To Speak of Silence

Postcoloniality and the narration of pain in context of the civil war in Sri Lanka

Luther Uthayakumaran

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Research

School of English University of New South Wales

March 2003

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to point to the existence of silences with regard to the civil war in Sri Lanka. The thesis consists of a fictional component and an exegesis that investigates several issues pertaining to the fiction.

The civil war in Sri Lanka is driven on either side by the opposing ideological positions of Tamil and Singhalese nationalisms, and it is chronicled from these two perspectives.

The two nationalist narratives position the victims of war in a martyr - loser binary based on whether the victim is on the same side or on the opposite side to that of the narrator and his/her nationalism. However, in the context of a war fought amidst a hybrid and complex postcolonial society such as that of Sri Lanka, the narratives of all people(s) do not at all times align with the binary positions determined by these two nationalisms. The stories the nationalisms exclude leave an area of silence.

If the pain of war (as the result of violence) is to be narrated representatively, then it needs a form of narration that enables the telling of stories from multiple perspectives.

Postcolonial literary theory, through its criticisms of grand narratives, has cleared a space for such a polyphonic narrative to emerge. It is now possible to move away from the total, and towards the fragment. Thus the stories of the fragment - the individual, the family, the local community etc - can now be told at the same level of legitimacy as that of the histories of totalising entities such as political movements, aspiring nations, and governments.

Page 1 of2 The theoretical part of the thesis is an exegesis relating to the fictional part. Based on postcolonial literary theory, it situates the fiction and explores pertinent issues with respect to representation, nationalism, imperial and postcolonial narratives, narration of history, post-traumatic silence, and exile and immigrant writing.

The fictional part of the thesis is based on my memories of living in Sri Lanka during the late 1980s. This is made up of the stories (fictional) of individuals, journal entries, letters etc, and depicts a writing of history as that history unfolds. The voices that this fiction depicts cannot usually be heard from within nationalist narratives, thus they point to occluded silences. The stories are imbued with gaps in knowledge, uncertainties, and missing links in threads of events. Thee fictional section as a whole does not follow a linear trajectory, but takes its overall form only in the coming together of its several component stories.

Page 2 of2 Acknowledgements

No work, creative or critical, emerges entirely from the mind of a single individual. It is not possible for me to even count the number of people who would have contributed in some form towards the creation of this work.

I am indebted to my supervisors Dr Anne Brewster and Dr Sue Kossow for all their guidance, help and support. Especially to Anne, for patiently going through the numerous drafts, and for being always available and ready to help in spite of her very busy schedule. I am grateful for her confidence in me, and her ceaseless encouragement.

Thanks to Dr Paul Dawson and Dr Suzanne Eggins for reading and commenting on the drafts at different stages.

I am grateful for the feedback I received from the two writing groups: Margaret

Vermeesh, Charles Bridges-Webb, and Rowena Finnane, of the non-fiction group; and

Rebccea Jee, Shoko Oono, Melanie Symons, and Fiana Stewart of the fiction group: not only for their feedback, but also for their company and the several stimulating conversations during which a number of ideas took shape.

Thanks to Suji, for her patience and support, especially during the stressful movements, when minds froze and computers crashed.

Page 3 of 3 Finally, a very big thank you to Satara, who had to sacrifice much needed attention during her first few months on earth. I hope this would not instil in her active mind too much an antipathy towards literary pursuits.

I gratefully remember my parents and others who shared with me the pain of war and never saw it end. If not for my memories of them, this project would never have started.

Page 4 of 4 Table of Contents

Abstract 1

Acknowledgements 3

Fiction 7

Part 1 8

1975 -The Church Where God Walked 9

1976 - The Durga Puja 12

1986 - St Francis Xavier College 13

1987 - The Return 27

Mallika Stores 30

Part 2 38

Silent not by Choice 39

After the Red Glow 42

Nights of Fate 52

Love 56

The Atheist and the Priest 67

The Departure 78

Destiny 85

Epilogue 87

Page 5 of 5 Exegesis 90

I .Introduction 91

1.1 Introduction to the Creative Thesis 93

2. The relevance of Postcoloniality (Postcolonial Theory) 94

2.1 Historical Background 94

2.2 The De-Secularising of the Sri Lankan State and the Tamil Nationalist

Response 96

2.3 The Relevance of Postcolonial Theory 100

3. The civil war in Sri Lanka; representations in literature 102

3 .1 The persisting Problem 102

3.2 The relevance of Stories 107

3.3 Individuation - problematising fixed identities in literary representations of

Sri Lanka 114

4. Narration of History 118

4.1 Spatial History 118

4.2 Linear and Non-Linear Narratives of History in Literature 120

5. Narration of Pain as a Struggle against Suffering 128

6. Metropolitan, Third World, Immigrant or Exile 132

7. Conclusion 143

8. References 144

Page 6 of 149 Fiction

Page 7 of7 Part - 1

Page 8 of 8 1975-The Church Where God Walked

1975 was the year Maya joined my school, and I invited her to play with us - Me,

Dheep, and Sidharth. My name is Rowan. Maya turned out to be the only girl in the group.

After school we walked home together and played for another two hours, after which

Maya's mother would drive her home, Dheep and Sidharth would walk home, and I would go indoors to bathe and have dinner with my parents.

On Fridays one of our parents would drive us to the fort to play.

One day my mother read me a poem about a merman who fell in love with a human woman. But the woman wanted to go to church first, and her prayers took so long that her lover had to return to sea without her. From that day, every time we went to the fort church, I would run out before mass ended and stand on the rocks at the shore to see mermaids and merman arrive to pick up their lovers.

The Old Portuguese fort stood at the edge of town. The fort protruded into the sea, and a narrow road squeezed between the ocean and the fort's ten-foot thick ramparts serpentined around it. Many 100 years ago it guarded the entrance to the bay. Now we get to it by driving past the tum to the causeway. The surface of the rampart, swept by three hundred years of sea-wind, was covered with overgrown grass and shrubs. There

Page 9 of9 were two cannons on either side of its entrance, facing the sea-gate into the bay. There

were even two unused cannon balls by the side of one of them. No one had touched them for two hundred years, so neither did we.

There were a number of buildings inside the fort, including an unused prison. Among them was an old church, where mass was said once a month.

It was in that church that Dheep claimed God walked every night. He was so tall that his head touched the roof.

The next night before Poya 1, we decided to go there at midnight to see God. It was that night of the month when our parents danced all night at the Officers' Mess. We slipped out, only the three of us, since Maya couldn't get out. The moonlight cast a blue shroud over the rampart and the sea around it. We entered the church through the door opening into the altar on the other side of the keeper's house. The door was never locked, since in my part of the world no thief ever dared to steal from a church. We dropped to the floor and crawled on our bellies to keep out of the gaze of the sacrament. Wrapped in the scent of the burning wax and the sea, we lay under the altar-tables, and waited for

God.

The day after Poya, I made sure that I stood next to Maya during morning prayers.

While the prefects tried hard to sound enthusiastic repeating the same prayer yet another day, I whispered into her ears. "I saw God last night".

1 Full Moon day, holiday in Sri Lanka

Page 10 of 10 "Which God?"

"God. I mean God, father of Jesus"

"At the church in the fort?"

The headmaster looked in our direction

"Yes, shhhhhhh"

"Who was so tall, that his head touched the roof?"

"Yes ... but how did you know?"

She giggled. "That's not the father of Jesus you stupid. That's Neptune, god of the sea."

Dheep turned back to say something. The headmaster's eyes stared straight at us.

"Oh God, please ... sorry ... er ... Neptune, please save us."

The headmaster looked away.

Page 11 of 11 1976 - The Durga Puja

One day, Maya's father, who Maya said worshipped different Gods, invited us for the

Durga Puja. I couldn't sleep that night because I kept dreaming of Durga, holding the

Thrisula2, riding a lion gliding into my room carried by the sea-wind. Then I saw her pierce a child's tongue with the Thrisula because the child had told a lie. The fires of hell were burning around them, and Satan was looking on. The tip of his tail looked like the Thrisula in one of Durga's hands. I woke up screaming. But a moment later my mother's arms were around me, and she wiped away my perspiration. I went back to sleep, and dreamt of Durga again. But I wasn't scared of the Goddess of valour anymore.

From then on every year I looked forward for October, when I would wake in the mornings for the sound of cymbals and blowing of conches that marked the Durga festival.

2 Hindu three thronged dagger

Page 12 of 12 1986 - St Francis Xavier College

It was dead quiet, and there was a general sense of relaxation in the camp. There was no trace of any military activity in the area. The boys, Ghandi and Arjun, were playing cards, while Prahal was leaning against a gunny bag on the verandah reading a newspaper. It couldn't have been that day's paper, since he couldn't have gone into the village to buy a paper that day. I hadn't given him permission to leave the camp. I was beginning to get worried about him. It seemed to me that he was beginning to be disobedient, that there was a side to him that I couldn't see. I made a mental note to check from where he got the paper. I looked for the two girls, and saw them sitting cross legged under the only poplar tree in the compound, a few feet from the well, chatting.

The surrounding forest was wrapped in a melancholic yellow afternoon light. The red soil, the new green leaves of spring, and the clear blue sky together formed an orchestra of colours. That day the beauty of nature extended beyond the best I could imagine.

There was a time when I was able to be still at a place, when I was able to read a book to its completion, or listen to a piece of music uninterrupted. But now it seemed that I had to move my body constantly. Physical movement had become the heartbeat of my sanity. So I shouted to Prahal, asked him to keep an eye on the camp and went to take a walk to the village. I avoided the main road and walked through the forest up to where it gave way to open paddy fields. The fields were freshly planted ready for spring showers, the sprouts ready to appear at first rain. Then I noticed the dark clouds approaching from the east. The rain would be here any moment. Somewhere in the field a radio played music as a run up to the 6 pm news broadcast. I remembered that

Page 13 of 13 before I left home to join the Organisation curfew at home was marked by the 6 pm

News. Then fifteen minutes to wash up, followed by three hours of studying, and then dinner with my parents and to bed. In those days I used to walk home from school along marine drive, listening to the same music from several radio receivers, tempered by the sound of the waves of the ocean. As the half hour that it took for my walk home ticked passed, each piece of music brought me a step closer to the end ofmy day.

Rain clouds were descending fast over the village. It started to drizzle. It would probably rain during the night. Rain at twilight used to overwhelm me. The last rays of daylight refracting through raindrops, lights coming on in houses, people huddling in tea-shops, and the sound of rain on rooftops, mixed with the sound of the sea never failed to lift my spirit. These things somehow made me feel happy about my future. But all that seemed a long time ago.

I came to the edge of the forest and saw a farmer gathering his things to go home. He buttoned up his shirt, and lit a cigar. Then, holding the cigar in his mouth, he covered himself with an old plastic bag - two sides of which were ripped open to serve as a raincoat, in anticipation of the rain. He reached for the radio hanging on a branch of a tree standing at the edge of the field where the forest began. He couldn't have been more than ten metres from me, and went still as soon as he saw me. He kept staring at me, his eyes squinted in a birdlike thoughtful manner. His fingers rested on the dial without turning them. We stared at each other for about ten seconds. I smiled, but he didn't respond. Another ten seconds would have passed as we kept staring at each other.

Then all of a sudden his squint vanished. It looked as if he had made a connection in his

Page 14 of 14 mind. He turned off the radio with his eyes still fixed on me, pulled the radio off the tree, mounted it in his shoulder, and walked away. In the silence that followed after the end of the music from the radio, the forest seemed filled with the sound of crickets and frog cry. I first thought I should follow the farmer into the village, then changed my mind and walked along the edge between the field and the forest. It started to rain heavily so I turned and started to run back towards the camp.

I stopped about 50 metres from the camp, and was startled by its appearance. It was the first time I had seen it from this distance, and in its entirety. And it was the distant view that made me realise it had been a school before it was converted into a guerrilla camp, a thought which paralysed me momentarily. It had been a village school where children came to learn, a place where futures were born, a beacon of hope for a rescue from the miseries of poverty. I had converted it into a place of war. The building looked ghastly in the last light of the evening, drenched in the pouring rain. The walls were bullet ridden and there were smoke marks from explosions on the walls. Part of the tiled roof had been blown off, and a gaping hole was receiving rain into the building. A simple lamp burned in the large room at the centre of the building, which presumably had once been a school hall. The school was now a symbol of the sacrifice the society was being forced to make towards the idea of a future nation. But how much of a poor child's mind is occupied by the ambition of nations? Nationalism is a hallucination that forces people to escape the poverty of the present, and even that of the future.

When I returned to the camp I noticed everyone had moved into the hall and were playing cards; all except Prahal who was still reading the paper. I wondered as to how

Page 15 of 15 many times he would have had to read the paper to be still reading it. As soon as I entered the room everyone acknowledged me with a wave - everyone except Prahal, who seemed genuinely immersed in his reading. When he finally saw me he just looked at me and nodded, as if to say: I have done my job looking after the camp, now you take over.

As I went into the room and started to wipe myself (I was the only one in the camp who had a room for myself), I started to wonder again about the school and Prahal. There was a vague sense in my mind that they were somehow connected. Maybe it was because of his familiarity with the surroundings, and the sense of confidence with which he went about doing his daily tasks. He displayed a unique sense of self-confidence, which usually comes with learning, and an assurance that arises out of the awareness of one's learning. He seemed more independent than the others in the cell, and I found him in a kind of dreaminess. It was as if even when following instructions he was doing so out of some sort of outer compulsion. But that compulsion was something that he had learned to live with, acknowledging it but not accepting it, like sleeping with someone whom you are not in love with.

When everything around is still, the mind often gets overactive with anxious thoughts.

My mind was full of riddles that night. There was the puzzle of the school; why did it cease to function? It was already abandoned when I set up camp here. Then, there was the mystery of Prahal. I had dinner by myself, and it was while eating that I remembered the head master's office: the locked room at the end of the hall. I was the one who locked the room after searching it when we were first setting up camp. On that

Page 16 of 16 day the desk looked as if it has been left in a hurry. Papers were thrown all over it, and a set of neatly arranged files and letters still remained in the in-tray. But in accordance with the Organisation's regulations, I didn't read any of them, but packed them carefully and locked them inside the half empty wooden cupboards that lined the wall on one side of the room. Tonight I was willing to break any regulation, in order to satisfy my curiosity.

I waited until Ghandi and Vima took their sentry positions for the first half of the night and the others went to bed. I opened the headmaster's office at about 11.30 pm, and navigated with a penlight, not wanting to light a lamp. The room remained exactly the way I had left it on the day I sealed it. I sat at the headmaster's desk and ran my hand over the green linoleum writing-mat. A massive painting of an ancient harbour hung on the wall opposite. I opened the cupboards, placed the files on the desk, and went through them one by one. Two hours passed and I had not discovered anything unusual or interesting; nothing to suggest what had happened on the days before the office was closed. I noticed the waning moon through the glass window. The raindrops on the glass windowpane shimmered in the night wind. It made the moon appear as if parts of it were vibrating in the night sky. The glow of the penlight was starting to grow dim when a thought struck me that I might have overlooked something. Driven almost by instinct,

I reached for the school register and went through the names again. And there on the list was the name, Prahal Jaykeesh.

I put everything back in its place, working very fast. I had a feeling that I was running out of time, that events were overtaking me. I walked through the hall to one of the

Page 17 of 17 classrooms behind where the boys sleep and opened the door, slowly. But, Prahal wasn't there. I closed the door and walked out through the rear veranda, and around the room to the edge of the building facing the forest. In the moonlight I looked around, and there at the edge of the forest, was Prahal. He seemed to be looking at the forest, as if waiting for someone, or for something to happen. I slid behind the comer of the wall and waited in silence. There was a rustle, and a night owl flew above us. Prahal became alert and then relaxed when he saw that it was only an owl. I waited for another half hour as Prahal stood in exactly the same place. Then there was another rustle in the forest, and Prahal took a few steps in that direction. A man emerged from behind the trees and walked up to Prahal. I gasped, and quickly covered my mouth, not to make a noise. Prahal seemed to have heard the noise and turned around. I jumped back to the comer where I was hiding. A few minutes passed as Prahal and the man kept looking around them. In that time I studied the man carefully in the little moonlight that was left. He was wearing only a loincloth. The rest of his body was bare. He had shoulder length hair and a long beard. There was an aura of otherworldliness about him. The moon had reached the tree line by now and cast long shadows. The night began to take on an eerie look. So that was it, I concluded; Prahal was a spy - probably a plant.

Once he had finished looking around the man looked at Prahal, who gave him piece of paper. I reflexively pulled my revolver and ran towards the two, levelled the gun at the head of the man and shouted "stay right there". The man stood where he was and looked at me as if in amusement. There wasn't even a trace of tension in his body. We just kept staring at each other for a few seconds. Suddenly there was a noise behind me. I swung behind and pointed my gun in that direction. It was that owl again. But in that split

Page 18 of 18 second the man bolted. He ran as if his body was weightless. I ran behind him shouting,

ordering him to stop. But I had no intention of firing my revolver, since that would not answer any questions. He ran zig-zag and I knew he would soon disappear into the forest. So I tried to run abreast and force him towards the open field. As I was running after him I put the pistol back into the holster and pulled out a flashlight. And as soon as

I stepped into the field, I saw him standing straight ahead. He was staring at me. I noticed that he was standing on the bund of the water reservoir. He had a paper in his right hand. I flashed the light at him and saw in the split second before he dived into the water that his face and hair were covered in grey ash. A black Thrisula was inscribed on his forehead.

When I returned to the camp Prahal wasn't there. I asked Gandhi and Vima whether they saw him leave. Both said they didn't. But I was too tired, too terrified, to investigate anything more that night. So I went into my room and sat at my desk. Sitting at my desk gives me the intellectual space needed for contemplation. But that night I was too terrified even to think. I felt so tired that I had to rest my head on my hands folded on the desk. Lying on my hands I noticed the inkwell at the edge of the table. It probably had not been used for decades yet there were ink stains on its walls. This building has been in existence for many years before I even saw it for the first time.

Slowly I began to be aware of the vastness of the world that I didn't know. I felt as if I was trapped inside a bubble, and I could go only as far as its skin. I could see what lay beyond, but I couldn't comprehend it.

Page 19 of 19 My eyes started to droop with sleep, and in that subconscious state I saw the inkwell grow bigger - wider and deeper, and I started to fall into it. But the floor of the well kept receding, and even though I kept falling I never touched it. Streams of ink kept falling alongside me. Then they started to form words, words that were unknown to me, the characters of a strange shape, of an unknown language. Then I heard a murmur of voices, their voices growing in number into thousands. They made no sense. They were voices from a world beyond my reach. And in the chaotic noise, I drifted into a dreamless sleep.

Page 20 of20 Excerpts from the diary ofPrahal J

I 3th September 1985

I am 16 years old now, and I have never kept a diary. But today I make my first entry, since I think what happened today needs to be remembered . . . but I also ask myself why I am writing this, since I know very well that until the day I die I will never forget what happened here this morning.

When I walked to school this morning through the fields and then along the road through the forest, I had a strange sense that something terrible was going to happen, because last night's dream was replaying in my mind. But I have had bad dreams before and nothing happened the next day. So I didn't take this one seriously. But then no premonition in the world would have prepared me for what I was to see ...

Morning prayers finished at 8.30 am as usual, and just as we were getting ready to go back to class we heard the sound of engines. It was unusual for vehicles to come at this time, so everyone stopped and turned to look. The army jeeps surrounded the school building, and soldiers jumped out to stand next to them, guns pointing at us. Then I saw the commander getting out of one of the jeeps. He was the only one without a gun. I saw the headmaster hurry towards him as if to greet him, and they shook hands. What I saw next made every muscle in my body freeze in shock. Behind the officer another soldier was dragging two boys; they were still in their school uniforms. Their clothes

Page 21 of 21 and hair were in such a mess that I deduced that they probably hadn't gone home yesterday.

