- 7 days ago
- 8 min read
Diary 1987
In her father's diary, oru sava oorvalam - a funeral procession is passing by; it was 1987. There were two official armies and multiple Tamil rebel groups, as well as active paramilitary groups and factions. It was that summer, following the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord, that the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) arrived in Sri Lanka. Their initial peacekeeping guise would soon fall away. The Sri Lankan Army (SLA) were hiding in their bases for the time being. Some of them would be deployed to the South to silence the revolt of poor Sinhala youth who were already fed up with the regime that funded an ethnic war. At the same time, they suffered poverty and a high unemployment rate. After all, who does an ongoing war serve more than the chauvinist elite? In the North, the Tamil rebel groups who took arms to fight the state persecution against the ethnic minority were also turning against their own, fighting within for “a sole representation” for the Tamil Liberation cause.
Miles away, in Mallavi, a small town in Mullaithivu District, her father was fighting as part of one of the rebel groups against state discrimination, the Eelam Revolutionary Organisers (EROS). There, in Mallavi, her father meticulously recorded his days in history. In those sepia-toned pages there is no indication of what the houses in the village or the villagers looked like, or the distinct nuances of how one spoke in that period. In his writing, there is no glimpse into that intimate landscape or surroundings. As a native who spent her childhood there, she could make sense of those places, the people in them, and some of the streets as well. She could imagine bits and pieces of what was written, the people behind the names, and merge into the world she once knew. From her eight-year-old memory, she could follow the people he wrote about, picturing them inside those identical houses. Even she can’t say the season when each entry was written, or which birdsong moved his worrisome heart.
Maybe it rained when he chose his words carefully, sitting on the long bench at the table on their veranda and writing. If he sat by the window, perhaps thoovaanam, a drizzle, gently fell on him, giving him comfort, just as it had when she was a young child herself. How did he choose what was significant among the numerous events of that turbulent time? Was he writing them before the end of the day, with three young children and a wife who was not well? Oblivious to her, then, the young man, her father, was worried about the future of his family, his people, and his country. After all, the year was 1987. Everything was so bleak. The fate of his friends, whether they were involved in the armed movements or not, ended in tragedy.
In August, he lamented the loss of comrade Theva, who was tortured and killed at the hands of the Sri Lankan army. There were entries on the SLA camp denying murders, and what her father and friends heard through third parties of what happened that day, how Theva walked into that death pit near Pooneryn on his way to Jaffna. It was surreal how, only a few pages before, her father and Theva were discussing what they would pursue as a livelihood if the Indian resolution, a devolution of power to the provinces (and other reforms) worked out in their favor. Her dad said, “I will become a farmer.’’ To that Theva replied, “What do I have to do for any business? It would be easier if I find a driving job somewhere.’’ The entry for July 31st was “Theva is leaving for Jaffna”.
Theva, in his early thirties, and another EROS member Kuhan, in his late teens,were biking through inner roads of old Tamil villages, such as Valaippaadu and Ponnaveli, parallel to the main road from Mannar to Jaffna through Pooneryn, when they came across the SLA camp. A clash between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and SLA had occurred in the surrounding area just a few days earlier. Unaware that the SLA was in a fury to take it out on people, as they were already frustrated with Indian involvement, these two biked in there, trusting the truce in place. For the Sinhala army stationed in the Tamil region, it didn’t matter whether Theva belonged to LTTE or EROS. In their eyes, they were all able young Tamil men who were absolute threats. After all, they had the state on their side and could retaliate without consequences.
Her father and his comrades heard that moments before his death, the enemies tied Theva’s hands and legs with ropes and paraded him around in an army Jeep as a warning in the same streets where they once roamed freely. Mourning his death, her father wrote:
“We organized a final tribute in Thumpuruvil for Theva and others slain. The star that rose from the eastern region of Eelam shone ever so brightly and then disappeared. How vile is the enemy! They caught him, an unarmed man, and cowardly tortured and killed him. They have taken away a well-mannered man, a friend, a well-respected comrade.”
In early October, he bid another farewell to Yogan, a friend who had no political affiliation with anyone, who was killed along with his wife and brother-in-law in a shelling in Jaffna, leaving behind their injured children. On an otherwise normal day, unrest in the country and confrontations among state, foreign armies, and rebel groups took over their fate, turning them into casualties, and just like that, their children became orphans. “Ever sweetest friend of my youth, I couldn't even take part in your last rites. Without their father, mother, and even the maternal uncle, how are those small children going to survive? Oh, the fate of our country!”
