mutable. Closely tied to the relationships within which they are born, their affect change along with the dynamics of the relationship. My interlocutors told me of painful lessons that they learned if the relationship went sore, that something that was once an object of love and solace could turn into thorns in their eyes, interfer- ing, intruding and haunting them with memories of good times lost and hampering their efforts at returning to some form of normalcy. It was after I met Amali that I gave serious thought to the impact of intrusive things. After her break-up, Amali told me she was haunted by memories, tearfully murmuring, “I can’t go anywhere. I can’t do anything. Everything reminds me of him. Places we have gone. Things we have done. Whatever I try to do, everything reminds me of him”. She did not know what to do with gifts he had given her in their four-year- long relationship. Refecting on similar circumstances, in The Comfort of Things, Miller (2008) points out that there are no rules to the ways in which people deal with things left behind, following the demise of loved ones, highlighting that these responses are contextual and personal. Elia, 4 MAKING IT REAL 117 featured in Miller’s account, for instance, whose life is permeated with things and people she encounters, wishes for things left behind to grow with her and become absorbed into herself. Malcom, who prefers to hold onto a digital archive of memories, freed himself of material objects following his parents’ demises. As for Amali, she did not have the heart to give them away or throw them away. “Four years of memories. Four years of us. Four years of my life”. She sighed thinking about all those things that changed hands in the past four years and told me that those things they exchanged while they were in love were frmly embedded in the relationship that it is not ever possible to rid them of the situated-meaning they had once obtained. She lived with their intrusions, “whenever I try to muster all the strength I have got left and try to raise my head up, I see something he gave me or remember something we did and all things start to fall apart again”. With her choice of words—éva mage matake avussanava (those things make a mess of my memory)— she highlighted the embodied memories’ ability to intrude, be chaotic, and cause chaos in her world and that she had no or little control over the process. While Amali chose not to deal with the things that are left behind, some others saw those as things to be dealt with and chose to do so in different ways. Drawing strength from anger that remained after her failed relationship, Hansika had a bonfre of all the gifts she has got from her former boyfriend. She spoke of her bonfre as if it were a sym- bolic ridding of a bad past, as if she were inciting Lord Fire to cleanse her life of all evil in order to facilitate a new start. Chinthana, who was forced to break off his relationships, had no access to such reserves of anger. He resignedly decided to give these things away to a collection made at the university to take to schools in border villages: “most of them were books. Some child will beneft from it. I tore off the page she had written on and gave them all away”. However, there were things that he found harder to get rid of, like the Buddha Statue that his former girlfriend had gifted him, when he left the village to start a course at Colombo University. At the time, he celebrated the gift, not only because he felt loved; he was delighted at his former girlfriend’s thoughtfulness. She knew he wanted to buy a Buddha statue to keep in his hostel room, and he revelled in the thought that she thought it to be an appropriate gift. Now, a few months after their relationship ended following her father’s request to end it, the statue has turned into a painful reminder of what they could have had. The powerful religious 118 M. Sirisena symbol pained Chinthana even more; as being a statue of the Buddha, he could not think of destroying it, nor could he throw it away. Being the Buddhist he is, he could not give it away, unless he is assured that the statue would be treated with due respect. At that time I met him, a rather miserable Chinthana, faced with limited alternatives, shared his hostel room with the statue, like Amali, hoping that time and fate would take away the pain this unwanted presence evokes. A few captivating lines Battaglia (1992: 5) wrote about Sabari seem to shed light on the experiences my interlocutors shared with me. The gift, she says, “as a memory, objectifes the subjective experience of relationship. More than an investment in the physical and social growth and strength of others (and thereby in the donor’s own self), the “memory” manifested as the gift coordinates the different life trajectories and perspectives of the donor and the recipient while creating a new point of orientation from which to develop their relationship”. With memory, my interlocutors suggest, comes the presence. Remembering evokes affnity, value and meaning. Rather than focusing on what happens if things go wrong, unless things have gone wrong, my interlocutors said gifts have meaning, because they could build and demonstrate understanding and be a gentle reminder that one is loved. Gifts engaged with expectations to be understood and appreciated, to be shown that they are understood and appreciated and were permeated with an ability to stand as a representative for the feeling and the relationships. Carefully choosing the objects that are given, thus, is also about creating a stronger impression that links the memory and the presence. Remembering facilitates a kind of “being with” as well as reiterating of the position that person holds in your life.

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My World in My Pocket: Phones, Relationships and Expectations

During my feldwork, I met with Narada a few times and almost every time; my meetings proved to be helpful and insightful. Illustrating with examples from the depository of opinions and thoughts he had collected during his show, Narada generously shared with me his observations on contemporary romantic relationships. Encouraged by this spirit of sharing, I decided to engage him with my impressions and observations. Being a bit of a technophile myself, and having witnessed the gamut of fashy phones at the university, I could not help but broach the subject of the place mobile phones occupied in romantic relationships. With this invitation, Narada launched into a fervent monologue about how mobile phones have radically changed the way we conduct our relationships, both romantic and other. He rather cynically noted that relationships young men and women have with mobile phones inspire art too and told me about songs, novels and tele-dramas in which mobile phones fgure prominently, altering the life course of their protagonists. He elaborated his point with these words to this Sinhala song, which was yet to be produced.

Tārakā viyana ihala ahasin ǽta indan hari hadissiyen

oba āvā ‘hanging on to an SMS’ ādarayē anśu mātrayak aran (Shaded by the sky laced with stars, you came from afar, hurriedly, hanging on to a text message, carrying a droplet of love.) The song was representative of many other love songs I have heard over time, where colourful words, which in themselves might mean much, were strung together to convey an indescribable impact the experience of love has on one. Its signifcance, as Narada pointed out and I too was quick to note, was in reference to the ‘SMS’, Short Message Service, which is known as text messages in other parts of the world. The SMS that she was holding on to was worthy of being held on to because, though we are not given any indication of its specifc meaning and value, it carried a droplet of love. It was a token as well as a proof of love. Throughout the time of my feldwork, I noticed that constant references to mobile phones showered the world my interlocutors inhabited and I slowly began to realise that Narada was not exaggerating, when he said that the relationship between mobile phones and couple relationships could be life altering. Present in the forms of ‘lunch time calls’, ‘missed calls’ and ‘midnight calls’ and copious amounts of text messages that changed hands, the mobile phone had become a key instrument through which these young men and women showed each other and the world around them that they cared for each other. They get to know potential partners, as well as begin, consolidate and end relationships over text messages and telephone calls. The phone, though not necessarily a thing that enters these relationships as a thing exchanged, like I discussed in the earlier chapter, is a signifcant thing in these relationships. Its signifcance is in the form it takes in these relationships, standing as a halfway thing, a thing between one’s self and the thing: an elucidation of intersubjectivity (Jackson 1998, 2002). Mobile phones, in my interlocutors’ relationships, acted as a means through which they extended themselves. Elaborating on the specifcity of the thinginess that distinguished it from other things that inhabited their lives, my research participants showed me that mobile phones have opened up a new space, in which lovers could be together, while managing the needs of their everyday lives. Refecting on this presence and its implications, I demonstrate in this chapter that mobile phones have added another layer to these relationships, in terms of how they understand the relationships as well as 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 123 their expectations of them. Mobile phones have enabled an availability that has helped them travel beyond the spatial limitations that have conventionally hindered their ability to “be with/ be near” (laňgin inna) the ones they love. This kind of ‘being with’, while becoming expected of in romantic relationships, has given birth to new expectations.1

It’s All in a Day’s Work My ruminations about mobile phones in romantic relationships almost always took me back to this advertisement taking over the television screen night and day when I was doing my feldwork. It was one of those advertisements in which Colombo had transformed itself and resembled Singapore, with high-rise buildings and grand, ornate steel structures set against the backdrop of crystal blue skies. The advertisement promoted a mobile phone package that provides two linked phone connections, announcing that the calls and text messages between the main and the supplementary connections are cheaper than those between other connections offered by the same company and by other companies. The package was known as the ‘Kit double’. These connections are popularly known as couple packages as they, it is said, facilitate keeping in touch with the ones you love at a low cost. The university was a fertile ground for such promotions, and one would not fail to happen upon at least an advertisement or two promoting competitive packages cov- ering walls and notice boards at the university. This advertisement for KIT I refer to begins with a young man and a woman, standing close with their backs to each other, looking distressed and gloomy, despite

1 This is not to hint at any sort of technological determinism of human relationships. As Horst and Miller (2005) have argued in the case of Trinidad, I too recognise that the different uses that the mobile phones have been put to in romantic relationships indicate how we draw from technology to cater to existing needs such as trust and mutuality of commitment. The point I am focusing on here is that these new ways of addressing existing needs in turn shape our understandings of the existing needs and expectations. Thus, the mobile phone use is not merely a way to maintain weak relationships, as pointed out by Horst and Miller, nor is it a poor substitute for something ‘real’ as Sunderland (1999) points out. Mobile phones, in contemporary romantic relationships among Sri Lankan university students, strengthen the relationship, weaving intricate webs between the lovers and deep- ening their involvement, both in their eyes and the eyes of the general audience. Romantic relationships engage in intersubjective relationships with mobile phones, which are managed by those involved. 124 M. Sirisena the bright and clear day shinning over Beira Lake, framed by the sky- scrapers sitting in the heart of Colombo. The camera zooms in on the girl, taking the viewer deeper into the situation that was unravelling. Tears are rolling down her face and she sobs softly. The camera moves towards the young man, who hesitantly retrieves a small box from his pocket. Covered in red velvet, the box reminds one of a jewellery box. He turns to the young woman and extends his hand towards her, still hesitant, holding out his gift. She takes the box and opens it; a smile fashes across her face as she opens the box to reveal a mobile phone connection card, or a SIM card as it is popularly known, sitting comfortably in the slot in the box, where, other occasions, a ring may have sat. The advertisement concludes with the same young man and the woman, beaming with smiles and standing about ten feet away from each other, speaking on the phone. A voice-over announces the perks that come with the ‘KIT Double’, and the camera drifts away from the happy couple, who are now in perfect harmony with the bright day and the promise of happier times. A gift of a supplementary mobile phone connection, this advertisement suggested, is similar to gifting a ring, in other, more conventional contexts. It is a statement of commitment. The ‘couple packages’ reminded me of those heart-shaped pendants that were once in fashion, those that were split into two, so that the two lovers could wear the two parts. The two pieces of the split heart were a statement of commitment, to each other as well to the world outside. The ‘KIT double’ insinuated a similar commitment. Incidentally, KIT is the abbreviation for ‘keeping in touch’, which many young people use in its abbreviated form, especially when signing off emails and text messages. ‘Double’ too has signifcant implications colloquially when used in the context of relationships. As it does in English, ‘double’ refers to two, in this case, the two people in the relationship. Ḍabalak or ḍabal dālā, which refers to two people riding a bicycle, are mixed code phrases in popular usage frequently used to refer to couples within the university as well as the wider society. The idea of the ‘double’ recognises the union of two people as a unit, yet it is not the same as the idea ‘two becomes one’. The idea of ‘two becomes one’ suggests that two people who share interests, ideas and feelings to such an extent that they could be considered as one person. The idea is not alien to Sri Lankans. Both in everyday life and in art and media, we often hear the phrase api denna dennek nemei, ek kenek in Sinhala (we are not two people, we are one), which carries similar connotations to the idea 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 125 of ‘two becomes one’. Quite differently, the ḍabala recognises the unit as one consisting of two people with different views of the world, yet who are bound by shared feelings for one another. This advertisement, with its content and insinuations, on the one hand, highlighted that the KIT Double, representative of similar phone packages indicated a sense of commitment. On the other hand, it suggested that the mobile phone, in general, is a means through which one lover could reach out to the other.2 Zooming into the lives of my interlocutors, I realised that it was these very uses, along with some others, that they put mobile phones to, in their relationships. Buttressed by the mobility the phone offered, with the phone they reached out to their loved ones beyond the immediate space they inhabited. Hishani elaborated quite well the centrality mobile phone took in her relationship. Hishani’s boyfriend, Anura, was not a university student, and balancing university course work, while following a course at the Law College and managing extra-curricular activities at the college, they do not have the luxury of spending time, as much as they would like to, with each other. Hishani described how they overcome this obstacle, extending themselves to each other, over the miles and the responsibilities that spread between them.

We talk on the phone. It’s like this, Mihirni akka. In the morning, Ayya always calls. Wakes me up. Not these days, because he knows that I go to sleep late. Then, he doesn’t bother me in the morning. Then, I am the one who lets him know that I am up. It’s not like he ever tells me to ring him in the morning or to let him know if I am going somewhere. I told you, he never tells me to tell him where I go. I don’t have any prohibi- tions or limits (tahanci/ sīmāvak). Ayya trusts me, meaning he says that he knows I wouldn’t do anything wrong. That is his trust. I wouldn’t ever want to break it. When he wakes up, if not, before he leaves home, he would call me. I wake up around 5–5.15 in the morning. But I wouldn’t get out of the bed. I would stay in bed at least until about 5.30. When I wake up in the morning, I stay in bed like that. It is at that time that ayya calls. He likes to sleep in. He wakes me, that is, he keeps the alarm and wakes up before I do, phones me and we talk for a while. Then he goes

2 On a different note, KIT connections are ‘pay as you go’ connections, which cater mostly to young people who may not be able to commit to a monthly payment plan and, as far as I recall, all the advertisements promoting KIT connections involved social situations in which young men and women interacted freely, away from the surveilling parental eye. 126 M. Sirisena

back to sleep. I told you akka, last night I went to sleep really late. It was around 1 or 2 in the morning. He knows that I went to sleep really late. Whenever I wake up, I phone him. I woke up at 7.15 in the morning to charge my phone. I rang him and plugged the phone on to the charger. Then he knows that I am up. Rang him means I don’t talk to him. I give him a missed call. I am the one, if I were to tell you the truth akka, I remember him all the time. If I start eating, I remember him. Wherever I go, I remember him. If I see a friend with her boyfriend, then you know, I remember him. Then, I feel lonely. But there is nothing I can do, no? I can’t bring ayya in here and keep him, no? Then, because of that, I give ayya a ‘ring-cut.’ If I do that two-three times, he would call me. Calling meaning akka, we don’t hang on the phone the whole day. They brought the Rs.3000 package to College too. But, then he told me, “babī, if you want it, we’ll get it.” But then I thought to talk to each other, we don’t have to pay Rs. 800 per month and you know, we don’t need it, no? We, that, I mean, we have things to do during the day, no? In the coming months, we have to study, then the other things, and the work at the campus. So, in the end, it could become a pain. So, I thought we don’t need it. We don’t need it like that. We talk in the morning. Then, if I feel like it, at night, if I feel I need to talk to him before night falls, I phone him during the day too. He has this habit akka, if he goes somewhere, he tells me. I don’t have the message, I have deleted it. I would have shown it to you, if I had it. “Sudu babī, I am going to an alms giving. I will give you a ring when I get back.” Usually, he phones after 9, from the landline, because it is cheaper. … Then, he tells me when he goes somewhere like that. When I phoned him last night, I asked him what he is planning to do today. When we talk we ask what we ate.

At this point, Hishani’s focus on being with each other through the mobile phone faded into a conversation about food. With this lengthy description of her day, Hishani alerted to me that, though she cannot physically “be with” her boyfriend throughout the day, she bridges the physical distance through her mobile phone. “We don’t get to spend a lot of time with each other”, she noted, gloomily earlier in our conversation. Hishani and her boyfriend bridge the distance with the help of mobile phones. Through being in touch via her phone, Hishani wakes up to the sound of her boyfriend’s voice, keeps his presence alive through the day and falls asleep to the comfort his voice brings. They plan their day together or inform each other what the other would be doing during the day, where they would be going and at times, alert each other to it, if there were a change to the plan. 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 127

Reciprocal Binding Listening to Hishani, I could not help but think that these relationships required hard work. Such sharing and being with is, quite evidently, a token of commitment. The commitment and the signifcance of that kind of sharing of each other’s lives come from the fervour with which it is enacted. It distinguishes itself from sharing of information about each other’s whereabouts and turns itself into a form of “being with” each other. Speaking of rituals of similar exchanges among teenagers living in London, Taylor and Harper (2002) point out that these rituals are imbued with the obligation of reciprocation. They are re-enacted daily, out of a “moral obligation” to take part in them (ibid.: 441). For instance, the good night texts that these teenagers exchange, Taylor and Harper say, are founded on the ideology that, though saying good night every night is a normal thing, when enacted with such consistency and vigour, it turns itself into a display of intimacy: “the normal, mundane encounter is made special through the observation of ceremony. This ceremony is ritualising insofar as it results in the meaning of the message being thereby altered in ways that gives it semi-sacred values” (ibid.: 441). The message is strengthened only when it is reciprocated, and the process of reciprocation transforms the message into something more than a collection of words. This is not to suggest that sharing of intimate details of each other’s life is a mundane thing, but to highlight that it is the fact that this kind of sharing is ceremoniously re-enacted that makes it signifcant. Such ceremonious and obligatory sharing gives the relationship meaning. As Cheal, quoted in Taylor and Harper (ibid.: 426), suggest, “reciprocal giving makes possible a shared understanding of the relationship as one that is founded upon mutual regard and coop- eration”. On the one hand, such sharing is powerful enough to stand as a sense of an extension of self, which facilitates a kind of being with. On the other, it is binding and at times, unending, thus, forming a cycle, which binds both the actors to the relationship. The messages that embodies this kind of commitment implies that the relationship between the man and the woman involved in it is signifcant and is worth saving. My interlocutors often saved SMSs, especially those such as declarations of love, wishes of good luck, birthday messages, when the technology permitted it. When storage got in the way, they wrote them down in books or in word documents. I often had text 128 M. Sirisena messages read out to me, either when my interlocutors wanted to share a good moment with me or as proof of what I was being told. Hiranthi showed me the myriad roles a saved text message could play in a couple relationship and after its demise. She had been in a relationship that has been predominantly carried on through mobile phones, and I will return to her story later in the chapter. Suffce it for now to say that Hiranthi, in less than half an hour, read out about 30 text messages that she had saved on her phone. The messages ranged from those that discussed mundane events, such as the day at the university, which were laced with loving innuendos to explicit declarations of love. “This is not all of them. I wish I had all of them with me. I didn’t have enough space. So I had to delete some”, she said in passing. Listening to her reading text message after text message, I felt that what Hiranthi was doing was reliving the real-ness of that relationship that she had with Anish, her former boyfriend. She was showing me, not merely telling me, that she had reason to put her faith in that relationship. At another level, I felt that she was sharing her grief with me, her grief over broken promises. Either way, she was telling me that, once it is written down, be it on a piece of colourful, scented paper or the screen of a mobile phone, words become tangible, thus real. Months after my encounter with Hiranthi, fipping through an article Taylor and Harper had written on the use of text messages, likening them to word gifts, a passage caught my eyes. It read:

The gift embodies meaning. As a material offering it makes tangible something of us as givers and our relationship with the recipient. For example, the gift helps us to order our memories into things that can be “grasped and held” and thus becomes associated with “particular histories and bound up with particular individuals”.

It is the tangibility that the crystallisation of words in text messages provided that Hiranthi found comfort in, for these word gifts, like all other gifts, render tangible the binding relationship between the giver and the recipient. The words defne the nature of the relationship and stand as a signifer of a sense of truth. Word gifts are like the plain gold wedding band, for they both speak the same language: the language of commitment.3

3 My suggestion here is that word gift in a text message stands as a form of commitment but not to imply that that is a commitment that could not be broken. After all, marriages 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 129

All those who have spoken about saving text messages, at one point or another, have brought up the issue of storage space, in terms of the phone’s memory. Presented with limited space which one could use to save text messages, one faces the dilemma of what messages to keep and what to delete. Some favour the old whereas the others favour the new. Taylor and Harper (2002) speak of a young woman, who saves the “nice” text messages she receives from her boyfriend, argues that text messages should be kept in their original form: the content, the time and the date stamp as it is the text message in its entirety that embodies the meaning. For her, writing down the message somewhere else seems to intrude into and compromise its meaning. Yet, not everybody saw it like this. Nirasha, a former university student I had known for a few years, in the middle of another conversation, told me that when she has used up the phone’s memory, she deletes her old text messages, after typing them on to a word document. She added that she favours content over form, as it is in the content that the core of importance of a text message lies.4 Mulling over the references to mobile phones’ place in relationships, I witnessed two levels at which they engage with one another: content and meaning. At the content level, as I had just discussed, the engagement with the phone is about communication. I recognise this to be the content level, because the content of the engagement is regarded with a certain value, as the content of the calls and text messages are signifcant. It is about informing each other of their day. The second level at which the engagement between mobile phones and relationships work is at the level, which I have chosen to call the meaning level. I do so, as though empty of obvious content, this kind of engagement carries signifcant meanings in as well as for, relationships. ‘Ring-cuts’ is a specifc form of exchange that is facilitated by a specifc form of technological development known as caller identifcation. Also referred to as ‘missed calls’, this is a less intrusive, yet powerful way of reaching out to one’s signifcant others.

are ended when couples get divorced. In the same manner, the commitment conveyed in the text message is authentic at that moment. 4 Taylor and Harper (2002) point out that the different uses mobile phones are put into inform the newer models of mobile phones. Increasing the memory capacity or introducing the possibility of increasing memory if the need arises is one such way. 130 M. Sirisena

Speaking the Language of ‘Ring-Cut’ During my feldwork, I noted that references to ‘ring-cut’ or ‘missed calls’ speckled everyday exchanges in all forms of relationships. Often used interchangeably, this referred to telephoning a person one wishes to be in touch with, yet rather than waiting for the person at the other end to answer the phone, the caller disconnects the line. Thus, ‘ringing’ and ‘cutting’ or disconnecting is what happens, literally. These telephone calls are registered on the call log of the phone as ‘missed calls’. As I mentioned before, this exchange of ‘ring-cuts’ is facilitated by the advent of caller identifcation, where the recipients are alerted to the persons who have called them, when they were not in a position to answer the phone. Neither the caller nor the recipient gets charged in this exchange. When I heard of it at frst when Hiranthi and her friends and peers speak of ‘ring-cuts’, I mistakenly associated it with money or the lack of it. Being students, and dependent on their, at times not so well-off, parents, fnancial worries were plentiful among students. Being aware of these burdens, at the beginning of the research, I had decided to ensure that they do not spend any money if they needed to get in touch with me. Thus, I had told my interlocutirs to give me a ring and disconnect the call or send a text message, should they need to get in touch with me. It was Padmika who opened my eyes to this other, more popular use of the ‘ring-cut’. One fne Sunday afternoon in mid-March, when I noticed that I had missed a call from Padmika, I was not surprised, for I immediately thought of what I had told them. Padmika is a young man in the frst year of university and is full of youthful energy and enthusiasm. I had already spoken with him once. Our frst conversation fowed easily from talking about his activity flled university life to his past relationships. Padmika did not see himself in a relationship in the near future and was forthcoming about his past relationships and his views and ideas about relationships. I had left that conversation open, telling him to contact me if he felt the need to talk. Thinking that Padmika had accepted that invitation, I phoned him back and was surprised when he disconnected the call. On my third attempt, he answered and took me by surprise by saying: “oh Mihirini akka, I was just giving you a ‘ring- cut’. I remembered you (matak vunā) and thought I would give you a ‘missed call’ to let you know”. Though bewildered frst, I was quickly engulfed in a childlike enthusiasm as I realised that I had become a part of that world I hesitantly entered, and that though unwittingly, I 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 131 had been initiated into the language of ring-cuts or missed calls.5 Since then, I noted how often references to missed calls dotted our conversations, given when something triggered off a thought of someone close. Essentially, ring-cuts were exchanged between those who were considered near and dear and gained a special signifcance among lovers as this was deemed as a means through which the lovers let each other know that they were thinking about each other, when they are not with each other. As Hishani did, I was often told that loving someone is like carrying them with you; insignifcant mundane acts such as eating, hearing a song or something you do, see, somewhere you go, gain signifcance as these may remind you of that person that you are carrying around. When you think of the person, it is important to let them know as, through informing them, you are reminding them of the place they occupy in your life and you in their lives. Missed calls served other uses as well. Hishani, for instance, told me that if she gives three or four missed calls during the day, her boyfriend phones her back to talk to her. These were implicit terms of engagement, that were personal and intimate, and made sense only to those who were involved. Turning back into look at Hishani’s relationship, to elaborate on these terms of engagement, Hishani told me that it is mostly her boyfriend who bears the cost of phone calls as he is better off than her fnancially. When she wants to talk to him, she asks him to call her by giving him a missed call. For them, a missed call means thinking of one as well as a request for a call, and it is the number of times one gives a missed call that differentiates one from the other. Sayuri, exposing yet another layer of meaning of missed calls, told me that her boyfriend would give her a missed call around lunchtime, when he is about to have lunch, to let her know that he is having lunch, so, that though they are not in the same place, they would have lunch together, at the same time, if she were free to do so. As for me, I did not quite master the language of missed calls and kept faltering, expecting my interlocutors to answer when they did not intend to. What the language of ‘ring-cuts’ pointed out to me, however, is a need to look closely at the currents that spiral out from the use of mobile phones. Horst and Miller (2006), looking at mobile phones and kinship networks in Trinidad, decide to abandon conducting a content

5 My interlocutors used ring cuts and missed calls interchangeably to refer to this prac- − tice of giving a call and disconnecting before the person answers the phone. 132 M. Sirisena analysis of mobile phone usage as they soon realise that calls are not suffciently long to have a meaningful content. Yet, this phenomenon of ring-cut points out that, though apparently empty of content, ring- cuts are embedded in layers and layers of meaning, which could not be grasped without a deeper engagement, for that meaning is contextual and personal. It is in this adaptability and embeddedness of the language of ‘ring-cut’ that lies its appeal. The ‘ring-cut’ elaborates the creative ways in which its users engage with mobile technology. My interlocutors showed that the mobile phone could help bridge the distance young Sri Lankan lovers may feel when they cannot be with each other, enabling them to “be with” their loved ones at all times of the day. This “being with” is founded on knowing what each other is doing during the day as well as knowing that the other person is thinking about you. The strength of this kind of “being with” is in its reciprocity. This reciprocation is ritualised, not in the sense of normative repetition, but in the sense of an established performance. That is to say, as Taylor and Harper (2002) elaborate referring to text message exchanges between teenage Londoners, the ritualised reciprocation of phone calls and text messages transfers the message by imbuing it with value. As they argue “these values are manifest in the desire to keep the message, to share it and to value it over and above its mere textual form; the text message comes to mean much more than merely an exchange of words, but becomes an offering of commitment to the relationship” (Taylor and Harper 2002: 441). The infuence mobile phones have on romantic relationships is both similar and different to the idea of link-up, Horst and Miller (2005) present. It is similar in so far as the connection matters. It is different as the mobile phone contact was part of a larger scheme of events. That is, “being with” on the phone gains signifcance and mattered, when the relationship has fulflled other needs, such as public recognition. Hiranthi’s story illustrates this point eloquently. Hiranthi, when I met her, was starting off her university life. She told me that one of her defning qualities is that she does not want to be bettered by anyone else (second venna kæmati næhæ). Yet, love is a domain where this is discounted for she wants someone she can respect, someone who can better her, therefore someone who is better than her. When she came into the university, she did not have high hopes as she was certain that she would not meet someone who could challenge her in the way she wanted to be challenged. She was placed 26th in a list of top scorers to enter the 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 133

Faculty of Law that year, and she was rather disappointed that all those who were placed above her were women. Thus, when she met Anish, playful and always undermining and questioning her ‘superior’ attitude, she was taken by surprise. He too was a student at the university, following the same course as her. He began hanging out with her and her friends, and neither of them openly discussed the attraction they felt towards each other.