The principal walked back towards us very slowly, almost reluctantly, and said "the commander wants to address the assembly". The commander stepped forward as the headmaster stepped back sheepishly ... After that everything happened in a split second

. . . I saw one of the boys run towards the forest. There was firing. Most of the students and teachers fell on the ground ... I saw the soldiers run in the direction in which one of the boys they had brought had run. For a while everything was quiet. Then I heard someone say "they have gone", and people started to get up: everyone but three. I looked at the dead bodies of three boys, their white uniforms drenched in blood, there were holes in the skull of each one of them. Some wept, some talked in loud voices, but

I just stood and stared at the bodies until I felt dizzy and fell on the ground. When I gained consciousness three hours later the bodies were gone, and there was no one in the school. I walked home, fell on my bed, and went to sleep.

1 fh September 1985 ...

Today is the fourth day I am coming to school after the shooting incident. There is no one else here. Maybe I will also stop coming from tomorrow.

A year later ...

Page 22 of22 2B'h August 1986 ...

Today is a replay. A year ago I decided to leave school, today I leave the Organisation. I don't know where I will go next. But I have run away once, so I believe I can do it agam.

On my way here I saw the body of an old longhaired man tied to a lamppost with a sign above his head that read 'Traitor'. I was not brave enough to look to see who it was. But

I am convinced that it is the soothsayer who came to see me last night.

Page 23 of23 A Letter ofDesperation

B* Septem-bef 1985 14th September 1985

To

Mr M Sathasivam

No 25 Singing Fish Road

Baticaloa

From

MrS Dharman

Head Master

St Francis Xavier College

Dear Father

I am writing to you because I am confused and in need of your advice.

You know that unlike you I am an agnostic. For me confidence in human potential

outweighs dependence on the supernatural. I believed that we people of this country

could improve our conditions through the collective exercise of our intelligence and

hard work. It is because of this belief that I chose to become a teacher in a Government

school. Through the last year I have been elated at the potential of the mostly poor

students who came to study in this remote school. But what happened here last night has

left me with a deeply troubled mind.

Page 24 of24 Father, remember you used to tell me about a community ofreclusive fortune tellers whom you claimed lived in your village, who cover themselves in ash, allegedly collected from crematoriums? You said that they used to knock on people's gates in the night to foretell the fate of the household, usually of impending doom. You know that I never believed you. Well, today I saw one of them. He knocked at the gate of my house,

and when I went out he told me that there would be death in the school. I shouted at him, and asked him to go, but he calmly replied that ifhe were I, he would close the

school and send the children home.

The war is getting worse by the day. The guerrillas are spotted in the village almost

every day. Today they almost came face to face with the army. It is only a matter of

days before there is a major confrontation and there will be death everywhere. Given

this situation anyone can safely predict impending death. But, I still wonder ...

Father, I left this letter unfinished yesterday in order to finish it today. But today I am so

shaken by events that I can hardly hold a pen. I can hardly describe what happened

today. The only thing I want to say is that the soothsayer's prediction did come true.

There was murder in the school. And I couldn't stop it. The children who died came

here to study. They were under my protection, but there was nothing I could do to save

them.

The connection between what happened today and what the soothsayer said might only

be a coincidence. Well, I still think it is. However because of what happened today I

Page 25 of25 can't continue to run the school. Whatever the soothsayer did or didn't do, he has destroyed my self-confidence. I am leaving the school. If anyone else wants they can take over and run it. But I doubt anyone will. I am coming home. At least I have a home to go back to. Hope I can stay with you for a few months, until I find another job.

Your affectionate son,

Dharman

Page 26 of26 1987 - The Return

Yesterday I came back to see my house - the place where I grew up. I had promised myself that I would not return until revenge was complete. But my revenge, the revenge ofDurga will never be complete, and it was hard to stay away, so I came back.

The doors kept swinging for the wind, and creaked. Metal window bars were corroding in the salty air. Books left behind were thrown about; their tom pages carpeted the floor.

But apart from that nothing had moved. Freshly washed table clothes and cutlery remained where they were on the day before my mother died. Everything stood where it was, decaying. It was as if time stopped when she died and started to walk back.

There was movement in the house now. Only time's backward flow of decay.

I walked through the streets. A few shops still did business. A lone radio still played music. Bodies of cars were rusting on the roadside.

I went to Dheep's house. It was empty. I could see the sea through the open doors.

I walked to Sidharth's house. It was locked. The locks had rusted.

I walked along the marine drive, slower than before, towards Maya's house. It was silly

to think she would have stayed. But to my surprise the front door was closed, and not

locked! There were chairs on the veranda, and the jasmine creeper in the garden was

Page 27 of27 freshly pruned. I knocked on the door and waited. There were shuffles inside, and then someone opened the door. I saw a young woman, not the child my subconscious expected. She had thick black hair, which was cut short, only her searching intelligent eyed had not changed. I said "Maya". We embraced for what seemed an eternity. She said something, but I didn't hear what it was. It was the first touch of affection in twelve years.

When we were having lunch I asked why she hadn't moved like the others. She said,

"My mother spent her whole life building this house, and building a life for us here. I was the one who was going to University, the one who was going to have a life, rather than spend a lifetime building a life. Neither of us have a another place to go, or another lifetime to build another life."

I asked what had happened to Sidharth. She shrugged and opened her palms. I waited in her silence.

She broke the silence and changed the topic. "You remember the church keeper at the

Fort Church?"

"Yes"

"I will be going there in a few minutes to take his food. Why don't you come with me?"

Page 28 of28 I agreed, and while we were walking I asked her why she took food to the church keeper.

"Because nobody else will."

While Maya was with the church keeper, I walked through the ruins of the church - a modem addition to the ancient sequence of ruins that formed the fort.

Did mermaids and mermen blow up this church so their human lovers would never have to leave them?

I stepped outside the fort. Maya was leaning on the old cannon, her hair on the rusting barrel. Behind her the sun had set the ocean on fire, a thousand tongues of light were marching on the ripples - the foot soldiers of the fire god Agni. The sun was kissing her goodbye, but before that it had lit the ocean and the sky to see her face, and in the light

she looked like the wife of Neptune.

She is the wife of Neptune. She had married him and taken him home, because there

was no longer a church for him to take walks.

I realised that Neptune had won the love of God's most beautiful creation. He did it to

exact revenge on him for holding in prayers the lovers of his creation for too long. His

revenge was complete.

Page 29 of29 Mallika Stores

Y ogar woke up when he felt the sunlight on his face, and made his Spartan bed of a single bed sheet spread over a worn out mattress, a bare pillow, and a blanket. In another half an hour he would have a breakfast of coconut-sambol and bread with black coffee, which he would prepare himself, and get ready to open the shop. Yogar's material needs were few. His desires were restricted to the basic needs oflife, with two exceptions - books and conversation with his customers. It seemed to Yogar that ever since the war started more people seemed to be coming to his shop to talk to him rather than to shop. The villagers thought that Yogar was a wise man. His wisdom unlike that of teachers was accessible to them. Scholars expected ordinary folk to respect them and always began with an assumption of superiority. But with Yogar they could debate, question, and disagree. People told him that even when they disagreed with him, the world looked a little saner after them talking to him. For most people Yogar was a connection to a time and place before and beyond the war.

At the back of Yogar's shop there was a room full of old books, which he read and reread. He occasionally wrote but never showed his writing to anyone. These days he had to resign himself to rereading books since it had become difficult to buy new ones.

They took a long time to come by post, and in addition most bookshops were not willing to send books without advance payment anymore, so he had to be content with what he had. Except for the occasional second hand copy that he managed to buy from a customer. He had just finished reading for the second time Darkness at Noon, by Arthur

Koestler. He wanted to select another one to start today. He wanted something less

Page 30 of 30 violent, something that didn't relate so closely to what was happening around him. So he picked up the Malgudi Days by R K Narayan - he hadn't read it before - it was a weathered copy, which he had bought from a customer recently. He walked to the shop with the book in hand, threw the book on the table, and checked whether everything was in its place for the shop to open. When he opened the front door, the first customer was already waiting, a young boy, in Yogar's estimation not older than a teenager. And as

Yogar pushed the shutter aside the boy asked: "Are you the owner?"

"Yes I am," replied Yogar, his eyes still on the shutters as he hooked them to the sidewalls.

"Can I have tea here?"

"Well, I don't normally serve tea in the shop, but I am going to have some, so if you want to join me come on in."

Yogar asked the boy to sit on the high stool in front of his desk, and went inside to make two cups of tea.

While he was at the back he heard the noise of an engine. It was not usual for vehicles to pass at this time of day. It would be at least two hours before the first bus to the city left the village. When Yogar came out with the mugs of tea the boy wasn't there, at least not where he had asked him to sit. Yogar momentarily noted a truck full of armed guerrillas speeding away. He waited for the truck to pass and yelled "are you here?"

Page 31 of31 There was no reply. So he yelled again. He then noticed the boy emerge shyly from the back room where the books were kept. The boy cautiously looked outside and asked

"has the truck gone?"

Yogar was alarmed now. "Well, are you hiding from them?" and as the boy remained silent he continued, "you are running away from them aren't you?"

The boy seemed more alarmed and shot back "No, I am not. But are you one of them?

You are, aren't you?"

He then made a dash to the table, fetched his bag, and ran towards the front door. But

Yogar ran behind him, and caught him just in time before he stepped out of the shop.

The boy shouted and tried to break loose. Y ogar summoned all the energy he could from his old body and held him still. The boy spoke in a shaky voice:

"If you are not one of them let me go. They will kill you, and they'll kill me."

Yogar spoke slowly, but made sure that his grip was firm. "I am not one of them, and they can't kill me. But you first tell me who you are, and why you are running away from the Organisation."

"My name is Prahal," the boy started and let his voice trail for a minute. The boy thought of the books in the back room. He somehow trusted people who read books. On several occasions he had taken blind chances based on that assumption and it had

Page 32 of32 worked every time. "Ok" he said, "let go of my hand, and I'll tell you." Over the next half hour Yogar sipped his tea while Prahal told his story. He would stop talking when an occasional customer came in, and if the customer tried to start a conversation Y ogar would wave his hand as if to say 'later', and the customer would go away. Prahal was surprised at the level of control Yogar had over his customers, to be able to dismiss them like that. He realised that they were more than just customers, they were members of a community that had formed around Yogar's shop, with Yogar as the de-facto leader.

When Prahal finished telling his story Yogar asked "so what do you want to do now?"

"I don't know, I will probably wonder around the country and see ifl can find a job".

"Ok," said Yogar, "if you want, you can hang around the shop today, and you can leave during the night when it is safer. I suggest that you stay at the back, so you don't arouse the curiosity of customers."

When it was lunchtime Y ogar took some bread and fish curry into the backroom, where

he found Prahal reading a Tamil book that he had picked up from the shelf. Prahal kept

reading through the afternoon, and never came out of the room. At sundown Yogar

closed the shop and went to the back room with two mugs of tea. Taking the tea from

him Prahal asked "have you actually read all these books".

"Yes, most of them, at least once. Do you find any of them particularly interesting?"

Page 33 of33 "Well most of them are in English, but I like this one which is in Tamil. I hope one day

I can earn enough money to be able to buy so many books."

"Listen," said Yogar " I don't think it is safe for you to be wandering in this area after running away from the Organisation. If I were you I would leave the country. Two kilometres west of here there is a fishing village. There is an elderly fisherman who lives there who is well known to me and trustworthy. I contacted him this morning, and he is willing to smuggle you across to India. Of course it is up to you whether you want to go or not. But if I were you, I would go. You know that I won't be able to help you once you are in India. But my advice to you would be to try and get an education. You never know where it can take you."

Prahal thought it was a strange proposition that in a foreign land he could get an education that has eluded him in his own country. But the same fact also showed him the futility of patriotism - what the Organisation called 'love for one's land'. Lands don't nurture minds, people do. He didn't have anyone in this country except his • parents, but that's where the Organisation would go straight if they wanted to find him, so he couldn't go back to them. So why not try to find in another country what he could not find in his own? That way at least his parents would be safe. He decided to accept the offer.

"Thanks, how can I find him?"

Page 34 of34 Yogar gave him the instructions and some money in Sri Lankan currency. He said that

Prahal would be able to exchange it with traders travelling south for Indian currency.

On his way in search of the fishing village, Prahal watched the evening sun set over the sea. He crossed people in bicycles going back from work. A bus overflowing with passengers went past him. Children played by the seaside. Evening prayers were being chanted at a Hindu Temple, the sound of prayer bells and chants mingled with the sound of the tide; the evening sounds of his childhood. He saw fishing boats at the horizon, their lanterns just coming alight. For a few minutes he stood entranced by the beauty of the evening. This was the country for which once he was willing to give his life. But tonight it dawned on him that his country had never asked him to make that sacrifice. It appeared to him as if now it was the country that was being forced to make sacrifices for the benefit of the Organisation, and not vice versa.

For a moment he stood before the temple and pondered whether he would ever return.

He realised that if he did, it would not be out of love for his nation, but because it was here that his dreams were made, and if he didn't, it would be because they couldn't be realised here.

Page 35 of35 From the diary ofPrahal J

5th September 1986

I will be eternally grateful to the shopkeeper Y ogar for helping me. It is a mystery why some people help strangers, while others kill them. Fisherman Father has said that I can't take anything with me, so I have to leave this diary behind. He has promised to send it through his son to Yogar.

The quarter moon is out, and the stars are beginning to come out. There's chill in the north wind. We will set sail in two hours. Is this the end? ... may be a beginning if we don't get caught to the Navy

Page 36 of36 It was 3 am when Yogar looked up from the diary and stared at the black ocean. The moon had set. He noticed the lights on distant fishing boats. It was hard to distinguish them from the stars. He wondered whether Prahal had reached India safely. He closed the diary with a resolve to preserve it for any eventuality. He closed his eyes and tried to measure the beauty that had passed through him that morning.

Page 37 of37 Part- 2

Page 38 of38 Silent not by Choice

The clock at St Bartholomew Hospital chimed six. A hundred years ago it called for curfew, but now it announced the beginning of nightlife. She would be off duty in one hour. For Guyatri being off duty meant having to talk to people - talking to people whom she had met for the first time last week. They were still strangers in a way, yet she couldn't talk to them as if they were strangers. These were colleagues, the only relationships left in her life now, for work was all she was left with. She could carry her knowledge across the world like a treasure, but every other memory was too heavy.

The conversation tonight, like every other night, would be personal, and it was personal conversation that scared her. She had no problems talking about patients, lab reports, or

X.Rays. Tonight her colleagues would try to make her feel at home, just like they did all last week. They wanted her to be one of them, but the problem was with her; it is she who had to somehow summon up the energy to talk back to them. It had been two weeks now since she left behind one strange world to join another. The first one in its struggle to survive showed its violence naked to the world. The second concealed the violence it induced elsewhere in order to keep its stability alive. She was a stranger in both.

In the strangeness she left behind, narratives of hospital life ran like this :

We were in the Radiology Block, in the Tea Room. The whole place was crammed with

people, including patients from the evacuated wards. We heard the noise of firing come

Page 39 of 39 closer. But we were sure that even if the Army entered, they would check us and then

explanations could be offered. The noise of firing was drawing very close. Now it was

all around us. We realised the danger and lay flat on the floor. The Army came firing

into the Radiology Block and fired indiscriminately at the whole mass of people

huddled together. We saw patients dying. We lay there without moving a finger,

pretending to be dead. We were wondering whether we would be burnt or shot when the

bodies of the dead were collected ...

Today the residents decided to go out for dinner after work instead of the pub they usually went to. It was an elegant restaurant on the south bank of the river. The candlelight from behind yellow shades formed moving orange images on the silver cutlery laid immaculately on the table. From the dimly lit interior she noticed the lights of the city reflect on the river in a spectacular gesture. She had no problem understanding the sentences of this city, but it was its messages that she couldn't comprehend.

She heard Analissa, an intern who tried the hardest to be friendly with her speak, "So

Guy, tell us about your life. How did you land here ?" She wanted to tell her, and embrace her radiance.

We lay down quietly under one of the dead bodies, throughout the night. One of the attendants had a cough. He groaned and coughed once in a while. A soldier threw a grenade at him, he and a few others around him died.

In the morning someone shouted, asking those who were alive to come out with their hands above their heads. We pushed aside the bodies of the dead lying on

Page 40 of 40 top of us, and came out. I saw Dr Ganesharatnam lying dead with the stethoscope around his neck.

But the words were too heavy. They couldn't be spoken. She felt frightened again, frightened that what she had to say wouldn't find relevance in this her new world, and as a result she herself would lose her relevance. So she searched for trivia. But there was no trivia in her life now. Everything was heavy, and she could not gather the energy to talk. So she chose to be silent, and in that silence she could see Analissa drift. She desperately wanted to grab her and stay close to her. She wanted Analissa's enthusiasm for life and her friendliness now more than at any other time in her life. Only such a friendship could liberate her to lightness. But for that she had to talk first. She couldn't, her life was too heavy to be narrated twice.

Page 41 of 41 After the Red Glow

1

Guyatri woke with a shudder thinking she was free falling. She noticed that it was just a few minutes past midnight, and at some point in the nine stages between sleep and consciousness she paused for a moment to work out where she was. She was in the

Resident's Room - a single room with ensuite rented to her by the hospital. A ghostly red glow filled the room. It made everything appear as if a red shroud had been thrown over them. The light clung to things as if it was choking them. She remembered that they used to bum red lights next to dying patients, from a Tamil song from her teens:

A red lamp burns .. .I see a life depart

It was a theme song from a film The colour ofpoverty is red. She remembered watching the film a very long time ago. The film and the song were both about tragedy, but there was something romantic about tragedy. There was a difference between tragedy in the arts and tragedy in real life: the former had an element of romanticism embedded in it.

There used to be a time when she enjoyed listening to lyrics like this. They gave her a window through which to experience the misery of life that engulfed people around her without letting them touch her. Those were the days her family sheltered her like a fortress. Her life was devoid of pain, shock and disappointments. It was the imagined tragedy in films and literature that enabled her to explore sadness. And it was that imagined tragedy that prepared her for the real tragedy, which swept her off her feet in

Page 42 of 42 one sweeping gush. Her family was no longer there - the ramparts had crumbled and the moats were dry.

When tragedy struck it seemed as if what had existed in her imagination had turned to reality. The characters from her favourite films were suddenly three-dimensional. But as they performed their scary dance around her, she felt confident because those characters were familiar to her, familiar as the lifeless forms of her imagination. And she could still see them as that. She started to see reality as if it was happening only in her imagination. Once again reality was like a two-dimensional film playing around her.

Her life had passed from one where reality was so void of tragedy that sadness had to be imported from the imagination, to one where sadness was so overbearing that it had to be treated as imaginary to make life bearable. The margin between reality and imagination, for Guyatri, was now an invisible line.

The room and the red glow reminded her of hospital mystery stories. It was in Victorian rooms like this, in novels, that hospital conspiracies took place: human body farms from which live organs were harvested; secret laboratories where Frankensteinian scientists developed new strains of germs; diseased bodies with missing organs floating in huge

glass bottles. However it didn't take long before her thoughts returned to reality. But

rationality returned only to be replaced by a fresh wave of fear; she realised her room

was more than a hundred years old. But she had no idea as to what had been happening

here until the previous week. The thought made her feel small, out of control, and

scared.

Page 43 of 43 Lying on her bed she looked at the street through the frosted glass windows and tried to figure out the source of the red light. It was a neon sign - a word. But it was not possible to read it through the glass. The word and its meaning were buried in a halo of silent night. There were voices in the street outside. She wondered whether they were zombies dressed in 18th century European robes. Perhaps the streets looked like those from the times of Charles Dickens, or maybe those of Jack the Ripper. It was in this city that he walked, raped and killed. At that thought fear melted into contemplative imagination. She continued to construct the night outside, in her imagination, and didn't realise when she fell asleep.