*****
It is indeed her father’s 1987 diary, with his name written precisely on the front, N.K.Thillainathan, in neat printing; the now-ripped front cover confirms the year. The address pages carry a permanent address to his siblings on Gold Hawk Trail in Scarborough, with a 416 number, since they were all settled there after the first one left the country in 1982. The pages reveal indications that the diary was used by her late mother as a domestic bookkeeping journal between 1987 and1989. Her father also wrote the finances of his household and EROS, dated back to 1989 on the front and back pages.Though her mother was not in good physical form, she was still managing her household well and fighting the financial shortfalls during that period. She traded coconuts, eggs, grains, and any other goods she had with neighbouring women for small amounts of money. She bought strands of cane wire to weave their chairs, built low-cost chicken coops and a mud stove hut beside their house, paying labour charges and other expenses. Her inscriptions show how frugally and efficiently they were surviving the era. Amidst war, life continued.
*****
Time was limited. Among his comrades, among his daily mundanity, he chose to write each day, at dawn or night, in his free time. What would become of these writings? Did it ever occur to him the striking image of one of his daughters reading it now, older than he was then? In 1987, his third daughter was around one year old and his wife was suffering the postpartum blues, for which he knew no name, nor did the almighty doctors. He wrote, “What am I gonna do in this political turmoil with my sick wife and three children?”
*****
In late November, Thangam akka, her father’s older cousin, still in her 40s, had just lost her daughter. Her father woke up to the scream of his uncle announcing the death while passing the street. Was it a warmer season? Or did it rain then, like the summer in 2012 when it rained so badly during his own son’s demise in Scarborough? In the brave new world where he decided to pursue a life in the hope that his children would be safer and above all else, alive. The pathetic loss of his youngest in the violent streets of a new land, like the loss of his comrades and people. Ah, which season was it? What untimely wind carried the news of a young woman who had passed before her time due to hay fever? She was eighteen or so when she died. She was unable to receive proper medical treatment during the war. She walked into eternal youth, just like his son, falling into the brave new streets he pursued in hope.
*****
A few years after the tragic passing of the young woman, she remembered how they, the three little girls, would stop by their house every time on their way to primary school. In the long verandah with a high ceiling and clay-tiled roof, in the corner, there is a mid-century modern showcase with glassware that’s unique to their home. Thangam maami’s husband was a teacher, and so they were accustomed to cities due to his work in various places in the past. Naturally, even in the rural setting, the house’s aura was different and modern. Above that showcase, there is a studio photograph of their daughter in saree, taken for her 16th birthday, in black and white. With beauty and confidence, she stood there, her gaze directed at the camera. On the pretense they were thirsty, they would stop by often just to get a glimpse of life and death in one dark frame.
*****
In the 1987 diary, Thangam maami’s daughter’s sava oorvalam moved so slowly towards the burial, not counting the people gone already. It feels heavy, foreboding for the countless processions awaiting their land.
Her father, a young man in his thirties, was occupied with the worries and dilemmas of the era. He, along with numerous Tamil youth of that time, had hope for the Eelam cause but was disheartened by inner conflicts among Tamil rebel groups. And the eulogies for the young continued to grow.
Her father would live through turbulent and unjust times. In the years to come, more of his comrades would be long gone. Later, a violent incident caused by the IPKF-backed paramilitary left him in a coma for months. He was stronger then, which helped him to withstand the head trauma. His body would carry the side effects of it in his later years. In those later years — the present times — his daughter sits with his diary and feels the drizzles in her heart returning through those pages. Her father, moving in front of her, is someone with the effects of violence in his aging body and brain. Like the fading colour of the diary, just as almost all the people in there who have disappeared –gone forever– these memories also might disappear, fully absorbed by this thing called ‘time.’
After those return visits to her homeland during the ceasefire and after the war, his daughter’s childhood memories are replaced with post-war abandoned houses without roofs, and concrete bases left in a worn-out state. His journal entries bring her back to that nostalgic world where her father was a man with no grey hair, sitting somewhere writing about his family and country, his future. Suddenly, flipping through those pages, the realization strikes her then, in that realm, he was younger than her, idealistic and charming,and it overwhelms her. What has become of it all?
But in his 1987 diary, amidst it all,her father is still there, standing tall and belonging among his family members and comrades in his own territory, their homeland - a healthy young man.
Glossary:
Eelam - an ancient Tamil name for Sri Lanka
Maami - Refers to the father’s sister, female cousin, or maternal uncle’s wife
Akka - older sister, also refers to an older female cousin or older females
KANGAMBIKAI PRATHEEPATHI is an aspiring educator, editor, translator and a published Tamil writer. She came to the settler state Canada following her father’s political asylum in the 1990s. Her will to write comes from learning from the lived knowledge of the First People of this land and the resistance movements led by minorities. She has co-founded community collectives that aim to work with women, youth and children, including Misfits for Change (2009), Made in Tkaronto (2018).