He is just like me (magē kapāpu paluva). His friends knew [that they were attracted to one another]; my friends knew; everyone in the batch knew. When we meet, we behaved like friends; didn’t utter a word about it. Doesn’t even give a ‘ring-cut.’ … But we both knew. After about 5–6 months, he started sending me messages and we would SMS each other late into the night. One day he asked me the meaning of it. He asked me why do you spend so much money and text me late into the night. He was trying to get me to say it. And I told him that I would give the same answer he gives, if I had asked him that question. And one day, he admitted that he likes me. He said he is scared that he would break my heart too. He has had lots of relationships and this is my frst. … But we would go to the university and behave as if nothing has changed. … He would hold my hand in secret … when we go back home; we start talking to each other on the phone.

When I spoke with her the frst time, she was fascinated with this idea of secrecy and life in two worlds: life by day as friends and life by night as lovers. It was almost as if she celebrated the privacy and the exclusivity the split in her worlds brought her. Her eyes glistened as she told me that, with the exception of a few close friends, nobody else knew of their relationship. For Hiranthi, not only has the mobile phone facilitated this intriguing split world, it has enabled the birth of a relationship, which otherwise, would have been impossible. Magē kapāpu paluva, she described him, identifying pride to be their defning character trait, which both of them wear like a badge of honour. Thus, admitting that they found each other attractive was not a price they preferred paying, at least not until they were certain that the feelings were mutual. The mobile phone, through midnight calls and text messages, helped them explore the possibilities without risking too much. Hishani did not speak of the phone in these terms. In passing, she told me that talking in the night gave them space, space away from the public eye, as they were both popular among their peers. At the end of this conversation, I was left 134 M. Sirisena marvelling at the perks new technologies have brought into romantic relationships, at least within the university. When I met her about two months later, I had every intention of exploring the dynamics of mobile phone connectivity further, for, though her peers talked about the mobile phone, Hiranthi came across to me as someone who had a special relationship with the mobile phone, because of the nature of her relationship with Anish. I met her on a Wednesday afternoon, the midweek heat beating down on us; it was early August, and there was a strange calm hanging in the air that painted the world sombre. The frst thing I noticed about her was her subdued demeanour. She was soft-spoken, quite the opposite of what she was when I met her sometime back. During the frst meeting, she told me that she decided to talk to me hoping she could glean information out of me, as I had already spoken with her boyfriend Anish. I was grateful that she accepted my soft refusal to divulge anything of what Anish had told me. This time it was different. This time, it was her need to tell that drove the conversation. We looked for a quiet place and found two rickety chairs and a plastic table in an abandoned room on the ground foor of the Faculty of Law. There were no students around as they were on vacation after examinations. The air was still and there was an uncomfortable silence inhabiting the room. I had not been to this part of the university before. The strangeness inhabiting that hollow room made me feel cut-off from the world, despite the constant whirring of engines speeding up and down Reid Avenue, not more than 20 metres away. The weight of a heavy morning on my shoulder and short of breath in that musty room, I found the courage to ask Hiranthi how life was. What unravelled was not something I had prepared myself for. She told me that her relationship with Anish had ended. She handled the break-up in a subdued manner. It was not like her to wear her pain on her sleeve. Her pride would not allow her to. She spoke a lot. She was more open. She kept reading me text messages from months back. We sat there and talked. I dropped my researcher role, switched the recorder off and listened. She told me that despite all the promises, her relationship was not going anywhere: she kept reiterating that “it only lived in SMS’s and mid-night calls”. Anish had greater plans for his life. He was active in student politics at the university and planned to run for a place in the Faculty’s Students’ Union. To be elected, he had to be popular, and in his battle for popularity, the relationship presented an obstacle. He had not offered her explanations. Whatever explanations she had were the 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 135 ones she had gleaned through conversations she has had with her friends and her older sister. That is how she came to the conclusion that he did not want to “go public” with the relationship, as, if he did so, he would miss out on an opportunity to be popular among the younger girls entering the university in the coming academic year. Being single and available enhanced his appeal to the female student population. She told me that in that relationship that was maintained through text messages and phone calls, she lacked a place in his life; the recognition of her place as someone important in his life. She hinted that, as Mason (2004) points out, we humans are relational beings, and we emerge as relational beings through the stories we relate about ourselves and our relationships. Thus, it is only obvious that Hiranthi felt violated when she could not speak of her relationship in public. Through the absence of the visibil- ity of the relationship in what she called the public world, what was also taken away was her right to speak of it in public. It is as if the relationship that we do not speak of does not exist in the public realm. Returning to the theme of mobile phones, Hiranthi showed that mobile contact on its own was not suffcient to maintain a relationship. It is so, because mobile contact is expected to fortify relationships by adding another layer rather than to replace the relationship.6 That is to say, “being with” through the phone reworked and reaffrmed the existing and new expectations lovers had of relationships.

Expectations New things, we would like to believe, give rise to new needs and expectations. Yet, it has been pointed out, we often resort to new things to fnd new ways of dealing with old concerns (Horst and Miller 2005). Refecting on the uses mobile phones served in relationships I was witness to during feldwork, I often felt that this rang true. Yet, unlike what Sunderland (1999) suggests, the distinction between virtual and real, as we tend to perceive it conventionally, seemed to matter less. This is not to suggest that mobile contact has replaced face-to-face meetings of lovers. It is merely to point out that mobile contact had become a part of the relationship on its own, not a weak alternative to one’s inability to be with their loved ones. This created new ways of being there: to have

6 Relationships that lived solely in phones were referred to as casual relationships, which come into existence to fulfl temporary, mostly sexual, needs. 136 M. Sirisena lunch together, play the role of the provider through taking responsibility of call charges, etc. and through these ways, mobile contact attempts to address needs and expectations that fall under the umbrella of trust, exclusivity and mutuality. Being with, through mobile phones, forms a part of the relationship such that it is seen as a necessity rather than an option. Hemanthi in an off-handed way told me that she gave her former boyfriend a mobile phone for his birthday because he did not have one. The motive driving her gift was, she told me:

I gave it to him for his birthday, because akka, it is something that’s a must (atyvāśya). Because, when I want to contact him, it is also my own selfsh interest (laughs). I didn’t give him that to make him happy. [It was] for me to fnd him when I wanted to. I wanted to be able to get in touch with him, when I wanted to.

While noting it as her need—a must, Hemanthi pointed out to me that maintaining such mobile contact is a means through which they made themselves available to each other. If she cannot reach out to him whenever she needed to and share with him her day when she needed to, it is as if he is not in a relationship with her. Such availability of each other, evidently, is exclusive to romantic relationships. There were rules of engagement that suggested whom one could speak with, at what time of the day. Sayuri told me that once her boyfriend scolded her when he found out that she had sent a text message to a male friend around 9 o’ clock at night to ask him for a set of lecture notes. He had explained to her that it was ‘too late’ to be texting other male friends and Sayuri added, “I feel that was right. I didn’t have to text him that late”. As Sayuri explained, the reproach was not because she was getting in touch with a male friend. Sayuri and her boyfriend both have close friendships with members of the opposite sex, and they do not hide it. It was the time of the day that she sent the message that brought on the criticism. Calling or texting in the night, and 9 o’ clock is night, was something, which usually lovers did. Thus, when Sayuri gets in touch with her male friend, late at night, she is miscommunicating her intent. In their own analyses of their relationship, my interlocutors painted “being with” through mobile phones as vital for processes of trust building as well as sharing. One may be tempted to argue here that rather 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 137 than being about trust building, such sharing comes dangerously close to surveillance. Contactability that is afforded through mobile phones not only paves the way for monitoring and/or surveillance as an individual’s movements could be kept track of more closely, but it also brings into realm the issue of accountability (Green 2002). When the phone rings, we must answer it. We must explain what we are doing and where we are, especially in personal and intimate relationships. For the better part, my interlocutors did not perceive such acts or questions negatively. Green (ibid.) argues that surveillance, regulation and mutual accountability are sites of struggle and negotiation, and the meanings we allude to in these ideas shift. In a similar vein, my interlocutors did not consider such knowing of each other’s activities and whereabouts as some form of surveillance. Hishani and her boyfriend spoke on the phone at night and in the morning. They told each other what they had done during the day and what they plan to do the next day. These young men and women had a good idea of what each other would be doing during the day and where they would be at different times of the day. If there were a change of plan, they would inform each other. Sayuri told me that if there were any change to her daily routine, something as small as going to the bank, which is a fve-minute bus ride from the university, she would send her boyfriend a text message to let him know. As important as it is to be open with each other about what they do when they are not together for this helps them build trust, Sayuri told me “in this day and age, it is good to let someone know what you do and where you go”. It was a time when indiscriminate bomb blasts were rocking different parts of the island, and there was an air of uncertainty fogging the country. Sayuri pointed out that in such a context in which you could meet your death in the most unexpected way at an unexpected time and place, it is important to let someone who loves you know where you are at different times of the day. She did not see this as a form of surveillance or control, for it came naturally and she did not contest it. Mobile contact was a managed relationship, and it is this management that distinguished “being with” from surveillance. It is through careful management of the relationship of mobile contact that one could preserve it from falling into the abyss of “becoming a pain”. Critical of some of her friends’ tendency to “hang on the phone”, Hishani told me that she resisted the temptation of succumbing to a ‘couple package’. ‘Couple packages’, she told me, “could get you into that place where you have to let each other know of every single move you make. It could 138 M. Sirisena become a pain (vātayak)”. She did not want to be a person whose life was watched through telephone calls, and she certainly did not want to live her life on the phone. She did not expect her boyfriend to inform her of the minute changes to his daily routine and appreciated it that he did not expect that from her either. In Hishani’s mind, the distinction is clear. Being with is not about watching one’s lover’s life through the phone. It was about living it, with your lover by your side. In this process, as in the case of ḍabala, one’s own subjectivity, as well as that of one’s lover, at least in theory, is preserved. The tag line here seems to suggest that “we are together but not one”.7 Speaking of managing the mobile contact, Hiranthi alerted me to yet another concern that she had about letting too much of her go or sharing too much through mobile phones.8 She almost resonated Foucault as she suggested that knowledge is power. Information is power for letting go of it might mean that you have given too much. Speaking of giving missed calls, Hiranthi told me that it is a way of showing and establishing interest. Speaking of the power she wielded over the relationship before she “caved in”, Hiranthi told me “I didn’t even give him a ‘ring-cut’”. Neither she nor Anish was willing to admit that they were attracted to each other. In that context of restraint, a ‘ring-cut’ would have given it away, for through missed calls you are letting the other person know that you are thinking of that person or that you remembered that person, with no ‘obvious reason’ to do so. When Hiranthi spoke of not giving missed calls, she was describing to me the extent to which pride got in the way of their relationship, despite their mutual attraction. Maintaining and merging subjectivities is not the only cause that may distress mobile contact. These acts of sharingface a peculiar set of concerns, as they are partially open to an audience. As I witnessed during and following my research, mobile contact works on the space, at times drawing strength from it, to validate the relationship, and at times carving out a space by breaking up the space.

7 There is a side to it that is not addressed here. The tendency to start relationships through random calling and having casual relationships and fabricating alias, etc. It is not within the scope or the capacity of my work to address those themes. 8 MMSs cost and not everyone had phones with cameras, but there were few stories making the rounds about compromising photographs going viral, and my interlocutors were aware of the danger of lack of control over material that one puts out there, even if it were meant to end on a phone of a loved one. 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 139

Working on the Private/Public Planes with Mobile Contact Almost always half exposed to a known or an unknown audience, one of the signifcant concerns facing mobile contact is that, for these interactions, we may not be able to create the same kind of privacy that we may be able to create for face-to-face contact. Cooper (2002) suggests that Simmel’s analysis of the private and the public in the metropolis provides a useful lens when looking at mobile phone use in public places. Arguing against Simmel’s idea put forth in Metropolis and Mental Life that we draw a distinction between the public and the private by securing “an island of subjectivity” where our most private lives are conducted, Cooper (ibid.: 22) says:

No longer is the private conceivable as what goes on, discreetly, in the life of the individual away from the public domain, or as subsequently represented in individual consciousness; furthermore, although it is still the case that the co-present tend not to speak to each other, they can now have conversations with remote others which are (half) audible to all. The co-existence of, and potential friction between public and private are now material and observable phenomena.

Rather than suggesting that mobile contact presents a merging of private and public domains of our lives, my interlocutors showed that, as with our other social interactions, through mobile contact we engage with the spaces we inhabit, writing on them to carve out new spaces, and discovering new ways of occupying the world. We make use of this public enactment of private aspects of our lives to assert the presence and the validity of the relationships that we are entangled in. At other times, we carve out cocoons through breaking up the space and creating spaces within which we could conduct our private lives. One of my friends told me a story about an interesting observation she had made of one of her colleagues. This young woman, my friend told me, receives a phone call, every day around the same time, just before, during or after lunch. My friend and her other curious colleagues soon gleaned from whatever they could hear that the call was from her soon-to-be husband, and he calls her to ask her if she had had lunch. The colleagues began mocking the young woman about her ‘oyā kǽvada?’ (Did you eat?) call, and she cringed in embarrassment every 140 M. Sirisena time the subject was brought up. One puzzled colleague had told my friend that she does not understand why the girl does not put an end to it, if she were bothered by her colleagues’ incessant mocking of the phone call. My friend’s response to this was that their colleague did not want to put an end to the ‘oyā kǽvada?’ call as it represented a statement about her relationship. The young woman is showing her colleagues that she has someone to care or/and is cared for by someone, who makes such an effort to be with her, and demonstrates care and concern, when he cannot be with her in person. My friend’s observation resonated with Cooper (2002: 23), when he suggested that:

The mobile phone can also be a resource for personalising one’s existence in public spaces, a resource for achieving privacy … It is not the only device for doing this, but it is a particularly effective one which visibly and audibly display one’s engagement with a remote other to those within earshot.

As my friend pointed out, her colleague was resourceful as she used mobile contact, not only to affrm her relationship in the public’s eye, but also to paint it out to be a relationship of care and consideration, in which she is loved. Though intensely personal, romantic relationships in Sri Lanka, as many other relationships, acquire validity through enactment of certain acts of caring in the public eye. This kind of exhibition of intimacy, I must note here, is carefully managed. Though my interlocutors too allowed it to be known to their immediate audience that they are in relationships that they are loved and cared for, when needed, they carved out spaces from the immediate space they inhabited to carry out their private lives. Yet another story would aptly elaborate this point. Once, in the middle of an interview, Amintha received a phone call. He took his phone out of his jeans’ pocket, looked at me apologetically and told me “I have to take this call”. I smiled and nodded, and within seconds, he walked away from where we sat to a corner, towards the entrance of the gym canteen as he said “halō”. When he came back, probably within fve minutes, he apologised and said that it was his girlfriend, who had returned from home that weekend, and they did not have much time to talk to each other. Thus, he had to answer the phone. I nodded my head vigorously and told him that I understood. I was slightly distracted, not because he answered his phone. It was the way he answered the phone. I wondered 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 141 what made him want to get up from where he was and walk away, that too towards a busier end of the gym canteen. Ever since, I began to notice something I did as well as those who were around me, whenever we received a phone call. Stepping away from wherever we were came like second nature whenever we answered our phones in public places. We were not necessarily looking for quieter places. I have often found myself walking up and down corridors, roads and other noisier, busier places. It was more a need to step away from the immediacy of the public setting we inhabited at that moment. Quite some time later, yet another experience of mobile contact enabled me to shed some light on my previous experience of Amintha’s conduct of mobile contact. This time, I was sitting in a crowded bus and sitting next to me was a man, probably in his mid- to late twenties. Trapped inside a parked bus in the midday heat, I was edgy, which I felt was a mood shared by many co-passengers. The man sitting next to me shifted in his seat a few times and took out a mobile phone. He never introduced himself and straight away launched into a series of questions, beginning with “did you have lunch?” followed by “what did you have for lunch”, “did you take a shower”. Curiosity got the better of me, and I discreetly paused my iPod and eavesdropped, for, at frst, I could not make out if he were speaking to a child or a woman. The sweet nothings that began to splatter as the conversation progressed suggested that he was speaking to his girlfriend and I realised that I did not need to stop the music, for the man did not make an effort to keep his voice down. He did not seem bothered by the possibility of all the passengers in the bus overhearing his conversation. Privy to this intimate exchange of a stranger, I could not help but think of the time Amintha walked away to create a private space for his phone call. Comparing the two instances, I realised that it is the irrelevance of the audience that determine the manner in which we engage with the space we occupy and the mobile contact. The need to walk away arises when the immediate audience is known, as was the case with Amintha. This also explained why he chose a crowded end of the gym canteen to answer his phone, rather than have me overhear his conversation. When the caller does not share any familiarities with his immediate audience, as the case was with the man who phoned his girlfriend while sitting in a crowded bus, the audience matters less. For our part, as the audience, we attempt to convey the message that we are not interested in being privy to his phone conversation, even if it could be that we are enter- tained by or curious about the exchange that is taking place. This polite 142 M. Sirisena distance that we attempt to convey is something akin to what Murtagh (2002) describes as “avoidance of gaze”. Drawing from his observations in trains, Murtagh says that those who answer mobile phones while they are travelling in the train avoid making eye contact with the others present in the train. Borrowing Goffman’s idea of civil inattention, he argues that through this mutual avoidance of eye contact, we manage embarrassment caused by the fact that those whom we share the train carriage with become involuntary audience to our conversations, through which they enter into our private lives. Speaking of presence of mobile phones in their relationships, my interlocutors showed me that being there virtually becomes a new expectation of relationships. By being there virtually, what they tried to do was to address some expectations they saw as “old” and “necessary”, such as trust, commitment and understanding. Mobile phones, in other words, did not transform what intimacy, love and partnership meant, although they did have an effect on how these were negotiated through distance and newly available digital connectivity. For example, while trust and commitment were and remain central to intimate relations, young people’s engagement with mobile phones meant redefning what it meant to be trustworthy/trusting and committed. By saying that mobile phones did not alter the cultural foundations of love and sexual intimacy does not mean they had no effect on the emotional practice of intimate relations. The mobile phone offered my interlocutors new ways of being with each other and feeling for each other, transcending physical distance and other spatial and temporal limitations. The phones, for example, can mediate the practice of sharing, which is based on a sense of moral obligation and reciprocity, and is enacted through timing, length and content of conversations. Such digitalised sharing entangles its actors, through the use of the mobile phone, in cycles of caring and trust and stands as proof of the exclusive places the lovers occupy in each other’s lives. Given this prominence, being there through mobile phones becomes expected out of relationships, not as a form of surveillance, but as a carefully managed aspect of the relationship. This aspect of relationships, in the way it is enacted in private/public domains, works the space, carving, shifting and stretching domains of private and public sites of their lives by marking some of them as sites of intimacy, but also asserting the relationship’s signifcance in the public eye. The phone, therefore, becomes an affective extension of the self, assuming a form of intersubjectivity (Jackson 1998). But it also serves as 5 MY WORLD IN MY POCKET: PHONES, RELATIONSHIPS AND EXPECTATIONS 143 an affective mediator of spaces, relations and expectations. As such, my interlocutors’ use of the phone is both similar to and different from the practice of “link-up”, observed by Horst and Miller (2005) in their study of mobile phone use in Jamaica. It is similar in that mobile phones, used by young people in Sri Lanka, serve to network within a community and connect—“link-up”—with sexual partners. It is, however, different in that being virtually yours is always emotionally charged. In other words, it is not the mobile contact itself that is signifcant, but rather, it is its affective mediation of old and new expectations of what it means to be together. Yet, as Hiranthi illustrated in this chapter, being with over the phone alone is not suffcient as a good relationship. The mobile phone cannot replace the relationship. Being with needs to be built on. The trust, knowing and commitment that come from the thoughts and the acts that are enacted through mobile phones paves the way for deeper engagement and a deeper involvement with the relationship.

References Cooper, G. (2002). The mutable mobile: Social theory in the wireless world. In B. Brown, N. Green, & R. Harper (Eds.), Wireless world: Social and interactional aspects of the mobile age. Surrey: Springer. Green, N. (2002). Who’s watching whom: Monitoring and accountability in mobile relations. In B. Brown, N. Green, & R. Harper (Eds.), Wireless world: Social and interactional aspects of the mobile age. Surrey: Springer. Horst, H. A., & Miller, D. (2005). From kinship to link-up. Current Anthropology, 46(5), 755–778. Horst, H. A., & Miller, D. (2006). The cell phone: An anthropology of communication. Oxford: Berg. Jackson, M. (1998). Minima ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the anthropological project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jackson, M. (2002). Familiar and foreign bodies: A phenomenological exploration of the human-technology interface. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8(2), 333–346. Mason, J. (2004). Personal narratives, relational selves: Residential histories in the living and telling. Sociological Review, 52(6), 162–179. Murtagh, G. M. (2002). Seeing the “rules”: Preliminary observations of action, interaction and mobile phone use. In B. Brown, N. Green, & R. Harper (Eds.), Wireless world: Social and interactional aspects of the mobile age. Surrey: Springer. 144 M. Sirisena

Sunderland, P. L. (1999). Fieldwork and the phone. Anthropological Quarterly, 72(3), 105–117. Taylor, A. S., & Harper, R. (2002). Age-old practices in the ‘new world’: A study of gift giving between teenage mobile phone users. CHI, 4(1). http://research. microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/ast/fles/chi_2002.pdf. CHAPTER 6

Balancing Between Pleasure and Propriety: Where, What and How

It was a warm afternoon. It had rained earlier in the day, and the sun was shining bright and harsh against a crispy blue sky. I was waiting between appointments. I had about an hour to kill. I found a quiet table towards the back of the gym canteen. It wasn’t diffcult to fnd one, now that the mid-afternoon rush had died. My luck had it that the table benefted from the wind that blew across the old hospital-like building, with its low roof, terrazzo tiles and patterned window grills. A few tables away was a group of friends peering into books, only exchanging a few words every now and then. The air hung still over us, as post-lunch lethargy was setting in. Into this world moving in slow motion walked in a couple, hand in hand. They sat at a table few feet away from me. A few minutes later, they were joined by a young woman, who sat on the chair next to the woman. And then, a young man joined the group, who sat next to the man who was already seated. I was distracted. I pretended to read but curiosity had got the better of me. I started prying into a world I had no invitation to enter. From what I heard I gathered that the ‘girlfriend’ has just returned from a visit home. She dug into a large black plastic bag that was resting on the foor and took out a packed lunch, which seemed big enough to feed a few. Everybody dug into it as she opened it. From my years at the university, I know that a home cooked meal is a luxury that those who return from home would want to share with those who are near and dear. I peered into this world of sharing and caring, rather unashamedly. Exchanges between the lovers

© The Author(s) 2018 145 M. Sirisena, The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka, Culture, Mind, and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76336-1_6 146 M. Sirisena featured prominently in that world. The snippets of conversation that blew my way and the jokes that were shared suggested that the girl and the boy sitting on the either side of the couple were being introduced or ‘matched’. Some of them caught my eyes a few times, yet they seemed unruffed by my stares. The exchanges of glances, the fow of best bits of food from one side of the table to the other, a hand brushing against another, tenderly pushing away a strand of hair that had freed itself from the tightly tied ponytail; what was unfolding in front of my eyes was a world that these young men and women would call a world of their own: an intimate world carved out, separated from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. A meeting of eyes that melted the heart, a word that caressed the skin, a touch that made the skin tremble: there are layers upon layers of events of signifcance that could take place in worlds like these. It is this multiplicity of implications that makes one refects on acts of intimacy, one could argue, almost to a point of obsession in their attempt to glean the meaning of an intimate touch. The multiplicity of meaning of intimacy is in the touch, but not the touch that is defned as the touch of skin by another, but a touch that is felt somewhere inside, leaving an impact in an undefnable part of your being. As Barthes (2002: 67) explains, “a squeeze of the hand – enormous documentation – a tiny gesture within the palm, a knee which doesn’t move away, an arm extended, as if quite naturally, along the back of a sofa and against which the other’s head gradually comes to rest – this is the paradisiac realm of subtle and clandestine signs: a kind of festival not of the sense but of meaning”. More often than not, a discourse is born out of any contact with those whom we desire, for it is not only the sensation that arises as a result of the touch. It is also the meaning that is attached to the touch. The smallest contact would fll us with an urge to explore the multiple layers of meaning that touch might have implied. What does it mean to be touched? Among many things, this touch Barthes engages with, within the context of romantic relationships, expresses intimacy. Even when, or especially when, associated with intimacy, it is more than an expression of a feeling. Touch is the point where the desire that begins as an attraction is consummated. Being an act on the body, and the body being the site where the act of touching is acted upon, a touch expressing intimacy makes intimacy as well as the feeling that instigates the act of intimacy feel real. The intimate touch, as Jackson (1983: 329), citing Best, explains, “does not symbolise reality, it is reality”. Many discussions social scientists have had 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 147 on habitus and corporeality have highlighted that the body cannot be taken for granted for it is a site where culture is acted upon as well as the instrument through which we act upon the culture.1 Thus, it is no surprise that talk about intimacy and consummation of intimacy occupied a signifcant place in the conversations I had with my interlocutors. Our conversations about intimacy encircled attraction, desire and fulflment of sexual needs. What was interesting about these discussions was that my interlocutors suggested the path to sexual intimacy is a path of negotiations. In these negotiations, they engaged with cultural as well as personal expectations and highlighted that bodily conduct in intimacy matters because “improper conduct” (væradi caryāva) could leave one compromised, and if compromised, that tarnishes one’s chances at living a good life, as they imagined it. The stories my interlocutors told of bodies and their conduct in romantic relationships suggest that physical attraction and fulflment of sexual needs and desires form a big portion of what is expected of their couple relationships. However, in fulflling these needs, one must be careful, as sexual intimacy, if not taking place within the ‘correct’ circumstances, is a compromise. This chapter refects on these stories and suggests that sexual intimacy asserted the corporeality of the self, by embedding it deeply in relations of power and gender.