She woke up briefly at about 5.00 am. The red light wasn't there anymore, and the street was quiet.

2

The alarm rang at 6.00 am. It was still dark outside. The first day of winter was only a few weeks away. The splitting headache on the left side of her head suggested that she had been up during the night. She was expected in Emergency in forty-five minutes to relieve the Registrar who was on night duty. Then she would treat the victims of the night; the night she tried to figure from her bed.

But at 6.45 am, as she was walking towards the ward her self-confidence returned, last night's apprehensions were long gone. The only thing that mattered now was her

Page 44 of 44 knowledge, knowledge of medicine, knowledge about the bodies of other people. For the next twelve hours she would feel nothing but power.

It was on her way to the ward that she noticed him again. He was staring at her. It was obvious to her that he had noticed her before she had noticed him. But she was somehow compelled to tum back and look straight into his eyes. But even when she looked straight at him his gaze didn't move. In a moment she was caught by an overwhelming sense of intimacy. So unlike what she had felt so far. By now she had experienced so many different forms of intimacy but this one was strange, almost eerie.

She searched desperately for adjectives but none came up. It was as if they had both seen something, and that knowledge rendered them apart from the rest of the world.

3

The morning passed quickly. She wanted to avoid company at lunch, so she walked to the cafe that was located the furthest distance she could walk to and back from within an hour. It was a small and ordinary looking cafe, could have been any one of the thousands that dotted London. She would spend the afternoon in theatre. The thought reassured her, since Operating Theatres were the only place where there was rarely any personal conversation. It was also the only place where ultimate frivolity met with

ultimate seriousness, a place people laughed while someone else's body lay open.

She performed three procedures that afternoon, and the sun had set by the time she

returned to her room. She threw herself on the bed and wanted to go to sleep, but

Page 45 of 45 instead dragged herself up to eat the salad she had bought from a departmental store, and have a warm shower. When she finally lay down to sleep she knew the night would be without dreams. And just before sleep overcame her, she wondered what was it about the appearance of the man that made him seem so familiar and strange at the same time.

4

It had been a month since Guyatri arrived in London. But the place still made little sense to her. Last night she went out with Analissa for dinner, the third since their first meeting, and again on Analissa's initiative. And on each of the three occasions Analissa tried to get Guyatri to speak of her past but failed. Guyatri wondered what made

Analissa so persistent.

It was a Tuesday. Morning in emergency ward followed by afternoon in theatre. She saw him again at the same spot on the skywalk. But this time she noticed him while he was walking next to her. He was so close that their shoulders were almost touching. But before she could absorb the feeling of him being so close, he spoke.

"Do you look into the eyes of your patients?"

"Sorry?"

"I asked whether you look into the eyes of your patients?"

Page 46 of 46 "Well sometimes ... but who are you?"

"That doesn't matter. Look into their eyes next time, and you'll see the difference."

"Difference between what and what?" Her irritation was not concealed. He walked quickly ahead, without replying. She made no attempt to follow him. But throughout the day she found her self subconsciously doing what he had asked her to do, although she kept wondering why she capitulated to this irritating stranger.

Just before the first procedure in theatre that afternoon Guyatri casually walked behind the screen and looked at the face of the patient, a woman in her seventies. She smiled at her, and said hello. The woman smiled back from behind the mask, and said in a sleepy voice "are you the nurse assisting the surgeon".

The Anesthesiologist blushed, and said almost as if to diffuse tension, "no, she is the

Orthopedic Registrar, doctor, not nurse".

Guyatri laughed "I can nurse you, if you want me to". Still smiling she thought to

herself, 'sexist racist bitch'.

That night, lying on her bed again she thought of the first patient she examined back in

Sri Lanka - a woman in her thirties. She was brought to hospital after being struck by a

multitude of shrapnel from a shell explosion. The patient was fully conscious so Guyatri

kept talking to her while carrying out a pre-operative examination on her. The woman

Page 47 of 47 told Guyatri that she was a mother of three. Her deceased husband was a motor mechanic who was killed by a guerrilla organisation because he refused to allow his workshop to be used to develop barrels for Klashnikoves. After his murder the family had no income, so she had no option but to run the workshop herself. She learned quickly, and became the first female motor mechanic in that part of the country.

Business was good, and she earned enough money to provide her children a good education and a reasonably comfortable life. But one day when she was in her workshop a shell fired by the army exploded in the backyard. She was injured, and a major part of her workshop was damaged. Now she had to rebuild the workshop, which she said she would somehow do. While Guyatri admired her courage, she was confronted by her pleading. "Please doctor, don't let me die ... for the sake of my children". But there was something strange about the way the woman was talking. Her body language, especially her eyes, seemed to be saying something different. She looked so tired, tired of the very act of living. Her eyes looked so weary that she looked as if she actually wanted to die.

Her pleadings to live were being made against a desire to die. Her eyes were betraying her words.

In her room that evening, Guyatri reflected on how different those desperate eyes were compared to that of the woman in theatre today.

She then realised that her attention spans were getting shorter; thinking about people made her tired. In the delirium she wondered whether this was the difference the stranger was talking about.

Page 48 of 48 In the morning she realised that she had slept well. She felt relaxed for the first time since she arrived in London, since maybe had connected to someone. The next day at work she called Analissa, and invited her to have lunch with her.

"Can I ask you something Analissa?" Analissa who was bending to take a mouth full of chicken skin that was refusing to be cut into two stopped mid task, head bent, hair falling over her forehead, "Its time you asked me something Guy. It's me who has been asking all the questions up to now."

It took a while for her to formulate the question. "Analissa, have you ever seen a man, slightly taller than me, curly hair and graying at the temples. He could be a doctor, maybe a nurse ... " She left her voice trail.

Analissa looked at her, her eyes slightly cocked. "Look Guy, I am sure there are hundreds of people in this hospital who fit that description. Can't you be a bit more specific?"

"He has kind of strange eyes. Sort of looked at me in a funny way."

"You mean with lust? You think there is a serial rapist lurking in the hospital?" Guyatri knew that it took a lot of convincing before Analissa took anything seriously, and wished she could be like that too.

"No, not in that way ... "

Page 49 of 49 "He could be in love with you"

Guyatri knew from experience that if she were to bring Analissa out of one of her cynical moods, she had to first sink into it.

"Oh, shut up. I have been a woman all my life. I can see when a man looks at me in that way. But this one is strange, eerie."

"You mean he could be a serial killer," she said in mocking whisper. "You know Guy, we have had quite a lot of them here in London, for many hundreds of years now. If you want to live here, you have to learn to keep out of their way". Analissa was still talking in a teasing tone, and Guyatri knew there wasn't much point in continuing. She decided against telling her what he had told her about looking into the eyes of patients, since it would only make her look more foolish.

They walked back to the hospital in silence, as the crowds of London brushed passed them in the afternoon rush. In the pompous grandeur of the lobby decor, they stood facing each other for minute. Neither of them said anything. Analissa broke the silence, and said in a voice that was serious as possible" I will try to find out who he is."

Page 50 of 50 5

The walls were flying away and the room was becoming larger. She felt like a tiny fairy on the floor of a canyon. Then the walls started to come flying back in. They came so close that she felt as if she was going to be crushed. She woke up perspiring so badly that she had to grab a towel to wipe her face. It was 2 am yet she couldn't sleep. She drank a glass of water and turned on the radio. But it didn't work. Every time she tried to sleep she was confronted by memories from her past, each one of them engulfed her in a fresh wave of guilt; memories of people who had died, while she survived.

After lying awake for an hour, she tried for another half an hour to focus on the rhythmic noise of the traffic outside. It soothed her mind by forcing the complexity of thinking into the predictable crescendos of approaching engines. Half asleep she listened to a motorcycle engine, then there was another one, and then another. They kept increasing in number, until there were about five. She went to sleep, but woke up in an hour thinking she heard gunfire. There seemed to be two sets of guns, one replying to another: an exchange of fire. She made a mental note that there might be curfew in the morning. Then she saw her father's body, the way it looked when they brought it home.

His white shirt was drenched in splatters of red blood. The marks looked like crimson flowers, which radiated from where the bullets entered his chest. She was only 24 then, and just kept staring at the body until they took it for embalming. There were no tears, no sadness, just shock. The shock jolted her out of bed. But she realised it was only a memory, a dream out of memory. A wave of guilt engulfed her. She started to drown.

Page 51 of 51 Nights of Fate

It was a typical April afternoon in Jaffua. The air was so hot that nothing moved. Except the slow ceilings fans that kept swirling warm afternoon air over people taking their siesta. Their semiconscious minds longed for the arrival of dusk and the supple summer night that followed. At sunset the city would come alive. Nut vendors took to the streets, cafes filled up, and radios started playing. People would then go out to meet others, to talk about their lives, and the war. It was a month in which people seldom did anything but wait: Wait for nights, wait for the monsoon, wait for the end of summer, the arrival of the trade wind. It was only natural that Universities and schools closed for vacation during this month.

Guyatri had arrived home the previous night, tired from the 12 hour train and bus journey that brought her from Colombo. She showered, half ate the meal her mother had prepared for her, then went to her room and fell asleep. It was the room where she grew up. Where every object that had some significance in her life was preserved: the dolls; the books that she read from childhood to teenage years and then as an adult. Basket balls, records - mostly of Karnatic and western classical music - Balamuralikrishna,

Ravishanakar, and Ayub Khan, along with Tchaikovosky and Beethoven and several others. She liked to listen to Beethoven's Symphony Nine, sitting at her desk looking at the setting moon. Perhaps the order of the Ninth Symphony added to the richness of celestial order and the calmness of night. In the morning she listened to Prashanthi by

Ravishankar, which prepared her for the chaos of day. The room held every one of the essays and tracts she wrote for school and university magazines, neatly arranged in

Page 52 of52 chronological order, including the ones that were never published - considered too radical or provocative. Her desk was in the comer of the room between two windows, from where one could see the moonset at nights and the Venus rise in the black-blue early morning sky during most parts of the year. On the same desk was a toy Doctor's

Bag, which her father had given her on her fifth Birthday - the day since when she never dreamt of any profession other than medicine. Her room bore witness to the vibrancy of her life.

In her early life, except for a few spurts of rebellion, everything she did was to please her father. And as if in return, her father was pleased with everything she did. It was to please her father that she chose to study medicine - a decision based on a slight hint of a wish made through a birthday gift.

But no sooner had she started medical school, than she started to feel a sense of sadness, growing as if it were a mist emerging out of the subconscious. She realised that her idealising of the medical profession was based on the only doctor she knew in her life - her father. But he was an anomaly. In her classmates she found neither her father's sensitivity, nor his idealism. She woke from her naivety to the knowledge that for most people medicine was a path to prosperity and social prestige, and for her male

colleagues a means to a trophy wife and fat dowry. Sickness and healing were just the

means of reaching those ends. Patients were a minor detail in establishing a relationship

with society based on people's dependency on doctors.

Page 53 of 53 Her assumptions were formed in less than six months after joining medical school when she took part in a student protest. The students were demanding better accommodation closer to the hospital. Travelling had become difficult due to the war. The students picketed outside the hospital during lunch hour, which was also the visiting hour for patients. But the students had stopped everyone from entering or leaving the hospital. A young woman in her early twenties came to see her mother who had been operated on early that morning. The woman told the students that she had brought her mother food because she couldn't eat hospital food. She virtually begged the students to let her through, but they refused. The woman went back in tears. Guyatri looked at what happened aghast, and at that moment her mind was made up that she did not belong with the rest of her profession. She hated her naivety for thinking until then that it would be different. During vacations she took some solace in conversations with her father about the medical profession, to try and understand it, to chart strategies for her own survival within it. At home she tried to revive her soul by reading literary novels and philosophy, and searched for inspiration to recover from what seemed an irreversible tryst with her destiny.

Her mother had diligently prepared dinner, and served it most meticulously. She carefully preserved the plate that Guyatri used before she left for University, and used it whenever she came back. She helped her mother to bring the food to the table. Her father joined them in a few minutes. Dressed in light summer clothes, the heat of the day washed away, everyone looked fresh. The frost on the outside of glasses of iced water gave a refreshing feel to dinnertime. Guyatri noticed that her father, Dr

Rajmohan, looked more tired this time than during her last visit. It was only natural; the

Page 54 of54 war was intensifying, he was the only surgeon in the hospital, and the number of casualties was increasing day by day. He was not getting younger, and the effects were showing.

After a few minutes of light conversation Guyatri asked her father whether it would make any difference to anyone whether she became a doctor or not. After all could she really have any impact, when the world seemed so up against her? To which her father replied: "None of us know whether we can make a difference until we have made that difference. The downside of which is; only when we haven't made a difference we know we couldn't have." Guyatri was sensing a resignation in her father's voice. It was unusual. He sounded as if he had discovered that there was unlikely to be happiness in his life anymore. He appeared to know something that others didn't. Just when they were about to finish dinner he asked Guyatri "did you hear about what happened at the

Al-Basheba hospital when it was under siege?" She had never heard about Al-Basheba, and Rajmohan told his daughter that he would tell her about it over coffee in the patio.

So after washing the plates and dishes and putting the left over food in the fridge, the three of them moved to the patio with their cups of coffee. But no sooner than they sat down Rajmohan's pager beeped and he left for the hospital; his coffee half finished.

Guyatri and her mother finished theirs mostly in silence. Both of them wondered how long he could work as hard as this. But neither thought, not even in their wildest imaginations, that it was last time they would see him alive.

Page 55 of 55 Love

1

It had been three years since her father died, and only one significant thing had happened in her life in that time: her graduation. But it was hardly an event, and passed like the mundane. She returned to work in Jaffua hospital, the same hospital where her father was working when he was killed. She never really liked Jaffua, but she returned because she could stay with her mother, and she could live in the same room and house where she was brought up. Everything in her room, which provided a sanctuary from the harshness of the world, pointed towards her departure. Every book she read, every piece of music she listened to, every painting she adored prepared her for the world beyond. Coming back seemed like a backward flip, a failure. But the town itself had changed, submerged under the sea-change posed by the war. The landscapes of her childhood were barely visible now. In fact, sometimes it looked as if she had come back to a new country.

For a while after her father's death, Guyatri noticed her mother's personality expand.

She displayed more energy as she took over the leadership of the household, managed the accounts, paid the rates, negotiated with plumbers and electricians, and managed the comings and goings of Guyatri and her brother; tasks she had never done before.

Guyatri saw a side to her mother that she didn't know existed. But soon she noticed her decline. Day by day she was getting more quick-tempered and was showing signs of tiredness. Guyatri's brother was in University now, doing Science, and he was rarely seen at home. It was obvious that he was getting involved in the Organisation, but no one at home approached the topic. Guyatri never had much respect for the Organisation.

Page 56 of 56 She saw it as a sham, claiming to be fighting for the rights of the people, but actually using the people as mere cannon fodder in fighting for their own glory. In her job she had treated people who had been held prisoner by the Organisation, and she noticed no difference in the forms of torture used by them and those used by the army. But she couldn't talk about it with her brother; in the family nobody talked anymore. Her family was disintegrating with the city around them.

Guyatri's brother and her mother shared traits that seemed incomprehensible to her and her father; they accepted the world as it is. The expression and fulfillment of their desires, everything from pleasure to revenge, had to be realized within the existing institutes of the world, or through the manipulation of them. But she and her father were part of the foolhardy who dared to stand against the world, alone. Their idealism demanded that the world and not they should change. They were the Davids who faced the Goliaths. But in the real world it was the Davids, and not the Goliaths who got slain.

2

As the civil war intensified life continued to ebb away from the city: temple festivals

stopped, libraries emptied, bands stopped playing. Only at the hospital activity was

increasing. In fact the hospital was fast becoming the hub of activity around which the

city revolved. It was as if the only thing that happened in people's life was to fall sick or

get injured. The situation was made even worse by the steady outflow of doctors. Some

left due to the never-ending increase of workload and stress. But most left just in search

Page 57 of 57 of safer and greener pastures, compounding the pressure and stress on those left behind.

It was a time when the remaining doctors, in addition to their normal work, were forced to take up an increasing load of medico-legal work; work ridden with political subtexts; torture, beatings, but more than anything autopsies carried out on unidentified bodies found on roadsides or tied to lampposts. The condition of these bodies varied from ones with a single bullet in the head and bodies intact, to ones that were totally charred, and included ones in every level of disintegration in-between. It was the kind of work that most doctors disliked, but Guyatri often found herself doing. She found herself in meetings with Government and military officials, Non Governmental and Human

Rights Organisations, and sometimes even with organisations who claimed to represent various community groups, but were in reality a front for one of the three guerilla groups that functioned in the area.

It was in a meeting involving the military and the State Prosecutor that she first saw

Dilshan. The meeting was regarding a body found on a country road of a man arrested by the Army a few days earlier, and it was claimed that he was released on the same day. Interest had been aroused by Guyatri' s comment on the autopsy report that a possibility existed that the shots thought to have killed him were fired after the man was dead. This suggested the possibility that he could haven been killed while in custody.

Calls made by a number of human rights organizations had compelled the State

Prosecutor to at least hold an inquiry, albeit only a nominal one. Guyatri knew the meeting was only an eyewash, so she rarely spoke, and did so only to answer questions.

She knew that the cause of death of this man, like several others, would soon sink into that oblivious deep end of history where no man will tread again. In order to while away

Page 58 of58 the boredom she started to draw pictures on the back of a paper, but twice when she looked up, she found the man in military uniform sitting across the table from her staring at her. On the second occasion he gave her a furtive smile. She smiled and went back to her drawing, but noticed that he seemed bored as she was. Which was unusual for anyone from the military side, who were forced into a vulnerable and defensive position today. When the meeting ended, she stood up and waited for the way to the door to clear, and it was clear to anyone watching that she was not in a mood for small talk, and not appreciative of her way out being blocked by those standing and chatting.

But Dilshan leaned over the table and extended his hand "Captain Dilshan". In spite of her annoyance Guyatri replied,"Dr Rajmohan, Guyatri Rajmohan". The way cleared, and they parted company.

She went to her office to get a moment's rest before assisting in Orthopedic surgery. It was unusual for someone to work in both Forensic and Surgery at the same time. But these were unusual times, and time-honoured conventions were easily broken by the necessities of the hour. To bring her mind back into an alert state after the numbing effect of a worthless meeting she started reading a few pages from the Ending of Time by J Krishnamurthi, when she heard the knock on the door. It was Dilshan. Alarm bells rang loud. It was not unusual for the army to use friendship as a tactic to win around those professionals who couldn't be intimidated through scare tactics.

"Hello. Come in" she said pointing to the chair on the other side of the desk.

Page 59 of59 "Thanks," he said as he sat down, keeping his beret in hand and placing his brief case next to the chair. He said, "I am new here, so I thought I should come over and introduce myself." His English was impeccable, and he was both polished and polite.

Which wasn't unusual among officers attached to Civil Liaison. He continued "Am I disturbing you? You must be busy."

"No, its ok, I was just taking a break before going into theatre," she said showing the book to him.

"What do you think of it ?"

It felt a bit unreal that she could randomly run into someone who would have read such an obscure book.

"Well, I find it too abstract, almost metaphysical. He argues that desire is at the core of suffering, and desire is possible only if a future is possible, and future is possible only if time exists. So ifwe get rid of time ... "

" ... we get rid of desire, and all suffering will cease."

"Yes that's why I think it's metaphysical, I know and feel that time is passing, therefore time must be natural..."

Page 60 of60 "But the reply of the Physicist is that the universe is static, or it moves cyclically. It's only humans that want to move linearly. So it's our notion of time that must be unnatural."

"Well, I haven't got that far yet, but I don't believe that all desire is negative. We need desire, if we are to eradicate poverty, overcome sickness, in fact to achieve anything."

'Yes, but maybe we wouldn't be having those problems if we didn't have desire in the first place. But let me know what you think once you have finished the book."

