Kumarigama, Ampara: 1988 and 2010
The year was 1988. September, if I remember right. I was on a private
bus, going from Kandy to Ampara. Uhana, actually. Kumarigama to be
precise. One of the villages that sprung up thanks to the Gal Oya
Project. I was with a university batchmate, Premasiri, who was from
Kumarigama.
This was ‘LTTE time’. This was a time of unexpected attacks at night
and even during the day. LTTE ‘freedom fighters’ setting up booby traps,
stopping buses, shooting passengers, storming into villages murdering
children, pregnant women, the sick and the elderly in cold blood. It was
a time of butchery. I was at the back of the bus. We were approaching
Arantalawa, where the LTTE had killed some 30 odd Buddhist monks
traveling in a bus. A fellow passenger, a student from the University of
Sri Jayawardenapura, seated at the left end of the back seat of the bus,
i.e. next to me, told me (in jest): ‘This is a dangerous stretch; the
LTTE can come out from the shrub jungles over there (pointing towards
the East) and shoot. We are used to it. We have our palms to protects us
(he lifted his left hand, finger outstretched and together, indicating
that this was how a bullet that might otherwise hit the head would be
stopped).’ I saw the humour but couldn’t really laugh. Humour. That’s
all they had.
That night, seated outside his house, Premasiri told me how the LTTE
had attacked a village close to his: ‘They came in the night. Everyone
was asleep. Before anyone could do anything, they had killed dozens of
people.’
‘The following night, some young men from the next village
retaliated; they stormed into a Tamil village, the closest one, and
killed innocent people. I saw the dead. The Sinhalese who died and also
the Tamils. They all looked the same. All poor. The same kind of
impoverishment. The same bellies carrying the same amount of rice. Not
much.’
Yesterday, August 5, 2010, I came down the same road. There were no
jokes about LTTE attacks, stopping bullets like Baron Munchausen. There
were some bunkers here and there, but not every 50m or so. There was one
checkpoint at Maha Oya. I remembered a different time.
I remembered getting down from the bus on several occasions, walking
through check points. Having bags checked. Having soldiers running their
hands all over me. Necessary inconvenience. Happily suffered. That was a
different time, a different country.
Twenty-two years ago, almost, I spent a night in Kumarigama. I
remember thinking that there was no one who could guarantee that there
wouldn’t be an LTTE attack that night. I remember thinking that there
was nothing that anyone could do. Life was a lottery. It was to become a
different kind of lottery not too long afterwards when the JVP and UNP
thought it would be fun to see who could wring the necks of the ordinary
citizenry more effectively, but that night fear had a name: LTTE.
Right now, I am in Kumarigama. Same house. I didn’t come with
Premasiri. Premasiri’s father, one of the first ‘settlers’ is no more.
His brother, Weerasinghe, ‘Loku Aiya’ to all of us, is now the principal
of the ‘village school’, Kumarigama Maha Vidyalaya. His other brothers,
Oliver and Kumara are out in the fields, harvesting paddy. Loku Aiya’s
son, Isuru, at the time a mischievous little baby, is now repeating his
A/L exam. He took my nine-year old daughter, along with his 12-year old
cousin Samadhi and her brother, nine-year old Nipun to watch their
uncles at work. This is post-LTTE Sri Lanka. It’s a post-war Sri Lanka.
I know we are not living in a perfect world, but this imperfection is
good. Premasiri’s mother, M. D. Babynona, now 69, seems not to have
aged. Same affection. Same warmth. Same simple loveliness of being.
There is electricity now. There’s harvesting. Life is good.
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