It’s a Basic Need! As he was with everything else, Amintha was not short of opinions on sexual needs and their fulflment. He started his story in his younger days, when he knew no better, when he associated love with a sense of purity that is devoid of any sexual connotation. “It was a pure sense of love which is not present among us lay people (lokōttara api atviňdinnē næti pavitra ādarayak)”. Now he knows better. “I’m grown up now. I know that love is something that is working towards or based on the need for physical intimacy (kāyika avaśyatāvayak)”. He went on to elaborate that while it is a bodily need, it could not be satisfed willy-nilly as the way in which one addresses the bodily need could lead to satisfaction/ release and fulflment or dejection. Differentiating between different kinds of love, as I illustrated in an earlier chapter, Amintha pointed out that there are different ways to address this bodily need. If it were

1 See, for instance, Biddle (2009), Butler (1990, 2000), Jackson (1983) and Sawiki (1991). 148 M. Sirisena done in a context engulfed in lust, it will lead to a release/satisfaction followed by disappointment whereas if it were done in an affective situation where the partners are concerned for each other and their mutual pleasure, that would lead to fulflment. Thus, desire for sexual intimacy, Amintha concludes, needs to be fulflled in a correct context of affect. The way in which Amintha spoke of sexual intimacy, reminded me of Scheper-Hughes and Lock’s (1987) concept of the mindful body. Amintha had no doubt that what the body does affects the mind. This kind of argument was common among my interlocutors at the university, who pointed out that the university, over the years, has become a space in which one engages openly in discussions on emotional well- being.2 Their discussions, often, are framed within a need to take a holistic approach to the well-being of individuals. Resonating with this kind of thinking, Amintha’s argument is that sound physical and mental health leads to self-actualisation (pūrna bhava). He began by saying that sexual intimacy is a bodily need, which needs to be satisfed. Yet, when satisfying this need, one cannot focus on the body alone, because if it were to be fulflled in a way that it is fulflling, it must be done so in an appropriate way (sudusu vidiyaṭa). The sudusu vidiya is composed of an apt affective and cultural context. It is when these needs are fulflled, not merely satisfed, that one could grow towards self-actualisation. Self- fulflling passion arises as a result of a mental bond and equality, which takes into account one’s needs as well as those of their partner. Caring for the pleasure of the other, in such ways, reminded those who engage in sharing sexual intimacies that in pleasure too, you give as well as you get. While he focused on the affective context at the start, Amintha went on to add, and his friends and peers readily agreed, it is not only emotions that made up the appropriate context for intimate encounters for these are governed by one’s culture and tradition (sampradāyaṭa anuva hæsirenna ōne—one must behave according to one’s tradition).

2 Though my interlocutors argued that perceptions towards emotional well-being have changed and that university provides an open and encouraging environment to talk about emotional well-being, out with the conversations, I saw quite the opposite. It is very rarely that anybody admitted to seeking help for whatever emotional distress they were feeling. Further, those who did continued to face stigma, often being referred to as una kārayo (those suffering from fever) indicating psychosomatic symptoms that may or may not be associated with their affictions. 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 149

Where, the What and the How of Sex To begin with, all my interlocutors saw intimate space, not surprisingly, as a private space, and intimacies should be enacted away from the public eye, within the confnes of home, an enclosed space. Keeping in line with a Simmel-esque division between public and private spaces, most Sri Lankans equate home (gedara) with the private and outside of home with the public. These sentiments were crystallised in the wooden decorative plaques displayed in stalls that used to encroach onto pavements in Pettah or the stickers displayed on three-wheelers that claim ‘home is where your heart is’. Ideally, home is where one lets down their defences and takes the weariness of their day’s work off their minds—a space of trust and comfort. It is an emotive space, where one could communicate what one feels and have one’s emotional needs reciprocated. Upon refection, I thought a home is sectioned into different zones, which represent different levels of intimate spaces. A hall, or a dining room, for instance, would be, though less public than a public place, is less private than a bedroom or a kitchen. Only those who one trusts most would be allowed into these spaces that are defned as sanctums within the home. It was an anthropologist friend of mine who drew my attention to class connotations of this imagination. He quite correctly pointed out that it is only within a middle-class household that such demarcations of space are applicable and possible as it is only middle-class households who would be able to afford to have different rooms for different purposes. He showed that a person living in a slum would not be able to afford to have different rooms for different types of intimacy. They would not have the same concept of privacy as the room in a one-roomed hut in a slum would take different forms at different times of the day, transforming itself from being the hall when one entertains guests, to becoming the kitchen when they prepare meals to eventually becoming the bedroom at night time, when parents get intimate while their children sleep.3 Demarcation of private and public spaces and adhering to

3 This notion of middle-class idea of privacy I rely on here, however, is far from uncomplicated. Levels of privacy a Sri Lankan would attribute to different spaces are diverse. Even within middle-class homes, where they have different rooms for different things, bedrooms may be separated from halls by curtains and/or doors, and householders would walk in and out of each other’s rooms without knocking on doors or asking for permission to come in, which suggest that practices of privacy are as complex and varied as demarcations of private space. I would like to thank Eshani Ruwanpura for elucidating this point. 150 M. Sirisena certain codes of conduct that denoted class status were ideals my aspir- ing middle-class Sinhalese interlocutors wanted to subscribe to and for them, confning intimacy to what they called private spaces, among other things, offered some indication of “where they come from”. Duleeka lived the dream many of my young interlocutors were aspir- ing to and was explicit about her view on privacy. In her early thirties, she is happily married, to a man Duleeka described as kind-hearted, generous and loving. They had met at university and married with parental blessings soon after they left the university. While at university, both had a clear sense of the direction they would move in life: up. The fact that both were gainfully employed was proof that they are on the right track. She was putting the fnishing touches to the house she had built with her husband in the suburbs of Colombo when I met her. She had a child and a car: everything my interlocutors said they dreamed of. “It was not easy”, she told me. “We both worked hard to make things right”. While telling me of the obstacles life had thrown their way, while at university and in their work lives, Duleeka said there was one ‘truth’ that she never turned her back on, which helped her deal with the problems and pave the way for her successful married life.

I don’t take home problems out of home (gedara praśna gedarin piṭaṭa geniyanne nǽ). I don’t bring problems from offce home (‘offce’ ekē praśna gedara gēnnet nǽ). We are both like that. We would talk about problems at work but [we] try not to bring any work home. Time spent at home is for spending time with each other. And after she was born, with Nadee. We didn’t talk about our private problems with other people. If I were angry, I would talk to him directly. We’re very private people like that. We don’t want to put our dirt on show (ape kunu kandal anik ayaṭa pennanna ōne nǽ).

Duleeka and her husband managed a demarcation between the public and the private spaces, by enforcing rules on what could and could not be shared with whom, and what could and could not be done in what is demarcated as a public space. The private space of home was not confned to the bounds of her new house. Home included friends, for later in the conversation, she told me that she discusses her emotional as well as sexual issues with her friends. She too was a believer in the doc- trine that bottling things up only lead to disastrous explosions, especially when it comes to hurt and anger. Yet, maintaining privacy by drawing 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 151 boundaries was important, because she did not want to expose herself to people, as Duleeka said in passing, “who would gossip behind my back”. Presenting a persona and maintaining it was important to her. Duleeka was not alone in this kind of thinking, and privacy was not just a matter of what one exposes of their private lives. It extended itself to how one should behave in front of the others. It was not only about what one could do with somebody. It was also about the ways in which they spoke of their intimate relationships. This was apparent in the criticism Amintha directed at his roommate’s behaviour, at his hostel. His roommate, Amintha noted, behaves as if he is “gone mad with love” (ādaren pissu veṭila) after he had started a relationship with a woman he had met recently: “He has started a relationship with this girl and he is taking her photos and listens to her voice recorded on the phone and he goes around acting like a mad man (pissu naṭa naṭā yanava). When you see him, you feel disgusted! (hirikita hitenava)”. Amintha’s criticism was not directed at having a voice recording, listening to it frequently or carrying or staring at photographs. All my interlocutors, Amintha included, who were in relationships carried tokens of love, among which photographs were common. Amintha’s criticism was directed at what he saw as his roommate’s excessive behaviour. Amintha saw his roommate’s emotional display in public as excessive and irrational (vaśī velā vagē—behaving as if he is possessed). As such, it was unbecoming of a reasonable, potentially middle-class man.

Private Dens in Public Places Despite all this talk about the demarcation between private and public spaces, it is not surprising to see young men and women being intimate in public places both inside and outside the university. When they did so, it was not without fear. There was the ever-present threat of “getting caught”, either by law enforcement offcers or parents, neighbours, relatives: the list seemed endless. It was not only concerns about violating codes of spatial separation between private and the public that my interlocutors worried about, when it comes to exploring sexual intimacies in public places. Premarital sex is far from welcome in Sri Lanka. While there are no laws prohibiting premarital sex in Sri Lanka as long as it involved men and over age of consent, Amintha told me apparently it is a law that has been around for a while on “gross indecency” that the law enforcement offcers are said to rely on as grounds to arrest young 152 M. Sirisena men and women, who they think are misbehaving in public.4 My other interlocutors fed into this narrative telling me they have heard stories of police raiding popular beaches, the Vihara Maha Devi Park, a park in the heart of Colombo, which young lovers frequent and even guest houses looking for unmarried men and women who are engaging in “unbecoming behaviour” and coercing them to marry each other as a form of punishment. These police raids, whether actual or fctional, were the tentacles through which the law crept in, to the confnes of the private. They injected real fears into the lives of the young people I spoke with, for “getting caught” was an ever-present fear that nagged them, whenever they tried to fulfl their sexual needs. Amintha told me how frightened he was the frst time he was sexually intimate was with his frst girlfriend. Barely eighteen, he had gone to visit her when her parents were not at home. “Shaking with fear” (bayen gæhi gæhi), which he oft repeated, was the tag line for his story. Though they were at her home, away from the public eye, the knowledge that he was still at school, thus a child, and that he was at a place where he should not be (her parents did not know of their relationship) crippled Amintha with fear. Thus, it was not merely the place where the act takes place; it was the perceived legitimacy of the act that allowed its enactment. As an unmarried young man and woman, they did not possess the social legitimacy to be intimate, whether they were in private or public places. Things change when they enter university. Not that premarital sex is accepted within the university, yet the fact that it is prevalent at university is accepted. The populist view is that young men and women have a heightened sense of sexuality and universities provide a space where they could intermingle with no parental surveillance, thus it is inevitable that these young men and women will explore their sexualities and needs at the university. Narada, once a university student himself, encapsulated these ideas and said:

You know that it’s a public secret. ‘Premarital sex’ is very much the thing that happens at the university. They say that, next to the Free Trade Zone

4 Amintha explained that it is clauses on Article 365A of the Penal Code of 1833 that the policy offcers used to justify harassing young couples, which was amended (Penal Code (Amendment) Act No. 22 of 1995). However, another lawyer friend pointed out that she is not aware of instances where this clause was used to force marriage upon young couples who had been arrested. 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 153

girls, university students have the highest rate of abortions5. Well, you put repressed young men and women and lots of dark corners (ahumul) into the same place, what can you expect? There is no way to control what they do in there.

Narada’s cynicism represented hues of Victorian values, which he has claimed allegiance to now. For him, with “its mass of sexually repressed men and women” and the “dark corners”—and there are many—coupled with even the vaguest sense of the acceptance or acknowledgement of its occurrence, the university provided an illicit licence and created an enabling environment for premarital sex. However, the “dark corners”, though dark may they be, are not isolated places for these included stairwells, corridors, nooks and corners behind buildings. The allusion here is that, not that there are distinctly designated areas that are private but that the distinction between public and private spaces is less clear and through repeatedly being used for similar purposes; these “dark corners” have come to be known as less-public public spaces (Sirisena 2016). I witnessed as well as heard stories of love dens built in nooks and corners of cinemas, the back seat of buses, under an umbrella in public parks and beaches, on benches, stairwells and sheltered corridors at the university among many other places. Adding to this list, my interlocutor told me that they get intimate in homes, when there is nobody at home and in some situations where some of their colleagues judged them to be des- perate, they rented rooms in guesthouses in Colombo and its suburbs. In everyday parlance, for them, place names became euphemism for the act itself. For instance, in our conversations, bælconiyaṭa yanava or ‘room’ ekakaṭa yanava (‘going to the balcony’ of a cinema or ‘going to a guest- house room’) became allusions for having oral or penetrative sex. These references differentiated the act from other types of sexual or physical explorations, because engaging in penetrative sex, carries deeper connotations. The seriousness that is attributed to different kinds of intimate acts represented the degree of compromise. That is why, after having

5 In 1978, Free Trade Zones, also known as export processing zones, were established as a means of attracting foreign investors are areas, where the investors were allowed a range of benefts. Majority of workers employed in these zones are women and work under conditions, which many describe as appalling. Narada’s reference to women working in the Free Trade Zones, who are referred to as kalāpe lamai, represents the popular public opinion which criticises these women’s lax and moral behaviour. 154 M. Sirisena told me that he and his former girlfriend tasted the pleasures of physical intimacy, Amintha had to make it clear to me that he has “never taken her to a ‘room’”. To have done so, Amintha insinuated, means that he has made her vulnerable, thus exploited her by taking something that is not his to take. In his view, if he had sexual intercourse with his girlfriend, he would have compromised her by ridding her of her virginity and compromised himself by being/acting like an exploitative man. Of course, not all men, nor women for that matter, thought of this in the same way. What was evident was, whether they “went to ‘rooms’” or not, that there was a general acceptance that engaging in penetrative sex was a compromise, for both the man and the woman, though not to the same extent. To have had penetrative sex implied that the woman has lost, along with her virginity, her respectability. Virginity is her preserve and the responsibility lies with her to protect it, and if she were to cave in for pleasure, she would thereafter be seen as someone who is without self-control, among other things. The man becomes a man without values, as Amintha pointed out, for he is taking something that is not rightfully his to take.6 It did not, however, as I elaborate later, affect men as much as it affected women. For these reasons presumably, no man or woman admitted to me to have gone to rooms or to have had penetrative sex, though they readily admitted that they have done “things that are on this side of the boundary”. They, however, did tell me stories of men, their friends, cousins or acquaintances, who took that drastic step of “going/ taking their girlfriends to ‘rooms’”. During my feldwork and after, a theme that fascinated me was the idea of transforming public places into private nests. The city seems to afford many opportunities that allowed such a transformation. A set of unwritten but shared codes seemed to govern the behaviour of those who accessed such spaces. What is it that makes it possible to turn a public place into a private space? I often wondered if it was the presence or the absence of other people. For some time, I was convinced that they referred to an absence of people, until I heard Hishani say “if ayya is with me and if there is nobody else around, I give him a ‘kiss’”.7 She

6 Very few men considered sexual intercourse to have a bearing on their respectability. It was only Amintha and Aravinda who claimed so, through a debate about “taking what’s not ours to take”, which they generalised and applied to their friends. 7 Hishani used the English word ‘kiss’. Code switching and code mixing were not uncommon, and often English words made their way into different conversations, even if the users lacked fuency in English. Hishani too was not fuent in English, and she told 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 155 giggled as she said this, and her voice softened and lowered at the men- tion of the word ‘kiss’. Thinking about that conversation later, I was not certain if she was referring to an absence of other people, for she had told me quite a few times that they often met each other in buses and at other public places such as the university. She stayed in a women’s hostel in Colombo, and they were not allowed to take male guests to their bedrooms. Moreover, she told me that she hardly spent any time at the hostel, as she was an active member of the student union at the Law College while following a course in social sciences at the university. Often, their meetings took place in crowded buses, when she was hur- rying from one lecture to another, commuting from the Law College to the University, when he accompanied her. Also, she had mentioned in passing that she pinched him and kissed him in buses. In that context, Hishani seems to imply that by absence she means the absence of known people rather than the absence of people. In a manner similar to the use of mobile phones, the presence of known and unknown people impacts upon the space differently. People often told me that they felt comforted when they were surrounded by friends or by a lover, as the presence of familiar faces created a comforting environment. Yet, there was a clear understanding of what could and could not be done when surrounded by known people. These young men and women told me that they do not do more than hold hands when they are with friends and even less when they are with family. What Hishani did was to highlight that an open and public places shared with strangers, such as aboard a bus, could become more private than a private space shared with people one knows, when it comes to sharing intimacies. It is almost like the presence of unknown people is likened to an absence of people, in the same way as

me that her ‘lack of English’ might tarnish her potential of achieving a bright future. She told me that she feels shy when she attempted to speak the few words of English she knew. Yet, when she spoke of acts of physical intimacy, she borrowed English words, as we saw earlier with the word ‘kiss’. She was not the only one. This switching between languages, I thought, could be explained with the degree of familiarity that is associated with them, because one hears these English terms more often and one becomes familiar with the English terms of reference to intimacy than the Sinhala ones. Moreover, I felt that people used the English words to talk about them as that distances the experience from their everyday language. In that sense, the use of this strange yet available language was appealing as it enabled them to speak about things that they are not used to or not comfortable talking about. 156 M. Sirisena they did when they answered telephone calls from their lovers. It is not that my interlocutors were unaware of the presence of unknown people. It was more that the presence of unknown people is not given the same regard as when they are surrounded by known people. It was that lack of regard combined with an illicit licence for intimate spaces to be defned as places where things happened that helped my interlocutors to turn back seats of buses and many other similar places that are overcrowded, with a sea of bodies moving in and out, into their love dens. As for the onlooker, when intimate worlds begin to be enacted in front of their eyes, managing gaze becomes the onlooker’s primary concern. There were a few places that I had defned as quiet places in the gym canteen, where I hung out with my interviewees. I had thought them to be quiet not necessarily because they were quiet, but because they had a way of being cut off from the public, compared to other places within the university. One such place was a row of plastic chairs, affxed on to the terrazzo foor, which was bordering a wall of the student union offce and a corridor running parallel to the badminton courts. This place was by no means, a place hidden away from the public gaze. Though there was a stream of people who walked up and down past that place, there was no need for anyone to stop, unless they wanted to speak with someone who was seated on one of those chairs. Thus, for my interlocutors and me, this space allowed some privacy for us to talk. Once, while I was waiting for an interviewee on the other side of the open hall, facing my little corner, I watched a young man and a woman walk in, head straight to this place, sit in the two chairs at the furthest end which were angularly placed, facing each other. They sat down and quite comfortably begun to talk and caress each other. They seemed less concerned about my presence. Watching them, and then realising that I was peering into someone else’s private world, and I looked away in embarrassment, later realising that I was practising what Goffman labelled as civil inattention and Murtagh called gaze management (Murtagh 2002). On a different note, it was quite evident in my interlocutors’ relationships that display of certain kinds of intimacy in public had become a sign of commitment to the relationship. These acts such as holding hands assert the young man and the woman as a couple, in the eyes of the public and those of their own. A hand withdrawn or a caress rejected becomes a sign of rejection. It is the fear stemming from similar notions of the absence of intimate assertions that lead Hiranthi, whose 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 157 relationship played out predominantly in phone calls and text messages, to see her relationship as incomplete because she did not have the public recognition of being seen as a couple. As Hiranthi pointed out, hand holding in secret is not enough. My interlocutors embraced those acts that convey recognition, those that assert that you belong (mama eyāge—I belong to him/her) to somebody in the public eye, reminding me once again that for my interlocutors that recognition gave a sense of concretisation to their relationships. Despite the stated and alluded disapprovals to engaging in acts of intimacy in public, being young and being university students, my interlocutors extorted a licence for sexual intimacies in public places. For them, the threats and the rules did not outweigh the need or the desire. They exploited the space that they were grudgingly allowed—the illicit licence they were allowed because they are young people in love, that they are university students who have been led astray by liberal thinking— to engage in sexual intimacy in public places. Most of the young couples justifed their behaviour by pointing out that they would get married to each other, one day. Further, for them, these are not heed- less indulgences but careful engagements with needs, expectations and boundaries.

Borders and Boundaries for Men and Women I didn’t even give that girl a kiss. Later, that girl, she is more ‘active’ than me. Later, she wanted, she, I didn’t have to take her to a flm. She took me to a flm in year 12, year 13 itself. We went. And we went to the balcony. In the end, it was she who gave me the kiss. She was the one who kissed me frst. It was after that, that this nervousness (cakitaya), this nervousness went away. Then I understood that love is not quite what I thought it was. We thought it is a spiritual thing, we don’t even touch her hand. It is like that. Later, that girl, when she and I are compared, she needs the touch (sparśaya) and things like that. Later she wanted me to come home. She fell ill. … she asked me to come home to see her. I went. There was nobody home. After that, she closed the doors, there was nobody home. After that she cuddled up to me (māt ekka turul velā hiṭiya). I was shaking with fear (bayen gæhi gæhi). I was in year 13. If we got caught, they would tie us up, (laughs) we’d be taken to the police.

His eyes glistening with excitement, Amintha relived those moments as he related tales of his frst physical intimate encounter with his former 158 M. Sirisena girlfriend. Barely 18 years of age at that time, he could not believe he was exploring the depths of sexual intimacy and brought out a range of emotions he felt: nervousness, excitement and fear. What was interesting about his account was his rendition of the event as something that happened to him rather than describing it as an encounter that he was engaging in. Most of my male interlocutors, like Anish or Nishan, gloated when they described their feats with girls to me. Amintha, contrarily, denied himself any responsibility or agency by presenting a version of the event that upturned the expected role-play between the man and the woman. Usually, it is the man who takes the initiative, especially in sexual encounters. The woman follows, if she decides to pay heed to the advances. In the few descriptions I was presented with, men and women assumed positions similar to those Jamieson (1998) describes—men appeared as masterful lovers and women appeared to be waiting to be seduced, admiring their men’s mastery and conveying that they are grateful after the event. Amintha’s account deviated from the norm. Using the term ‘active’ to describe his former girlfriend, Amintha highlighted that she was anything but subdued, as women are expected to be. Amintha’s presentation of her hinted that she is someone who is driven by her physical needs and therefore lacked self-control and self-discipline as she transgressed normative heterosexual mating conduct. When Amintha spoke of his experience this way, it has not been long since, he, along with his brother Aravinda, criticised their friends and colleagues for being disrespectful of women, especially girlfriends. The brothers talked at length about how men discuss what they did with women in private, in such a way that they presented the women to be ‘forward’, which insinuated one’s moral laxity. While Amintha chose a less loaded term, ‘active’, to describe his former girl-friend, his account of her act still bore the same connotations, which highlighted her transgressive conduct. As if reading my mind’s working behind my furrowed brow, Amintha interjected and explained that she was ‘active’ because she was “more mature” than he was in her approach to the relationship. Mature as she was, though she was only a year older than Amintha, Amintha claimed that she had a better understanding of what she needed from her relationship. He then diverted my attention away from his accidental slip that suggested he may not be that different to his friends he criticised and told me how he performed differently in his relationships, when compared with his friends and colleagues. 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 159

Amintha explained that despite nervousness, fear and lack of experience, he did what was expected of him and tried to fulfl his girlfriend’s needs. Presenting that as an attempt at mutual caring in their relationship, he tried to emerge as a man who is mindful of a woman’s needs, thereby someone who is different to a “conventional man” (samprad āyika pirimiya). Amintha elaborated that sampradāyika pirimiya considers that his primary duty is to provide materially and emotions do not fgure in their imaginations or equations. Amintha chose to walk away from this tradition and spoke at length about mutuality and sharing in couple relationships. His point of reference here seemed to come from ideas of companionate marriage, fown into local culture through writings of those writers such as Leelananda Gamachchi, which many of my interlocutors recommended that I read. In their speech, Amintha and his male colleagues use the kind of dialogue I describe below to highlight their ‘modern’ ideological stance. They described that conventional Sri Lankan marriages are built in conventional notions of domination and subordination, but they think differently. They think that marriages and relationships leading to marriage should be founded on mutual caring and should be democratic in nature, especially when it comes to pleasure and its fulflment. They suggested that sexual pleasure should be engaged for its own sake, thus liberating it from being a route to reproduction. When I heard them frst, these notions of democratised intimacy resonated with ideas on modern love that Giddens, De Botton, Bauman and their contemporaries have proliferated, where the needs, expectations and their fulflment are given serious regard. However, I soon found out that my interlocutors’ pursuit for democratised intimacy does not allow the same space Giddens allows for fulflment of sexual needs. For my interlocutors, there are unspoken rules of what could and could not take place outside the confnes of marriage. When speaking of fulflling needs, both female and male interlocutors told me that there are things on “this side of the boundary” that are acceptable, acts preceding sexual intercourse such as petting and cuddling. Sexual intercourse, on the other hand, is the prize worth waiting for. Amintha explained:

When you think of love, the true lover doesn’t rush to have sexual intercourse. There is nothing like we have to get it done soon. We are grown up now. I am grown up and so is my girl. We have needs. We are young (tarunai). Some of the others who are of the same age as us, they have 160 M. Sirisena

got married. But to this day, we have not gone into a room or done things like that. Even if we go into a room, we won’t have sexual intercourse. We do things that are below that. If we go, we would cuddle, we would give a kiss, we would get our satisfaction.