"I will," Guyatri said smiling. He got up to leave "I have to go now. Meeting you was refreshing. Hope we will run into each other again".

Guyatri found it strange that she was involved in this philosophical conversation in the middle of a busy day. But it also made her realise such conversations had virtually disappeared from her life. Her interests and thinking were now pursued in loneliness.

She longed to see him again. It was customary to see the army at the hospital. They were there for a number of reasons: to visit their injured; to bring prisoners to be treated for natural as well as 'induced' illnesses and injuries. But more than anything to spy on the guerillas who also brought their injured to the same hospital. The guerillas kept the hospital under constant watch too. But for them, who could disguise as ordinary people, it was much easier. Whenever she saw a group of soldiers, she hoped that Dilshan would be there

Page 61 of 61 He did come to see her again, several times, and their friendship grew. They exchanged books, talked about everything from philosophy and religion, to music and fiction, but never discussed each other's work. They found it stimulating to listen to each other's worldviews. They admired each other's intellects. In a place where life was reduced to mere basics by the everyday needs of the war, the times they spent together were like an oasis which gave them glimpses into beauty and permanence. But when Guyatri was at home, and alone, she would be taunted with doubts about what she was doing. She couldn't believe that she was in love with someone in the army: in this army, the army that killed her father. But love is made up of emotions; and emotions seldom respond to reason.

Then the crucial moment arrived: Dilshan invited Guyatri to his flat for dinner. The flat was inside the Fort encampment. "I will pick you up, and drop you back", he said, almost pleading. Her impulse was to refuse to go inside the encampment, and in a military vehicle. That would be taking things too far; it would be to cross the point of no-return. But then why should she refuse? Nothing was happening according to her will now. There was no purpose in life. Caught in a meaningless war she was a slave of the God of randomness. Since mostly it brought her only agony, why use her will to repel the one instance in which it chose to bring her pleasure.

"No, I prefer to drive. I will see you at 7.30". The die was cast.

A little after 7 .30 she drove into the heavily fortified main entrance of the Fort encampment. A sentry walked forward. His flirty smile vanished when he saw the

Page 62 of62 'Doctor' license on the windshield, and knew at once that she was Captain Dilshan's guest. He stood at attention while the other conducted the ritual search that all the vehicles entering the Fort were subjected to. Then the man who was standing at attention saluted and waved her through. A few metres down the road she saw Dilshan in full civilian clothes waiting outside his flat in the Officers' mess.

Dilshan's flat was compact and tastefully decorated, just as she expected. There were paintings, mostly of local scenes, small statues of Gods and women, clay pots, and of course books and records - plenty of them. She didn't spot a single sports trophy or a picture of a cricket or rugby team; there were none of the typical military trophies. In the past whenever Guyatri asked him what made him join the army, he had simply replied, "it's only a job, a way of making a living". When she had mentioned to him the mounting evidence of human rights violations committed by the Army, including torture and extra-judicial killings, he had simply smiled back. He never denied those accusations in private. But tonight Guyatri got the feeling that there was also a more complex side to Dilshan, something more than what met the eye; there was something that he had not told her.

He asked her what music she would like to listen to, and when she threw the choice back at him, chose to play Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsokov. Although Guyatri listened to a lot of music, musical criticism was never her forte. For her, music lingered at the level of emotion. She appreciated it by linking it to its theme. But she knew that

Dilshan, whose knowledge of music was greater than hers, understood this, and probably selected this piece to stimulate discussion. And The Sea of Sinbad 's Ship,

Page 63 of63 mixed with the sea breeze through the open window lifted her spirits. A man in uniform served dinner, told Dilshan where the dessert and coffee was and left. Guyatri asked

Dilshan whether he wasn't going to invite him to join them, and he replied with his usual ambivalent smile, "armies are not the most egalitarian of organizations Guyatri.

Not even the Soviet Army", which was a tease at her left wing views.

After dinner, as he was getting the coffee ready, Guyatri walked through the living room surveying his books. They were largely works of fiction, nothing politically controversial. Then on one of the side tables next to a statute of a woman carrying a pot she saw a copy Curfew and the Full Moon by Ediriweera Sarachandra, with a bookmark still in the book. She picked it up and was reading the back cover when Dilshan walked back into the living room with the percolator.

"Do you read Marxist stuff like this?" she asked noticing that he had become uneasy, but was trying to conceal it. It was as if he had let something slip. But Guyatri persisted.

"Are you a Marxist?" Under the prevailing conditions it had almost become a dirty word, but a Marxist inside the Army? She thought, even if he was, to push him to confess it would be simply asking for too much.

"I am not any 'ist' Guyatri. Idealism is a luxury available only to the privileged. But to answer your earlier question, yes, I was influenced by left wing ideas, when I was at

University".

"So what made you join the army?"

Page 64 of64 He poured the coffee into two cups. "I have told you, for me, being in the army is just another job. It pays me well, helps me look after my father, who worked all his life to educate me".

"You haven't told me about your family".

They moved to the patio. There was a mild sea wind coming from the lagoon beyond the rampart carrying with it the distinct smell of salt and seaweed. Dilshan told her about his family. His father was a Chena farmer in Hambantota, and he was his only son. Hambantota was the driest district in Sri Lanka where it rained only for two months a year. All farming had to be done during those two months. In the other months, they had to walk 5 km to get water, and then walk the same distance back carrying a day's water supply. In Sri Lanka, however rich you may be, you cannot force poverty out of sight, but walking 5 km to get water was beyond comprehension to Guyatri. He showed her a picture of his home, a thatched hut with only two rooms: one open room surrounded by a half mud wall, and another enclosed room also made of a mud wall, and a bare window made up of iron bars. In spite the sparse house, there were a few flower plants in front, neatly planted and pruned. Guyatri was shocked by the revelation. She always thought Dilshan to be of middle class extraction. There was such a distance between his present appearance and his origins. What surprised her most was that everything he was, he had learned, and everything he owned was the result of his effort. He was from the other half of the country who were born into nothing.

Page 65 of65 He insisted that Guyatri tell him about her family, and at the end of the exchange, they were left with nothing but admiration for each other. Talking about her father brought tears to her eyes. She got up and stood at the edge of the patio. Her eyes were moist and her hair was flying in the gentle lagoon wind. Dilshan put his arm on her shoulder and she drew nearer to him. He kissed her hair, she turned and looked at him, straight into his eyes. Then as if to obey the command of the same God they both leaned towards each other and kissed. Dilshan drew his hand through her hair, as she opened his shirt and caressed his chest. There was a stir in the wind, and the air got cooler. A shout rose from beyond the rampart, perhaps a fishing boat returning with the evening's catch. In each other's embrace all of reality was hurled a million miles away. There was no war, no past, no present, only the two of them; the stars, the warm night, and the moonlit lagoon beyond the rampart. And when they made love it was if energies held within them since day of creation were released that night.

It was a little after midnight when she left the encampment. But neither of them were aware that sensitive remote-sensing equipment supplied by the world's leading democracies had recorded every word they had spoken that night.

Page 66 of66 The Atheist and the Priest

Guyatri found it strange that a catholic priest had asked for her to see him. He had invited her to have coffee with him at his vicarage, which was even stranger. The

Catholic Church often acted as a buffer between the various guerilla groups and the people, and she thought it was probably to warn her about her relationship with Dilshan.

If it was, she would politely tell him that if he had any evidence that she was being made use of to let her know, otherwise her private life was neither the business of the church nor the guerillas.

It was dusk when she parked her car outside The Cathedral of Our Lady of Refuge.

Evensong was still in progress, and as the priest had requested in the letter, she went in and joined the congregation. It felt strange to be in a church, she had not been inside one in 5 years. When mass was over and people began to walk out in single file she joined the queue with them. But halfway down to the door a junior minister greeted her, and talked to her as if he had known her all his life. He then said "why don't you join me and the Chief Priest for coffee. It will be good to catch up". She got the message and followed him, and he led her through the vestry into the vicarage, where a scholarly looking man in his late fifties shook her hands.

"Dr Rajmohan I presume? I am Rev Joseph Daniel. Thank you for coming, doctor", and he led her inside into a drawing room. The junior left them.

Page 67 of67 When they were both seated, the minister pushed a plate of cake and a painted ceramic cup and saucer towards her, followed by a pot of coffee, milk, and sugar. The Catholic

Church never lost its opulence when it came to entertaining. Guyatri was pleased to have it at the end of a hard day at work. The priest served himself after her and leaned forward to speak.

"Doctor, what I am going to tell you might disturb you greatly. That is why I thought and prayed about it for a long time. But the man I want you to meet today can't stay here anymore. I have arranged for him to leave the country. But before he goes it will be good for him to talk to you, and for you to hear his story directly from him."

Before Guyatri could figure out what was going on, he got up and opened a door on the other side of the room, and a young man in his thirties walked in. He stood for a while with a shy smile, absorbing the presence of Guyatri.

The priest spoke "Meet Corporal DeSilva, or maybe Ex-Corporal DeSilva". Guyatri stared at him, overtaken by events. The priest asked DeSilva to sit down and continued:

"DeSilva used to work in the 3rd Airborne Division of the Army. I will make a long story short: A few years ago he came to me, shall we say, with a very heavy heart. He had witnessed and had been part of terrible events and wanted to talk about them, But before he could talk in a coherent way he needed medical help, which I had to organize in secret, so I tried to find a doctor who was willing to come and treat him here. It was your father, in spite of his busy schedule, who agreed to come. DeSilva was cured and

Page 68 of68 came to be of a sound mind. In the process of healing he told us why he was disturbed."

He turned to DeSilva "Why don't you tell the doctor yourself ... " DeSilva shifted uneasily in his chair, and started to talk.

"Doctor ... what I am about to tell you might upset you, might bring back memories ... "

Guyatri's mind switched to a clinical mode, as she listened.

"In April 1986 I was in the army, and I was part of an operation in the jungles that lie south of Jaffna and to the north of the mainland. It was a massive operation involving about five hundred soldiers, and we were out to destroy some of the major guerilla hideouts in the area. Which we did; the operation was a success. The secret orders were not to take prisoners. We killed about hundred guerillas. But about twenty surrendered, mostly young boys and girls in their teens. The field commander had a problem with them, since he was told not to take prisoners without exceptions. Prisoners are a problem; they are not just an expense, but they can talk, even if not immediately, definitely at some point in the future. Then one of the officers came up with a solution.

He told the young people who had surrendered that he had to airlift them to a base in the south of the country for their own safety. So, they were boarded into three helicopters, and I was asked to accompany the prisoners in one of those helicopters. I had a feeling that the officer had mistaken me for someone else when he asked me to join him. It was a moonlit night and the helicopters took off and flew south. But half an hour into the flight they turned and started to fly west - I worked it out from the direction of the moon. I couldn't ask why because the rotors were making too much noise. We flew

Page 69 of69 over forests and hamlets, and in about twenty minutes were directly above the sea. And then the three helicopters stopped and started to hover".

DeSilva had stopped talking and Guyatri noted that his hands were shaking mildly. The priest put his hand over his shoulder. DeSilva continued.

"Then ... "

"Then, what happened?" Guyatri prompted.

"Then they started to push them into the sea, one by one." DeSilva started sobbing. "I can still hear their screams, the agony in their faces, the pleadings." The priest put his arm around him, and DeSilva stopped talking. The priest moved closer to Guyatri and placed his hand on hers.

"I don't think your father's death was accidental, I don't think he was caught in crossfire. I think it was a planned assassination, given that he was the one of the three people who knew what DeSilvajust told you."

Guyatri leaned back in her armchair with her hands together, forefingers on her lips. She needed time and space to think, and to do that she shut the other two people in the room out of her mind. She was angry because they had involved her father in this, but now he was dead and they were alive. She never trusted Catholic Priests; it seemed as if they couldn't help being sinister and mercenary even when they were doing good.

Page 70 of70 "How do I know that what you are telling is the truth?" Guyatri asked. The priest looked a bit surprised, but DeSilva opened a folder he had in his hand and gave her a few sheets of paper; his medical records in her father's handwriting. She gave it back to him, and got up to leave. The other two got up too. Guyatri extended her hand. "Thank you for contacting me, and thank you for sharing this information with me, Father. I will have to make more inquiries, and then I will get in touch with you if I need to. Meanwhile don't contact me unless it's very important."

The priest shook hands. "Thank you for taking the time to come", and DeSilva shook her hand in silence.

That night Guyatri lay in her bed restless. Regardless of the priest's and DeSilva's intentions, she thought she owed it to her father that she find out what happened, and whether his death was connected to it. She desperately needed to speak to somebody, but couldn't think to whom. The story would be too much for her mother. If she told her brother, it was likely that the Organisation would get to know within hours. A press conference would be held in a European city within a few days, and the army would hide all the evidence. She had only one option, Dilshan. But the idea seemed ridiculous even to her. How could she trust him? The affair between them might even be an orchestrated one to find out who else knew about the incident, or to find a lead to the priest and DeSilva. But instincts told her that she could trust Dilshan. It was only an instinct. But when all other faculties fails, instinct is all one is left with.

Page 71 of 71 The next morning she left a message on Dilshan's voicemail, asking him to drop by for coffee at her office. He did. They knew each other so well now that she knew there was no point in beating around the bush; it would only be too obvious. So she recited the story to him, down to the minute possible detail, but without giving away a single name.

Dishan listened, his beret on the table, legs crossed. His eyes looked straight at her, concentrating, but there was no emotion in his face. When she had finished, he bit his lip, looked around to see whether anyone was listening, and spoke:

"Guy, I have told you this before. I am not a jealous warrior, only a paid employee. I do what I am told to do, and I get paid at the end of the month. I send part of the money to my father so that after working 12 hours a day everyday for 52 years he can live a few years in peace. The rest I save so that when the compulsory service period is over, I can leave the army and take some time to find another job. That is my relationship to the army. I was not part of any such operation, and I have never been asked to defend it, so

I don't know whether it happened or not."

Guyatri felt angry for the first time with Dilshan. "But Dilshan, how can you be part of such a brutal institution such as the army?"

"I am not responsible for what others in my institution do. You work for the

Government too. So the difference between our complicities with what happened, if it is true, is only a matter of distance."

Page 72 of72 He got up to leave and made a gesture as if he could not talk any further; language failed.

That night two people had nightmares.

2

Dilshan woke shortly after midnight, opened the windows and let the sea wind blow in.

It made him feel less claustrophobic. He wished that his life would be simpler, where decisions could be made between love and hate, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong.

But in his world they always seemed to extend into each other. What was desirable was always at war with itself. He was tom between images of his father and that of Guyatri and her father whom he had never seen. He imagined his father's life: a life without ambition, frustration, or anger; a life where suffering was taken for granted and the occasional discharge from it considered the luxury. Walking 5 km up and down, every day for sixty-one years, to send his son to school and University. Could anything in that son's life be more important than making that father's life happy in his final years on earth? On the other hand was Guyatri, the woman who risked isolation from her community, harassment by guerillas, and even death, in order to love him; the only real love that he ever experienced in his life. It was true that he was born into poverty, and

Guyatri into wealth. But it was her father, and not his, who had been murdered. He thought of the young people who were killed, probably born into poor families like his.

If he had a brother or sister would they be different to those who were pushed into the

Page 73 of73 sea, buried in perhaps the world's most secret mass grave. He looked at the rampart through the window, and the searchlight oscillating slowly on top of it. He tried to visualize the world outside, and realized that only a series of accidents stood in between him and the young people who were killed that night. He had to make his decision based on what he believed in and not based on the consequences of that decision for others. He noted the pale reflection of his tired face on the window glass.

The next morning, Dilshan told the officer in charge of Military Archives that he had to check some Autopsy Reports to prepare for a court case later that week. Inside the archives room there was a large table with armchairs around it. In accordance with regulations the officer came in with him and sat in a separate desk. Dilshan sat at the comer of the large table with a bunch of files marked "Autopsy". The officer was immersed in reading the day's newspapers when Dilshan, still seated, surveyed the cupboards until his eyes rested on the cabinet marked 'Helicopter Flight Schedules'. He then took a few papers from the Autopsy file and gave it to the officer to be photocopied. While the officer was away, he opened the cabinet, and removed the Air

Traffic Control Records for the day of the operation in question, ran it through the photocopier inside the room, and slipped them back into the cabinet. A good ten minutes had passed before the officer came back with the photocopies.

Dilshan felt relieved when he left the room, and decided that he would give the copies of the flight records to Guyatri without him reading them.

Page 74 of74 3

Guyatri's mother woke up from siesta and looked at the wall clock, and noted it was

6.00 pm. She must have overslept. Guyatri would be home in an hour, and she went into the kitchen to prepare dinner. She put on an apron and went to the stove in a way she had programmed herself over the last twenty years. Then she heard the back door open, and spun around. A man in his thirties dressed in a white shirt and khaki trousers stood there facing her. She opened her mouth to scream, but he put his hand to her mouth:

"Mother," he said, "I am not here to harm you. I can't stay here for long, I am going to leave this file with you, please hand it over to Guyatri."

He left the folder on the kitchen table, and Guyatri's mother recoiled from it as if it was a poisonous snake. He said "Thanks" and walked out through the back door. In a few minutes she heard a car start a few meters from the house. She then took the file inside, holding it as if it might explode in her hand, and put it on the dining table.

When she returned the back door was open again, and there was another man. But this time she had regained her confidence to defend her territory. She put her hands to her hips, and said, "now, what have, you, got for Guyatri"? The man took a .22 calibre pistol from his pocket and shot her twice in the head.

It was dusk and Dilshan had not driven very far when he heard the shots. He knew at once that his suspicion was no longer a conjecture. It all made sense now. Why did the

Page 75 of 75 officer in the archives room go out of the room to take photocopies, when there was a photocopier inside the room itself? He jammed the breaks of his Four-Wheel Drive and jumped out. He ran into the overgrowth on the roadside until he saw the ground slide down. He threw himself on the ground and slid until he hit a tree trunk, and couldn't move anymore. It was dark and when he looked up he saw the headlights of a vehicle come to a standstill behind his 4WD. The headlights turned off, and in the twilight he saw the silhouettes of two men get out of a car. In a few minutes he heard the unmistakable sound of running military boots close in on him.

4

Guyatri made the funeral arrangements in a state of dazed apathy, but in a programmed machine- like manner everything was done efficiently. She and her brother spoke only when they absolutely had to. And when the funeral was over, they left the house to go their own ways.

Time stopped in their house, and started its walk back into decay.

5

In a remote dry hamlet in South Eastern Sri Lanka an old man woke on a bench used as a bed in a thatched hut with mud walls. He felt the wet wind on his face, looked at the sky, and thought the monsoons would be here soon. In a few moments his view of the sky was obstructed by two men in uniform. One of them handed him a letter.

Page 76 of76 It is with great sorrow and regret that the Commander in Chief of the Army informs you that Captain Dilshan of Civil Liaison was reported missing in action on 12th of

September 1985. The unfortunate incident took place during an anti-terrorist operation, and his remains are yet to be found. My office will get in touch with you within the next few days with more information. I share in the grief ofyour family.

The mind of an old man, made weary by working 12 hours a day every day for 52 years, was too tired to figure out the Civil Liaison never took part in anti-terrorist operations.

Page 77 of77 The Departure

1

London was getting colder by the day as winter drew nearer. Last night was rainy, and when Guyatri finally went to sleep the first rays of the sun were already out. She had been virtually sleep walking through the day when she sat at the hospital restaurant for lunch. But no sooner had she sat than she saw the man again. They smiled at each other, and he waited for a few seconds for her to invite him to sit next to her, and in a few minutes they sat facing each other.

Relationships with people had become an irritation to Guyatri. She hated thinking about people. For her they were mere bodies, which were either in need of or not in need of mending. In the boundary between doctor and patient, knowledge and subject, she found a shield that protected her from other people. It is the only relationship in which others couldn't hurt her. But in the presence of this strange man she seemed to be allowing that shield to melt.

