Anthology II

Write to reconcile ii Write to reconcile ii An Anthology Edited by Shyam Selvadurai ISBN : 978-955-4787-01-8 First Edition 2015 All rights reserved © Write to Reconcile Published by NPC, No. 12/14, Purana Vihara Road, Colombo 6, Sri Lanka www.writetoreconcile.com table of contents Shyam Selvadurai Introduction 7 nalini Sivathasan Divided by Faith 13 Binguni liyanage 39 Shanthiya Baheerathan In Separation 47 Kandiah Shrikarunaakaran Sandunika Hasangani The Redemption 60 ranmini Gunawardena nimalan thavandiran Piumi Wijesundara ruchini Abayakoon Wazna Wazeer The Saviour 111 Michelle Handy Hasitha Adhikariarachchi Yogarajah Atchuthan Pakeerathy Patkunanathan Deborah S Xavier lahiruni ekanayake luxika nagendiran naduni Dineisha easwarajanani Karunailingam lilani Anuruddhika rubatheesan Sandranathan Sapna Supunsara Janani Balasubramaniam Fathima nusaira ruvini Katugaha K. Jepakumar Acknowledgements 268 introDuction One evening in Toronto, while I was in the middle of editing this anthology, I went with a friend to listen to the monk, Venerable Ajahn Brahm, speak on the subject of Self-Compassion. He started his talk with a story that stayed with me for long after. The tale went something like this: Seven monks lived a holy life in a cave on top of a mountain, largely unknown to the people in the surrounding villages. The seven monks consisted of a head monk, his best friend, his brother, his enemy, a very old monk, a very sick monk and a useless monk – who never did any of his chores and never remembered the chants, but who the other monks kept on to teach them patience and compassion. One day, a band of robbers discovered the cave and saw immediately that it would be a perfect place to hide out, as well as store their loot. In order to get the cave, however, they would have to murder the monks. They didn’t want them going down into the valley and informing the villagers about the robbers’ whereabouts. So they stormed the cave, grabbed the monks by their robes and prepared to kill them. The head monk, like most head monks, was a good talker. He spoke to the head robber at length and, after much negotiation, he persuaded the leader to spare the monks’ lives. The leader, however, had a caveat. He would kill one monk as a warning to the other six not to divulge the robbers’ location. The head monk had to choose which one must die. After he had got this far in the story, Ajahn Brahm asked the audience who they thought should die. I, like a lot of the other own life; a few volunteered the life of the useless monk, a few the enemy. Yet, all our answers, it turned out, were wrong. The correct answer was none. The head monk could not choose from the seven of them, valuing his life as those of his brother, his best friend, his enemy, the sick monk, the ill monk and the useless monk. The lesson of the story was that we must love another person not more or less than ourselves, but as WRITE TO RECONCILE II ourselves. The moral of Ajahn Brahm’s story lingered with me in the following days as I read and corrected work for this anthology, the point of view of the “other side”, or from points of view within I found myself admiring how they had entered with imagination themselves as if they were their own – Tamil participants writing Vanni, or of a Muslim family whose son was abducted by the LTTE; Sinhalese participants inhabiting the lives of a violated Tamil girl the LTTE; a Muslim participant inhabiting the points of view of an LTTE soldier and a Sinhalese medical student. Their work tells us that empathy is possible, that it is possible to regard the other as one regards oneself. They invite the reader to feel a similar empathy. writers, through their complexity and poignancy, also invite us to from the diaspora give us a chance to see the war from the point of view of a segment of Sri Lankans who are no longer living here, but who have played an important role in the history of Sri Lanka over the past 30 plus years. The goal of , which is in its second year now, is reconciliation in Sri Lanka who, through their work, are willing to explore the hatreds that have torn apart this country. The idea for the project was born out of my belief in the restorative power civil war; my belief that literature has an important part to play in healing wounds between communities and creating empathetic dialogue in post-war Sri Lanka. Good literature, unlike politics or much of today’s journalism, gets to the heart of human experience because it is not polemic; it avoids the rigid blacks and whites and goes for the multiple greys that make up society and human 9 existence. We all possess positive and negative impulses and these impulses jostle in us. Our actions are determined by a combination of personal, cultural and political history. Good literature, with its commitment to multiplicity and plurality, is best poised to explore the contradictions not just in a person but in a society. The nuances and muddiness of motives and interactions, as portrayed in good literature, are precisely what is needed to bridge polarities and develop empathy between divided communities in Sri Lanka today. Late last year, put out an island-wide call for applications from all Sri Lankans and members of the Sri Lankan diaspora, between the ages of 18-29, along with teachers and professors of any age. The submission and selection process was rigorous: potential participants had to send in a piece of creative work, along with an explanation as to why they thought they would be good candidates. The response was overwhelming and we received close to double the number of applications we had in participants to a residential creative writing workshop that would , we the tools and techniques of creative writing, covering everything also generated creative pieces through in-class exercises that were Sri Lanka. Participants also learnt the tools and techniques of editing. I was assisted in all this by my co-facilitator Ameena Hussein. The residential workshops were followed by two online forums in for discussion. Supervised by Ameena and myself, the participants editorial feedback from us. Following the end of the two forums, each participant selected one of their two pieces for publication, and I worked with them to prepare the chosen piece for this anthology. 10 WRITE TO RECONCILE II One of my goals for the project was that participants learn to think of their work in the context of the cultural multiplicity of Sri Lanka. cultures of these regions. Equally important, participants got to as well as those who were victims of the war. Encounters with their work, particularly pieces set in the Eastern Province. To see this work set in the Eastern Province was especially came out in 2013 lacked anything set in the region. One of my goals for the second anthology was that this imbalance be redressed. The of members of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. It too has been addressed, I am delighted to say, in this collection. The one perspective, however, that eludes both anthologies is that of the LTTE. Not work about the LTTE but rather work from the LTTE. I feel that if we are to really understand what happened in the last 30 plus years and make sure it never happens again, we need to understand, even though we might not condone, the viewpoint of those who truly believed in the LTTE’s cause. We need to understand why large segments of the Tamil population believed in and supported the LTTE until very close to the end of the war. Why segments of the Tamil population still believe in them. In the Sri Lanka of today, with its culture of censorship, and the use of anti-terrorism laws to silence such points of view, it may not be possible to gather these stories. I suspect one must look to freer to speak their own version of the truth. , working with the participants in this anthology has broadened my understanding of the complex history of Sri Lanka. Their work has helped me to understand how the war was fought in the Eastern Province; their work has increased my empathy for members of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, with whom my own encounters, as someone with a Tamil surname, were often fraught in the war years. I hope that you 11 too, as you read this anthology, feel a deeper, wider and more empathetic sense of yourself as a Sri Lankan and what it means to be Sri Lankan. Or, if you are not Sri Lankan, a broader view of what happened during the civil war. The Royal Norwegian Embassy and The American Centre backed our project for a second year and we are deeply grateful Jehan Perera and The National Peace Council gave our project a home for the second time and have been enthusiastic supporters, so that it might reach a wider audience. They also arranged a pleasure of working on this project is the excellent team I work with who bring a joy and commitment to . I am deeply grateful to them. Shyam Selvadurai Shyam Selvadurai Funny Boy, Cinnamon Gardens, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea and The Hungry GhostsStory-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction and Many Roads Through Paradise, An Anthology of Sri Lankan Literature 12 DiViDeD BY FAitH like bloodthirsty mosquitoes. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and then exhaled, counting to 10 in my head.

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