My interlocutors, like Amintha, agreed that there is a “right” time and a place for the sexual encounters to take place. However, the argument followed that, since the need for intimate, sexual touch is a basic need, which should and could be fulflled to whatever extent possible, within boundaries. My interlocutors’ solution to the problem facing them was to break the act of sexual intercourse down and glean out layers of intimacy. Firstly, there is the recognition that sexual pleasure is not the same as and does not depend on sexual intercourse or penetrative sex. There was no contestation of the fact that the right time and place for penetrative sex is marriage. However, there are a multitude of activities ranging from kissing to petting to having oral sex, which my interlocutors termed as ‘having sex’ or ‘doing sex’. Thus, for my interlocutors, while penetrative sex is a prohibited act, having sex is not. Throughout this conversation, again and again, Amintha avowed that he did not have sexual intercourse with his girlfriend for, to have done so would be to cross a boundary that he should not have. “I never took her virginity” (mama eyāge kanyābhavaya gatte nǽ), he told me, suggesting that her virginity was not for him to take as he was not married to her. The undertone of this conversation was that it is not a matter of his former girlfriend wanting to or not wanting to lose her virginity, when or to whom. The emphasis was on Amintha taking it from her or not. His claimed that since a large part of her respectability hangs on virginity and being a respectable man, he did not take it. However, he thought it was unfair that when it comes to fulflling their sexual desires, women are placed in a disadvantageous position, because of this association between sex and respectability.

We [men] give ourselves pleasure. It is not something that is wrong and there are no obstacles to it (ēka væradit næhæ, ēkaṭa bādhavakut næhæ). From a certain young age until we get married, if needed even after that, we get certain opportunities to give ourselves pleasure and climax. Now in a context like Sri Lanka, a girl would not get a chance to climax until she marries. Until she marries, she won’t get to climax. Leave that aside. But let’s say a girl was raped by her uncle (gǽnu lamayek tamange māma atin 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 161

anāta velā), and she lost her virginity. But because of that, she can’t get married. That is the situation in Sri Lanka. It is not love they look for. It is virginity.

Virginity, Amintha points out, is a central concern in most Sri Lankan marriages. In the same conversation, he was quite critical of his educated friends at the University, who openly admit that virginity is something they would want in the girl who they get married to. He seemed angry when he pointed out to me the injustice done to women as they are deprived of opportunities for sexual fulflment. Yet, he found it diffcult to turn his back on cultural codes of conduct for he too indirectly accepted that a woman should not lose her virginity before marriage, by telling me that he did not take his former girlfriend’s virginity because it was not his to take. His point was to prove that he is not like those men who exploit women, yet, in doing so, he failed to acknowledge that he may be denying the woman he was in a relationship with for sexual fulflment. Instead, he accepted that a woman’s virginity is a prestigious object on offer, which, by refraining from taking, Amintha was preserving her respectability as well as his. He preserved her respectability as she was not in the right place to give it away, as she is not married and virginity is something given up at marriage. He preserved his respectability by not taking away something that is not his to take as he is not yet married to her. Despite his allusions to modernist mutuality and caring in relationships, Amintha was leaning on the conventional belief that a woman’s virginity is not her own. References to virginity were not mere references to a membrane in a woman’s body. It was a reference to her respectability. Amintha and my other interlocutors pointed out that once she had been in a relationship, a woman would not be able to assert her respectability. It is the man she had been in a relationship with who could vouch for her propriety. The last episode of Chinthana’s relationship illustrated just that. Chinthana, after he broke up with his girlfriend, took necessary steps to assert his former girlfriend’s respectability. Even after they had broken off the relationship, Chinthana kept in touch with his former girlfriend. One day, she telephoned him. Hoarse from weeping, she told him that her parents had found her a man from the same village to get married to. Left with no choice, she wanted to elope with Chinthana. What Chinthana did was something quite different. After having thought things through, he thought the best course of action he could take 162 M. Sirisena was to speak with the intended fancé and inform him of the relationship he had with his former girlfriend. He explained that, since all three of them are from the same village, this woman’s fancé would, sooner or later, hear of the relationship she had with Chinthana. Speaking to him openly about it and describing to him what did and did not take place, as Chinthana saw it, was the best way to assert his former girlfriend’s respect in the eyes of her future husband. Speaking openly about the relationship and what led to its demise would tell her future husband that nothing unbecoming had taken place between the two lovers. “I met him and told him. It’s like this. I didn’t associate her in wrong ways (væradi vidiyaṭa āśraya kalē nǽ). I would never do that kind of thing. It is because of a problem like this that we broke up. I explained it all to him like that”. In and out of relationships, men had the potential to infuence the life course of women they had once been in relationships with through allusions to respectability. However, notions of respectability were not all to do with sexual conduct and who preserved whose respectability differed from one context to the next. It is the work of De Alwis (1997) that infuenced me to categorise ideas my interlocutors expressed as nambuva, gauravaya and hædiyāva under the umbrella of respectability. In her work, she engages with Obeyesekere’s (1984) concept of lajja-baya, which he explains as fear of being shamed or ridiculed. De Alwis expands on this thesis glossing it as respectability, thus paving the way for us to see the currents of power at work in notions of respectability or lajja- baya. Departing from Obeyesekere’s thesis, De Alwis argues that notions of respectability condition the behaviour of men as well as women, and that private/public distinctions Obeseyekere alludes to, when he argues that fear of being shamed was particularly signifcant to men as they were the ones with public roles, are less clear and that respectability facilitated certain roles for women in public domains, which they may not have been able to play otherwise. It was, however, De Alwis’ (1997) attempt to locate the notions of respectability historically that caught my attention, when I refected on the notions of it I encountered during my feldwork. She explains that prominent place lajja-baya occupies in the middle-class conduct is a result of social processes triggered off through colonial education, pointing out that the notions of propriety expressed through bodily gestures, movements and dress that lend to the idea of lajja-baya are part of a civilising mission. It was the people who saw themselves as people of the middle class, both Obeyesekere and De Alwis 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 163 point out, who took on this sense of propriety. It was this middle-class way of being that my interlocutors claimed an allegiance to in their references to respectability, especially when they referred to it as being part of hædiyāva or upbringing. Both men and women I met during the research told me that they exhibit their respectability through their clothes, accessories, speech and the way they conducted themselves among many other things. Many men told me that a respectable woman was one who would engage with men in a particular way, exercising restraint and distance. Touching, standing too close or the use of umba, ban language was unbecoming of a woman.8 Though they did not refer to the same things, rules of respectability applied to men too. For instance, Nayana and Charithra pointed out that men who wear tight jeans, thick silver chains, sleeveless T-shirts and big brass bracelets are automatically preju- diced against, as rastiyādu kārayo, hooligans. The person’s respectability, they told me, comes from the way they dress, the way they speak and the way they interact with men and women. In that way, codes of respectability applied equally to men as well as women and one’s respectability also refected on those with whom she/he associates. Nayana told me that the way she dresses and the way she interacts with her friends at the university could bring her boyfriend praise or shame. She described:

I don’t wear long skirts. I wear short skirts. I have a way I dress. I like wearing short skirts because I fnd it comfortable. If someone looks at me and says “it’s not nice. Your legs can be seen. It’s like you haven’t had a proper upbringing (hædiyāvak nǽ),” then I don’t like that. I don’t appreciate that. I wouldn’t change because of that. But if I were to wear things that are really short or skirts with really long slits, then it is a ‘disgrace’ to him. … Also, if I was in a relationship and if I hang out with a lot of boys, and behave with them in a free manner, then it is not good for him [the boy she is in a relationship with.]

In Nayana’s interpretation of rules of respectability, it is not only the actor who would suffer the consequences, if they behave in an unbecoming way but also the actor’s world, comprising of their families, relatives and friends. Hædiyāvak refers to one’s upbringing. Thus, when someone says hædiyāvak nǽ, that is the criticism of the way in which you have

8 Umba, ban language referred to a familiar and colloquial use of the Sinhala language, which my interlocutors at times referred to as the macaň language. 164 M. Sirisena been brought up, by extension of their parents and family, for it is your parents who bear the responsibility of having brought you up to be who you are. Whatever qualities one displays, they are extended in such a way that it refects upon their kin and friends, because they provide one a network of acceptance and approval as they form a cluster of shared values. That is how Nayana explained how dressing in a way that is not socially acceptable brings disgrace to one’s lover. What Nayana implies is that, since you are in a relationship, you now form a part of a union, a couple. What one does within and outside that union bears implications for the way in which that union is perceived by the larger society. Thus, when she wears clothes that are too revealing and is perceived by society as a woman who does not dress in a respectable way, then these negative views rub off on her boyfriend as he is in a relationship with a woman who does not dress respectably, therefore might not be respectable. However, Nayana implies in her descriptions of respectability that the rules on the issue are far from clear. How short is too short? Should it be above the knee or should it be below the knee? What is a top that reveals too much? The beige skirt Nayana donned on the day she spoke to me about respectability sat about an inch above her knee. Though she was slim and tall, and had the body of a grown-up woman, I felt her childlike face and the southern twang in the tone of voice worked for her beneft, as they saved her from being seen as a “short-skirt wearing loose woman”. The line between respect and disrespect, thus, is a thin one. Yet, one thing was clear, at least for Nayana. One has the primary responsibility of preserving one’s own respectability. As Nayana emphasised and re-emphasised during our meetings, in the frst instance, it is the way you conduct yourself that protects or destroys your respectability in the eyes of the others. Despite trying to appear as if they were less affected by “conventional” discourses of gender and respectability, my interlocutors highlighted that their lives are not disassociated from these ideas that they described as anachronistic.9 In our conversations, respectability appeared as a trope of power and control, which is one self-imposes or is subtly compelled into submission. Women were particularly careful in the way they walked the space of modern expectations, because in their own stories and those of their male contemporaries, it was quite clear that the

9 Sampradāyika, parana, ādī were the words they used, all of which insinuated ‘out of date’. 6 BALANCING BETWEEN PLEASURE AND PROPRIETY … 165 price they would have to pay for transgression was signifcantly higher for women. The threat of compromise is what the rules governing physical intimate behaviours banked on. These rules showed that in these intimate relationships, gendered dimensions of power, respectability and compromise are so entrenched that if one has broken the rules, one is likely to suffer life-altering consequences. This is not to say that young women in relationships did not transgress the professed codes of conduct for sexual relationships. When they bend the rules, my interlocutors argued, that they did so with restraint.

References Barthes, R. (2002). A lover’s discourse. London: Vintage. Biddle, J. (2009). Shame. In J. Harding & E. D. Pribram (Eds.), Emotions: A cultural studies reader (pp. 113–125). London and New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (2000). Appearances aside. California Law Review, 88(1), 55–63. De Alwis, M. (1997). The production and embodiment of respectability: Gendered demeanours in colonial Ceylon. In M. Roberts (Ed.), Sri Lanka: Collective identities revisited (Vol. I). Colombo: Marga. Jackson, M. (1983). Knowledge of the body. Man, 18(2), 327–345. Jamieson, L. (1998). Intimacy: Personal relationships in modern societies. Cambridge: Polity. Murtagh, G. M. (2002). Seeing the “rules”: Preliminary observations of action, interaction and mobile phone use. In B. Brown, N. Green, & R. Harper (Eds.), Wireless world: Social and interactional aspects of the mobile age. Surrey: Springer. Obeyesekere, G. (1984). The cult of the goddess Pattini. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sawiki, J. (1991). Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, power and the body. New York: Routledge. Scheper-Hughes, N., & Lock, M. M. (1987). The mindful body: A prolegome- non to future work in medical anthropology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1(1), 6–41. Sirisena, M. (2016). Making Colombo intimate. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 39(1), 167–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2015.1 132404. CHAPTER 7

Sex Games: Pleasures and Penance

While they claimed that sexual intimacy is the ultimate expression of love and attraction, my interlocutors were not forthcoming on their views and experiences on sexual intimacies. Standing out from crowd, Amintha and Aravinda were eloquent, particularly to advocate for “proper” sex education, which for them entailed openly discussing the physiology, the biology and the psychology behind the sexual intercourse. Taking a self-proclaimed, ‘open-minded’ stance, the brothers highlighted the need for open discussions of the topic telling me that, at the moment, there are no proper measures in place for sex education; while general science syllabus taught in preparation for ordinary-level examination includes a section on the biology of sexual intercourse, teachers gloss over it because they are too embarrassed to discuss it; and that “boys learn sex from x-rated flms” due to which they have unrealistic expectations from sex and that there is no one to turn to advise and help when they are left defated when their experiences fall well short of their expectations. Among divulgements, criticisms and complains, they shared with me what I found most compelling and revealing was a vignette Aravinda shared with me that highlighted their attitude towards sexual intimacy and its consequences:

Now I have another ayya who knows quite a bit about postmodernism. I asked him, we talked about it and he asked me the same question: what would you do if the girl you marry were not a virgin? I said I wouldn’t ask

her anything about it. He scolded me saying I am stupid and I asked why. He says after she lost her virginity, there won’t be records of how many men used her after that.1 He is saying when coconut husks go beneath the Kelani bridge, they won’t leave marks. (Kælani pālama yaṭin pol leli giyāṭa pārawal hiṭinne næhælu)

This reference to coconut husks fowing beneath the Kelani bridge was an image I had diffculty shaking off. In all its crudity, this image invoked a picture of the river which borders the district of Colombo, perpetually weighed under a heavy traffc fow on the bridge overhead. The bridge connects the suburbs of Colombo to the city. Just before meeting the sea in Modara, the Kelani River is at its widest and fullest under this bridge, carrying its weight of murky water and rubbish it had collected on its 90-mile-long journey from the Sri Pada mountain range. A coconut husk that fows under this bridge, in that scheme of things, is inconsequential. Likening a woman’s vaginal passage to this bridge, Aravinda invoked the importance and relevance of virginity to his generation taking it outside its usual haunts of chastity, purity, propriety and respectability and relo- cating it within discourses of trust. He did not agree or disagree with his brother but admitted that his brother’s lecture got him thinking. As he saw it, the simple message Aravinda’s brother was trying to convey here is that, once a woman has had a sexual encounter—be it forced or voluntary—it is impossible to trust her as there would not be records of how many men she may have indulged with, after her initial encounter, and for some unclear reason, there was an insinuation that one cannot take the girl’s claims and declarations as evidence of her claims. Aravinda’s vignette revealed many facets of sexual relations. Implications of taken-for-granted nature of importance of chastity and its direct association with virginity, double standards applied to gauging men’s and women’s sexual behaviours and their consequences, placing emphasis on women’s sexual demeanour as passive and considering virginity to be a seal or proof of trust were some such facets which emerged in Aravinda’s and others’ stories, highlighting that power intertwines and intersects with sexuality in a multiplicity of ways and layers (Foucault 1978; Weeks 1986), which refects its multi-directional and complex and constitutive operations (Brickell 2009). Describing their everyday practices, my interlocutors highlighted the fuidity and multifacetedness

1 My emphasis. 7 SEX GAMES: PLEASURES AND PENANCE 169 of power pointing out how it shapeshifts and moves from dimension to dimension, while having morality at the heart of it all, which is expressed and managed through tropes of respectability. This chapter focuses on those fuid accounts of power in sexuality.

The Push and the Pull Dilan was not in a relationship when I met him during feldwork, not because he did not want to be in a relationship, he could not afford one.2 Looking in from the outside, he had a wealth of stories and observations he felt a need to share with me, particularly stories about what he called ‘sex games’.

From what I see, men want just one thing. Whatever they say, they all need ‘sex’. Some start an ‘affair’ just for sex. Some don’t. Whatever the reason they start it for, they want ‘sex’ from it. Women don’t want it like that. They know, if they give in, that’s the end. So they don’t. They wait as long as they could [before giving in]. Some ‘affairs’ end because of that, because men don’t get ‘sex.’ It’s also a kind of bala aragalaya.

Balaya—carrying connotations of power, force—is a term frequently heard inside the university, which is often used to describe battles students have with teachers, governments, political factions within and outside the university as well as the society at large. Yet, none of my interlocutors who were in relationships used it when speaking with me about personal relationships, probably not wanting to explicitly classify or position themselves as dominating or subordinates in their intimate relationships. Dilan, exercising his privilege of being the outsider, thought he was well placed to discuss it. He explained that he has often noticed in his friends’ relationships, intimate sexual encounters are like a game, where the man would push for sexual intimacy and the woman would do their best, for as long as they could, to hold back. Dilan’s descriptions, like the excerpt I cited, suggest that sex is a male need, to which women cater and that women have an allusion of wielding some power over as they could decide when they engage in sexual relations.

2 As was mentioned before, my interlocutors believed that the inability to pay for things compromised their ability to play the role of a provider, which held them back from starting couple relationships at times. 170 M. Sirisena

However, women’s wishes are curtailed and controlled by men’s ability to override them by threatening to end or ending the relationship and/ or bad-mouthing the woman once the relationship had ended. In a context where it was not recognised as a woman’s need and that any revelations about sexual relations or needs are likely to leave a woman vulnerable, it was no surprise that my women interlocutors were not forthcoming on the topic of sex. Whenever they chose to speak of sexuality in roundabout ways, they spoke of it as an event that takes place as the relationship matures, denying themselves a role in making of the event. Thus, women too presented the view that sexuality is a man’s need and expectation of relationship and that virginity is a prised possession that one loses to the right man. It is viśvāsaya—a concept that refects something akin to a bond based on trust—that determines if the sexual event can take place. Holding oneself back to see if they have found the right man seemed to be a course of action most women followed, and Hemanthi shed light on it telling me that, “it’s about ‘trust’. If you trust him, if you know he loves you, he’s not after some ‘fun’, then you ‘give in’”. For Hemanthi, the ingredient of the relationship that determines whether she should or should not engage in sexual intimacy is trust. Viśvāsaya and ‘trust’ appeared in all conversations with my interlocutors as a pillar in couple relationships, into which various elements such as familiarity, sympathy, empathy and obligation were woven and were present in various contexts. Within discussions, needs and expectations of sexual intimacy, trust was mobilised to recognise that the woman would be compromised and vulnerable after the sexual act and that that will tarnish her respectability unless the man involved follows the due process of following through to marriage.3 Whenever my female interlocutors mentioned trust in relation to bodily conduct, I noticed that an entrenched anxiety manifested, certain fear or an apprehension that highlighted a woman’s vulnerability in the management of her body. In her reference to trust’s role in determining the course of sexual intimacy, Hemanthi hinted at three things that would help her overcome this fear: faith that she has got it right in thinking she knows him; conviction that he will do no harm and preserve her respectability; and submission to his need by exposing oneself. Further, she added a second layer of regulation that determines the course of action: seriousness of

3 I will return to the topic of trust in the next chapter. 7 SEX GAMES: PLEASURES AND PENANCE 171 the relationship. Seriousness is posited against ‘fun’ and presents itself here as an antidote to vulnerability and a way of securing trust. All in all, it was not with notions of pleasure, love or needs that Hemanthi associated the sexual act with but an act of ‘giving in’, which suggests surrendering the power she may have had over her body. In a few words, Hemanthi conveyed that she recognises that she wields a certain power over the progression of the relationship into sexual intimacy and glossed ‘trust’[ing] as the instance of surrendering it. While fears of tarnishing respectability took centre stage in all our conversations about sex, neither men nor women I spoke with associated men’s sexuality and fulflment of sexual needs with men’s respectability, at least not to the extent that they saw engaging in sexual activities with their girlfriends as smearing men’s respectability. This is not to say that respectability is preliminarily a female attribute or that some male sexual behaviours were not criticised. Both men and women criticised indecent and unwelcome advances women were subjected to, especially on buses where they were rubbed against or their bodies caressed, by men who were described as ‘perverts’. ‘Pervert’ or asahanē (repressed) was rarely used to refer to or describe any aspects of women’s behaviours and almost exclusively remained a male domain. It was such terms my interlocutors turned to, when they described men who run after sex, like Nayana did. “Some boys have only one thing on their mind” Nayana told me once, describing Anish—a man younger than Nayana who is studying at the university and who was one of men whom I spoke with at length about his relationships and who also happened to be in a relationship with Hiranthi at the time. At this point, Nayana was not aware that I knew Anish and continued:

they begin ‘affairs’ to take the girl to a ‘room.’ That’s all they want to do. There is this boy at the Faculty – young, in the frst year. Maybe you know him. His character is not that good (ē boyge carite hari næ). He has had a lot of girlfriends. He jumps from one branch to the other looking for what he wants [implying sex]. He’s very popular and everybody knows [he’s libertine]. But girls still go with him. Ayya is not like that. He said it’s okay to wait until we’re married to take things to next stage.

Curiosity got the better of me at Nayana’s rather surprising revelation that she and her boyfriend have spoken about sex, and I blurted “Did you bring it up?” to which she furrowed her eyebrows and responded, 172 M. Sirisena

“no he said it on his own”. Nayana quickly veered me away from this line of questioning asking me if I knew Anish, for which the response did not matter as she continued to berate the young man. For Nayana, Anish’s behaviour displays excesses. It seems that Anish cannot commit because he cannot be sexually gratifed (koccara læbunat madi—whatever he gets is not enough). While Anish nor Hiranthi said anything about Anish’s libertine behaviour, they both acknowledged that Anish fnds it diffcult to commit to one person and rather than describing him as a Casanova, they declared that Anish has ‘commitment issues’. According to Hiranthi, rather than having multiple relationships with women at the university, Anish ‘firts’ and likes to maintain an air of availability that would appeal to young women and help him be popular among them. Also, in a close circuit community such as the university, where everybody seems to know of everybody else’s business, it will not be easy for Anish to move from one woman to another, as Nayana put it. However, what mattered for Nayana was that Anish ‘firts’ and that he may be having multiple partners because of it and irrespective of what he did with them, that was enough for Nayana to brand Anish as a Casanova. For her, it is these excesses that tarnished his respectability/character (caritē). Her implied argument was that he is driven by the urge to fulfl his sexual needs and sexuality is an urge that a man as well as a woman is ought to control. As proof of Anish’s tarnished caritē, Nayana told me that Anish has a ‘reputation’ at the university.4 However, when I asked her if that stops women at the university from wanting to get into romantic relationships with him, she smiled and shook her head, saying “he’s ‘handsome’”. Then, she explained that a friend of hers too likes (kæmaætii) this man, yet Nayana advised her against it because it is likely that the relationship would not lead to anything and when that happened, people would start talking about what she may have got up to with him, whether she did anything with him or not. The suggestion here was that, by being with a man who has a questionable reputation, a woman’s respectability too will become questionable, suggesting that a woman is more vulnerable than a man in sexual conduct. While Nayana considered the inability to control sexual urges a lack or a failing, some others described it as a pathological character faw. Describing a friend’s predicament after a break-up of his relationship,

4 ‘Reputation’, in this kind of usage, indicates being known for, and it is not in a good way. More often than not, it is used to refer to being morally lax or loose. 7 SEX GAMES: PLEASURES AND PENANCE 173