She started the conversation. "I did what you asked me to do, and yeah, maybe you are right, there is a difference in their eyes".

He asked "where are you from?"

Page 78 of78 Oh not again. "Where do you think I am from? You said that patients were different

where I come from, so you must have some idea."

"I don't know where, but I know that you have lived through a war, probably in that part of the world which they call the Third World here ... ! don't know, East Timor,

Bolivia, Chile ... "

"How do you know that"?

"It's written all over your body".

She felt naked. Was he trying to play games with her? What else did he know about her, is he actually a serial rapist? ... She let him continue.

"I can see it in your eyes, they are the same as your patients back home."

"You mean ... "

"I mean the same desperation."

Guyatri froze in horror as she looked back into his eyes. They were the same as those of patients back home. That was what was strange about the way he looked; the same intimacy, the same familiarity. He spoke slowly. "We must talk more privately sometime."

Page 79 of79 Guyatri thought for a while, her curiosity was overtaking her caution. Her consultant

was away on conference, so she thought she could use his room. "Ok, come to Room

No D 11, on Level 4, at 6.30"

"Ok" he said, and both walked away.

2

The room was tastefully furnished. The walls were wood panel and there were two large bookshelves that were full. She walked along the walls examining the books. Most of them were medical texts, but two rows were filled with books on philosophy, medical ethics, a bounded edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, a Jane Eyre, and a copy of the Upanishads. Guyatri wondered whether her boss really read these books.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of her guest, who looked reluctant as he entered the room.

"Hello."

"Hello," he replied. "Do you really want to do this"?

"Do what"

Page 80 of80 "Talk, I guess. But that is what we can't do. By the way, what is your name? Mine is

Yonus"

"Call me Guyatri, and since you asked me before, I am from Sri Lanka. I know what your next question is going to be, so here is the answer; I came here because I had to leave Sri Lanka, and I got a job in London".

"Does London offer you what you want?"

"Well, sort of, it's a weird place, where no one can stay still. Back where I come from they call people like that 'cats drunk on hot water'. London seems full of drunk cats."

"They seem to be running away from something".

"They are running away from their past. They fear that if they stop, the ghosts from their own past will catch up with them and destroy them. It's a society that is defined by what people do, rather than who they are".

"In my country people are obsessed with who they are; they are obsessed with identity: imagined identities based on unverifiable incidents that took place thousands of years ago. Because of these delusions we kill people who have lived next to us all their lives.

Isn't it better to be obsessed with activity, than to be obsessed with identity'?

Page 81 of 81 "Well, except when it turns into some monstrosity like mass produced war ... " There was a time when conversations like this would have excited her, but now everything seemed pointless. She switched to light conversation. "Where are you from?"

"Hendon, in north London."

She smiled "Ok you have made your point; where are you originally from?"

"Why can't I be from North London?"

She felt irritation rise inside her "Well, because you don't have that awful accent".

Guyatri was surprised at her statement. Why did the British accent irritate her, after all it was not the British who were responsible for what had happened to her. She felt the blood drain out of her head.

Yonus said "We are here, speaking their language, why object to the accent?" His voice seemed to be coming from a distance. When she didn't respond he got up and started scanning the books on the shelf. He pulled the Upanishads, and asked, "have you read this?"

"Yes, a long time ago, but I didn't like it very much. Why are you reluctant to tell me where you are from".

He said, still looking at the book, "Lebanon".

Page 82 of82 "Lebanon"

"Yes, and you are a well-informed woman. So, before you ask me whether I am Muslim

or Christian, let me tell you I don't believe in a God".

He sat down, and Guyatri continued. "Why did you leave Lebanon?"

He seemed reluctant at first but then said, "does the word Al-Basheba mean anything to you?"

She noticed that Y onus was sweating and his hands were shaking. The name didn't mean anything to her at first, but she kept wandering whether it did. And while she was thinking Y onus got up and walked out. Guyatri noticed that he had left the book on the table. She returned it to the shelf, made sure that everything in the room was left exactly as it was, and left.

That night the word Al-Basheba kept repeating in her head. Every time she woke up she heard a male voice saying "Al-Basheba". But she still couldn't figure out where she had heard the word before. Every time the word surfaced she felt sadder, more depressed.

She woke earlier than usual the next morning, and after a quick breakfast went to the

Internet Cafe across the street. It was still empty: later in the day it would fill with travelers and students. She relaxed in front of a computer and typed 'Al-Basheba' into

Page 83 of83 the browser and waited. Typing enabled her to switch to a relaxed state of mind. She waited for the browser to respond. It returned twelve pages, but she didn't have to go beyond the first page to find out. A dark mist that originated from a distant mountain descended upon her, and froze every part of her body. It was the topic of the unfinished conversation with her father on the night of his death.

She wanted to see Yonus desperately. But she never ran into him during the day. She decided to call him when she got back home. But when she went to her room, she discovered that he had already called her. There was a message in her answering machine: "I am sorry I left you abruptly yesterday. I didn't mean to hurt you, but even if

I had stayed I wouldn't have been able to say anything more. I hope I will be able to talk to you again, but not about Al-Basheba."

Guyatri' s heart sank. She had long forgotten that word, and the unfinished conversation with her father. Now she has been reminded of its existence, but its meaning eluded her agam.

They met several time after that, and talked about a number of things, but rarely about themselves, or their past. When they met it was their silences that they shared most.

Page 84 of84 Destiny

1

Winter arrived and London huddled under biting cold frosts. It was late January, and

Guyatri had not seen Yonus for three weeks when she got a letter in the mail.

Dear Guy

I hate farewells because they suggest the inevitable, that we will not meet again.

Whereas I think life is made up of possibilities - possibilities of even the inconceivable.

It is the awareness of these possibilities that make pain and loneliness bearable.

Especially for someone who is ambivalent about god, it is the only way that hope can be factored into life.

A few weeks ago I received a letter from a friend, whom I haven't heard from in years.

He is a doctor working in the West Bank. I was in fact shocked to hear from him. When

I read his letter it sounded as if he was writing from hell. Even with my imagination stretched to the maximum I couldn't comprehend the conditions that he was working in.

It was a reawakening to what I had left behind.

I never liked London. But now I realise that my dislike of London is actually a dislike of myself. It was a dislike of what I had chosen.

I have decided to go back. When I go back my life will be under threat from more than one side, because I am among the few people who know what actually happened in Al-

Page 85 of85 Basheba. But there is no heroism in this decision. If I stay here I will be safe but sad. If I

go back I will be happy but not safe, I am merely choosing one option over the other.

You are the only friend I made during my brief stay in London. So I am bidding goodbye only to you. Hope fate will bring us together again.

Yonus

2

Guyatri thought, for someone who claimed not to believe in God, Yonus was remarkably fatalistic. She felt the teardrops run on her cheeks. She kept crying until well past midnight, but then when she finally went to sleep she slept more peacefully than ever before.

Next morning it was still dark, as usual, when she took the skywalk to the hospital. But as she noticed the lights come on in the shops and cafes below, and the red busses pass carrying early morning commuters, for the first time she sensed beauty in them.

In the evening when she took a walk in the street she noticed a bookshop and went inside. There was a lighted globe on display. She spun it, and remembered Yonus's words when he first tried to figure out where she was from; ". . . from what they call the

Third World here .. .I don't know, East Timor, Bolivia, Chile ... ". The world was much larger than two places. So were her options.

End

Page 86 of86 Epilogue

Page 87 of87 St Bartholomew Hospital

London

Dear Rowan

I am sending this letter to Maya's address, because I don't know your address or whereabouts. Maya wrote to me recently that you had visited town, and had met her.

She also told me that you had left the Organisation. I am so happy for you.

Maya might have already told you that I am in England. I couldn't say goodbye to you when I left, because I didn't know how to find you. Maya told me that you are disillusioned with your desire to avenge our parents' death. I never thought that violence could avenge anything. It is like a bee that replicates with each one of its stings. It will only end once the world is swamped by killer bees seeking revenge, and no one, guilty or innocent, can escape their sting. But I never spoke to you about it and

I am sorry. It is regrettable that we never shared our views. I feel guilty that I never tried to dissuade you from joining the Organisation. Not because I think you are not capable of making your own decisions, but because it would have relieved me the burden of having to carry the guilt of not sharing. Opinions come into existence only when they are shared.

Rowan, please take care of yourself.

Page 88 of88 As for me, for the moment I am safe here. But I have never been happy in England and never will be. There is too much noise here. I don't think I can speak of my suffering. It will be easily drowned. In fact, I don't think I will ever be happy again. But I think I can learn to live with sadness and silence for the rest of my life. I will be leaving England soon.

If you get this letter please reply. If you want to come to England, and if you can manage to find your way here, please do. You can stay with me until I leave.

Yours,

Guyatri

Page 89 of89 Exegesis

Page 90 of90 1. Introduction

In the final months of the last millennium, the following report appeared in an English daily The Ceylon Daily News published in Sri Lanka:

. . . in the [aircraft] seat next to me there was an old woman from Sri Lanka. Tears kept flowing down her cheeks during the entire flight - approximately fifteen hours, from Colombo to London. A number of people kept asking her in different languages whether they could help, but she just kept shaking her head from side to side. (24th Nov 2000, p2)

This is the silent aftermath of war, when language fails to adequately express one's pain. Rousseau (1988, p23) defined the essence oflanguage as: "man's first language is the cry of nature ... this cry was wrenched from him only by an instinct in pressing circumstances to beg for help in great dangers from violent ills ... " But in case of this woman, language fails even in its very primitive function; she cannot cry for help. It is not likely that we will ever know what caused the agony of this woman. Her violent ills will stay with her until she dies.

Every war leaves behind great silences; the stories that are difficult to be told, too embarrassing to be told, stories which when told subvert the dominant political institutions and ideologies that exist at the time of war or that emerge after it. These are stories that the world would rather not hear. Stories that would leave too great a wound in the conscience of nations; they would allow official versions of history to simply

Page 91 of 91 skirt around these stories. It took more than ten years from the end of Second World

War for holocaust narratives to become part of the world's collective memory of the war3• Victims of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still die in silence, their stories untold even fifty-five years after the event4•

In the creative component of this thesis I seek to point out the existence of a similar silence with respect to the civil war in Sri Lanka; the silence of those who fall out of the two ethno-nationalist agendas that drive the war.

There is a self-contradiction of sorts in claiming to be able to speak about silence, since one cannot really know the reason for the silence until the silent themselves have spoken. I would like to stress that the objective of my fiction is to point to the existence of a silence rather than to conclusively break it. The characters in my fiction demonstrate the existence of a group of people outside the popular binary definition of the conflict. I am not attempting to speak on their behalf or rescue them from their silence, but merely pointing to the possibility of their existence. To that end, ifthere is a silence I am breaking out of, it is my own. It is how I see the war after living through it for approximately 15 years. My own experience is perhaps thus the experiential boundary of my fictional narrative, and in this thesis I am not attempting to step out of it.

3 Wajnryb, 2001, p66 4 Oe, 1995, p7

Page 92 of92 I will return to a discussion on my position within the conflict and its relationship to my writing once I have discussed the relevant theoretical issues - the narration of postcolonial history, the narration of suffering, and exile or immigrant writing. But before going further, it is worth noting that my strategy of foregrounding individual narratives against grand narratives does not aim to present a romanticised notion of an individual nor does it aim to detach the individual from the context of his/her situation.

Rather, it is an attempt to break out of the binary definition of the war by demonstrating that it is defined by not two, but a multitude of narratives. It is with regard to the breaking out of the limitations of grand narratives that a postcolonial criticism of the narration of history comes to be most powerfully germane.

1.1 Introduction to the Creative Thesis

The objective of the creative part of this thesis is to develop a text that gives glimpses into the civil war in Sri Lanka and its impacts on people, told through the voices of those who suffer violence. It is a narration of events told as they occur through the voices of characters who see and experience those events. They present different perspectives of the same war, and the text constantly refocuses the images to make visible the clashes between the different perceptions. The stories are told through multiple voices, and are ridden with silences and gaps in knowledge about events, which depict the chaotic nature of war, and the imperfect knowledge with which people make decisions during times of war. With a few exceptions, the narratives of the characters don't coincide with nationalist narratives that drive the war from both sides.

Page 93 of93 In spite of using different voices, in some sense the narrative cannot escape the biases of

one gaze, and a single voice emerging from the view of that gaze, which is the voice of

the writer - from which the text, however diverse, cannot break loose. I make no claim that the creative work is either a complete or an 'authentic' representation of history.

For, to narrate history in such a way, as the historian Paul Carter (1987) has demonstrated, is all but impossible.

2. The relevance of Postcoloniality (Postcolonial Theory)

2.1 Historical Background5

Political violence in Sri Lanka started within the first ten years of formal independence from Britain. Thus it cannot be separated from the country's struggle to decolonise from its complex colonial past. European colonisation of Sri Lanka began approximately five centuries ago when Portugal invaded the island in 1505, and established control over two out of the three principalities which existed at the time, namely Jaffna (Yalpanam) and Kotte (Kottaya) in 1518; subjugating approximately two-thirds of the population of the island, half its land area, and 85% of its coast. Portuguese occupation ended when it was invaded once again by Holland in 1656. The Dutch occupied the parts formerly occupied by the Portuguese until 1796. In 1796 the country was invaded again, this time by the British. The British expanded their domain by taking control of the only remaining hilly principality of Kandy in the geographically central region of the island.

The long history and the multiple layers of colonisation of Sri Lanka are suggestive of

5 This is only a summary presented in a highly condensed form. Its based on the following works; Tam bi ah ( 1986), Hoole (2001, 1990), Jayawardena (1985), De Silva (1998)

Page 94 of94 the complex and hybrid nature of the country's postcolonial society. It is worth taking note of the fact that Sri Lanka was colonised by European Powers for a longer period than any other part of the Indian Subcontinent with the exception of Goa.

Sri Lanka formally gained independence from Britain in 1948 following a lukewarm and non-violent freedom struggle based on a secular ideology and a pan-Sri Lankan national identity, which mirrored the ideology of the Indian Independence movement.

But after independence, unlike India, Sri Lanka remained a British Protectorate until it was declared a republic in 1972. At the time of independence the country's ethnic composition was 78% - Singhalese, 17 % - Tamil, and 5% - Others including moors and peoples of European descent. Approximately one million people, about 5% of the country's population and mainly Tamil speaking, were brought to Sri Lanka by the

British during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to work in the Tea and Rubber plantations in the central hills. A small proportion of them were repatriated back to

India, and those left behind are only now being granted Sri Lankan citizenship.

Except for the descendents of Indian Tamils, and a small proportion of the population who are of European descent, all other ethnic groups trace their arrival in the island to periods well before start of European colonisation - in fact to pre-Christian times. There is plenty of literary and archaeological evidence that suggest that both Singhalese and

Tamil culture had been present in the island for approximately 2000 years. However the exact geography of their presence and the chronology of respective dominance are heavily debated and fraught with uncertainties.

Page 95 of95 Within the first ten years of independence, Sri Lanka witnessed a number of incidents of inter-communal rioting, which between them left more than 1000 people killed. Riots were repeated in 1964, 1977, and 1983, at each instance leaving a larger number of people dead. The riots of 1983, the most severe of the three, were associated with the coming of age of Tamil Nationalist Insurgency. It also brought about an unprecedented level of international attention and involvement to the conflict.

2.2 The De-Secularising of the Sri Lankan State and the Tamil Nationalist Response

The Sri Lankan state, which was constructed at the time of independence from Britain, was and still, characterises itself as, a multicultural and secular entity. It was designed by departing British Administrators following consultations with a number of local organisations and so called 'prominent individuals' through three Royal Commissions in three consecutive public hearings. The new Government was structured based on the

Westminster Model of Britain, with power concentrated in an elected parliament, with well-defined separation of powers between the legislature (parliament), executive and judiciary.

However in the early 1960s, acting on the notion that minorities (especially Tamils) were treated favourably by the British Administration, the Sri Lankan Government introduced affirmative action laws that favoured the entry of Singhalese over Tamils into higher education and high-level Government jobs. It left the large Tamil middle class, which depended heavily on such jobs for economic mobility, significantly

Page 96 of96 disadvantaged. The Tamil backlash was swift. A Tamil Nationalist moment emerged quickly. At its early stages it was committed to non-violent methods, and agitated inside and outside parliament calling for a changeover to a federal system of government similar to that in India, which would have enabled a Tamil federal state in the geographic Northern and Eastern Provinces of the Country6. However failure on part of

Tamil political parties to achieve this transition, and repeated attempts by the

Government to suppress non-violent protests (outside parliament) with the use of force, and heating up nationalist rhetoric, led to the birth of a Tamil insurgency in the early

1970s. This steadily grew and by the mid 1970s the call for federalism was abandoned by nearly all Tamil Nationalist movements giving way to a call for separation from Sri

Lanka. In 1977 a coalition of Tamil political parties, the Tamil United Liberation Front, secured seats in the Sri Lankan parliament on a mandate that called for the establishing of an independent Tamil state in the Northern and Eastern provinces of the country.

Following the ethnic violence of 1977 and 1983 and supported with military, diplomatic, and logistical assistance from India, Tamil insurgency grew rapidly, and by the mid 1980s it had turned itself into a large conventional force capable of and actually controlling large populated areas. The mid 1980s are seen as the approximate starting point of the civil war; the starting point of proliferation and diffusion of violence in Sri

Lankan society. From then on, ever increasing state oppression, internecine fighting among various Tamil militant groups, their growing intolerance towards dissidents, and the rise of Singhalese nationalist groups more extreme than that of the state, trapped the

6 Populated predominantly by Tamils

Page 97 of97 society in a complex web of violence and counter violence. From the mid 1980s the affects of violence in Sri Lanka were never felt along neatly defined ethnic lines alone.

In mid 1987, owing to intense international pressure, especially from India, the

Government of Sri Lanka agreed to grant limited autonomy to the Tamil-speaking areas of Sri Lanka. This was encapsulated in an accord between the Government of India and the Government of Sri Lanka under which Sri Lanka promised to deliver greater autonomy to Tamils in return for India not helping Tamil insurgency. The accord also allowed the deployment of an Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka to support the implementation of the accord, plus to monitor, and help enforce, a truce between Tamil insurgents and Sri Lankan state forces. However, before the end of the same year, the largest of the Tamil insurgent groups called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

(L TTE) accused India of selling out on the Tamil cause, revoked the truce, and launched attacks on the Indian Peace Keeping Force. What resulted was one of the most gruesome battles ever fought in Sri Lanka, waged amidst a confused civilian population, which left more than 15,000 civilians dead within just the first two weeks of fighting.

Meanwhile, in a different part of the country, the NP (an insurgent organisation holding a Singhalese nationalist ideology) launched an armed insurrection against the

Sri Lankan Government, alleging that it had caved into pressure from India and conceded too much to the Tamils. Although the JVP fought under a facade of anti­

Tamil and anti-Indian nationalism, many analysts argue that the real cause behind the

JVP's ability to mobilise large number of youths to fight in its ranks was discontent among the poor and the working classes over the increasing disparity created by the

Page 98 of98 Government's neo-liberal economic policy. The brutal crackdown of this insurrection

left more than 60,000 people dead in a period of approximately three years. Thus the

1980s will be remembered in the history of Sri Lanka as a time marred by violence and instability and death: it is the period I traverse in my creative writing.

In addition to what I have described so far, which is broadly called ethnic violence (and violence related to it), in 1972 there was an attempt by Maoist rebels to overthrow an elected government, the crackdown of which also left thousands dead. I present here a complex nexus of events in a telegraphic form. A complete historical and political analysis of it is far too voluminous, and not within the scope of this thesis. The violence in Sri Lanka is complex and its origins and affects are heavily diffused. Its effects are not felt anymore along neatly defined lines of ethnicity, religion, or even class.

However, as I have mentioned earlier, the war is seen (especially in the international media) as a conflict between two ideologies - Singhalese Nationalism and a counter

Tamil Nationalism - fought between the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of

Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Sri Lankan state and the LTTE chronicle the war, and are the dominant voices that narrate its history to the world.

An exhaustive discussion of Singhalese and Tamil Nationalism, their ideological positions and narratives is outside the scope of this thesis. But, Suvendrini Perera (1999, p 189-201) in an essay Unmaking the present, remaking memory: Sri Lankan Stories and a politics ofcoexistence, illustrates the nature of the gross misperceptions that can exist.

She cites the example of a report that appeared in the New York Times soon after the riots of 1983: "The Singhalese are of Aryan stock, the Tamils are of darker skinned

Page 99 of99 Dravidian extraction." (p189). Perera makes the point that this description of the races

will sit comfortably within the narratives of Sinhala and Tamil Nationalisms. But she

demonstrates in her essay, through the use of archival information, that it is a gross

oversimplification of the complex nature of identity formation in postcolonial Sri

Lanka. She demonstrates that Sinhala and Tamil Nationalisms are both reactionary and

are preoccupied with projecting back into history an idea of racial purity that actually

originated in Europe with the rise of the nation-state and was introduced to Sri Lanka by the British who were obsessed with the taxonomy of racialised difference. She argues that by doing so, these movements are not only denying Sri Lankan society its essential hybridity, but also are violently erasing large parts of the self (identity) of its citizens.

2.3 The Relevance of Postcolonial Theory

The body of postcolonial theory is vast, in fact so vast that a number of authors 7 comment in the introductions to their work on the impossibility of carrying out an exhaustive survey of all postcolonial theory. It is not within the scope of this essay to do so either. Nor is it is my objective to conduct a postcolonial analysis of Sri Lankan politics. I use postcolonial theory only as a tool to help relate my writing to other writings around the same theme.

A number of authors including Spivak (1990), Ashcroft et al (1989), Loomba (1998), and Gandhi (1999) have tried to define the term postcoloniality, and tried to determine which societies or communities fall into that category. But all discussions on the subject

7 Including but not restricted to Aschcroft et al (1989, p 2), Loomba (1998, pXI)

Page 100 of 100 usually end up revealing the ambiguity of the term, at times pointing to the worthlessness of going through such a tedious analysis of definitions. For my purposes, the most useful way of using the idea comes from Ashcroft et al (1989), who argue:

We use the term postcolonial, however, to cover all the culture affected by the

imperial process from the moment of colonisation to the present day ...

postcoloniality takes the world as it is. (1989, p2)

Such a definition of the postcolonial enables Sri Lanka to be looked at in its existing state as a whole, acknowledging its hybridity and the diversity of identity of its citizens.

It also enables one to write a view of the war independent of the contemporary ideologies that drive the violence. Most postcolonial theorists have problematised ideas of racial purity and nationalism, suggesting that postcolonial societies are hybrid and postcolonial identities are complex. Postcolonial theory offers a powerful means by which to critique representations of a civil war that is being fought based on ethno­ nationalistic ideology. A postcolonial understanding of Sri Lanka enables one to write about the country recognising its hybridity and complexity, and represent the country as one that achieves its wholeness only in that complex and hybrid state.

Page 101 of 101 3. The civil war in Sri Lanka - Representations in literature

3.1 The persisting Problem

The communal riots of July 1983, referred to as Black July, were a pivot on which the

world's perceptions about Sri Lanka changed. Ismail (2001, p 296 - 308) in an essay

'Talking to Sri Lanka' describes that change of perception as follows:

In the rest of the Third World, the actual numbers [statistics] 'proved' backwardness. But, from the 1950s, the Sri Lankan figures added up to a peculiar fact: anomalously welfarist Third World Democracy. Polisci in 1960s and 1970s represented Sri Lanka as actually becoming modem (Wriggins 1960). But after that pivotal event that took the name July 1983, reality intervened. Sinhala Buddhist nationalism went berserk. In the space of a few days Sri Lanka, according to the New York Times, reacquainted itself with the Script, it resembled the rest of the third world. ( 2001, p299)

For the rest of the world, in July 1983, the image of Sri Lanka changed from that of a model third world democracy to one that represented 'typical' third world chaos. Ismail argues that this sudden change intrigued western academia. In no time an academic question was formulated as to what had gone wrong with Sri Lanka; it was a question that was based on intrigue as to why a country so well on the way to modernity and progress should suddenly collapse under such intense violence and fratricide. There was a scramble to understand Sri Lanka, resulting in a number of books and papers being

Page 102 of 102 published in a range of academic disciplines with Sri Lanka as subject.8 But Ismail

(2001) goes on to demonstrate that all these studies are bound by a common problem, which is that invariably all studies on Sri Lanka so far are bound by protocols of knowledge that have been shown to be problematic by postcolonial critics such as Edward Said and Dipesh Chakrabarty.

Edward Said in his groundbreaking work Orientalism (1978) first problematised the study of an area broadly defined as the "Orient" within western (imperial) academic institutions: an enterprise he terms, "Orientalism". Said problematises the process through which the place roughly defined (by European scholars) as the Orient developed as an object of knowledge for European scholars. For Said, the project of studying the Orient is inseparable from the political ambition of Europe to dominate and control the Orient. Thus he argues:

Taking the late 18th century as a roughly defined starting point, Orientalism can be discussed and analysed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient - dealing with it by simply making statements about it, authorizing views on it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it: in short, Orientalism was a western style of dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient."(1978, p88).

Said believes that within the project of Orientalism the Orient exists as an unthinking object, and this is central to his argument which demonstrates the limitations of

Orientalism. He concludes that a culture can never be understood without understanding

8 Eg, Tambiah (1986), Daniel (1996), Ismail (2000), Jeganathan (1998), political - Tiruchelvam (1999), Manikalingham (1995), De Silva (1998), Uyangoda (1993), Hemanyaka (1992), Balasingham 1983, and Sociological - Jayawardena (1985),

Page 103 of 103 it as a force. But for Said the European Orientalist's study of the Orient excludes this,

by ignoring the relationship of the Orient to the Orientalist, and assuming that the Orient can be studied with detached objectivism, that it can be understood in its totality in a detached way. But all through this process of study the superiority of the Orientalist over the Orient was taken for granted. This form of knowledge formation, where the

Orient is an object, empowers Europe with the ability to dominate the Orient. Said argued that it was the knowledge of the Orientalist that enabled the Imperialist to achieve his ambition of conquering and dominating the Orient.

It is possible to extend Said's idea to argue that once psychological and institutional colonisation of the Orient (the Third World) is complete, the protocols of knowledge formation within the Third World itself will not be free of the influences of Orientalism, since they will now be in one way or the other an extension or replication of academic protocols that exist in the west. Thus the postcolonial Third World's awareness of itself is now tainted by its objectification at the hands of European scholars. Now, if this argument were true, the first step in the process of decolonisation should be the creating of awareness within Third World scholarship of its own limitations. The result of this awareness, one could expect, will lead to the provincialising of Europe - which means removing Europe from its position as the vantage point from which the world is viewed.

It will ensue that a European view of the world becomes 'one' and not the 'only' way in which the world could be studied. Thus Europe becomes 'a province' rather than 'the metropolis' of the world.

Page 104 of 104 Dipesh Chakrabarty (1992, pl-26) analyses the theme of provincialising Europe in

relation to the re-writing oflndian history. For Chakrabarty, the protocols of knowledge

production that exist in current academic institutions, in the Third World or elsewhere,

are not free of the sorts of Eurocentricity that Said (1990) talks about. Thus knowledge

production within these institutions will not be free of the constraints imposed by the

projection of European modernity as universal truth - specifically the projection of the

scientific (Enlightenment) method of narrating history, which depends on a linear

narration of events, as the only correct way of narrating history. He argues that although the discipline of history within the universities of the West and the Third World have in theory accepted that there are ways of narrating history other than the European-styled linear narrative, when such other forms of narrative enter academic publications they enter only as part of a larger narrative which follows the accepted linear form. This has to be so in order for the writer (anthropologist or historian) to comply with the institutional requirements of documentation, writing and publishing. He cites as examples tape recordings and quotations within inverted commas of statements made by peasants or tribals in an anthropological thesis. Thus for Chakrabarty, a non-linear or non-European narrative can enter an academic discussion anywhere in the world only as a part of the voice of a scholar writing in the European tradition. In the process the non­

European narrative becomes subject to the interpretation of the scholar. But Chakrabarty sees the cause for this eurocentricity as lying not only in the imperialism of Europe, but also in the traditions of Third World nationalism. He sees the provincialising of Europe being achieved not by a blanket rejection of European ideas such of reason, science and modernity, or in reverting to nativism or atavism, but in building into academic study an awareness of its own shaping by imperialism. He argues that the project of

Page 105 of 105 provincialising Europe is not possible within current academic institutions because their

knowledge protocols will always take us back to the contours of the "hyperreal

9 Europe" • All it can do is to make visible within its own narrative its own impossibility, and in turn include other possibilities such as the inclusions of collective memory, public and private myths, etc. Such a telling of history Chakarabarty sums up, will look to its own death, and eventually present the world, once again, as a radically heterogeneous place.

Ismail (2001) uses Chakrabarty's (1992) arguments that reveal the euro-centricity of current academic protocols on writing and publishing (modes of knowledge formation) to criticise academic studies of Sri Lanka. Ismail (2001: p297) cites as an example a letter that appeared in the Ceylon Daily News 'Letters to the Editor' section. This type of writing, he argues, "which doesn't appear on the world wide web" (p304) nevertheless had to be understood, and debated, or talked to, if one were to understand the post 1983 escalation of violence in Sri Lanka, and if one were to explore and develop a psychological space in which that violence could be abated or dowsed. The letter in question makes unfounded and rhetorical claims about racial purity, and the relationship of those races to land. Ismail's position is that letters such as this should not be used simply as data to illustrate the 'state of the native', but should be considered a live voice, with which the anthropologist should engage in a conversation or debate. Thus Ismail, based on Said and Ckakrabarty, makes a case for an interventionist as opposed to a detached position for one who seeks to understand Sri Lanka. As Ismail goes on to develop an interventionist position through debate based on Marxist

9 A Europe which by assuming the role of a metropolis, and the vantage point from which the world is viewed, had assumed a role that is larger what it really is - a hyperreal role

Page 106 of 106 theoretical positions, I expect my writing to intervene through the telling or retelling of stories.

3.2 The relevance of Stories

I will take Ismail's (2001) reasoning a step further, to argue that if one were to both understand and participate in a conversation that engages with the psyche of political violence in Sri Lanka, one should not only look at expressions of opinion such as in the

'Letter to the Editor' cited above, but look at similar textual expressions of memories and experiences - stories, which in the minds of people make up the history of the conflict. Stories take up a large portion of the text I create, and it is the medium through which I am seeking to intervene in the discourse on Sri Lanka. There are tales originating from Sri Lanka which are rarely translated into English or published outside

the country because to do so is beyond the intention of their authors and publishers. They are written with the singular purpose of sharing experiences of being victims of

political violence in order to mobilise a group of people to fight against that violence (even if it is through the use of counter violence). The authors of these stories don't

intend their stories to reach an audience wider than those whom they intend to mobilise. But in spite of their limited nature they succeed dramatically in what they set out to do, which is to draw people around a shared memory and a shared experience - the experience of being victims of (political) violence.

A number of journalistic narratives that have chronicled the conflict in Sri Lanka have mentioned the existence of such stories (eg. Pratap 2001 p51-65, Hoole, 2001 p95), but

Page 107 of 107 neither of them have analysed these in depth, since most of these stories have never been translated into English. Given this restricted access, I will confine my discussion to just one example; a booklet published in Tamil, called the Lanka, Rani. The human rights activist Hoole, in his book The Arrogance ofPower (2001, p95), makes a passing reference to it, and claims that it was necessary reading for all new members of the Tamil Insurgency of Sri Lanka during its formative days. But interestingly Lanka, Rani is neither a political treatise nor political rhetoric, but a book of stories. "Lanka Rani" is the name of the ship that carried Tamil Refugees from Colombo in the aftermath of the racial violence of 1977. The book is a collection of stories that narrates the experiences of some of the passengers, and the conversations they had while they were on the ship.

Hoo le (2001, p95) claims that they were collected and published by a publisher identified as 'Arular' - technically an independent business. Stories are told by people of varied descriptions; from a grey-haired man dressed in indigenous clothes who speaks only in Tamil, to a young woman whom the text describes was dressed in jeans and speaks only in English. They talk about their sufferings during the communal violence, and their fears and hopes for the future. Benedict Anderson (1983) argues, with respect to the emergence of new nation states in Europe during the Reformation period, that printed texts usually succeed in bringing together imagined communities groups of people who cannot otherwise communicate with each other, because they are too far apart - geographically, culturally or across time. This argument can be extended to suggest that texts such as Lanka, Rani achieve the same with respect to Sri Lanka. Despite the diversity of characters, the text of Lanka, Rani suggests, that they share a common identity - they are 'Tamil'. The narrative uses race to draw a boundary and construct an 'other'.

Page 108 of 108 The stories of Lanka, Rani carry within themselves a sense of collectivity fundamental to a national identity. It is the beginning of national consciousness which leads to the

othering so vital to the emergence of violence - especially violence that is legitimised through the notion of revenge. These stories are a powerful reification of what Rennan ( qtd. in Bhabha, 1990, p 19), in a lecture at Sourbome University in 1882 defined as a "shared legacy of the past" which, according to him, when combined with "a willingness to be together in the present" brings together a group people as a nation. The concept of a collective identity, which in this case resembles that of a nation, is vital at least at a psychological level, if boundaries are to be drawn around people, boundaries that are necessary in order to identify targets for violence. It is these boundaries that determine whom to protect and whom to attack, and enable the perpetrator and executor of violence not to mix enemies with friends, thus facilitating the execution of a cleanly defined campaign of violence.

There is no reason to believe that what Chakrabarty (1992, pl-26) has demonstrated with respect to academic discourses produced in the Third World, does not exist with respect to stories written in the Third World too, even if those stories emerge from deep inside post-colonised societies. If we are to believe what Said (1978) had demonstrated, 10 that imperial representations of the colonised influence perceptions of the colonised about themselves and their perception of other colonised peoples, then it is reasonable to assume that biases originating from imperial representations of the colonised would have entered into the narratives of stories at a more subtle

10 This notion of Said has been challenged by other postcolonial critiques such as Bhabha ( 1990).

Page 109 of 109 psychological level. This is especially so since the osmosis into the colonised of a belief in the inferiority of their own culture was as Walder (1998, p14-15, p29-32, p33-34) reveals, very much part of the mechanism by which imperial control was established in most British colonies.

Hence it is reasonable to suppose that imperial stereotypes would somehow filter into stories that are being narrated locally even if they have a strong local origin. If we take this possibility a step further, one might be left with a suspicion that the othering portrayed in narratives similar to that of Lanka Rani is likely to be aligned closely with the othering of imperial discourses, in that they selectively absorb from within imperial discourses the negative manner in which a group of people other than one's own is portrayed, while dropping the way in which one's own is portrayed within that same discourse. A number of analysts ( eg Hoole 2001, Tambiah 1986) have investigated images and stereotype used by the Singhalese and Tamil Nationalists Movements to demonise each other's race. I will not go into an exhaustive analysis of these stereotypes themselves, but will consider them only to illustrate their origins. A label often used by Singhalese extremist to describe Tamils was Kalla Thoni (Smuggling Boat), to imply their involvement in illegal trade across the Palk Strait with Southern India. Trade between Southern India and Northern Sri Lanka has been taking place for hundreds of years.

However, during the early part of the twentieth century the British Administration discouraged cross Palk Strait trade in order to control influences from the highly radicalised Indian independence movement from reaching Sri Lanka. Trade across the

Page 110 of 110 Palk Strait was made illegal, and traditional traders became to be known as smugglers. In the early 1980s the word was adopted by the Singhalese nationalist movement, to brand all Tamils as smugglers in light of links the Tamil insurgency had with South

India. Similarly Tamil nationalist literature used the phrase Sinha/a Modaya (Singhalese Moron) rampantly, referring to the allegedly laidback and easygoing nature of the Singhalese. If one looks at British travel writing from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Eg David Lear, D H Lawrence, Leonard Wolfe) it is all too common to find the Singhalese described in this way. Thus imperial representations can and do become a tool in demonising the enemy in Third World conflicts. But while we could take heed of the presence of such influences, until all stories such as Lanka Rani, being written and circulated within different communities in Sri Lanka, are translated and surveyed, a task which has not yet been undertaken, it will not be possible to confirm this suspicion. Nevertheless, an awareness of the possibility of such stereotypes emerging in my fiction was a useful precaution as I was creating the text.

If my purpose in writing stories is to problematise the violence based on fratricide through stories that run counter to stories such as those in Lanka Rani, one way of doing so is to problematise the boundaries themselves. To do so can smudge the difference between the us and the them - the self and the other, and enable the reader to develop a level of psychological empathy with the victims of violence. I aim to develop stories where the reader can form empathy across racial, ethnic, and national boundaries, by telling or retelling the stories of victimisation without restricting the identity of the victim to a particular identity beyond that of a victim. In other words, I aim to sift the emphasis of the narrative of victimisation from the race of victims, to that of human

Page 111 of 111 suffering - to do so would require to represent the individual outside a name - outside a classification.

But a gaze exists prior to a name, and in that, there is a view that the gazer sees before she assigns a name to what she sees. Carter (1997, p67, p68, p328-330) has argued, with respect to naming of places, that a name is not just something that signifies a space, but it establishes a relationship between the gazer and the space, an argument that can easily be extended to the naming and classification of people. To name and classify someone not so much identifies the person in absolute terms, but rather identifies that person in relation to the namer - it establishes a relationship between the namer and the named - and enables Othering. I will argue that if a story of human suffering has to be told to an international audience, it has to be told at the point before the sufferer is named, the point where the person is nothing more than a man, woman, or child - since at that point the suffering cannot be justified by attaching a classification to the person. Statements such as, "she deserved to be raped because she is Tamil", or "he needs to die because he is a Jew", become impossible - othering is impossible. I strive to tell some of my stories at such a level; a level where someone who sees a bleeding child sees only a bleeding child, before he knows whether the child is Singhalese, Tamil, or anything else. It is the point where the individual exists outside classification. A story told at this level will hopefully have the power to form human bonding and empathy and problematise violence.

As the war intensified through the 1980s it also grew in complexity. By the late 1980s it had developed into several separate battles where a number of different groups were

Page 112 of 112 fighting each other, indicating that the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion had multiplied - they had shifted and were constantly shifting. New boundaries were being formed. Those boundaries were both dynamic and transient, thus suggesting that new narratives were being constantly invented - new narratives of stories with intents very similar to that of Lanka. Rani but which defined new identities. I expect to be able to represent in my writing this dynamic (changing) and ambivalent nature of identity, in that most of my characters don't behave according to the expectation imposed by their racial or ethnic identity. Their personal beliefs, relationships and desires intermesh with these expectations, and often force them to behave at odds with the expectation of the collective. Thus, in Part 1 of the creative thesis, the character Prahal's friendship with the elusive soothsayer makes him run away from the organisation that claims to be fighting for the rights of his people. In Part 2 the character Guyatri falls in love with an army officer, attracted by his personal qualities even when she suspects that her father was killed by the army. Her lover Dilshan, prompted by his love for Guyatri and in response to his conscience, betrays the army. They are characters whose personal behaviour is in tension (and not in total contradiction) with the collective. I hope to illustrate that people's identities and their behaviour are based on a complex web of relationships, loyalties, beliefs, and sense of belongings. I hope to demonstrate that the narrative of the individual can be at a level of variance to any one of the collective identities imposed on him/her- the narrative of the fragment can at times to be at variance to that of the total.