Madura described the friend’s condition as asahanē (eyaṭa asahanē). While most would interpret asahanē as unrest, Madura’s insinuation was his friend was suffering from a mental condition that is brought on by suppression of needs. All the while he described his friend’s predicament, telling me that all that his friend did was moan and mope about his broken relationship, Madura kept smirking. While nothing Madura shared with me explicitly indicated that it was the lack of a space for sexual intercourse that left his friend was left broken after the break-up, for Madura the reasons were obvious: Eyaṭa ‘release’ ekak nǽ (he doesn’t get a ‘release’). Though Madura did not condemn his friend’s conduct out rightly, the debasing tone he used to narrate that episode highlighted Madura’s attitude towards his friend’s inability to curtail his emotions. Madura distilled his friend’s emotions, whatever the range of emotions his friend may be experiencing and expressing, into an inability to fulfl sexual needs and summarised that the event of the break-up has led his friend to a pathologically restless state of mind. Most of my female interlocutors finched whenever I broached the subject of sexual relationships, needs, desires or anything vaguely related to the theme. Not only were they not forthcoming with details, as they were when we discussed other things like gifts, but also they giggled and blushed and almost always struggled for words, when they tried to speak about sexual relationships. When I refected upon women’s demeanour when we talked about sex, it always took me back to my meeting with Dulanjali. Dulanjali was a fair, slender girl who was soft-spoken. Her hair middle-parted and plaited, dressed in long-skirts and blouses with long-sleeves whenever I met her, for me, she represented the “woman of everyman’s dream”, as I was told by male interlocutors. She has been in a relationship for over two years at the university, and though she sought me out, she was not forthcoming with her stories and she offered no reasons as to why she sought me out, like Bindu, Hiranthi or Nirasha did. Every time I prompted conversation, she smiled a shy smile and looked down towards the foor while she gave me her pithy answers. The conversation felt stilted and dead, until I asked her about the kind of things they do to show our lovers what we feel for them. Blood rushed to her cheeks. She looked at me and down at her feet and mumbled “anē, maṭa ēva gæna kata karanna læjjai” (oh, I’m too shy to talk about it). I found it amusing because I was not referring to sexual intimacies when I asked her about ways of showing love. We were talking about gifts when I asked her if she thought there were other ways 174 M. Sirisena to show love. Dulanjali’s quick association of demonstrating love and sexual intimacies pointed out that it is not that they do not think about desires and physical intimacies. They, it seemed, prefer not to talk about it. When or if they do, they spoke through insinuations. Once, I was chatting with Kamani and two of her friends, when Kamani stroked her left arm and said that it is hurting. Her friends were quick to turn what started as concern into teasing, asking her what she did the night before for her arms to hurt. She blushed, turned her head down and said that the hurting had nothing to do with the kinds of things her friends were alluding to. Despite the legitimate space her marriage provided for sexual intimacy, it was as if she felt it was inappropriate for her to be speaking of sex, let alone speak of her needs and desires, suggesting that virginity is not merely a matter of a membrane but a disposition of, maybe feigned, innocence about all matters to do with sexuality that continue well into marriage. The concept of virginity and its environs has an extensive infuence on the preserves of respectability and that silences women on speaking their needs, expectations, about what they do as well as what is done to them. Dulanjali embodied such a disposition. When I asked her why she is shy, she turned her head up ever so slightly to look at me and said “[I’m] shy” a second time, not showing any anger or annoyance at my persistent prodding but being coy in such a way that, eventually, it made me feel uncomfortable enough to not pursue the line of questioning further. Dulanjali’s proclivity to be subdued made me think of a conversation I had with Bimal. Bimal was speaking about his girlfriend and their shaky relationship. His description of his girlfriend refected their roller coaster relationship, which Bimal said was brought on by clashes of religion and class. His inverse-flled account described her as chaste (chām), compassionate (karunāvantai) tread lightly on life (sæhælluven jīvat venne), but her women’s ways (gæhæṇu gati) appeared when she needed something he was not willing to give. Apparently, her conniving guiles (kaṭṭai) included things like crying softly, looking defated, giving him one-word answers in a soft tone, and Bimal concluded, “in whatever way, she gets what she wants acquiescently” (kohoma hari eyata ōna dē yāppuven kara gannava). When they spoke of it in circuitous ways, my female interlocutors admitted that “virginity” is something they wanted to hold on to, until they were married. They seemed to have accepted the idea that a woman who has had premarital sex is a compromised woman, maybe not so much because they agreed with it but because of a cultural reality that 7 SEX GAMES: PLEASURES AND PENANCE 175 faced them every day. However, it is not that they did not have “needs” (avaśyatā), as Hishani concurred, “everybody needs the warmth of love” (ādarayē unusuma hæmōtama ōna). Their solution was to engage in less compromising behaviours, the acts “on this side of sex” as Amintha described them, which included everything apart from penetrative sex. In spite of whatever that they did within the confnes of their relationships, which hinted that they did not agree with outdated modes of thinking on propriety and respectability, the idea that a woman’s respectability is closely linked to her sexual behaviour was something no woman openly criticised, suggesting that to criticise it is to reject it and that women may reject it because they have crossed the boundary of respectability, which eventually insinuated that they are compromised because their respectability is compromised. Nor did my interlocutors question the passive roles women were assigned in sexual encounters. Women saw themselves with a sense of passivity, as people to whom things are done to, rather than those who would do things. Being a recipient of acts, the woman did not express her desires. These were refected in Amintha’s thoughts, which I described in the chapter, where he insinuated that woman should not take the initiative to instigate action in sexual encounters. When and if they do, it is something to take notice of and speak of, even in the subtlest of tones. “It was she who gave me the kiss frst” outlined this succinctly.5 Amintha’s guru Leelananda Gamachchi (1998) argues that most Sri Lankan women see sexual intimacy to be a duty she needs to perform for her husband. While Gamachchi invited young people to reject these ideas that he saw as archaic, his audience at the university did all but that. When talking about sexual relationships, most of my female interlocutors alluded to similar ideas, which Gamachchi calls archaic. Kamani summed up the numerous words spoken by many women when she said, “if he doesn’t get it here, where else would he get it from?” For them, sexual intimacy is an expression of love—as Dulanjali who was quick to associate ways of showing love with sexual intimacy showed. Yet, when speaking about them, sexual intimacy is alluded to, not so much in terms of fulflling their own desires but in terms fulflling the needs and desires of the man in her life. For men, Amintha pointed out, it was a different state of affairs.

5 Emphasis not mine. 176 M. Sirisena

Amintha: Boys, among boys, they talk about their sexual exploits (kerumkārakam). If they go to prostitutes, they go to prostitutes when they get their Mahapola. And they come back and talk about it. They say they did this and they did that. They gloat. Me: Do they talk about their girlfriends too? Amintha: No No. They don’t talk like that [about their girlfriends]. But if they ever break up, then they come and say this happened, this is how she kissed at the cinema, this is how she bit my ear, and they go on.

Amintha gave me a glimpse into a world I did not have access to, a men’s world where they boast about their sexual exploits and experiences. Amintha showed me that men recognise that they have needs and fnd other ways to fulfl their needs if they cannot fulfl them within their couple relationships. They take measures to preserve their girlfriends’ respect by not talking about their intimate exchanges with their girlfriends to other men. However, he showed me that the same does not apply if they break up, underscoring a certain vindictiveness, exploitative power a man is afforded, and exploited when they wished to. Amintha later added that many men do not hesitate to exercise this power, and some of them even make up stories as well (atinut dāla kiyanava). The exploitative sex speech where men exploit the power they gain through sexual intimacies by speaking of their former girlfriends in debasing ways highlighted, albeit in a twisted way, why trust occupied the position it did in these relationships and why some hinted that trusting is about taking risks. In this scheme of things, trusting seemed to be about exposing oneself to the person they wish to share their lives with and it is a risk, because, in case the relationship goes sour, then it is not only the heartache one would have to worry about, it is also the risk of having one’s dirty laundry hung out in public.

“Trap Them In!” Amintha: When the second girlfriend broke up with me, what my friends and ‘seniors’ said was that “you’re stupid. When you get into a relationship with a woman, give it to her (kellaṭa 7 SEX GAMES: PLEASURES AND PENANCE 177

ātal dīpaň)”.6 If I were to use their words, give it to her (ǽkiṭa vædē dīpaň). Squeeze her this. Squeeze her that. Take her to a flm. Me: That is to touch her? Amintha: Yes to touch her. To rid of her virginity. … That is, when you start a relationship with a girl, rid of her virginity (kellek yālu vunagaman ǽkige kanya bhāvaya næti karapan). Then, she won’t leave you. (Etakoṭa, ǽki umbava dāla yanne nǽ). Then, she can’t leave no?

Amintha was bewildered by his friend’s advice. He told me that he was disgusted at this suggestion, which saw an act of love being transformed into one of power and control. “What bothered me most”, he added, “you know, it’s because of our culture. It lets a man do that to a woman”. Amintha explained that culturally having penetrative sex had serious consequences (gæmburu prativipāka) for unmarried women, for a woman who has had her sexual needs satisfed was a compromised woman. Having given up her prized possession, her virginity, she is left with no choice but to stay in that relationship. The choice of being able to walk out of a relationship anytime it pleases him, Amintha added, is a luxury only men enjoyed:

Now we say, now boys say, this stupid idea about virginity in the society, our boys, they make it a weapon. They make it a weapon and they say, the majority, the minute you start going out, take her virginity, take her virginity then she won’t leave you. But that’s not the problem. Now, they try to keep her by force. The boy can have a few relationships and see if the girl is good or not. But a girl, if a girl gives a word at a certain point, on that basis when she is taken to a ‘room’ and her virginity is taken, she gets only one chance to decide the path her life should take. She won’t get a second chance because then she has lost her virginity. Whoever the devil he is, she has to be with him. She won’t get a chance to marry another man. That is not love.

6 Ātal is a word loaded with meaning I struggle to translate. On the one hand, I felt I could not capture the meaning of this colloquial term in Sinhala itself. In previous contexts when I have heard this word used, it implied something good. For instance, ǽka ātal implied that it was good or great. Employed differently, in the context of Amintha’s interview, it carries connotations of pleasure, yet, with a certain vindictiveness attached to it, as it implies a certain bond that the act of lovemaking should not imply. 178 M. Sirisena

Positing all powers to decide the course of a couple relationship in a man’s hands, Amintha painted a picture of a ruthless man, who acts devi- ously to trap a woman into a relationship, whether she wants to stay in it or not. He repeatedly told me that the only point at which a woman may have a chance at deciding the course of her relationship was the point at which she gives her word and this word was not necessarily a nod to sexual intercourse. It was that initial nod of interest in starting a relationship. Once that is given, the woman seems to be at the mercy of the man, who takes advantage of the compromised position she puts herself in by declaring her love or commitment, for then, he has the power to “take her to a ‘room’. Rid her of her virginity”. Once the act has taken place, the man can leave a woman if he pleases, but a woman cannot. Once a woman has had sexual intercourse, she is left anātai—lost, with no future, hope or life to look forward to. It is as if she were a tool that has outlived its use. Amintha shared a story about a woman whom he did not know personally to prove his point.

… now, there was this senior ayya in our room. He is from Anuradhapura. He was in a relationship with an akka from Kelaniya. She is not that beautiful. He was going out with her and they had sex and now she is no longer a virgin. Now after that he started a relationship with an akka from our campus. He had sex with her too and she got pregnant. Now she’s having a baby. Now because she got pregnant, the two families decided to marry them off. She’s pregnant no? The other was anātai.

Anātai carries implications of lead astray, where a strong sense of vulnerability, lack of a future and desolation is emphasised. Amintha used this story to highlight unfairness of the status quo—to recognise that it is not fair and should not be done. His outburst sounded more like an engagement with and criticism of society’s images of a man and a woman, that of the narcissistic man and the woman who willingly subjugates herself to male domination. It was a criticism of social expectations. Seeing the passion with which he criticised this social injustice, I could not help but wonder, was he ready to cross the line? What does he think of premarital sex and virginity? Would he accept a woman he knows is not a virgin as his wife? His irresolute answer did not surprise me.

Now I thought, our friends ask me when we talk about virginity what I would do if I realise on my wedding night that my girlfriend is not a 7 SEX GAMES: PLEASURES AND PENANCE 179

virgin. A serious question. It is because I live in this society with this culture. Actually, I thought refexively. I talk to my teachers a lot. Actually, if I am in such a position, I won’t ask her a thing. That is because I am, now we climax everyday no? We climax every day. We climax every day. But what about her? Now I’m not talking about love. But I’m asking can’t she not make that fault/mistake/wrong-doing (ayāgen ehema varadak sidda venna bærida)? None of us have reached that higher spiritual plain (api kavurut rahat vecca minissu nemei). We all have needs. None of us have reached that higher spiritual plain.

If he were facing a situation where his partner had had sexual intercourse prior to being with him, Amintha found acceptance on premises of forgiveness. Making a statement of his chivalrous nature, he chose to for- give the fault/mistake/ wrongdoing (varadak) the girl has committed, since she too has needs. For him, being an educated, modern man, this is what is expected of him. It is this kind of thinking that distinguished him from ākalpanīya atin pahat mōḍa harak (those bovines who are low in their thinking). He did not see that, despite the exposure and the intel- ligence he claimed for himself, he did not go so far as to say that the woman did nothing wrong when she indulged in the satisfaction of her needs in the frst place. Despite being a modern man with a higher education, he implied that he does not have power and/or the will to cross the cultural barriers defning a woman’s respectability to say that she did nothing wrong. Instead, he chose to focus on his inability to change the way of the culture: “… I live in this society with this culture”. Amintha’s tirade suggests that he accepts the Sinhala cultural truth that it is the man who has the power to choose and make decisions on how the couple conducts themselves in sexual encounters. He insinuated that cultural notions of respectability and proper conduct are forms of violence enacted on the woman’s body, as she apparently lacks the ability to do as she pleases with her body. Though, on this occasion, Amintha candidly acknowledged women’s lack of choice as a form of violence, in the better part of the conversations I had with my interlocutors— those with Amintha, Aravinda as well as others—references to violence remained veiled yet unacknowledged. Veiled references to control, curtail and abuse were scattered throughout the stories I encountered during feldwork. Movement watching in terms of making the woman come home at a particular time, walking them home or walking with them if they visit new places, urging them to inform/seek approval to go places, 180 M. Sirisena restraining their conduct through money, managing money for them, deciding on how to spend money, even if it is the woman who brings money into the relationship, discouraging them from looking for part- time work and advising them on what to and what not to do in public as well as in private are some examples of such instances where woman faced coercive control. Disconcertingly, however, some of these acts, such as being walked home and having money managed were among what women sought from relationships, which highlighting that the line between love and coercion and protection, and control is a very thin one.

An Enabling Environment More often than not, in Sri Lanka, it is men who are portrayed as perpetrators of domestic violence. Many non-governmental as well as government organisations have carried out campaigns to raise awareness on domestic violence.7 Referring to domestic violence in the forms of physical as well as emotional abuse, these advocacy campaigns highlighted the perpetrator’s role men play in violence, pointing out that often, violence is directed at women and children. When women were portrayed as perpetrators of violence, children were the victims. These stories of violence women perpetrated were often contextualised as occasions of women taking out their anger and frustration on the weakest link of the family. A woman’s disposition, as I have pointed out before, is perceived as non-violent. Thus, for a woman to contradict her disposition, the argument followed, she has to have been violated, more often than not, by men around her, which implies that men are the real perpetrators behind all acts of violence. Often, it is deemed that alcoholism sparks off violence, and men use their status of inebriation to settle squabbles over fnances, kin and other related household decision-making (Kottegoda 2004; Gamburd 2008). The male penchant for violence among the Sinhalese, not differently to elsewhere, is closely associated with performances of masculinity. Among the Sinhalese, this spins out from a male disposition which Jeganathan (2000) describes as baya næthi kama or fearlessness. Baya næthi kama, as Jeganathan describes it, is a display of fearlessness of the possibility of danger and harm one could cause one’s body.

7 Wijayathilka, K. 2001. “Role of NGOs in addressing violence against women”, in Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR)/UNFPA (ed.), Gender-based violence in Sri Lanka. CENWOR for an account of NGO work assessment. 7 SEX GAMES: PLEASURES AND PENANCE 181

Jeganathan illustrates the display of baya næthi kama with a range of instances such as crossing the road riskily, trying to jump over a barbed wire fence unconcerned about the metal spikes sticking out and challeng- ing the authority of the village thug. He (ibid.: 52) argues that baya næthi kama these sort of practices of masculinity create an enabling environment for violence, by abetting and justifying it rather than producing it. Baya næthi kama facilitates aggressive behaviours and violence at different levels. Firstly, one does oneself violence by putting oneself in the face of possible danger or harm while trying to display fearlessness. It is the disregard for physical harm that is revered in acts such as crossing the road riskily or jumping over barbed wire fences. Secondly, revered notions of disregard for physical harm produce a belittling attitude towards violence and harm. Jeganathan (ibid.: 56–59) uses the occasion of a group of young men thrashing a younger boy to illustrate this penchant of disregard for physical harm. On yet another level, as baya næthi kama presents an antithesis to notions of respectability/law/order, attempts to curb or respond to baya næthi kama often take violent forms. These forms of violence intended to respond to baya næthi kama are seen as legitimate, moral and even normative as they pose a threat to normative conduct, and this in turn, ends justifying the occasion of violence. Examples of such normative violence could be “a beating … policemen [gives] a drug dealer … teachers [give] ‘brash, ‘forward’ and imprudent students” (ibid.: 64). This form of normative violence, Jeganathan argues, rather than being antithetical to notions of respectability, is justifed as it is born in response to baya næthi kama. Dispositions facilitated by baya næthi kama and its upshots lend a hand to coercive control in the Sri Lankan context at two different levels. At the frst level, disregard for physical harm enables a general non- chalant attitude towards physical threats and harm and propagates an attitude which urges one to overlook physical hurt, harm and pain one could have caused a person, especially if it were done in a context of ‘love’. This belittling attitude towards bodily harm and pain enables many people to brush off violence, especially in the domestic context, as a minor issue. This attitude is exemplifed in the Sinhalese generic attitude towards domestic violence, which manifests itself in Sinhalese adages such as “anger between a husband and wife is only until the pot of rice gets cooked”. When associated with dispositions repeatedly, penchant for violence becomes naturalised to such an extent that wife beating comes to be seen, not only a sign of masculinity, but also a natural response to hardship and shortcomings one faces in family life (Gamburd 182 M. Sirisena

2008). At another level, the space that baya næthi kama allows for the practice of normative violence is exploited to discipline and keeps women in check as displayed in some instances of coercive control. Keeping women in check is cogently discussed in writings on nationalism, especially in the South Asian context, where it is pointed out that the need to keep women in check stems from the place women occupy as bear- ers of culture. Hyndman and De Alwis (2004) argue that in Sri Lanka, women’s role as guardians of morality and culture was propagated with vigour, particularly in the context of the prolonged ethnic confict. They (ibid.: 541–542) elucidate their position:

Sri Lankan women, be they Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim, continue to be constructed as the reproducers, nurturers and disseminators of ‘tradition’, ‘culture’, ‘community’ and ‘nation’. Such perceptions have not only legit- imised the surveillance and disciplining of women’s bodies and minds in the name of communal/national ‘morality’ and ‘honour’ but they have also re-inscribed the expectation that whatever women may do, they are primarily mothers and wives – they have to marry and have children and the domestic burdens are solely theirs.

Hyndman and De Alwis argue that this ideology imposed a double burden on women: a woman is destined to inhabit a home-bound role as she is best placed to be the guardian of morality and, because she is the guardian of morality and since she will be imparting knowledge on morality to the next generation, it should be ensured that she does not go astray. My interlocutors embraced the ideology at both these levels. Both men and women I spoke with claimed that the best place for a woman to be is home, bringing up children. Only a handful of women I spoke with saw employment to be fulflling a need other than a fnancial need. Consequently, this ideology shaped how my interlocutors approached instances of control and violence. Whenever my interlocutors, mostly men, made veiled references to violence, particularly in the form of control, these were made on the premise that some female behaviours, which they deemed inappropriate, must be corrected and the use of some forms of violence is appropriate if it were employed as a means of correcting behaviour. These forms of violence took the shape of normative violence, and the most prevalent examples of such forms were of men scolding their girlfriends for having done things that they should not have, as Aravinda did when he found out that his girlfriend 7 SEX GAMES: PLEASURES AND PENANCE 183 had gone to the university on a Saturday. Whenever men talked about such instances, they were followed with the allusion that their girlfriends are naïve and did not know better. Susantha’s claim that he advised his girlfriend as he would have advised his younger sister, had he had one, illustrates this point well. These presumptions liken women to children, and, as most Sri Lankans do with children, some forms of reprimand are acceptable if they are done to stop women/children from doing things that are unbecoming or dangerous. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, the frameworks for this kind of power relations, where women are placed in subordinate positions, are laid at the inception of relationships, when lovers position themselves in romantic relationships as ayyas and nangis in love. In positioning themselves in such familiar confgurations, where ayya—old and knowledgeable—could advise and control the behaviour of nangi—young and immature—young men and women lay the foundation on which power relationships of similar sort could be enacted. When my interlocutors referred to moral codes and norms associated with sex and violence, they spoke of them as if they were innate, located somewhere within themselves, in spite of whatever resistance they may feel or display towards them. Ruwanpura (2011) illustrates that women in a similar cultural location, a university few miles from Colombo, had internalised these ideologies about sexuality, respectability and propriety to such an extent that they would castigate themselves should the unspeakable should happen to them. Ruwanpura presents the self-vilifcation of a damaged baḍuvak, a woman who was ‘damaged’ because she lost her virginity when she was raped and abused. The man she was in a relationship with at the time “forgives” the woman in question as she lost her virginity through no fault of her own though he continues to describe the event as “her mistake”. The woman’s response to what she sees as her boyfriend’s self-sacrifcial act of forgiveness is to say, “you’re too good to me … [I’m damaged] because this [rape/loss of virginity] happened to me” and to suggest that they break up. The vignettes I was made privy to during feldwork elucidated that sex and power have a close relationship, which is fltered through layers of trust. Despite their inclinations to speak of mutuality and choice that Giddens-esque relationships are founded on, in their conversations about trust in couple relationships, my interlocutors revealed that their couple relationships are far more complicated and precarious than meets the eye. They saw their relationships as perilous commitments that need careful management and relied heavily on pillars of trust. Trusting was a risk 184 M. Sirisena they took, yet it was an investment. As with a bad investment, the consequences of misplaced trust could be costly. Trust in their relationships was far more complicated and precarious. These precariously positioned ideas of trust, however, fulflled a need that most young men and women sought in life—they brought them the magēma kenek (someone of my own) they sought. The ideas of magēma kenek spoke of owning: the need to own as well as the need to be owned. All young men and women found comfort in the knowledge that they have or will have someone of their own and that they do or will belong to someone. Owning meant caring. Owning meant unconditional and unhampered being with. Owning and being owned conveyed some sense of fulflment. Owning meant obligation.

References Brickell, C. (2009). Sexuality and the dimensions of power. Sexuality & Culture, 13, 57–74. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-008-9042-x. Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, Volume 1: An introduction. London: Penguin Books. Gamaachchi, L. (1998). Lingikathwaya haa vivahaya: Jeevithaya gana dana gan- imu. Colombo: Wijesuriya. Gamburd, M. (2008). Breaking the ashes: The culture of illicit liquor in Sri Lanka. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hyndman, J., & De Alwis, M. (2004). Bodies, shrines, and roads: Violence, (im)mobility and displacement in Sri Lanka. Gender, Place & Culture, 11(4), 535–557. Jeganathan, P. (2000). A space for violence: Anthropology, politics and the location of a Sinhala practice of masculinity. In P. Chatterjee & P. Jeganathan (Eds.), Subaltern studies XI: Community, gender and violence. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Kottegoda, S. (2004). Negotiating household politics: Women’s strategies in urban Sri Lanka. Colombo: SSA. Ruwanpura, E. S. (2011). Sex or sensibility?: The making of chaste women and pro- miscuous men in a Sri Lankan university setting (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh. Wijayathilka, K. (2001). Role of NGOs in addressing violence against women. In Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR)/UNFPA (Ed.), Gender based violence in Sri Lanka. Colombo: CENWOR. CHAPTER 8

Magēma kenek: On Future and Certainty

“All I want is someone of my own”, Bindu told me, fnally settling into a chair facing the grilles that separated the narrow corridor where the table we sat was at, from the badminton courts. We had moved at least three times that morning, looking for a place that was quiet. She seemed anxious, irrespective of where we sat, and kept looking over her shoulder every two minutes while fddling with her phone. She sought me out, through her friend Nirasha. She told me that she had anger management issues (maṭa ikmanaṭa kēnti yanava) that got in the way of her relationship. She wanted to talk to someone about this and thought I may be able to help. She knew it was too late to save or to try to resurrect her previous relationship. It was her future that she was concerned about. She feared that her quick temper would be a spoiler in her future relationships as well. Bindu and her boyfriend of two years, Nilanga, had decided to end their relationship after struggling to make it work. “We fought all the time and he told me that I get angry all the time”, Bindu explained, through tears. All she wanted, she reiterated time and again, was someone of her own (magēma kenek), someone she could stay close to (mage laňgin inna kenek). Bindu was not alone in her search for magēma kenek. My interlocutors often spoke of magēma kenek, laňgin inna kenek as something they look for in their romantic relationships. What is laňgin inna kenek all about? What does magēma kenek imply? Proximity and ownership were the frst two words I turned to, to capture the meaning of these

© The Author(s) 2018 185 M. Sirisena, The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka, Culture, Mind, and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76336-1_8 186 M. Sirisena references. In doing so, I was wrapped up in the literal translation of the words laňgin and magēma, for, literally translated, magēma means my own and laňgin means proximity or nearness. Drawing from the discussions I was exposed to on intimacy and power, I associated these ideas of laňgin and magēma with intimacy. Yet, while insinuating intimacy, I realised later, magēma kenek/laňgin inna kenek suggested that it is stability that my young participants sought from their romantic relationships: someone who could and would be an anchor in their lives. The crucial ingredient my interlocutors expected a couple relationship to bring into their lives is continuity. Yet, the future is uncertain as my interlocutors often reminded me as well as themselves. “Who knows what will happen tomorrow?” Thus, to go on with life, their actions seemed to suggest, the future needed to be injected with some sort of predictability. As Stevenson (2009) points out with her work with Inuit youth, predictability is brought on with planning. To plan, one needs some sense of stability and continuity and this is what magēma and laňgin inna brought into the lives of my interlocutors. What is it that one can inject into a couple relationship to make it last? Spoken of in terms of an intimacy of the minds, my interlocutors suggested that it is under the umbrella idea of magēma kenek/laňgin inna kenek that everything they sought in a relationship came together. It is what facilitated the growth of the relationship that began with attraction and lead to the point of its consummation. Magēma kenek/laňgin inna kenek is not happenstance. Nor is it a mere leap of faith. It is hard work. It includes taking risks. Conversations about fnding someone of their own presented themselves as moments of refection. Having invested in the relationship through things and being, this is the moment, where they took a step back to refect on the future. In the way my interlocutors sought magēma kenek, gender differences, Cancian (1986) attributes to romantic love seemed irrelevant, for both men and women spoke of their desire and need for a magēma kenek to hold, love and trust. Speaking of something that resembled what Jamieson (1998) describes as disclosing intimacy, my interlocutors spoke of the importance of sharing, trusting and understanding, when they thought of magēma kenek/laňgin inna kenek. Working towards “really knowing”, my interlocutors spoke of exposing the ones they love to that “privileged knowledge to an inner self only permitted to those who are loved and trusted” (ibid.: 9). In such sharing, there is an embedded vulnerability, as those who share have to trust that the confdences that are shared will not be betrayed and the 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 187 shared privileged knowledge will not be used against them, if the relationship were to fail. Orienting themselves towards a future, my interlocutors agreed that the risk is worthwhile because, as did Swidler’s (2001) American couples, a marriage that is grounded in virtues of self-knowledge and honesty stands a better chance of success. The intimate sharing of selves that was insinuated in magēma kenek/laňgin inna kenek, in this sense, was a step towards deep embedding in the relationship. It is where one took risks by sharing in a way that might position them in compromising situations. It is the point where refection reveals if they have got it right, in terms of compatibility, expectations and their views of a shared future. Above all, it is an antidote to uncertainty inherent in life itself. Following my interlocutors, I present this chapter as a moment of refection, in which I engage with their ideas of what paves the way for magēma kenek/laňgin inna kenek: sharing, trust and understanding.

Sharing Is Caring After being together with each other for longer than a year, what Aravinda appreciated most about his relationship was that, in Shivanthi, he found someone of his own. Explaining what he meant, Aravinda told me:

[in romantic relationships] We expect a kind of sharing that is different to all other relationships. If I were in pain and shared my painful experience with one of my friends, there is a slight chance of the friend talking behind my back, if we fall out one day. It’s not like that when you’re in a relationship. You can tell her anything, because I trust her and she is someone close.

Aravinda appeared as a spokesperson for his peers and friends when he distinguished the kinds of sharing that takes place within romantic relationships from other relationships. My interlocutors spoke with one voice when they reiterated time and again that to share is to show one that they care. Sharing is a theme that ran through all our conversations, and as it has been established throughout this book, there are different ways of sharing. There were signifcant acts of sharing, like a handmade gift or a meaningful card. Making an effort to do mundane things together, at least at the same time if not in the same space, too is a way of sharing, as it is with lunchtime calls. Sharing was not only about sharing what one 188 M. Sirisena has. Sharing is also about holding oneself back from things their boyfriends or girlfriends cannot have. Hishani lucidly elaborated on this kind of sharing and told me that her boyfriend does not eat things that he knows she does not have the privilege of having:

Though I get to eat well at the hostel, I often see a difference in it. Hostel food is not bad but it’s not like what [you] get at home. So, I ask him what curries he had. So, he, so if they had cooked things like meat, he doesn’t eat it. He’s not lying. That’s the truth. One day, he said that they had made a chickpea curry. Or that they had cooked æmberella but he didn’t eat it1. If they have made things that I like, he doesn’t eat it. His mum sends me rice and other things to eat. But still, he doesn’t eat. I tell him, don’t be stupid. I eat well here. But he doesn’t eat.

Food and feeding held a place of signifcance in the lives of my interlocutors. They spoke about food quite often and asking if they have had their meals, and exchanging information of what they had or what they will have to eat fgured largely in everyday conversations they had with each other. “The frst thing he asks when ayya calls is if I have eaten”, Hishani told me, just after having told me the story about æmberella. Linking food to caring is not uncommon, particularly in the South Asian context. Lambert (2000), speaking of relatedness among Rajastani families, says that feeding marks bonds of affection: “… those whom one feeds are those one cares for and who thus are – or can be – relatives” (ibid.: 84–85). She elaborates, “fows of sustenance parallel fows of affection, and the paradigm for emotional and substantive nurturance is, of course, the mother-child relationship, in which actual bodily substance is shared” (ibid.: 85), establishing that in general, caring relationships have incor- porated this association between love and nourishment. Trawick (1992) too, in her rendering of love in a South Indian family, draws our attention to the relationship between love and nourishment. Unspoken love, Trawick explains (ibid.: 92), when it appeared, appeared, not as words of love or words for love, but as acts of love. These acts, she says, “were [ ] common, and as wrapped in cultural signifcations, [such] as eating” (ibid.). In the depictions where feeding and nourishment are associated with showing love, more often than not, women take a key role, keeping

1 Æmberella is a tropical fruit, which is eaten raw as well as cooked as a curry or made into chutney. 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 189 the conventional connection between food/cooking and women alive. Speaking of romantic relationships that are depicted in the Hindi cinema, for instance, Dwyer (2006: 298) says that women demonstrate “maternal tenderness as the woman shows her love for the man in non-erotic ways”. Such maternal tenderness includes the woman expressing her love through acts ranging from cooking to tending to wounds, acts through which she takes care of the man’s body while demonstrating a willingness to submit to the domestic duties expected of her. While majority of the accounts of relationships elaborating love and nurturing position women in roles of nurture giver, Hishani’s story where it was the man who offers and/or withholds himself from food indicates that gender roles, at times, could be reversed.2 While saying “he’s being silly”, Hishani is touched by his act and recognises its signifcance. That is why she wanted to tell me that story. She recognises that, despite running the risk of coming across as silly, her boyfriend, through not eating things that she could not have, especially when he knows that she likes them, is forming a sense of oneness with Hishani. “I will not have what you/she cannot have” seems to be the message that he communicates with this act. In so doing, Hishani’s boyfriend shows that depriving oneself of good food is an equally powerful means through which messages of shared caring could be communicated. As he could not share with her good food or the food that she likes, he resorts to depriving himself to show that he cares. Holding himself back from good food, it seems as if Hishani’s boyfriend is sacrifcing but he sacrifces out of choice. Yet, being an act one commits out of choice, this does not appear as sacrifce. Framing Hishani’s boyfriend’s act in this manner suggests that there is no space for sacrifce in romantic relationships. Elaborating on this idea that there is no space for sacrifce in romantic relationships, Swidler (2001) says that the form of morality of self that her American interviewees sought out “commands individuals to do only what they can do willingly. The autonomous self must freely choose its actions” (ibid.: 148). Buried in ideas of American voluntarism, this sense of free choice suggests that to do what one does successfully, one should do so willingly and if one

2 It could be argued that, it is that Hishani’s boyfriend still lived with his parents, where his mother played the primary role of the nurture giver and if Hishani and her boyfriend shared residence, it may be that Hishani would become the nurture giver, as it is what is expected of her. 190 M. Sirisena does what one does willingly, there is no space for sacrifce. “A person who knows what he wants and acts on that knowledge cannot sacrifce, since anything he truly wants to do is not a sacrifce” (ibid.: 150). In that scheme of things, to speak of an act in terms of sacrifce is to demonstrate either an inadequate self-understanding or a lack of their power to choose. In a similar vein, my interlocutors freed the acts committed in the name of sharing from the clutches of deprivation or sacrifce and reinstated them as signs of commitment. In commitment and everything one does in the name of that commitment, there is no room for sacrifce and obligation. It is not obligation or sacrifce because, as Swidler (ibid.: 153) says, they show “a shared moral understanding of action” and “frame a moral discourse”, which lays the foundation for a shared understanding. Later, returning to the æmber- ella story Hishani highlighted this shared understanding, when she said “he’s ‘sweet’. He knows I would do the same for him if I were in his place”. Inferring to shared understanding, Hishani drew my attention to the position food has in their lives. More importantly, she showed me that holding oneself back too is an equally, if not more, effective way of sharing. This sharing is founded on a set of values, which infuences the course of action one follows. These values were important because, as Swidler (ibid.: 155) very correctly points out, “… not because they are religiously validated or because they express the nature of human existence. Rather, one’s values are right because one has chosen them”. Thus, if one has chosen a person who shares the same values, one has made the right choice of a partner and, in doing so, “in a kind of circular logic, the self becomes both the source and the end of its own existence” (ibid.). This kind of thinking, while wiping out the possibility of obligation and sacrifce from the vocabulary of romantic relationships, makes going to their loved ones a kind of going home. Chinthana, speaking of his past relationship, elucidated on this existential kind of sharing. Likening it to a sort of going home, Chinthana said:

Meeting her is like going home. When I go home, I get into my sarong, drop the face I have for the outside world and just be myself. I can be myself because I know my mother and my father wouldn’t reject me. When I’m with her, it’s like that. I don’t have to pretend. I know she accepts me. I can share myself with her and not pretend (boru mūnu pānne nætuva). 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 191

It is this kind of intimate sharing my interlocutors sought in their relationships in magēma kenek/laňgin inna kenek. To share that natural state of being, one must deeply know the person it is shared with. Love, in the eyes of my interlocutors, seems like something which arises out of a deeper understanding, as opposed to what we hear as conventional romantic love, where one falls in love with the person they see, rather than know. They differentiated attraction from love, and told me that love is possible only if one knows the person they are attracted to. To know the person, one has to communicate and understand what is communicated. Thus, communication and understanding were key things on which the relationship was founded. Opening up, sharing and commitment facilitate communication and understanding. To understand, one has to communicate. Communication is possible where there is trust, and it is trust that turns romantic relationships into the bedrock of commitment, thus distinguishing it from other relationships, such as friendships. Trust is attached to reciprocity and proximity, and it is this insinuated mutuality that gives my interlocutors the security of not being betrayed. In that light, it is no wonder that trust fgured prominently in the conversations I had with them.

Trust Is the Key Trust appeared in every conversation I had about romantic relationships, during my research. Trust meant different things to different people and different things in different contexts to the same people. For some, trust lies in the ability to speak freely, in that ability to share their opinions, day’s activities, friends and family, past, and their hopes for their future. For others, trust is in sharing confdences. Trust is also about trusting them to make or help make decisions. It would not be an exaggeration to say that all my interlocutors saw trust to be the foundation on which stable relationships are formed. They suggested that trust works only when it is shared. It resembled a tie, for to trust someone is to expose oneself. So, in that sense, trust was about not only exposing oneself but also having a sense of continuity through mutuality, which implied an investment. Trust was also about affrming that the judgement to trust was right. Charithra is articulate and immersed herself completely in discussions, whatever we talked about. She refected, drawing from the books she 192 M. Sirisena had read and experiences, those of her own and what she has witnessed, when she tried to make sense of and elaborate on what she was saying. It was with similar zeal that she explained what she sought in a lasting relationship.

Trust is the frst thing (viśvāsaya tamai vædagatma dē). A relationship is founded on and is continued because of trust … What I expect from the person I love is, that is, to get what I expect from the person I love, if I face a problem or if anything troubles me, for him to be there, I need to tell him everything. I tell him everything. It is important to do that. From that, from his reactions I could fnd out about what his understanding of me is. So, if I tell him something, from the way he reacts I could fnd out if I could get what I expect from him, if I were to do something like that. So, you have to say everything, ‘openly.’ You have to understand that you cannot have secrets within the relationship.

Charithra recommended openness and “telling”, as the means through which one could win another’s trust. It is openness that she practises. She elaborated on this and told me that they discuss everything: studies, past, plans they have for future, their families, disappointments, friends, their problems and concerns, each other’s take on world issues, books they have read, flms they had seen—the list seemed endless. Charithra did not see this kind of sharing as a hindrance or a burden. She suggested that it comes naturally. “You would want to share everything with the person you love”, she explained. For her, such unrestricted disclosing was important for a relationship that is meant to last, because it is through such sharing that one could get to know the other. Since the relationship is meant to last and that it relies on sharing, and sharing is based on trust, such unrestricted exposure of oneself is not a compromise. In fact, it is the opposite. It adds strength to the relationship, because not only does it show the two people in the relationship that they could trust each other, such exposure gives them the opportunity to assess their compatibility in terms of the persons they are in each other’s eyes, their dreams and expectations. Charithra highlighted the dual-purpose trust serves with two separate statements about trust: “from his reactions I could fnd out about what his understanding of me is” and “from the way he reacts I could fnd out if I could get what I expect from him”. The trust that is built through being open, in that sense, while being a compatibility check and at the same time, is an assessment 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 193 of the relationship in terms of trustworthiness. The implication underlying Charithra’s statement here is that, if he has a wrong impression of her and if she cannot get what she expects from him, the chances that their relationship would last are slim and the effort they make to build trust would be an effort made in vain. For this kind of trusting to be meaningful, Charithra pointed out, it should be reciprocated with an appropriate response that informs the person that gives trust that their trust is given to a suitable recipient. Dhananjaya’s take on trust is different. A few inches taller than me, Dhananjaya was slight in build and I could have easily mistaken him for a teenager, had I not met him at the university. When I frst met him, he seemed to lack the self-confdence most men I met at the university displayed. Dhananjaya was fdgety and non-committal when I met him frst. The second-time round, his approach seemed different. This time, he did not let his fdgety manner interfere with the unique story he had to tell. He told me that his story was different, when he started telling me about the relationship he had with a woman who was eight years older than him. “She was good to me, and she took good care of me”, Dhananjaya explained, yet he knew that their relationship would not withstand the social pressures. “Her friends thought I was after other things and in the end, she told me that I’m too young for her”. I wondered how this experience infuenced the way in which he envisioned trust. He catego- rised romantic relationships into two clusters, saying that not all of them are driven towards the same end. Then he pointed out that it is only in the relationships that are meant to last that trust plays an important role:

A lot depends on what each other needs from the relationship. If it is just for sex, then there is no love there. In our countries, it is the girl who frst suggests that we should get married. That’s the plan. That’s the target. That’s where things come to in the end. If it is like that, then there should be mutual trust (anňōnya viśvāsaya). No suspicions.

Dhananjaya’s notions of trust resembled the mutually disclosing kind of trust that Charithra described but Dhananjaya was explicit about trust being a means to an end, the end being marriage and the means of trust interject couple relationships with continuity. Yet, it is not an easy matter and, trusting and trust building need to be engaged with carefully. For trust to facilitate a stable and fulflling relationship, it must be reciprocated, both through mutual sharing and mutual response and such 194 M. Sirisena reciprocation is possible when they understand/know each other. He elaborated his point with a recent incident he had witnessed between his friend and her boyfriend.

Now yesterday too, one came and told me that “my boyfriend is suspicious of me (sækai).” The girl comes and says that. She trusts him and tells him everything and it hurts him (eyāge hita ridenava). She has got a proposal and she has told him about the proposal and asked him what she should do. The boy has told her to do whatever she likes to do. That hurt the girl. He speaks hurtful words because he is hurt. At a time like that, viśvāsaya is important. We have to understand each other. She loves only me and I love only her, if you can build trust, step by step, if I know what she is doing, that is mutual trust. That is important. If the trust is there, it is easier to go forward.

For Dhananjaya, victimised twice, his friend’s is an unfortunate situation. To start with, his friend, the girl, is in a helpless situation as there was nothing much she could do to stop her parents from arranging for marriage proposals, for her parents did not know of her relationship. She kept her relationship a secret from her parents because she was not sure if they would approve of it at that moment. Thus, as Dhananjaya described, “she had to play along”. Yet this did not help the situation with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was hurt at her playing along, because for him, her participation in the rituals of marriage proposals erases his place in her life. What Dhananjaya insinuated was that it was the hurt coupled with jealousy arising from the possibility of another man entering her life that made the boyfriend react in the way he did. To deal with his hurt, he hurt her. Despite the problems stemming from sharing too much, Dhananjaya’s solution to the situation did not entail reconsidering what you may want or not want to share with your partner. He saw this as a problem stemming from an inability to empathise. The girl shared the information because there was trust in the relationship. Yet, her boyfriend did not reciprocate it with an appropriate response because he did not understand her situation, thus could not empathise. Dhananjaya’s friend too could not understand how her boyfriend experienced the events and failed to see the situation through his eyes. Bimal too refected on his experience to tell me that it is only when the couple empathise with one another that trusting serves the purpose it is intended to serve. Describing his relationship at the moment as a non-relationship, 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 195 he explained that both he and his girlfriend knew that they could not make the relationship work because they did not share that deep understanding. “At times, it was like we speak different languages”, he told me, describing the fghts and arguments. “I trust her. Whatever said and done, she has not broken my trust. She tells me everything, whether I want to hear it or not” yet that did not offer the foundation on which they could build a serious relationship that would last. Stories of past, future, present, people they interact with, their stories, disappointments, achievements and many other things became signifcant in building and maintaining trust. In the way trusting appeared, it also seemed as if it involved telling everything as well as the concealing something. In some stories, rather than what was told, it was that nothing of signifcance was concealed or that they were not purposefully misled to believe something different that mattered. Sayuri, for instance, told me that she does not share her friends’ secrets with her boyfriend, though some do, because she sees that as irrelevant for their life together. Trust, “should be about understanding each other” she reiterated, distinguishing acts of trust from gossiping and passing judgments on others’ lives. Information shared without understanding, she said, as if she were ana- lysing the stories Dhananjaya and Bimal told me, either become mindless gossip or food for petty jealousies and heartache. Trust and knowing were knit so closely that at times they seemed interchangeable. Someone one can trust, my interlocutors suggested, is someone they knew well.3 To know is to understand. To reach a level of knowing and understanding that facilitated trust, one has to be ‘tuned in’. Nayana elaborated on the need to be tuned in, as she explained that knowing and understanding do not come from sharing anecdotes of each other’s lives alone:

I have to get to know him (haňdunā ganna ōna). I have to learn (dæna- ganna) what his likes and dislikes are, his behaviour, how does he behave,

3 At times, I could not help but wonder why my interlocutors trusted me with their stories, for they did not know me. Later, I realised that, trust indeed takes different forms in different relationships and above all, attached to trust is also an assessment of potential for damage/compromise. Since I was not from their world, it might have been fne for them to let me in on some things about their lives. The cost of this is that this does not pave the way for lasting relationships. This explains why some of them did not seem too keen on keeping in touch, and looking back at the stories I was told, I realised that they were the ones who did not try to hold themselves back when sharing their stories. 196 M. Sirisena

that kind of thing. It might not be thorough, but I have to have a good understanding/knowledge (dænīmak) of who he is … It is not diffcult to do. From the way he reacts to my conduct, I could fnd out if he likes or dislikes my behaviour … From his answers, his reactions, his facial expres- sions, I could learn a lot more than what he says with words. If his face changes, I know that he doesn’t like it, no? If I observe him well enough, I could fnd out/understand (dænaganna puluvan) who he is. A relationship continues because of that kind of thing, no akka? Trust, viśvāsaya is the frst thing.

For Nayana, trusting and knowing seem to mean one and the same thing. Building trust is a form of fne-tuning to the likes and the dislikes of one’s lover. Nayana revealed that there are many layers to knowing. In couple relationships, one must look beyond what is said. That is not to disregard, reject or distrust what is said. It is to look beyond it and be aware of the subtleties of what is said with words. It is through such involvement and commitment that one could get to know another. This deep knowing facilitates trust building, Nayana told me. Being aware of his needs and trying to cater to them, Nayana suggested, are not about pandering to his desires or being untrue to herself or changing herself. As far as she could see, by not doing things that he dislikes, she communicates to him that she knows him, and therefore, is worthy of his trust. Trust, thus, is something that needed to be won or achieved. This knowing/understanding that is facilitated through trust leads people to believe that it is possible for the one you love “to know you better than you know yourself”. Often, my interlocutors used phrases like “I trust him/her more than I trust myself” or “s/he trusts me more than I trust myself” to describe the trusting relationships they had with their partners. Hishani fgured prominently among those who found comfort in the knowledge of “I trust him more than I trust myself”. For her, this kind of deeper understanding does not have to come necessarily from sharing minute details of mundane activities. There are so many things that she keeps from him, things that, she considered, are relevant to their relationship as well as those she considered irrelevant. Once, she told me, she lied to him about working part-time. He has asked her not to work while she is studying, as he did not want her to get distracted. Yet, she found it uncomfortable that she had to depend on him for money. That is why she decided to take on a part-time, short-term con- tract. She looked as if she were in pain when she spoke of that time when 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 197 she evaded his questions about her day’s activities. She told me that she felt her guilt consuming her, when she lied to him. She told me that she found it too painful and later, admitted to him that she was working part-time. While her boyfriend was not happy that she lied to him, Hishani said that he understood her position, for he would have felt the same if he were in her position. The incident concluded with Hishani’s boyfriend reiterating that he does not want her to be distracted looking for work and that she should focus on her education, to which Hishani agreed.4 The incident did not change the way trusting was enacted in their relationship. Hishani told me that they work on the understanding that they did not have to “report on” on their activities of the day. She knew that he did not expect her to “report back [your] every single move”. After having been in a relationship with this man for six years, Hishani did not see trust as proving herself by telling him everything. As far as she could see, once trust is established, there is no need to share all the mundane details of her life. Trust building was a passage that was facilitated through open sharing and once it was established, focus shifted towards a shared future, rather than about the present and/or the past. Planning for a shared future was a sign that they trusted one another. While Hishani reaped the benefts of her investment in trust, Chinthana was not so fortunate. For Chinthana, having that level of trust made it harder when he was compelled to break off his relationship with his former girlfriend because, by that time, they had crossed that hurdle of getting to know each other and trust building. They trusted each other. They understood each other and they respected each other. Thus, it was harder to let go. At times, when it got hardest, Chintana found comfort in the knowledge that it was not a betrayal of trust that leads to the failure of the relationship. It was comforting that his intuition was not misplaced and his efforts to build trust were not wasted, yet it did not make the break-up hurt any less. Knowing, understanding and trust were work in progress. While emphatically telling me that it is important to know the person they are in a romantic relationship with, my interlocutors alerted me to the

4 Instances such as these left me confused, for while they appeared as acts of love and care—he wants her to focus on her education—such instances were also illustrative examples for control and power their boyfriends exerted on my female interlocutors. To whatever extent possible, I have attempted to suppress my discomfort and give prominence to my interlocutors’ accounts. 198 M. Sirisena fact that it is impossible to know a person completely. Highlighting the fact that no one stays the same, they told me that it is diffcult, if not impossible to know someone inside out (ætulāntayenma dænaganna bæhæ). It is diffcult, they suggested, to claim that they know themselves absolutely, for they too change. Thus, knowing is a kind of a provisional knowing. That knowing concerns the present and a shared view that would facilitate unifed expectations of a future. That is why trust and understanding mattered, sometimes more than attraction itself. Comparing attraction with understanding, Nayana told me:

For me, more than looks, it is understanding that appeals to me. It could be someone I don’t like that much. But, say he knows me so well that I feel even I don’t know myself that well. Then I start having good feelings (pæhædīmak) about him. Then, I can’t not love him. It’s not that he would know me 100%. Nobody does. Even I don’t know myself 100%. But to think that someone knows you, it’s nice. If someone knows you and loves you for the person you are, that’s what matters.

Love, as Nayana explained here, stems from that kind of knowing where the depth of that knowing may surprise one by exposing oneself to an awareness of themselves that they previously did not have. Thus, this knowing and understanding is about knowing and understanding the other just as much as knowing and understanding oneself. Understanding is like the mirror that refects a mélange of expectations and elements of compatibility. This kind of knowledge and understanding looks like a mixing of the types of individuals Swidler (2001) describes as the ‘utilitarian individual’ and the ‘attuned self’. The utilitarian individual is an individual who is aware of their desires and needs. To improve one’s life by seeking out what one desires, Swidler describes, frst, they must know what they want. These individuals form relationships with others because they are mutually benefcial, and one cannot and does not impose one’s will or values on the other. As the relationship is founded on mutual beneft, to reap the benefts, the utilitarian individuals must be upfront and honest about their needs and desires and should communicate their needs. To be aware of one’s needs and desires, one needs to be attuned to one’s self. It is by being in touch with their deeper self that they can fnd out what they want and need. By being attuned to oneself, one has a better chance of forming stable relationships because they can communicate their needs and desires better. 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 199

Between the attuned self and the utilitarian individual and being known and understood lies that sense of self that Mead and his followers saw as the sense of self that emerges through the combining of the ‘me’ and ‘I’. My interlocutors found their ‘me’ in the way they were known by their girlfriends and boyfriends. Nayana, as I pointed out earlier, illustrated this brilliantly, referring to the verses her boyfriend writes for her in greeting cards: “… if I have good qualities”, she says, “and if he has ‘identifed’ them, I like him writing about them. That is, I like it that he sees that I possess those good qualities”. When my interlocutors insinuated that trust is about knowing and understanding, they implied that trust is about seeing these qualities one possesses, and by acknowledging them, these qualities are brought to the fore. “When he tells me that I’m generous”, Nayana added, “I know I am. I believe it and I take pride in being generous”. In such light, trusting seems like a process where one takes in “the attitudes of signifcant others” and turns it into their impressions of themselves (Morris 1962: xxiv and xxv). Awareness and refection hold the key in this process, as it is through these that one becomes aware of the self one is. If they were to reach out to another with a view of building a relationship that is stable, then they would have to communicate and work on this awareness that they have of themselves with each other. My interlocutors saw communication as pivotally important to make any relationship a success.

Understanding Is About Thinking and Saying Trust = For a successful relationship, my interlocutors reminded me often that communication is important. Once again, Aravinda was lucid when he elaborated on the importance of communication in his relationship. Explaining what comprised the happiness that he seeks from his romantic relationship, Aravinda said:

The most important thing I want from my relationship is happiness. Happiness is the mental happiness. They say that happiness is the ultimate wealth. Whatever we don’t have, we have to have happiness. Especially, from a romantic relationship, we expect happiness for ourselves. That happiness comes with understanding, mutual trust and things like that. Happiness, lightness of being (sæhælluva) and overcoming the life’s struggles are what are expected from a romantic relationship. … In love, we have someone we could share everything with. … When we keep all 200 M. Sirisena

the hurt and disappointments we collect inside, we boil inside (ætula kækǽrenava). We can’t concentrate. We get angry. We become bad human beings. When you share, the pain is less. It’s like that about good things in life too.