Page 113 of 113 3.3 Individuation - problematising fixed identities in Literary Representations of Sri Lanka

To divide society in terms of groups and deny its individuals their individuation,

according to Loomba (1998, p52), was part of the way imperial systems of knowledge (eg medicine) named and categorised the native. Imperial discourses distinguish the western individual from the native by assigning individuality to the former while denying it to the latter. The European was an autonomous individual, while the native was to simply disappear into the collective. Postcolonial writing should open up the possibility of reintroducing individuation to individuals in postcolonial societies. By individuation, I mean the recognition of the individual as a thinking being capable of

being 11 critical of the collective , even as their behaviour is influenced by it at some level. It is to recognise that the individual narrative and the narrative of the fragment (eg individual, family, local community) can be at odds with that of the total. A number of

Sri Lankan novels have sought to depict this contradiction.

The period following the 1980s saw the publication of eight novels in English which thematised life in Sri Lanka. Of those eight, three thematised the civil war, and it is these three that will be the subject of my discussion in this section, because it is to them that my text most closely relates. The three novels are : Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai (1994), When Memory Dies by S. Sivanandan (1997), and Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje (2000).

11 Collective here means a top down imposition, it is used in a different meaning to the way it is used in Marxist literature.

Page 114 of 114 The novels of both Selvadurai (1994), and Sivanandan (1997), represent the ambivalent nature of individual identity in a postcolonial society (Bhabha: 1990 p4--65) in order to problematise justifications of violence in Sri Lanka. They highlight the ambivalence by bringing to light the hybrid nature of postcolonial identity by placing individuals in situations where they assume multiple identities. Selvdurai's protagonist, Arje, is a boy growing up in his teens in a wealthy part of Colombo (the capital of Sri Lanka), but as he grows he is beginning to understand two ways in which the world sees him. One, as being a Tamil (hence belonging to a racial minority), and two, as funny because people see his behaviour as being too similar to that of girls (of his age). In time he discovers his homosexuality. But, as he is growing up, communal tensions in the country also intensify and he finds himself being made a victim because of both these identities: in the wider community - because he is Tamil - and in the family - because he is homosexual. Suddenly he finds himself in a situation where he has to choose between being loyal to his community or to his lover (and to his sexuality). His two identities come into conflict with each other when he has to make a decision on whether to support the principal of his school, who is keen on maintaining its multiethnic nature, or his friend-turned-lover, who is at the verge of emotional collapse because he is being tormented by the homophobic principal. Arje has been nominated by the principal to deliver a speech at the prize giving. The principal's continued tenure as head of the school depends on his impressing important guests at the prize giving, and Arje's speech is a vital part of his plan to impress. Thus Arje has a choice: he can deliberately make a substandard oration, which means the principal will have to eventually leave the school, and his lover will be freed from further harassment, or he can help the principal

Page 115 of 115 to continue in his job, thus preserving the school's multiethnic status. Arje deliberates on the decision until he is on stage (the author highlights the complexity of Arje's problem of having to choose identities - two loyalties), and decides to let down the principal.

Given that there is no visible and assertive gay moment in Sri Lanka, homosexuals are usually left to negotiate for their rights and expression within hidden individual spaces. Thus an illustration of a situation where an individual gives greater importance to a personal relationship (and loyalty), over loyalty to a national (racial) identity, problematises the notion of the overarching dominant nature of national and racial identities - which as Perera (2000) shows, is a continuation of the imperialist way of classification and identifying the native. Against national and racial identities Selvadurai highlights personal space, spaces that are often invisible, according to Paul Carter (1986), to narrators of imperial histories. The individuation of identity (Loomba 1998, p52) that Selvadurai achieves, is a powerful counterpoint to the binding effect of narratives such as Lanka Rani, which gather people around an ethnic identity to develop a response to political violence.

Sivanandan (1987) does something similar, in his novel When Memory Dies, but his understanding of ethnic identity emerges from a different philosophical perspective. His is a story of three generations of a Sri Lankan family, and it is underpinned by Marxist assumptions and explanations. For him ethnic divisions are the result of a bourgeois attempt to split the working class. Thus he sees racial, ethnic, and other forms of national identities break down within the trade-union movement of Sri Lanka. In the

Page 116 of 116 second generation of his story, Sahadevan, a Tamil civil servant, marries a Singhalese co-unionist, and the couple have a male child, Vijay. But soon afterwards they get caught in a vicious racial attack in which the child's mother is killed, and Sahadevan suffers a nervous breakdown and is sent to an asylum in England. The child is brought up by his Singhalese grandparents, and grows up unaware of his Tamil identity. He grows up surrounded by militant left-wing politics, and while at university comes to know of his mixed ethnicity. He then decides to travel to Jaffna (a city inside the Tamil heartland of Sri Lanka) to meet his grand-uncle. He is accompanied by his Tamil fianc _. But once in Jaffna, he finds himself in a situation where he confronts Tamil insurgents on behalf of a Tamil cripple who is about to be executed by the insurgents after being accused of spying. In the heat of the argument Vijay himself is killed by the insurgents and, in a dramatic end to the narrative, his fiance walks up to her lover's killer and tells him: "you have killed the only decent thing left in this land ... we'll never be whole again" (p 411 ).

Both Sivanandan and Selvadurai problematise cleanly defined identities, and explore the liminal space in between identities where individuals exist. In my fiction I have tried not to depict mixed ethnicities as Sivanandan does, but instead choose to depict relationships and interactions between individuals across ethnic and racial boundaries. In that sense my characters are closer to those of Selvadurai. But I focus more on the psychological - the state of mind of the individuals caught in such situations. My focus is more on the internal. I try to explore how people come to terms with desolate situations. The narrator in Part 1, towards the end of the narrative, slides back into his childhood fantasy about the Sea God in order to make sense of a world that had become

Page 11 7 of 11 7 incomprehensible to him. Guyatri's imaginings of the streets of London m Part 2 function in a similar way.

4. Narration of History

4.1 Spatial History

A narration of events is a narration of history, and a narration of events through multiple voices, as is the case in my writing, opens up the possibility of a simultaneous narration of multiple and potentially competing truths. In his book Road to Botany Bay (1987) Paul Carter introduces the idea of spatial history, which enables such a polyphonic narration of history. Carter differentiates spatial history from imperial history, with regard to objectives. The objective of imperial history, according to Carter, is to legitimise events after they had taken place. He argues that imperial history chooses events after they had taken place and presents them as if they occur in sequence following a natural logic or pattern. The historian who records it sees himself only as a passive or neutral observer, who is merely recording events which are unfolding naturally with the passage of time - for him the process of recording history has nothing to with his orientations or culture. Thus imperial history observes events only in time - it is a narrative with closure. Carter defines spatial history as what fills the lacuna that imperial history leaves behind. He demonstrates that when we stand and gaze into space, what we see, where we stand, and who we are, are all part of the history which is unfolding. It is this unfolding space that forms the substance of spatial history.

Page 118 of 118 Carter argues that the events that unfold around us, although material, are not always visible - they constantly transcend real objects. The spatial historian, like the traveller, and unlike the imperial historian, does not assume universal authority, and makes no claim to be free of cultural position; nor does she assume that her view is unrestricted. Spatial history is aware within itself that its view is both limited and culturally oriented, and it seeks to understand history as it unfolds. It investigates items such as travel­ joumals, letters back home from explorers, and unfinished maps, etc - which, although they are literary artefacts, would not have come into existence if not for their spatial occasion - that is, their authors were present at a particular place (a point in space). They do not narrate linearly. Such a history, according to Carter, begins and ends in language, and could not be defined only through linear narratives. Carter goes on to assert that spatial history begins not in a year or a date but in a cultural space, that is the point of naming: it starts at the point when a place is named - the point when a space becomes a place. A narration of spatial history is one that is continuously beginning and continuously ending. Thus it is a history that is continuously reinventing itself. He argues that everyone who is gazing at the passing of events can write an authentic history. Thus, with respect to the early colonial history of Australia, he argues, Aborigines, escaped convicts, travellers, and early settlers, not just historians and

explorers can all narrate an authentic history of the early settlement of Australia.

Carter's arguments can productively be extended to other countries and other situations. They can be extended to Sri Lanka, where they are useful to theorise a polyphonic narration of the civil war, where the story of the war, narrated through, discontent professionals, runaway guerrillas, mothers of guerrillas and soldiers, and ordinary

Page 119 of 119 shopkeepers, can be seen as authentic as the narrations of the Sri Lankan state and Tamil nationalist movement, and other political institutions. To narrate the civil war in such a way is my project in writing. It is a fictional recreation of a narration of spatial history. It is to meet this end that I have included in my narrative items such as private letters, diary entries etc - artefacts of spatial history - that is, artefacts that emerge as history unfolds, and depict the narration of passing of events as they happen. It is also an aspect of spatial history that there are silences within my narrative, invisible spaces,

and unfinished threads of stories.

4.2 Linear and Non-Linear Narratives of History in Literature

The narratives of both Sivanandan (1997) and Selvadurai (1994) are linear - the narratives are sequentially arranged, and follow a plot. The problem with a linear narrative is that it is forced to exclude events that are not connected with the plot of the narrative, even though those events actually occur in the place (space) where the narrative is set. Linear narratives reduce a multidimensional space into a one­ dimensional space. If the objective of one's writing is to represent all what happened in a place, such as the war in Sri Lanka, to choose events and present them in sequence would force one to leave out the vast majority of events that took place simultaneously.

Michael Ondaatje, in the fictional-autobiography of his family, Running in the Family (1982), uses non-linear narrative - events not arranged chronologically - to write the history of his family in Sri Lanka. The chapters are not sequentially arranged, but are simply a collection of stories and descriptions. Although non-chronological, when read

Page 120 of 120 together they present events with a sense of completeness that linear narratives fail to achieve.

Walder (1998, p23) has suggested that a colonial history is not one but many histories. Histories narrated by different people ( eg the coloniser and the colonised) could present the same set of actual events in completely different lights. This multiplicity of histories changes the background and foreground of stories. In Running in the Family, buried in a chapter about gambling and horse racing, is a story of the Japanese bombing of Colombo during World War II. The news of the bombing is conveyed to the writer's mother through a telegram, which read 'Rain over Colombo' by mistake when it should have read 'Raid over Colombo':

The day this eventually happened my grandmother was up north. She received a telegram in the early morning which said ... so she put her money in another horse. Dickman Delight (the name of the horse) galloped to victory on dry turf. Dickman Delight never won again (1982, p50)

That a bombing raid over Colombo (in which no one was hurt) is easily confused with something as trivial as horse racing, problematises the way in which grand (imperial) events are understood by the individual. That is, the individual interprets the significance of the event differently to that of an imperial institution such as the Government; it is horse racing rather than bombing that is foremost in the mind of the reader of the telegram. It also demonstrates the contingent nature in which events proceed; a mistaken message leads to a change in decision which in tum leads to a change in one's career. In another chapter - the Karapothas - Ondaatje illustrates the

Page 121 of 121 different lenses through which the same events can be seen. By placing the following quotation from David Lear, a British Travel writer who wrote about Sri Lanka in the

th late 19 century, he contrasts the different views through the different lenses:

The brown people of this land seem to be odiously inquisitive and botherly­ idiotic. All the while the savages go on grinning and chattering to each other.

qtd in Ondaatje I 982 p78

It is easy to find in-between the lines the cause for David Lear's irritation - the 'natives' were chattering and laughing at him. Thus there were different opinions being represented here. One, the opinion of David Lear, the coloniser's opinion of the native, and two, the native's opinion of David Lear- the cause of the natives' laughter. A few lines into the same chapter (p79), Ondatje recollects his niece telling him that Sri Lanka has too many foreigners - just like Karapothas (cockroaches), while Leonard Woolf sees the Sri Lankan jungles as evil. Ondaatje presents his niece's opinion of foreigners, mentioned to him in casual conversation, as an equal and competing voice to that of a published author Leonard Woolf. The possibility of the presence within the same narrative of such competing voices is what distinguishes a postcolonial narrative from an imperial narrative. This is what enables the narration of the complexities of postcolonial society. His narrative includes both official and unofficial voices of history. Thus this work exemplifies the narration of spatial history12 • Running in the Family ends before the civil war started in Sri Lanka, although there are some references in the text to early political violence. But it is a non-linear text that narrates Sri Lanka in its

12 The word Spatial History was coined four years after Running in the Family was published, but the concept appears very strongly in Ondaatje's writing.

Page 122 of 122 complexity so very well that it provides textual platform on which a similar narrative of the civil war period could be constructed.

Ondaatje returned to Sri Lanka in the late eighties to write about the country when the civil war was at its height - the result was the poetic novel Anil's Ghost. Anil's Ghost (2000) is less polyphonic and more linear than Running in the Family. It thematises knowledge, and demonstrates the existence of competing ways of knowing the world; it demonstrates the existence of competing truths about the same situation. Anil Tissera is a forensic anthropologist, born in Sri Lanka, who returns to the country after having lived and worked in the west for more than fifteen years. During that time she becomes a doctor and then a forensic anthropologist. In the course of her career she exhumes bodies from a mass grave in Guatemala. Soon after her assignment in Guatemala she is sent to Sri Lanka by the United Nations to investigate alleged mass killings by militia groups. She returns to Sri Lanka carrying with her a belief in certainty; a belief in the objectivity of truth. For her, truth is not only universal, but it is something that is accessible, and knowable. Her work in Sri Lanka brings her into contact with four other characters, who have their own versions of truth, which are different to hers. They are the brothers Gamini and Sarath Diyasena - Gamini a doctor, and the Sarath an archaeologist, Ananda Udugama - a drunken artist, and Palipana - a blind sage. Their different versions of truth come into direct conflict with that of Anil.

The novel presents the tension between the different versions of truth. It suggests that finding the truth in Sri Lanka is much more complex than it is in the west - complex because several different perceptions of it exist side by side, competing perceptions

Page 123 of 123 exists even within Anil's team. The tension between Anil's version of truth and that of Sarath reaches a climax when a skeleton is found in the midst of an archaeological dig in an area controlled by the Government. Out of the four skeletons found, one is suspected to be of a recent origin, the other three are believed to be from ancient times. The discovery of the skeleton makes Anil suspect government involvement in the killing, and leaves her with an obsession to find the killer. But Sarath sees the happenings of the present only as one of the many layers that form history. His understanding of truth is that it is ambiguous, and he finds it in the delicate balance between maintaining his personal decency and surviving the brutal realities of current day Sri Lanka.

The juxtapositioning of the ancient and the recent skeletons can be read as a representation of the two narratives that function at the two different scales of time (or at two 'times') and define a nation, as defined by Bhabha (1990, p297-299) - namely the pedagogical and performative. Pedagogical narrative is repetitive and originates from a point in the past and repeats itself through time into the present. Hence it doesn't change with time, while the performative is the part of the narrative that is dynamic and hence changes with time. The ancient skeletons represent the unchanging past that projects itself into the present, while the recent skeleton can be seen to symbolise the performative - the current 'performance' of political violence. By depicting the existence of violence into both 'times' of nation, the novel could be read to suggest that violence is endemic to the narrative of Sri Lanka if were to be narrated as a single nation. Thus it could be suggesting that the existence of Sri Lanka as a single nation is in itself problematic.

Page 124 of 124 In the process of the investigation Anil discovers that finding the truth is not an easy and linear process as it is in the west. She encounters Sarath's brother Gamini, a doctor, who is now obsessed with his patients, and can sleep only when he is in the presence of parents who show love to their children in hospital wards. Being a doctor, he spends most of his time treating people with war wounds. Truth in Sri Lanka, Anil learns, is not detached from the individual, but it is what helps the individual to survive. Like the character Ananda Udugama and his knowledge of Nethra Mangalaya - the ceremonial painting of the eye of the Buddha - truth is to do with the restoration of the individual after the war, after the story ends. The existence of such competing truths, Walder (1998) argues, is endemic of postcolonial societies, where imperial narratives about indigenous peoples exist in parallel to the narratives of the indigenous. The most powerful theme in Anil 's Ghost seems to be the two different perceptions of truth. On the one hand there is objective truth, which is independent of the knower and exists outside the individual; it is what can be sought and be known. This notion of truth, which originated in the European enlightenment, is at the core of science, the intellectual tool through which Anil Tissera seeks to understand Sri Lanka. On the other hand there is the vaguely defined notion of truth that Sarath holds; for him truth is what could help him survive the war. It has a similar resonance to Said's (1978) argument, but at a microscopic level, that knowledge (truth) is inseparable to the situation of the knower. The situation here is the war. Truth is what enables one to survive the war.

With respect to the representation of knowledge and knowing my writing differs from Ondaatje's in two ways. Firstly, I don't necessarily present competing voices from the

Page 125 of 125 west and Sri Lanka, such as that of Anil Tissera and Sarath, in conversation with each other, since in reality they rarely converse. Their respective viewpoints are likely to be in conversation only with the reader of the text. Secondly, I don't present a view which originates from the west, as Ondaatje does with the character Anil Tissera, who in a number of ways resembles Ondaatje himself. She like him is born in Sri Lanka, but returns after a long period abroad to finds herself in a situation where she is forced to re­ understand the country. Most of my characters rarely leave Sri Lanka. Only Guyatri does in Part 2 of the fiction section and when she does, it is she who seeks to understand the west. Thus, it is the knowledge of the colonised that is fore-grounded - it is a view from the periphery.

However, an attempt to narrate the story of oppression, in the voice of the oppressed is an attempt to narrate in the voice of the dispossessed - of both the colonial past and the country's post independence power groups. I am faced with a level of uncertainty in determining whether the dispossessed in this instance and the subaltern described by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay 'Can the Subaltern Speak' are the same, although there are some resonance.

Spivak (1985) has argued that the total recovery of this v01ce - the voice of the subaltern; the voice of the victim - is not possible. The subaltern cannot speak. This notion has been challenged by other including Loomba (1998, p231-244), who have cited the success of several national independent movements as examples of instances where the subaltern have successfully recovered and made use of their voice. But

Page 126 of 126 regardless of how accurate Spivak is, the criticism creates an acute sense of awareness to the writer's own limitation.

On the other hand, Carter, by arguing the possibility of the enterprise of Spatial History, casts the situation in a more positive light. Although Carter doesn't respond directly to Spivak, by arguing that "wondering convicts and aborigines can all become narrators of history in their own authentic way" he is being dismissive of Spivak's notion that their voices are completely lost, since in the context of the early history of Australia, convicts and Aborigines were both part of the subaltern. As I try to write stories about the victims of violence, I negotiate the tension between Spivak's pessimism and Carter's optimism. I am constantly aware of this tension in my writing, and I have tried to restrict myself to pointing to the existences of a silence rather than to speak on behalf of the silent. Hence there are gaps in my narratives, the passage of events is at points left unclear to the reader. There are depictions of silences like Yogar' s writings at the end of Part 1, which he doesn't show anyone, and the word Al-Basheba in Part 2 and what happened there, which keeps eluding the narrative. So is the reason why St Xavier's College was closed down and turned into a guerrilla camp, and Prahal's connection to the otherworldly soothsayer, for example, remain unanswered in this narrative.

Page 127 of 127 5. Narration of Pain as a Struggle against Suffering

The ability to be able to express in language one's suffering, and to be believed is the starting point of healing. It is quintessential before moving to a stage where society acknowledges that what someone underwent is in fact suffering and pain, and that its removal is justifiable. It enables those who suffer to draw from the resources of others, and find social context. It is the first step towards the restoration of the individual after the trauma. It will let the sufferer break out of isolation and be recognised within a social context. Breaking the silence about pain will prevent the sufferer from sinking into further melancholy and depression. It makes society aware of the suffering that exists within it.