Communication in a trustworthy relationship paves the way for the happy life Aravinda envisioned for himself. Communication is not merely about sharing. As Aravinda insinuated and Gamachchi (1998) states, communication brings other benefts as well. Gamachchi (1998), advising young married couples on ensuring sexual satisfaction within marriage, encourages them to be aware of and communicate their needs and desires. Highlighting the companionate nature of contemporary marriages, he explains that it is through awareness, trust and communication that one could work towards a happy wedded life. It is Aravinda’s brother, Amintha, who frst recommended that book to me. Aravinda soon followed suit. Describing the book as timely, he subscribed to Gamachchi’s ideology that a happy man is a mentally stable man. Mental stability could be achieved when one is at peace with oneself. One can fnd peace through maintaining an emotional balance, Amintha explained, by sharing their victories and woes. Aravinda elaborated on this arguing that bottling up disappointments and anger give rise to mental instability. Thus, sharing them with someone he can trust helps him deal with the negativity resulting from unpleasant interactions. Dealing with these negative emotions constructively would eventually help him reach his potential. The same applied for victories. Drawing from his Buddhist upbringing, Aravinda argued that sharing victories not only lets him share his joys with his loved ones, it helps him maintain his emotional balance by helping him keep composure. “I wouldn’t become too swollen headed” (mage oluva idimena eka ṭikak adu venavā). For Aravinda, “keeping things inside” meant only harm and one can enjoy the true joy of life only when one shares its pain and pleasures. Illouz (2007) proposes an interesting take on the intimacy that is resulted through this kind of openness and sharing. She explains that this form of intimacy emerged in the contemporary west when the psychological discourse on pent-up emotions was mixed with feminist ideas of liberation and stipulated that liberated sexuality through unconstrained disclosure lead to emotional well-being and political emancipation. Citing Masters and Johnson’s work The Pleasure Bond, she says that becoming aware of one’s needs, talking about them, and fulflling them 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 201 on egalitarian grounds became the new norm for successful relationships. This resulted in a realignment of conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Masculinity was realigned around feminine conceptions of self, that is, it necessitated that men be more aware of their feelings and respond to them. Women, it suggested on the other hand, would become more autonomous, self-controlled subjects. This intertwining of therapy and feminism around the concept of intimacy, Illouz argues, has produced a process of rationalising intimacy. To rationalise, one needs to disengage with feeling by refecting on what one feels. Illouz argues that refecting on what one feels leads to an intellectualisation of private life, which turns emotions and intimates life into measurable and calculable objects. Refection, in the experience of my interlocutors, emerged as a process through which emotions were made sense of. This sense-making was tied to how they engaged with what they felt and what they did with their interpretations. It is by thinking about feelings in terms of the responses these emotions initiated in them and relating these feelings and responses to their lives that my interlocutors made sense of their feelings. In that sense, rather than a detached intellectualisation of their affective lives, refection was a process through which my interlocutors embedded themselves deeper in what they felt. Dhananjaya, as I mentioned already, when I met him for the frst time, did not come across as forthcoming. Initially, fdgety in his demeanour, his responses seemed elusive and non-committal. He described his relationship as ‘normal’, told me that it is just the ‘general things’ he would look for in a relationship and the same set of elusive responses were delivered again and again. I left the interview feeling as if I had released a caged bird when I let him go, for I felt that the interview was more like an interrogation rather than an interview. At the end of our meeting, that is why I let Dhananjaya take the initiative, if he wished to continue his participation, suggesting that he gets in touch with me, if he wished to take part in a follow-up interview and had the time to do so. A few weeks later, I was taken by surprise when I received a text message from him, telling me that he was free to meet up again. The second time around, Dhananjaya seemed enthused. His responses were elaborate and I almost wondered if it had been the same person I met a few weeks earlier. The penny dropped for me at the end of the long interview when he told me that:

I thought about the things akka asked me about when I went to the hostel that day. I had thought about them before, but didn’t know how to 202 M. Sirisena

describe them (mēva gæna hitala tibunata kiyanna tērumak tibune nē). I talked to some of my friends about these things. It’s like things become clearer when you talk about them. I felt now I understand things better (Hoňda tērumak tiyenava). Felt I could describe them better.5

With this, Dhananjaya brought to light that it is with the help of refection and narratives that one makes meaning of their experiences. This meaning-making is what facilitated sharing and communication, which in turn infuenced refection and meaning-making itself. Each time things were discussed, a new layer was added to the meaning that was made. Dhananjaya went back to his hostel and discussed what he felt with his friends. In the discussions, he found the words and the meaning of what he was going through, there by adding an interpretive layer to his experience. My interlocutors pointed out to me that it is through such meaning-making that their stories are born and in that story-making process, they make sense of their experiences for themselves as well as facilitat- ing the process of the other’s understanding of themselves. Such sharing in itself is intimate as their sense of self was woven through the stories that they related. It is that knowledge that they wished to share, buttressed by the conviction that they would be treated with care, with their magēma kenek, which in turn brought a sense of certainty and continuity to their relationships.

Trust and (Un)certainty “I trust ayya. He is the one I trust most. He’s the only one I trust. There’s nothing I would keep from him. Me having someone like that, that is a hitaṭa haiyak (gives my mind strength/gives me strength)” were Hishani’s concluding words on the topic of trust. Here, it is not nitty gritty details about telling or not telling or sharing every minute detail of their lives, as most others agreed, that mattered. It is the concept of having someone that one could share that gave them the strength. The argument followed that life is full of contingencies—life is inherently uncertain and this uncertainty was amplifed by the breakdown of the ceasefre agreement. Thus, having someone one can trust, ergo rely on,

5 Dhananjaya’s admission brought to light a methodological challenge I failed to overcome in the research as my line of questioning ended up urging Dhananjaya to refect and intellectualise his emotional life. 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 203 helps one navigate life’s contingencies better (despite the belief that trust itself is uncertain) as having that knowledge that one has someone, gives them hitaṭa haiyak. The discourse of hitaṭa haiyak brings to light workings of hope in couple relationships. The narrative follows that, love, ideally, arises out of a deeper understanding between the two people in the relationship. It is different to attraction, and attraction is all but one aspect of a relationship. Love is possible only if one knows the person one is attracted to. To get to know the person, one must communicate and understand, which necessitated that they take the risk of opening themselves up to persons they might not trust wholeheartedly. At the beginning of a relationship, this risk of trusting is a calculated risk, which is assessed through notions of compatibility, and background checks in some cases. With time, the risk attenuates as trust builds. To build trust, it needs to be attached to reciprocity and proximity, and it is the mutuality attached to notions of sharing that enabled one to have not only the security of not being betrayed, but also the certainty and continuity that is brought on through fnding a serious relationship that brings them their magēma kenek/laňgin inna kenek, which in turn brought in a sense of certainty to the relationship and life as a whole. Here, trust appears as a hypothe- sis (Möllering 2001; cited in Frederiksen 2014). One’s trustworthiness is pondered upon at the beginning of a relationship, and it is the assumption that one may be trustworthy that prompts one to trust him/her. The supposition follows that trusting relationships are binding, because in trusting, one reveals oneself and that trust is an alternative to risk as a way of dealing with uncertainty (Frederiksen 2014). Trust is not happenstance but a process of building and it took many forms. Trust is knowing. It is the ability to expose oneself completely. Trust is trusting them to make or help you make decisions. It matters, because trusting also meant knowing and understanding. Yet, trust works only when it is shared. Trust is a bond. Trust is not only about exposing oneself but also having a sense of continuity through mutuality, which implied an investment. Trust was also about affrming that the judgement to trust was right. In trying to build trust and understanding, one refects on their own needs and desires, which enables them to (re) connect with their sense of self-perceptions. Refection, my interlocutors pointed out, does not result in detaching oneself from feeling, as some may argue. Through adding layers of interpretation upon layer, refection was a process of making meaning and rendering the experience 204 M. Sirisena signifcant. Trust and understanding mattered as it laid the foundation for stable relationships and it was also the plank from which these young couples took the plunge of faith into the consummation of the relationship in its fullness. However, I was often reminded that I would be wrong to assume that trust is a conviction, an obligation or a bond, that produces certainty as underlying every word uttered about trust is notions of uncertainty that may or may not be out within one’s control. Nishan was many others who laughingly acknowledged that many couple relationships—whether they are considered serious or not—do not survive beyond their time at the university. While most spoke of this possibility as something that would not happen to them, the suggestion was that realities and priorities change once they leave university and most relationships would fail to adjust to and cater to these new realities and priorities. They proposed that uncertainty is larger than life itself and trust in itself is not enough to overcome uncertainty but trust provides an anchor that stabilises the moment. However, due to uncertainty that is inherent in life, trust remains a risk, because in trusting what one does is guessing at future consequences of their present decisions (Luhmann 1993). My interlocutors were managing uncertainty by making it liveable through exclaiming a sense of direction—a couple relationship that would lead to marriage. They were hoping effectively by interjecting their couple relationships with palpability through a long-drawn process of building a ‘serious relationship’ to which trust becomes integral.

References Cancian, F. M. (1986). The feminization of love. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 11(4), 692–709. Dwyer, R. (2006). Kiss or tell? Declaring love in Hindi flms. In F. Orsini (Ed.), Love in South Asia: A cultural history (pp. 289–302). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frederiksen, M. (2014). Trust in the face of uncertainty: A qualitative study of intersubjective trust and risk. International Review of Sociology, 24(1), 130–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2014.894335. Gamaachchi, L. (1998). Lingikathwaya haa vivahaya: Jeevithaya gana dana gan- imu. Colombo: Wijesuriya. Illouz, E. (2007). Cold intimacies: The making of emotional capitalism. Cambridge: Polity. 8 MAGĒMA KENEK: ON FUTURE AND CERTAINTY 205

Jamieson, L. (1998). Intimacy: Personal relationships in modern societies. Cambridge: Polity. Lambert, H. (2000). Sentiment and substance in north Indian forms of relatedness. In J. Carsten (Ed.), Cultures of relatedness: New approach to the study of kinship (pp. 73–89). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luhmann, N. (1993). Risk: A sociological theory. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Möllering, G. (2001). The nature of trust: From Georg Simmel to a theory of expectation, interpretation and suspension. Sociology, 35(2), 403–420. Morris, C. W. (1962). Introduction: George H. Mead as social psychologist and social philosopher. In C. W. Morris (Ed.), Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stevenson, L. (2009). The suicidal wound and feldwork among Canadian Inuit. Being there: The feldwork encounter and the making of truth (pp. 55–76). Berkley: University of California Press. Swidler, A. (2001). Talk of love: How culture matters. Chicago and London: University of Chicago press. Trawick, M. (1992). Notes on love in a Tamil family. Berkeley: University of California Press. CHAPTER 9

Serious Relationships: Intersubjective Intermingling, Fuller Lives and Embodied Emotions

“Has akka you seen the Samahan ad?” Bindu asked me as she sat down to share her love story. The advertisement, as I found out later, presents something like a portrayal of life as it unravels. The scene of a life beginning is set when a youngish, beaming man and a woman bring their baby home, wrapped in a thin light blue muslin-like cloth. We follow the life of the child, now clad in blue shorts and a crisp white shirt, being escorted to school—the beginning of a new chapter in life, which is followed by the next chapter in his life, marked with the son’s graduation. In the subsequent scene, the viewers could linger for a few extra seconds as they take in the setting of the son’s marriage: confetti, more smiles, a man in a Western suit and a woman in a cream coloured, lacy osariya1 and the glitter of the jewellery. The birth of his own child follows the marriage. The advertisement ends with the marriage of the child’s child, who has grown up to be another handsome young man, and the cycle of life begins again as the advertisement concludes with a tag line along the lines of “with you, through life”. This was a representation of life as a conjuncture of creation and procreation of relationships, with clearly signposted life events that marked one’s progression from one stage of

1 The osariya is often cited as the traditional dress of the Kandyan Sinhalese woman. Six yards of cloth draped around the body with an elaborate frill at the side and a fall, the osariya is worn with a ftted blouse, known as a jacket.

© The Author(s) 2018 207 M. Sirisena, The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka, Culture, Mind, and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76336-1_9 208 M. Sirisena life to the next, and these are the events—and the life—that Bindu could relate to and aspired to. Bindu’s, she told me, was yet another sad love story. She sought me out to ask me to help her manage her quick temper. For her, it was her quick temper that got in the way of her relationship with Nilanga. They fought a lot, she explained, “I get angry at the smallest thing and I scold him. He doesn’t like that”. Bindu added that they fought a lot, over small thing. Eventually these fghts began to end with one or the other declaring that they are ending the relationship. Yet, after a few days, one or the other would apologise, and the other would concur, and they would restart the relationship until the next fght. A little over a month before I met her, Nilanga had broken up with her, this time, she said, for the last time. She did not cry. Her tears had run dry. When she started the relationship with Nilanga, her hope was that he could lead her towards the life she dreamt of, with a house, children and a car, “like in that Samahan ad”. Her story was not to be, at least not with Nilanga. Yet, she moved on with the conviction that a couple relationship unlocks the door to a happy life, and met me as she was looking to “correct” her dispositional faw—anger—which got in the way of her relationship with Nilanga. For Bindu, love is both a bond and a vehicle at one and the same time for she seems to agree with Hardt (2011: 676) when she says that “love is a motor of both transformation and duration or continuity. We lose ourselves in love and open the possibility of a new world, but at the same time love constitutes powerful bonds that last”. The strength about these notions of love relationships is buttressed by their various portrayals and the assumptions we have about them, like Bindu did about the Samahan advertisement. The Samahan advertisement is founded on the assumption that, which Bindu highlighted, ideal life is one that is facilitated by a relationship, which leads to the creation of more and more relationships, thus expanding one’s world. Refecting on labour, love and value in the context of reality television programmes, Skeggs (2010: 48) explains that in such processes of fow of infuence from the outer world to inside, not only “the performance of relationships … exposes the different exchange mechanisms that underpin intimacy, but also reveals the centrality of affect to the encounter, setting the scene for the possibilities of exchange… The affective transaction cir- culating in the encounter … surrounds the production of value through intimacy”. Skegg’s audience highlighted that perception of “the affective as value-added to the scene of the emotional performance” which 9 SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: INTERSUBJECTIVE INTERMINGLING … 209 determines the form of the transaction and the value to be attributed, if at all, to the labour exhausted on the act. The main aspects of the exchange here are emotional practices and consequent value, which very much infuenced the workings behind serious relationships that Bindu and her peers sought at the university. The key element that stands out from the affective transactions Skeggs refers to is the future orientation of the exchange that it promised, which enabled them to envision a sense of stability, which also turned it to a bond. Pivoting on similar logic, Bindu and many of her friends and colleagues I met with during my research tied suggested that emotional work on which serious relationship is founded has a future orientation, in terms of both interjecting continuity and inhibiting contingencies.

Living with Uncertainty Life, my interlocutors often reminded me, is full of uncertainties. Growing up in the shadows of Buddhist doctrines, they were familiar with one of its essential proponents—aniccā, which claims that all conditioned existence is evanescent and change is the only constant. Global uncertainties as well as their specifc contextual chaos of war, decline and natural disasters did not let them forget the uncertainty that clouded life. While acknowledging the all-encompassing presence of uncertainty in their lives, they did not fnd it paralysing. In almost defance of its inevitability, my interlocutors sought to subdue uncertainty by planning for a certain future. Their approach to life is sectioned but continuous. As Dhamma envisages it, life is separated into stages, and of each stage, one has different expectations. Being in a stable relationship by the second or third year at university is one such expectation.

There are people at the university who get into relationships for the sake of it. It’s ok to have that kind of an attitude in the frst year. But when you go to the 2nd year or the 3rd year, it shouldn’t be like that. Then the relationships should have some aim. By this age, life has to have some stability. By this age, life has to have a plan. (mē vayasa venakoṭa jīvitē stāvara bavak tiyenna ōna. Mē vayasedi j jīvitēṭa planak tiyenne ōna)

Life, in that sense, seems to be divided into clusters that Kosseleck (2004) describes as “periods that last until”. When one regards time in terms of “periods that last until”, Kosseleck explains describing time as one encounters it in history, natural time is suspended. These experiences 210 M. Sirisena may or may not follow the sequence of “temporal rhythms” that are believed to be found in nature. Kosseleck points out that nature has its own temporal rhythm, a rhythm that one witnesses in the fow of day to night. Like nature, all things that are in motion have their innate rhythm, and it is the rhythm that makes time calculable. Thus, temporal experiences in “periods that last until” are governed by rhythms that are unique to the period, and they may or may not correspond to the temporal rhythms in nature. The temporal rhythm of my interlocutors’ lives, relating roughly to age, glides through periods of life: as they were depicted in the Samahan advertisement. Periods of life roughly coincide with activities and expectations. My interlocutors spoke of lamā kāle being a time of being cared for and schooling, ṭaruna kāle as a period of setting up for life focusing on career and further education, mædiviya as a time of bearing and rearing children and fulflling duties towards others and mahalu kāle a stage of being looked after. Each episode allows a certain way of being, and there are expectations to be fulflled towards and by one as they pass through these periods. They move from one period of life to the next as they fulflled or tried to fulfl the expectations antici- pated of life periods. As such, the expectations of each period of life were conjoined by the current of an expectation to fow from one period of life to the next. These periods were also clusters of mini-stages through which one develops as a person. The period of life at which they were at, for instance, is a collection of mini-clusters in which my interlocutors develop themselves in search of careers as well as life partners, with a view of engaging the expectations of the period of life that is to come. They were in their ṭaruna kāle, which was marked by a sense of youthful lack of responsibility (Hughes 2013) as well as responsibility towards oneself, particularly their future. Despite the periodic engagements with life, it is life’s continuity that my interlocutors placed the emphasis on. Life fows from one period to the next, bringing a sense of continuity and informing its inhabitants of where they came from as well as where they are going. Continuity was a particularly important concern to my interlocutors, in their in-between state of life. They were in-between, both in time and in space. Their lives refected the intertwining of village and the city, and “tradition” (sanskrutiya) and ‘mod’ or modernity. The cross sections they were at informed my interlocutors’ life projects they could pursue. There were expectations, as my interlocutors understood life to fow through periods in which they were expected to display certain characteristics and 9 SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: INTERSUBJECTIVE INTERMINGLING … 211 assume certain roles. Yet, at the same time, the shape of life periods was loosely defned such that they were malleable, and they could incorporate change and make space for new expectations and new ways of performing the expectations. Refecting on the period that they inhabited at that moment when I met them, my interlocutors pointed out to me that ‘traditionally’, it was the time at which the frst bricks were laid for their marital lives. Yet, modernity has changed the way in which marriages were arranged as well as the roles and expectations within marriage. For my interlocutors, the life period they inhabited at that moment accom- modated expectations of both tradition and modernity. These expectations formed a thread that extended towards a future, thus offering them a sense of continuity. Continuity through the thread of expectations is not all that life periods brought to the lives of my interlocutors. As such, notions of life periods, tied up with future and planning injected a sense of certainty into otherwise uncertain lives. Stevenson (2009) points out in the context of the Inuit, planning may arguably be the most effective antidote to uncertainty. Stevenson describes how the work ethic that Canadian colonial- ism propagated among the Inuit primarily concerned itself with ensuring that the Inuit would come to work tomorrow. To plan for a tomorrow and to make a promise of that tomorrow, one must extend oneself to that tomorrow and commit to it. In other words, to plan for a tomorrow is to say that there will be a tomorrow. Saying that there will be a tomorrow, and planning for it, for Inuit as well my interlocutors, is an attempt to extend oneself beyond their immediate temporal locations, thereby laying out a presumed scenario and injecting a sense of certainty and continuity into one’s life. In the same way, for my interlocutors, tying romantic relationships to marriage is to telescope towards a future with a view of bringing their love lives a sense of predictability. The predictability future orientation injected into the lives of my interlocutors provided padding for the persons they became in their relationships, providing them with a sense of security with which they countered the sense of uncertainty of relationships and lives.

The Promise of a Tomorrow The kind of love that one fnds within a ‘serious relationship’ connoted or sometimes even equated stability, security, comfort and a whole lot of other things that Bindu and her friends and colleagues at the university 212 M. Sirisena associated with a certain way of being. In that sense, a ‘serious relationship’ lets you access a certain kind of life, one that they deemed fulflling and worthy of living. It lays the foundation for bonds of a lifetime, bonds that are ideally crystallised in marriage. Associating romantic relationships or marriage with a lifestyle is not unique to Bindu and her friends. Wardlaw (2006), for instance, describes the way in which young Huli women and men with whom she conducted her research spoke of companionate marriage, which suggested a longing for a certain lifestyle: a life out of which a certain kind of person emerges—a person who spoke in a particular way about particular concerns, worshipped particular gods in particular ways and lived in certain kind of houses. In a similar way, for my research participants, romantic relationships facilitated a particular kind of life and a future of stability and security: a house, a car and two children. That is the life that is worth living. The worthy life facilitated through romantic relationships is founded on two premises. One is that life is valuable. The second, related, premise is that that value emerges through the relationships one embeds oneself in. For my interlocutors, as Stevenson (2009) points out, that life has a value is an “unquestioned certainty”. Their conversations presumed that life has its own value, which is a positive value. The value of one’s life is reckoned in relation to one’s position, defned against the relationships one is entangled in, through the different roles one performs as a son/daughter, a mother/father, friend, teacher, etc. Thus, whatever one does in life should be aimed at discovering and fulflling the expectations of these roles that one dwells in. The roles, the relationships that facilitate the roles, and the manner in which the expectations of these roles are delivered determine the value of life. Purposeful living, connoted by notions of ‘point’ and meaningful living, is about discovering this value and working towards its fulflment. The conversations I had with my interlocutors often led to discussions of the ‘point’ of doing things, be it studying, giving a gift or entrenching themselves in relationships. The point, it seemed, was a reference to refecting on a larger ‘plan’ for life. Nishan told me he let himself be guided by head over heart, when he chose to study law, instead of ‘arts subjects’. Karannan vāle dēval karala vædak nǽ (there is no point in doing for the sake of doing) was how he put it, explaining that studying law lays a certain path for job security, and stemming from it stability and upward mobility. He would not have the same ‘guarantee’ if he had studied humanities and social sciences, as they are not professional studies, thus, doing a degree for the sake of 9 SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: INTERSUBJECTIVE INTERMINGLING … 213 doing it, would have been to study ‘arts’, which he may have enjoyed more but would not ft in with his future ‘plans’. The logic behind gifting where it is stated that ‘gift’ ekak denna ōne kiyala oya monava hari deyak dena ekē tērumak nǽ (there is no point in giving something for the sake of giving a gift) was the same, as Nayana told me. She explained the lengthy process of choosing a gift for her boyfriend, suggesting that the ‘point’ in giving a gift was to demonstrate closeness and meaning. Dhamma applied the same reasoning when he wanted to emphasise that, by that stage of life where he was at that moment—24 years old and a university student who would soon complete his degree—one should act purposefully. Purposeful acting necessitated a plan, in which couple relationship comprises a crucial element. He told me there is no point (vædak nǽ) in beginning relationships āgiya atē (without a sense of direction), or ‘fun ekaṭa’ (for fun), paving the way for his discourse on compatibility and why it is important to think about compatibility beforehand. Amintha and Aravinda too offered similar criticisms of life without a sense or direction, suggesting that unexamined life is an unfulflled life. While they offered no thorough theoretical or philosophical engagements, putting together fragments of pasts, presents and futures to create something like a coherent path for life, these young men and women are inventing their own art of living (Nehamas 2000). In their renditions of life, life presupposes a sense of coherence in terms of unity of personality traits and the like, which provides it with a sense of as aesthetic unity of character (Anderson and Landy 2001). With this sense of aesthetic unity of character, they apply a coherence to their life that is true of that unity of character. A couple relationship, within that frame, offered coherence to the extent that it enabled one to visualise stability, certainty and continuity of life, and it is these qualities that associated a couple relationship with a good life. At this point, let me stop and take you back to the story I began this book with, the story Amali told of her failed relationship. Amali’s story begs the question that, if life has its own, unquestioned value, how could one entertain the idea of suicide, let alone condone or attempt it, just because of a failed relationship? The story I related in this book suggests an answer, demonstrating that, though life has its unquestioned value, the value of one’s life is determined in relation to the relationships that one is embedded in and defned with and against. Thus, the value one attributes to one’s life could be questioned when that life is rid of the relationships through which that life was defned. If one were to fnd 214 M. Sirisena oneself cut off from all the relationships which one fnds oneself in, life might feel like a vacuum, as if emptied of all its contents. Constantly searching for stability and safety through relationships, my interlocutors suggested that they could empathise with the overwhelming emptiness one would feel if one were to inhabit a vacuum of relationships. A life without relationships, my interlocutors pointed out in many ways, is like an empty vessel, and such a life is not one that is worth living. It is in that light that most of them said that, if one were to throw such an empty life away, it would be explicable. It is such empathy that Kamani felt for her neighbour, who took her own life in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, which had drowned her entire family. Kamani shrugged her shoulders as she told me, “that ænṭi (aunty) roamed around like a ghost for about a month, before she hung herself. I wouldn’t have lived that long if all the people I love died like that”. Likening her neighbour to a ghost, Kamani pointed out that it is people who bring meaning to life, a life in which loved ones are absent is not a life that is worth living. The proposition here is, as Sahlins (2011a: 11) taking kinship beyond the grasp of biological links advises, “kinsmen are persons who belong to one another, who are members of one another, who are co-present in each other, whose lives are joined and interdependent”. A serious relationship is a process through which such kinsmen are created. In a way similar to that Carsten (1995) describes of husband–wife relationships among Langkawi, a serious relationship is a process of converting strangers into kin and this process is permeated with constructive as well as destructive capacities. These relationships are constructive to the extent they offer a sense of stability and direction or mutuality as Sahlins (2011a, b, 2013) proposes. At the same time, they are instinctively destructive in the sense that they build and justify conditions which perpetuate control, violence and/or self-denial, reminding us that kinship, as Lambek writes, “entails promises and breaches of promise, acts and violations of intimacy, and acts of forgiveness and revenge” (ibid.: 4). It is a form of mutuality that is predicated upon subordination and submission, sacrifce and exploitation, and trust and deceit, merging and diverting along the intersec- tions of gender, class and age. To that extent, the story in this book recognises the double-edged quality of relationships (Carsten 2013). It relates the story of mutuality of being that enables one to blossom but constricts as they are meted with control, which, at times is sought, as Amintha’s girlfriend did when she sought a man who is ‘strict’ with her. My interlocutors acknowledged the double-edged nature of 9 SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: INTERSUBJECTIVE INTERMINGLING … 215 serious relationship with intimations about complementarity—a ying for one’s yang, which would balance and bring out the best in each other. While serious relationships were posed as a solution to uncertainty inherent life, my interlocutors acknowledged that the solution is fawed when they recognised impermanency of life in general and of human relationships in particular. They frequently acknowledged the impermanence of relationships. Not only break-up of couple relationships, my interlocutors were reminded of life’s impermanence when war, violence, traffc accidents and natural disasters ripped webs of relationships apart claiming lives and causing destruction. They recognised that while they engaged in their relationships intensely at times, these relationships sometimes thin out, with time. Despite this recognition of impermanence, the mantra that my interlocutors ratifed in their orientation towards life is to plan. The reasoning followed that, “whatever happens, happens. But that does not mean you wait for it to happen”. It is this sense of active participation of life, which lies behind the logic of art of living, Dhamma and his friends vocalised. It is not denial of it but injecting life with a sense of direction, a path to follow, which made life liveable and with all that entailed, a couple relationship formed a part of that plan and the path to a fuller life.