There are several possible reasons for silences to exist following the trauma of war. Shweizer (2000, p229 -240) defines the withdrawal from the pain of war as arising out of the gulf between the sufferer's authority over the understanding of his/her own suffering and the listener's doubt over what the sufferer narrates. He demonstrates that, while the narration of one's pain is the first step towards its alleviation, the narrator by narrating his/her pain is also opening his/her pain to a different interpretation (and possibly misinterpretations), which means that the narration of pain, changes the way the pain is understood and finds meaning in public discussion space. To avoid misinterpretation, he argues, is the challenge one faces in narrating pain. To speak of doing so, according to Shweizer, is an attempt to " ... to speak against all odds" (p230). And a perceived inability on the part of the sufferer to bridge this gap in interpretation is

Page 128 of 128 the primary reason behind the silence of those who have suffered any form of trauma - especially as a result of war.

In his essay 'Against Suffering: A Meditation on Literature', Shweizer builds his argument on the German proverb Weh spricht vergh, which translates into English as "Woe says go." Following a lengthy discussion on the rhyming of the proverb, he demonstrates that in articulating one's pain as woe, you are by implication, also saying that you are wishing that pain away. Thus, by speaking about pain, he who is in pain is expressing a desire not to be in that pain. When this process takes place, Shweizer observes, there are two bodies present in the imagination of the speaker - the physical body which is in pain, and the imagined other body which is not in pain. In expressing the desire for the pain to go away, the individual is expressing the desire to move from that body which is in pain to that body which is not in pain. Hence, Shweizer argues, speaking about one's pain is the first step in the journey towards transformation - the healing of pain. Thus he concludes " .. .if woe speaks, the speaking itself is already curative ... who [the sufferer] can now say that he is no longer in the solitary body but [moving] towards another." (p234).

Elaine Scarry in her book The Body in Pain (1985) discusses the nature of pain and the ways by which that pain takes meaning. Pain, according to Scarry, resides inside a person's body. She argues that it is the only sensation that is felt inside rather than outside one's body (p4), in that it lacks the presence of an external object. It is unlike sight, hearing, or even desire, all of which directly involve an object outside one's body. Further, Scarry argues (pl-23) that although pain is felt inside the body, it takes a

Page 129 of 129 particular meaning only when it is projected outside the body and connected with an outside object through one's imagination. It is the establishing of this connection between one's pain and an external object, she claims, that transforms pain into suffering. In the absence of this imaginative link, the feeling of pain in itself nothing more than a meaningless sensation. She cites the example of hunger: in the course of one's daily life where food is available, hunger is not seen as suffering, but only as the sensation through which the body communicates its need for food. But hunger as a result of an economic blockade will be invariably seen as suffering. The same physical sensation (hunger) is seen as something normal in the former, and as suffering in the later, depending on how it is imagined - a desire for food in the former, and political victimisation in the later. Scarry describes this imagined connection an artefact. In relation to theme of this thesis, it is reasonable to consider that the narrative is the artefact - since it is the narrative about the war that tells the story, which determines

whether the pain is 'normal' or whether it's 'the result of victimisation'.

Scarry (1985, p60-160) also discusses the nature of pain in relation to war. She argues that inducing bodily pain (injury) is the key objective of war. In war, each side seeks to induce the maximum level of bodily damage on the other; and success or failure depends on which side succeeds in inflicting the maximum level of bodily damage on the other. Thus each side, when they seek to maximise pain on the other side, is seeking to inscribe their superiority on the bodies of those on the opposing side. And, once the damage to the opposing side is done, what has been done is communicated to the world - the war is narrated. It is this narrative that inscribes in the consciousness of the world who are the winners, and who are the losers of the war. Thus narrative is what translates

Page 130 of 130 pain into sacrifice (in the case of the winner), and humiliation (in the case of the loser).

Narrative is the artefact that gives meaning to the pain of war

I will take Scarry's argument a step further to argue that the outcome of the situation is that pain of war on individuals is felt along the binary opposites of martyr and loser. For those on the winning side, suffering becomes the 'honourable wounds of war', something revered and sacrificial - the badge of a hero - the martyr. But for those on the losing side the same wounds are the mark of humiliation, akin to punishment - the loser.

In the case of a long drawn out civil war where winner and loser are not determined easily and where they can interchange rapidly, one's wounds can also switch with equal frequency between the binary states of martyr and loser. The problem with this is that it allows the individual's pain to find meaning (ie expressed/narrates suffering) only within this binary state. Which leads to the silencing of the other meanings that the same pain can find. For example, the death of a person in war, in the mind of others, can be seen as a sacrificial death, contributing to the victory of one side, or the deserved death of the enemy (or justifiable collateral damage). But it fails to be seen _in equal light as a death of a daughter to a father, or as a husband to a wife - which are the silenced narratives- lost meanings of the pain of wars.

Ifwe apply this to the war in Sri Lanka, finding meaning for one's pain along the binary axis of martyr and loser, requires aligning one self with one or the other of the binaries of the two nationalisms, and the corresponding identities. This denies the multiple other

Page 131 of 131 meanings that the same pain can find given the hybrid nature of its postcolonial society. The suppression of those other narratives is the silencing of war. It is with respect to breaking this silence that I tum to postcolonial criticisms of grand narratives. Fanon (1961) and Said (1993) suggest that the continuation of national consciousness well after the end of formal colonialism limits the potential for the emergence of constructive post-colonial politics. Postcolonial theory problematises nationalist grand narratives by pointing out limitations due to their linearity and demonstrating that they are in reality a continuation of the imperial narratives of colonialism. What postcolonial theory achieves is that it clears a space for the possibility for more heterogeneous narratives to emerge. It enables the telling of stories of the multifaceted nature of the pain of war, without denying the hybridity of society and the multiple pasts, presents, and futures of individuals and societies.

6. Metropolitan, Third World, Immigrant or Exile

A text on Sri Lanka created from within an Australian (first world) academic institution invariably raises questions about the influences of dislocation on the creative process. Exile is a well-traversed theme in literary and cultural criticism. It has more than often been celebrated as a situation that catalyses creativity, even before the advent of postcolonial criticism and the recognition of third-world and postcolonial literature as a literary canon in western academic institutions, in spite of its agony, exile had always been described in favourable light, across vast expanses of time. Exile has been associated with the universality of Dante's vision in The Divine Comedy to Jonathan Swift's creative genius in Gulliver's Travels. James Joyce's biographer Richard

Page 132 of 132 Ellmann argues that Joyce deliberately chose exile (from Ireland) in order give force to his artistic vocation. Ellmann writes, "whenever his relations with native land were in danger of improving, [Joyce] was to find a new incident to solidify his intransigence and to reaffirm the rightness of his voluntary absence" ( qtd. Said 2000, p 182). Ellman quotes from a letter written by Joyce where he claims that there is a connection between his fiction and his state of being 'alone and friendless,' a state which he had consciously chosen.

This idea of connecting exile to creativity was earnestly latched onto by a number of postcolonial critics and third world writers, from the very early days of the canon. Edward Said repeatedly draws from the writing of the twelfth-century Saxon monk Hugo, who celebrates exile: "The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner ... The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his" ( qtd. Said, 2000, p 185). Said has often used this quotation to depict his own situation, being driven out of his native Palestine to live in United States, a society were there is a high degree of sympathy for Israel, the aggressor of Palestine, and the cause of Said's exile. Said (2000, p 185) suggests that exile is a state where one has not only given up (or has been forced to give up) attachment to a one place (his home) but a state where one cannot feel at home in any other place as well. This is the perpetually wandering soul, the light traveller, the metaphorical travel writer. This is the kind of writer we find all too common in the archives of the later half of the twentieth century under the classification 'Postcolonial Literature' or 'Third-World Literature': Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Gita Mehta, Michael Ondaatje, Shyam Selvadurai, Sivanandan ... the list can go much

Page 133 of 133 longer. Said (1984 p49-55p) has agued hat this kind of writer has a voice that is uniquely advantageous because it makes possible a plurality of vision, since this kind of a writer has the advantage of having seen his/her country from both inside and outside. But, while it may be true that the exile has a plurality of vision, to place it hierarchically, and argue that his is a more enlightened vision than that of the indigenous writer could be erroneous.

The ideas of Said on exile, which are broadly representative of the view of a number of postcolonial writers, has come under criticism from a number of critics. I will discuss two key ones, Aijaz Ahmad (1992, p109-203, p336) and Bill Ashcroft (2001, p41-47). Ashcroft argues that it is not possible to apply the experiences of exiled European writers from an earlier period (eg James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Conrad, and even Dante and Hugo) to the exiled writers of the post-second-world-war period, especially those who have been exiled from the third-world into the first-world. Because, according to Ashcroft, most of those who come into the First World from the Third World do not enjoy the acceptance and patronage which writers like Joyce and Swift enjoyed in their host countries. He argues that both migrants and political exiles (the difference between which I will stress later) from the third world who arrive in the west are usually seen as a threat in their host communities and often end up in social exclusion. They integrate only at the margins of society and end up with no voice at all. Ashcroft concludes that although someone like Said might have succeeded in carving out a place for himself within western academia (a position from where he could articulate his point of view), the same is not true for the vast majority of third-world exiles for whom exile has meant nothing but a fast descent into squalor.

Page 134 of 134 The criticism of Aijaz Ahmad (1992, p109-203) is indicative of something much more fundamental. He suggests that there is a significant difference between an exile and emigre, although the two, he claims, are often confused. He argues that immigrant writing, if it is to be understood correctly with respect to its representation of the third world, should be interpreted in the light of the writer's social class. But the difference between the exile and the emigre is something that even Said identifies in his 1984 essay 'Reflections on Exile', where he draws a distinction between exiles, refuge, emigre, and the expatriate. Said argues that the difference between an exile and the refugee is the isolation and loneliness of the former. The refugee, a twentieth century phenomena, is someone who is part of mass movement of people across countries, albeit forced. The expatriate and the Oigr_ are those who chose to live in another country. But, an exile is someone who is not only forced out of his/her country, but is also forced to live in isolation, not being part of any real community. For Said, it is this forced loneliness that sets the exile apart, and it is what links to creativity. But for Ahmad, who doesn't talk of refugees, the difference is that of class, and it makes all the difference. The emigre and the expatriate (whom he treats as one) often move out of their country as a result of their own choice for personal, professional, and or economic gain, and their mobility is enabled by their belonging to a privileged class in their country of origin. Exiles on the other hand are forced to leave because of prior political activity in their home country. But he goes on to demonstrate that in the recent past immigrant writers have often used the word exile to describe their writing in order draw from the deep emotional and historic resonance attached to the word, often in order to augment professional recognition. He argues that both the confusion between exile and Digr_ and the privileged class status of the middle class (in his words, petty-bourgeois)

Page 135 of 135 immigrant writer has to be taken into account if one were to understand third-world

literature and its subtexts correctly - especially its exclusions.

Ahmad draws a parallel th with the writings of the 19 century American poet Emily Dickenson, whose poetry resonates with the pain of civil war America. In spite of her otherwise progressive views, however, Dickinson remains blind to one of the most severe agonies of the period - slavery. This is not to criticise her - her poetry is both profound and progressive - but to illustrate the point that even intellectually honest writers can be blind to conditions that exists in a different class. According to Ahmad, to look at postcolonial situations through immigrant (not exile) writing alone would be to miss something very large - something as large as slavery in I 9th century America. Ahmad's criticisms are severe, but poignant. The implications of his assertions have a similar resonance to that of Spivak, who argues that the voice of metropolitan writer can actually eclipse the voice of those who live in the real periphery (the subaltern) from being heard in the metropolis.

The second half of the twentieth century, the period of decolonisation and the emergence of postcolonial literature, also saw transport and communication technologies develop to a level unprecedented in history. It has in theory made cross­ national movement of people easier than ever before. But in reality, the ability to travel, and to move countries remain heavily skewed in favour of those in the rich nations. Ever tightening visa regimes, and toughening attitudes towards migrants with little or no economic benefit (such as refugees), coupled with the increasing dependency of third­ world countries on foreign capital, and on industries such as tourism, has led to third

Page 136 of 136 world countries welcoming people from the first world but not vice-versa. The first world has always been and remains inaccessible to the vast majority of (poor) people from the third world. Thus if the world is beginning to look more like a global village, it is also (at least at this stage) beginning to look like an apartheid state. The doors of the first world are open only to those who belong to the highest socio-economic strata of the third world. This, in conjunction with the fact that their wealth is drawn from the impoverished economies of their countries, makes the criticisms of Ahmad even more pertinent.

On the other hand one of twentieth century's foremost critics, Theodore Adorno, an exile from Nazi Germany, articulates a deeply perceptive understanding of exile. For him exile is primarily a state of mind, and only afterwards a movement between countries. Adorno, in principle, rejects all systems. For him everything that exists only in the aggregate is untrue, and the only space where truth can exist is the consciousness of the individual. The mind, according to Adorno, is the only space that cannot be regimented. Everything, including ideas, has now become mere commodities - language is jargon - objects are for sale. To live in the present is to be pressed into prefabricated forms. The aim of the writer, he asserts, should be to resist this state. He writes in his autobiography Minima Moralia :

... the house is past. The bombings of European cities, as well as the labour and concentration camps, merely precede as executors, with what immanent development of technology had long decided was to be the fate of houses. These are now good only to be thrown away like old food cans .. .it is part of morality not to be home in one's home. (qtd. Said, 2000, p184)

Page 137 of 137 For Adorno, the desolate state of mind of the exile starts before leaving home. In fact he even suggests that leaving home may not have anything to do with exile.

The following is an extract from a poem by the Sri Lankan poet, Chelvi Thiyagarajah,

who is relatively unknown outside Sri Lanka:

the heart is crushed

by the pain ofliving

How solely I detest

to be a living corpse

whose being is bereft

of the human touch

(qtd, Hoole, 2001, p431)

In 1992 Chelvi was abducted and later murdered by the L TTE. 13 At the time when this poem was written, she had hardly left the shores of Sri Lanka. Yet her poem resonates with the desolation and loneliness of exile - ... how solely I detest ... bereft of the human touch - has a resonance with the lines of Adorno - a state of mind that is all too familiar tome.

It is not possible to discuss the question of my writing, without following a subjective line of reasoning. My writing emerges from memories of living in Sri Lanka in the second half of the 1980s - perhaps the darkest period in the country's history. A time

13 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Page 138 of 138 when two militaries, one of the world's most potent guerrilla organisations and three independent militias were functioning at the same place and time. It was a time when one heard gunshots in the night, and walked passed dead bodies to attend lectures in the morning. But for me the greatest agony of all came from loneliness, of being unable to belong to any side or group, being choked by military totalitarianism on one side and ultra-nationalism on the other. I was living a desolate space where public life was void of quality. Everything had descended to the mundane - politics was replaced by power play, creativity by manipulation, and life by mere existence. But it is when everything in the collective is stifling that one takes refuge in the personal - books, music listened to in private, and private conversations - activities out of one's consciousness, which, according to Adorno, is ultimately the only space that is impossible to regiment. But though Adorno has argued that consciousness cannot be regimented, at least totally, other writers of around the same period have written extensively about the regimenting of consciousness. Two relatively well-known works are, Nineteen Eight Four by George Orwell, and Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. These differing arguments are outside the scope of this thesis. I would merely like to suggest here that my writing does emerge from memories of a state mind where there was a general sense of alienation from the collective (the aggregate) even while living in Sri Lanka.

By the time I left Sri Lanka, six years had passed since the worst years of violence in the country. In that time my personal situation had changed drastically, and in many ways I had recovered from affects of the late 1980s. My migration was driven more by a desire to expand horizons than by a pressing need to leave Sri Lanka. This coupled with the fact that I can return to Sri Lanka suggests that I am more an immigrant and than an

Page 139 of 139 exile. But it remains that I am still alienated from the dominant political streams that

exist( ed) in Sri Lanka - I remain a psychological exile.

I do not claim plurality of vision, or that my vision is more sophisticated than that of writers who have never left Sri Lanka. The only advantage I have in living within Australia is that it has created a temporary safe space from which to write. It is a temporary space because I don't feel connected to Australia in the way I was connected to Sri Lanka, safe because I am free (at least at this point in time) of persecution from either the Sri Lankan state apparatus or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. But writing from the west about a third-world conflict brings its own problems and limitations.

Ruth Wajnryb (2000, p55-81) in her book the silence speaks of the silent aftermath of war. In her work she describes the difficulty that people have in talking about the experience of war for periods of up to 20 years after the incident, even in private conversations. Her study, based on Second World-War holocaust victims, and Vietnamese refugees arriving in Australia in the 1970s, demonstrates that experiences of war cannot be spoken of because current western society lacks appropriate responses to those experiences in its conversational spaces. She argues that in both public and private conversations people's responses are selected from a predetermined set of responses. The responses available in private conversations are usually borrowed from public conversation. The problem, according to Wajnryb, is that in contemporary western society, psychological conditions that might be a normal outcome of living through war have been pathologised to an extent that, when victims of war speak of their

Page 140 of 140 experiences, they risk being seen as abnormal. An implication of this, she claims, is that from that point onwards it is a quick step to the victim being blamed for their own suffering, forcing them back into silence.

Wajnryb also suggests that survivors of war are often left with survival guilt. The awareness that their survival was due to mere chance, and so was the death of others, leaves them with a moral nihilism. The world, to the survivor, seems like a place devoid of any moral purpose or justice; it's a place where people die or survive based only on chance. This leaves them with a lack of interest in talking about their experiences, which they see as pointless. Thus survivors tend to suppress their experiences, often with negative consequences to themselves, and try to move on with their lives.

Both the above are true when it comes to writing or speaking of experiences of a prolonged war, in a society like Australia (or any country in the first world). I would like to take Wajnryb's argument a step further. Society in the west is saturated with mass produced culture. People are constantly exposed to images that are reproduced and delivered through the electronic and print media, resulting in millions of people listening to or seeing the same image simultaneously at a given point in time. At any given moment the largest section of the population selects from a severely limited finite set of available choices to watch or listen to (eg five television channels), thrusting a level of uniformity of thinking into the population.

In a thought-provoking essay 'The Culture Industry' first published in 1940, Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1991, p29-42) have argued that mass produced culture

Page 141 of 141 (like anything which is mass-produced) unites people around an average. Mass production achieves its economics of scale through repetition, and what is most suitable for repetition is what best pleases the majority. But once such an image is released it excludes other choices, and draws more people towards the average. Thus the proportion of the population who gather around the average will progressively increase, a process that is eventually bound to reduce if not destroy plurality in society. These images that are reproduced through the mass media are what are used today to promote consumerism and a consumerist culture. Closely associated with this culture is the myth that links consumption to happiness, gratification, and pleasure - the three are deliberately confused. In the same essay, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that, in promoting consumerism, the media (in their words, the culture industry) does not and cannot leave a free space for the consumer. They argue that the media projects to the consumer the impression that every one of his/her needs, including happiness, can be fulfilled through consumption. This idea resonates with greater relevance today, given that today's markets are even more saturated with such formulae for happiness. This leaves us living in a society where sadness is seen as failure; a result of inadequate or mis-consumption. On the other hand, living through war, tends to leave one with a permanent state of sadness (Wajnryb, 2000, p66-81), a sadness that one can learn to cope with, but cannot drive away at will. It is a sadness that fails to find a place in the consumer society of today, and remains silent. Thus if the overbearing grand narratives of nationalism silences the narratives of the victims of war in Sri Lanka, hyper consumerism silences them in the west (Australia).

Page 142 of 142 When writing, I can only be conscious of these obstacles. I cannot avoid them by following any particular formulae. It may be pertinent to ask whether I would have written differently if I had continued to live within Sri Lanka and had written this from

there. I am inclined to think not, but I will never know the answer.

7. Conclusion

Postcolonial criticism has cleared a space to move away from the total and towards the fragment. It has legitimised the narrative of the fragment - the individual, the family, local community etc. Their stories can be now told in with equal legitimacy as that of political movements, nations, and governments. But texts of creative writing do not emerge out of theory. Theory can only be used to read them. My writing is a result of an experience. It is open to be read in different ways, based on different theories.

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