Towards a Fuller Life Self exists in relation to relationships with or as opposed to others and it is this relationality that Amali explained when I met her in 2008 as she was trying to come to terms with the consequences of the break-up of her relationship to Erantha. She explained that nothing meant anything to her at that time. “I feel that everything is a lie”, she said often in our conversation, “all that he said, about me, us, having children and a future. I feel I have nothing. They mean nothing”. Amali’s references to meaninglessness and falsity of the claims Erantha had made about her as well as their relationship, as well as the despair she highlighted when she said “I feel I have nothing” indicated a process of mourning of a loss of a relational self, the relational self that Amali lost with the demise of her relationship with Erantha. Her references to nights she spent in despair, mourning the lack of midnight calls and dealing with the obtru- sive presence of gifts that meant nothing anymore highlighted an investment gone wrong. These absences and presences reminded her again and again that along with the trust, commitment and understanding 216 M. Sirisena that she had had with Erantha, she lost the sense of self that she had founded in the context of her relationship with Erantha. What Amali said in mourning the demise of her relationship, and Kamani illustrated with the story of the aunty next door, and Butler (2009) lucidly illustrated in her article “Violence, mourning and politics” is that along with the relationship, one loses a sense of self, the self that one had become in relation to that relationship. The absence of the relationship through which one becomes a person of a certain nature strips one’s sense of self, thus turning him or her into nothing but a ghost. These accounts, while highlighting that we are relational beings, also highlight the fragility relational selves face as relationships themselves are plagued with threat of dissipation—impermanence of life and uncertainty stemming from fckle human mind. My interlocutors, at different occasions and in different ways, hinted at this fragility, bringing to my attention the fact that relationships as well as life itself are uncertain. They battled this uncertainty by trying to inject into their relationships a sense of continuity. Active engagement through which one could build towards a future, for them, was the path through which they could get closer to living a fuller life (sartaka jīvitayak, sampūrna jīvitayak). A sartaka jīvitayak, sampūrna jīvitayak connoted a life with some stability and taking stock of one’s position, achievements and expectations and planning for a future through the means which they build towards this life. It is within this confguration that their search for magēma kenek becomes clear. Magēma kenek—a person to whom one is bound with through sharing, trusting and understanding—is not a leap of faith. The supposition follows that ‘serious’ love is possible only if one knows the person one is attracted to. To get to know the person, one must communicate and understand. Within this process of converting a stranger into a magēma kenek, sharing, trust and understanding are intertwined processes that feed off and feed into one another, which take place alongside and are infuenced by other sociocultural processes and relationships—gendered beings and expectations of pasts, presents and futures. Being a complex event that is impacted upon by many dynamics that fall within and without one’s control, it is not a surprise that ascertaining a magēma kenek is a process striven with risk. At one level, it is a risk to the extent that one would not know whether plans one makes for future would transpire for life is full of contingencies—people die and relationships end. At another level, while magēma kenek neces- sitates a “really knowing”, where one is expected to expose themselves 9 SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: INTERSUBJECTIVE INTERMINGLING … 217 to each other, within which there is an embedded vulnerability, as those who share have to trust that the confdences that are shared will not be betrayed and the shared privileged knowledge will not be used against them, if the relationship were to fail. This aspect of risk is greater particularly at the beginning of a relationship and with time, this risk attenuates as trust builds, as the relationship grows with reciprocity and proximity while contingent nature of life pushed to the back of the mind as one occupies oneself with the present. It is mutuality that is attached to notions of sharing that enables one to have not only the security of not being betrayed, but the certainty and continuity that is brought on through fnding a serious relationship that bring them their magēma kenek. As such, the notion of magēma kenek is imbued with such a sense of certainty to the relationship and life as a whole. It is presumed that trusting relationships are binding, because in trusting, one reveals oneself and that trust is an alternative to risk as a way of dealing with uncertainty. Insinuated in magēma kenek is a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership is not necessarily a sense of possession—though it does not deny connotations of it. What is highlighted in magēma kenek is a sense of dependence and dedication, in the sense of having a person with whom one has an emotional bond and on whom one could rely on for various needs and desires such as care, protection, sexual intimacies, plan and build for a future. Specifcity associated with magēma kenek, for it is one unique being of all beings who becomes one’s magēma kenek, buttresses the notion and the bond between the two persons, imbuing them an ability to undermine a risk that may be associated with trust or discount or disregard the underlying uncertainty that is thematic of life. As such, notional magēma kenek helps one navigate life’s contingencies better because having that knowledge that one has someone of that sort, gives them hitaṭa haiyak—the strength of the mind. The discourse of hitaṭa haiyak brings to light workings of hope in couple relationships, which highlights that love, which arises out of a deeper understanding between the two people in the relationship, paves the way for one to imagine and envision a future and plan for a life that is beyond the grasp of now.

Embodied Emotions In stories I gathered from my interlocutors during feldwork, what emerges as constitutive of ‘serious relationships’ is a process of habitual embedding. It is the process that involves emotions, codes of practices, 218 M. Sirisena and concerns about and expectations of futures. When they spoke of love, my interlocutors almost never spoke of refexes—those automatic refexes such as raised heartbeats, butterfies in their stomach or blushing, which other studies on love at times have noted as indicative of attraction and desire. Their descriptions involved cognition and recognition of a feeling like attraction, refection, desire and habits. Instead of speaking of refexes they might have experienced, my interlocutors turned to phrases like “eyā hoňdai kiyala hituna (thought s/he was good), lassanai (beautiful), hoňda gatiguna tiyenava (has good qualities)” to describe what attracted them to their signifcant others. The initial interest that they felt in such ways was then built layer upon layer of meaningful doings and ardency, adding signifcance and strengthening the bond. Meaningful doings are orientated towards building understanding, trust and commitment, which are the pillars of a strong relationship. This is what paved the way for ‘serious relationships’. The failure of such doings will lead the relationship to decay either slowly to wither away with time or end abruptly, as Hemanthi’s or Hiranthi’s did. Meaningful doings are habitual practices, like waiting for the ‘goodnight call’ to catch up on each other’s day’s activities before going to sleep or “waiting for the lunch time ‘ring-cut’” so they could have lunch, together in time. These habituated practices pave the way to fnding different, meaningful ways to feel. The meaning that is inferred here is not a meaning of the act in itself but lies in the consistency and the ardency with which the habituated practices are repeated. It is that consistency and ardency combined with that initial interest expanded with compatibility that gives the act its signifcance. Such signifcant acts, in turn, have the ability to interject into my interlocutors’ lives with a future orientation through continuity. This is what my interlocutors attempted to demonstrate when they spoke of future orientation of their ‘serious relationship’; its continuity which is also its meaning enables them to envision a ‘serious relationship’ as a path to a good marriage. That is the logic of the ‘serious relationships’—that couple relationship is a purposeful, directional engagement that leads to a better future. This logic of ‘serious relationships’ is what created an enabling environment for couple relationships to take place where they are not encouraged. Their makings and their meanings instigate acting on future and un/certainty, and propose emotions are indeed a practical engagement with the world (Scheer 2012). Refecting on happiness, Sara Ahmed (2010) proposes that happiness as a happening, which involves affect (to be happy is to be happy affected 9 SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: INTERSUBJECTIVE INTERMINGLING … 219 by something), intentionality (to be happy is to be happy about something) and evaluation/judgement (to be happy about something makes something good). Ahmed elaborates that, “to be affected by something is to evaluate that thing. Evaluations are expressed in how bodies turn towards that thing” (ibid.: 31). In order to be affected in a way that is good, the object we turn towards needs to be accepted as being good or being able to give something that is known as good and we build our near sphere with things that [will] bring us happiness, into which we incrementally incorporate things we happen upon. Very much like the family, which Ahmed places under the microscope in her analysis of happy objects, ‘serious relationships’ are happy objects, that are formed and shaped by cultural webs that formed my interlocutors’ world. The appeal for ‘serious relationships’ comes from the (equally constructed) ties in with a vision of life and the ‘serious relationships’ potential to pave the way for it. The making of ‘serious relationships’ is an exercise embedded in moral economies that governed my interlocutors’ lives, for the “goodness” of ‘serious relationships’ are thoroughly evaluated, through considerations of compatibility, its strengths in building trust, commitment and understanding. “End-orientated” intentionality associated with ‘serious relationships’ is clear for it is not merely an object that gives happiness at the moment, but it is envisioned to lead to a good marriage, which is expected to bring happiness to my interlocutors. Are cultural conversations that have classifed them as happy objects enough to lure people in and keep them? What delivers the promise? My interlocutors’ stories suggested longevity of love comes with embodiment of love which comes through habituation. As Trawick (1992: 97), argues, “love, or attachment, or a sense of oneness with a person or thing or activity, grows slowly, by habituation” a process through which persons, habits, time, and places are bound together. Speaking of love in the context of a Tamil family with whom she conducted her research, she explains “Parakkam [habituation] was love, or rather, it was the behavioural side of a reality that also had an emotional component… Parakkam was the reason for the growth of the feeling of love; love was the reason for the continuation of parakkam” (ibid.: 99).2 Like

2 Trawick’s rendition of parakkam reminded me of the Sinhala proverb: janmeṭa vaḍā purudda lokui, which my interlocutors used frequently, especially when they were critical 220 M. Sirisena parakkam, my interlocutors love lives were marked with innumerable little acts, like Hemathi’s long walk to the faculty, which were not necessarily called out as acts of love but habits that sustained. While she was in a relationship with Anish, Hemanthi used to walk in through the Arts Faculty gate and walk behind the library to pass the gym canteen to see if Anish is there at the chairs opposite the badminton courts, where he used to hang out with friends. “Puruddaṭa tāma mama ēka karanava” (I still do it out of habit). Hemanthi explained that it was when a friend asked her why she still walk to the faculty the long way that she realised that she has no reason to. “It’s ‘painful’”, she explained, “it’s just like not having my ‘good-night SMS’. Little things like that I ‘miss’ most”. Hemanthi suggests that it is when cracks appear and the promise fails to deliver that space for refection opens, which brings to light the little, unseen habitual elements that are constitutive of ‘serious relationships’. It is in the hollow space where a relationship once was—a space that was once flled with things that they did together and places that they went together—that one notices the ever-so-powerful presence of habituation. As ever, Amali was eloquent when it came to describing her pain, marked by the absence of the little and the big acts of love. She was haunted by memories, things, possibilities: ‘I can’t go anywhere. I can’t do anything. Everything reminds me of him. Places we have gone. Things we have done. Whatever I try to do, everything reminds me of him’. Amali’s descriptions of pain engulfed her body, her dispositions and her mind: “Maṭa eyava matak vena koṭa inna bǽ” (I can’t be/live when I remember him). “Mage æňgen kǽllak kapala gihin vagē” (as if [somebody] has cut a piece off my body). “Kisi deyak karanna panak nǽ” (I don’t have life/strength to do anything). “Kisi deyak karanna āsavak nǽ” (I don’t have a desire to do anything). Hers were lucid descriptions of a world collapsed and she sat with her debilitating pain, not knowing where it began or ended, if it were her heart that was aching or her mind, whether it was the lack of a touch or death of a future she had built with Erantha that hurt. She sat, waiting for time to soothe and mend.

of their peers’ or society’s moral failings. The literal translation of this proverb is that the impact one’s habit has in shaping one’s life is stronger than the impact the one’s birth circumstances may have on it, thus, favouring habit over birth. 9 SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: INTERSUBJECTIVE INTERMINGLING … 221

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A Belonging, 4, 5, 19, 39, 42, 106 Active participation of life, 215 Body, 5, 6, 15, 35, 86, 87, 89, Acts of sharing, 138, 187 146–148, 161, 164, 170, 171, Affect/affective/affective relating, 179, 180, 189, 207, 220 4, 6, 7, 10, 20, 46, 58, 80, 107, 116, 142, 143, 148, 154, 201, 208, 209, 218 C Affrmation, 46, 110 Care/caring, 2, 7, 19, 33, 35, 43, Anātai, 178 69, 74, 81, 82, 89, 90, 109, Anger management, 8, 185 140, 142, 145, 148, 159, 161, Attraction, 29, 47, 58, 63, 64, 67, 184, 187–189, 193, 197, 202, 133, 138, 146, 147, 167, 186, 217 191, 198, 203, 218 Certainty, 48, 202–204, 211, 213, 217 Availability, 27, 67, 123, 136, 172 Choice, 10, 13, 14, 17, 28–30, 71, Awareness, 5, 6, 180, 198–200 82, 108, 112, 113, 117, 161, Ayya, 47, 77, 79–81, 86, 92, 94, 105, 177, 179, 183, 189, 190 125, 126, 154, 167, 171, 178, City, 23, 36–43, 56, 69, 73, 90, 101, 183, 188, 202 154, 168, 210 Coercion, 180 Colombo University, 3, 11, 21, 22, B 25, 28, 37, 41, 46, 59, 68, 84, Being with, 48, 118, 123, 126, 127, 132, 85, 91, 117, 123, 151, 153, 157, 135–138, 142, 143, 172, 179, 184 213

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 237 M. Sirisena, The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka, Culture, Mind, and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76336-1 238 Index

Commitment, 12–15, 46, 47, 69, 109, Emotions/emotional/emotional prac- 113, 123–125, 127–129, 132, tices, 4–9, 17–19, 32, 43, 45, 47, 142, 143, 156, 172, 178, 190, 80, 90, 104, 106, 107, 113–115, 191, 196, 215, 218, 219 142, 148–151, 158, 159, 173, Communication, 17, 80, 129, 191, 180, 188, 200–202, 208, 209, 199, 200, 202 217–219 Compatibility, 11, 30, 45, 47, 58, Empathy/recognition/affrmation, 6, 70–73, 107, 109–111, 187, 192, 9, 20, 46, 109, 110, 132, 135, 198, 203, 213, 218, 219 157, 160, 170, 214, 215, 218 Companionship, 11, 12, 15, 95 Expectation, 12, 15–18, 25, 47, 81, Compromised woman, 174, 177 82, 93, 116, 142, 170, 182, 209, Connection, 6, 7, 12, 20, 63, 64, 110, 210 124, 132, 189 Exploitative power/sex speech, 154, 176 Continuity, 10, 12, 13, 100, 186, 191, 193, 202, 203, 208–211, 213, 216–218 F Couple package, 90, 123, 124 Family, 1, 4, 11, 18, 24, 27, 28, 33, Culture, 14, 16, 18, 34, 48, 65, 92, 34, 40, 42, 70, 71, 73, 74, 82, 100, 147, 148, 159, 177, 179, 83, 95, 111, 155, 164, 180, 181, 182 188, 191, 214, 219 Feeling selves, 4 Feminine/femininity, 7, 35, 80, 201 D Food/-eating, 20, 61, 90, 100, 126, Death of a relationship, 3, 10, 17, 137 131, 146, 188–190, 195 Desire, 29, 30, 45, 47, 57–64, 67, Fulflment, 18, 61, 147, 148, 159, 107, 132, 146–148, 157, 160, 161, 171, 184, 212 173–175, 178, 186, 218, 220 Future, 11, 28, 36, 39–41, 45, 58, 65, Disclosure/disclosing, 95, 186, 192, 68, 71, 72, 74, 82, 84, 85, 112, 193, 200 130, 155, 162, 178, 185–187, Disposition/male and female, 5, 7, 56, 191, 192, 195, 197, 198, 204, 89, 92–94, 104, 174, 180, 181, 209–213, 215–218, 220 220 Dispossession, 9 Double/ḍabala/ḍabalak, 123–125, G 138, 168, 182, 214 Gender/gendered, 5, 16, 17, 32–35, 38, 66, 80, 83, 91–93, 95, 96, 147, 164, 165, 180, 186, 189, E 214, 216 Effort, 2, 3, 23, 40, 46, 95, 103, 104, men, 17, 32 106, 109, 115, 140, 141, 187, positionality, 34, 189 193 women, 16, 17, 35, 164 Embedding/embeddedness, 46, 47, Gifts, 45, 46, 82, 99–105, 107–110, 132, 147, 187, 217 116–118, 128, 173, 215 Index 239

meaningful, 108, 111 provisional, 198 personalised, 104, 105, 107, 111 really, 186, 216 returned, 82, 110 Good life, 68, 147, 213 L Life worth living, 46, 212 H Love, 2–4, 10–20, 27–32, 41–43, Habits, 218, 220 46–48, 55–71, 77, 83, 86–90, Habituation, 13, 58, 219, 220. See also 92–94, 101–109, 113–117, 122, Habits 123, 127, 128, 132, 142, 147, Happiness, 58, 68, 199, 218, 219 151, 153, 156, 157, 159, 161, Hope, 55, 65, 115, 116, 178, 203, 167, 171, 173–175, 177–181, 208, 217 183, 186, 188, 189, 191–194, 196–199, 203, 207, 208, 211, 214, 216–220 I modern, 10, 11, 15, 17, 28, 93, Identity, 9, 24 101, 159 Intermingling, 20 prosaic, 13, 14 Internalisation, 8 pure, 30, 58, 59, 147 Intersubjectivity/intersubjective inter- real, 13, 18, 46, 128, 135, 152 mingling, 19, 122, 142 romantic, 3, 10, 11, 13, 15–18, 31, Intimacy, 10, 11, 28, 33, 46, 48, 61, 62, 42, 43, 47, 59, 62, 67, 71, 79, 71, 82, 127, 140, 142, 146–150, 88, 103, 104, 123, 132, 134, 154–160, 167, 169–171, 174, 136, 140, 183, 186, 189–191, 175, 186, 200, 201, 208, 214 199, 211, 212 disclosing, 186 Lust, 30, 59–63, 148 intimate behaviour, 146, 165 of the minds, 149, 186 physical, 61, 62, 142, 147, 148, M 153, 154, 157, 174 Magema kenek, 184–187, 191, 202, sexual, 48, 61, 62, 142, 147, 148, 203, 216, 217 153, 154, 157–160, 167, Marriage, 3, 11–18, 20, 27–35, 40, 169–171, 173–175 46, 59, 62, 63, 70, 72, 78, 80, Investment, 46, 104, 118, 184, 191, 88, 95, 152, 159–161, 170, 174, 197, 203, 215 187, 193, 194, 200, 204, 207, 211, 212, 218, 219 arranged, 29–31, 33, 211 K companionate, 12–15, 95, 159, Kinship/affective kinship, 4, 11, 15, 19, 200, 212 29, 42, 70, 78–80, 83, 131, 214 love, 3, 10–18, 20, 28–32, 46, 59, Knowing, 62, 64, 69, 81, 86, 99, 103, 60, 69–71, 159, 171, 173, 174, 107, 110, 132, 137, 143, 186, 186, 207, 211, 218 195–199, 203, 216, 220 240 Index

Masculine/masculinity, 32, 80, 93, 94, Purity, 34, 100, 147, 168 180, 181, 201 Purposeful acting, 213 Meaningful doings, 218 Meaning-making, 6, 202 Memory/embodied memories, 113, R 115–118, 129 Reciprocal binding, 127 Middle class, 62, 149, 150 Reciprocity, 12, 45, 101, 132, 142, Missed call, 122, 126, 129–132, 138, 218 191, 203, 217 Mobile phoness, 48, 121–123, Relatedness/relational/relationality, 4, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131, 132, 9, 19, 20, 62, 80, 82, 101, 135, 135–138, 142, 143, 155 188, 215, 216 Morality, 10, 36, 169, 182, 189 Relationship, 1–4, 7, 8, 10, 12–15, Mourning, 9, 215, 216 17, 18, 30, 31, 37, 42–44, 46, Mutuality, 12, 19, 123, 136, 159, 47, 56, 57, 59, 62–64, 67–70, 161, 183, 191, 203, 214, 217 72–74, 77–82, 84–87, 90, 93–95, 102–105, 108–111, 113–118, 122–125, 127, 128, 130–138, N 140, 142, 143, 151, 152, Nangi, 47, 64, 77–81, 86, 89, 90, 94, 183 156–159, 161–164, 169–174, 176–178, 180, 183, 185–188, 190–201, 203, 204, 208, 209, O 211–218, 220 Objectifcation, 115 couple, 3, 4, 12, 15, 30, 46, 47, 70, Openness, 192, 200 75, 77, 80, 81, 86, 91, 93, 96, 102, 122–124, 128, 137, 147, 156, 157, 159, 164, 170, 176, P 178, 179, 183, 186, 193, 194, Passion, 29, 30, 59–63, 148, 178 196, 203, 204, 208, 213, 215, Performativity/performance, 5, 6, 82, 217, 218 132, 208 romantic, 1, 3, 10, 11, 13, 15–18, Perilous commitments, 183 31, 43, 47, 59, 62, 67, 71, 79, Personhood, 4, 31 95, 99, 103, 104, 121, 123, Planning for a shared future, 197 132, 134, 136, 140, 146, 147, Pleasure, 3, 10, 13, 58–60, 65, 67, 148, 172, 183, 185–187, 189–191, 154, 159, 160, 171, 177, 200 193, 197, 199, 211, 212 Predict/predictability, 186, 211 serious, 15, 47, 48, 57–59, 64, 67, Propriety/proper conduct, 33, 34, 48, 68, 108, 110, 116, 159, 177, 67, 161–163, 168, 175, 179, 183 195, 203, 204, 209, 211, 212, Protection, 43, 74, 82, 83, 89, 90, 214–220 180, 217 stable, 68, 70, 72, 84, 191, 193, Public space/private space, 149 198–200, 204, 209 Providing, 82, 83, 86, 87, 95 Index 241

Respectability, 27, 33, 34, 74, 154, Stability/stable relationships, 12, 25, 160–165, 168–172, 174, 175, 48, 58, 68, 71, 186, 200, 209, 179, 181, 183 211–214, 216 Ring-cut. See Missed call Status, 18, 23, 27, 33, 34, 37, 42, 57, Risk, 38, 46, 91, 92, 176, 183, 187, 70–73, 78, 79, 82, 85, 92, 112, 189, 203, 204, 216, 217 150, 178, 180 Subjectivity/subjecthood, 4, 5, 19, 138, 139 S Surveillance, 3, 56, 137, 142, 152, Sacrifce/sacrifcing/self-sacrifce, 183, 182 189, 190, 214 Self-fulflment, 70 Self-understanding, 190 T Self-vilifcation, 183 Tangibility, 47, 113, 128 Sentiment/sentimental, 27, 32, 36, Temporality/time/temporal, 11, 36, 57, 63, 64, 102–104, 110 37, 39, 47, 62, 63, 102, 210, 211 Serious relations, 47, 58, 116 Text message/SMS, 94, 122, 128– Sex, 3, 60–62, 65–67, 78, 115, 136, 130, 132–134, 136, 137, 201, 151–154, 160, 167, 169–171, 220 173–175, 177, 178, 183, 193 Thoughts embodied, 6 penetrative, 153, 154, 160, 175, Tokens of love, 151 177 Tradition, 34, 38, 100, 148, 159, 182, premarital sex, 62, 151–153, 178 210, 211 sexual intercourse, 20, 60, 63, 159, Trust, 30, 44–47, 56, 72, 123, 160, 173, 178, 179 125, 136, 137, 142, 143, 149, sexual relationships, 165 168, 170, 171, 176, 183, 184, Shame-fear, 162 186, 187, 191–200, 202–204, Sharing/shared understanding, 20, 38, 214–219 44, 48, 107, 112, 121, 127, 128, building, 136, 137, 193, 195–197, 136–138, 142, 145, 148, 155, 203, 204, 218, 219 159, 186–188, 190–197, 200, mutual, 137, 193, 194, 199 202, 203, 216, 217 trustworthiness, 193, 203 Space, 10, 24, 28, 39–43, 48, 66, 87, 93, 95, 100, 114, 122, 125, 128, 129, 133, 138–142, 148–150, U 152, 154–157, 159, 164, 173, Uncertainty, 2, 24, 40, 113, 137, 187, 174, 182, 187, 189, 190, 210, 202–204, 209, 211, 215–217. See 211, 220 also Certainty private, 11, 28, 41, 139–142, Understanding, 14, 30, 40, 47, 62, 149–156 70, 88, 107, 118, 142, 155, 158, public, 67, 133, 139–142, 149–157 242 Index

186, 187, 190–192, 195–199, W 202–204, 215–219 Worthy life, 212 Upbringing, 112, 163, 200 Upward mobility, 25, 27, 37, 42, 85, 212 Y Youth/young/youthful, 2, 3, 14, 15, 22–27, 29, 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, V 44, 46–48, 58–62, 64–68, 70, 71, Valentine’s Day, 100, 101 79, 83, 84, 87, 101, 121–125, Violence/coercive control, 45, 46, 68, 129, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 72, 81, 83, 85, 91, 93, 94, 117, 142, 143, 145, 146, 150–153, 153, 164, 170, 172, 177, 179, 155–157, 159, 160, 165, 171, 180–183, 197, 204, 214, 216 172, 175, 181, 183, 184, 186, Virginity, 34, 154, 160, 161, 168, 193, 200, 204, 207, 210, 212, 170, 174, 177, 178, 183 213 Virtual, 135