Part 3

...

Part 2

Part 2
Survival

Tamils knew the war was around the corner even though the Indian army left the country. Because the discrimination against Tamils continued; Sri Lankan governments’ bombing and killing continued and there were no changes what so ever.

Soon after Indian army left the country, all the railway tracks had been removed in Jaffna to make bunkers; and we could hardly identify if there were any Railway tracks in Jaffna. Slowly there were small shops appeared on the road sides. The bombing continued, and it became our daily life, but we all learnt how to survive. Tigers had their video documents to educate the people about how to make effective bunkers and how to escape from shelling and bombing.

Until I started year 9, I/we have only seen bombers, but then we started seeing more and more fighter jets, such as P(B)ukkara and Sakada and other fighter jets. These were the planes used for carrying tons of bombs; they also used them for carrying armies. Sri Lankan army often used Sakada and Bukkara to bomb the town with toilet wastes and other poisonous chemicals. People usually became ill soon after they breathe this air.

I get up around 5ish most of the days, then go to tuition and then come back home to get ready for school ( Starts at 8.20am – Chavakachcheri Hindu College) and then I finish school at 3.20pm and then I go to tuition and come back home before 6pm, my parents never allowed me to go anywhere after 6pm. It was very common for any Tamil kids to stay at home after 6pm, who grown up there during this time. Our only aim was studying harder. Otherwise we know we can’t get into university or get a decent job.

“The Tamil students received two serious blows. The Sinhala Only act of 1956 made it difficult for them to secure employment. A policy of standardisation made it much more difficult to get admission to a university. In the original form in 1971, discrimination was on the basis of language and the region the student came from. The system that has prevailed since 1977 is as follows: 30% are filled on island-wide merit; 55% by allocation to revenue districts in proportion to their population, and filled within each district on merit; 15% are given to districts deemed educationally underprivileged. How this operated against Tamil students can bee seen from the following quotation” 1

“Students in the North (almost certainly Tamils) and those in Colombo (two-thirds Sinhalese and one-third Tamils) continue to suffer serious discriminations. In 1983/4, 530 students who had the necessary grades for admission to the Faculties of Medicine, Science and Engineering were excluded, to accommodate 519 who had lesser marks. Of the excluded students, over 50% were Tamils." 2

Such discrimination contradicts U.N policy. Article 26.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Every one has the right to education - higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit."

Our schools had science laboratories, but we haven’t had anything there. We just had to learn everything through text books. We never saw how Potassium looks like, or Nitrogen, or Sodium was like but we all learnt it through text books. Government never distributed any educational apparatus to Tamil areas (Tamil Schools). We struggled but, that only made us stronger.

These incidents can relate to this story (my father told me this story when I was a kid). Kamal and Kumar were studying at this school. Kumar was the servant boy and Kamal was Boss’s son. Kumar asked his boss to send him to school instead of paying him money; boss didn’t want to spend too much on him so he gives him one foolscap paper (that’s how they say A4 size in Sri Lanka) a day and then a pencil and a rubber per month. Boss also sends his son to the same school, but he bought him everything he wanted. What happed Kumar had to reuse one paper for the whole day so what he did was he studied everything before he rub them off and then he go to the next class. But the Boss’s son kept his books home until the exam comes, so he couldn’t be able to cover everything they taught him at school. So he failed the class and Kumar aced all the subjects with over 90%.

Even though there were no schools on regular basis and we had to go through all these war horror, Jaffna was leading in education in all Island level. We were proud of it and none of us took education for granted.

Our life was just shut into a dark hole; to encourage this darkness in our life army bombed electricity towers and they also introduced economical embargo on Tamils, Kerosene were smuggled in Tamil areas and they were sold for more than 50 Rupees per bottle, where you can buy Kerosene in Colombo for less than 10 Rupees a bottle at this time. Sri Lankan government banned any iron products, oil, soap, match boxes, battery, etc.

This is where they made us even stronger. We invented certain things to accommodate our needs. For example, Palmyra fruits were used as soap to wash cloths. Instead of iron box we put our cloths under our mattress and also we used the old charcoal iron box to keep our cloths wrinkle free. There was no electricity for us to listen to the radio, so what?? We made electricity from fans/ dynamos and used radios. Instead of petrol we used Kerosene on motorbikes. Coconut leaves and Palmyra leaves became our roofs. Our people learn to farm even better. Agriculture and farming became life saving jobs. Even then, to do farming you need these chemicals to protect them from bugs and pests, but they were also banned in Tamil areas by the Sri Lankan government so what we did was we invented our own pests killers, these were made from plants, and this was the time that some people even used cow dung to protect their plants from certain bugs and also cow dung, plant’s wastes were used as fertilizer.

Ref:
1 - Brian Senewiratne: Sri Lanka, A Synopsis Of the Racial Problem", p 3
2 - Brian Senewiratne: Sri Lanka, A Synopsis Of the Racial Problem", p 3

Part 1

***This article is about what I can remember and what I and my family experienced during the Indian army invasion.

Part 1

Indian Army Invasion {Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) invasion}

Sea Plane, Afro, B(P)ukkara, Sagadai, Helicopter (Bell helicopter, crocodile helicopter and so many other different type), Bomber, Supersonic, Kfir these are the names our kids learn before they started Learning A, B, C, D. In fact most of us could tell these fighter-planes names without even looking at them… We could identify what sort of plane or helicopter is coming with their sound.

I can still remember, when I was younger I was always so happy to see those planes from our windows or court yard and always wondered how do they fly and I wanted to fly on it one day. Time has changed then we became scared of it and every time we hear or saw the planes we had to run to the bunkers for survival.

First incident that I can still remember; when the Indian army arrived, there were heaps of planes and heaps of parachutes on the sky and we were all scared and my father put me with my siblings and mother in the bunker and he didn’t let us get out of the bunker for little while. After he found out it was Indian army he let us got out of the bunker and then we were all happy and we thought we don’t have to worry about going into the bunkers any more and then we were all celebrating about the Indian armies arrival.

Even though I was only around 9 years old or something at this time, I can still remember few days later or months after Indian army arrived in Jaffna my fathers’ friends (From Urumbirai) and my uncles (From Kantharoodai) arrived in our house, they said there is a fight between Tigers and Indian army and they can’t live at their place because there were heavy shelling, and they wanted to stay with us for few days or so.

One day my dad went to our rice paddy in Thanankilappu to make sure all the work’s done properly in our paddy field and if everything okay there. After an hour, Indian helicopter was rounding Chavakachcheri area and it was shooting (we called that helicopter “Crocodile heli” because its face looked like crocodile). We were all standing there in front of our house and watching this from our front house-hoods (front part of the house). Mum started crying out loud and all of us were scared. Thanankilappu is only one or two Kilo meters away from Chavakachcheri and we weren’t sure where they were firing exactly. Only thing we were sure about was that helicopter was shooting around Chavakachcheri area. After 30 minutes or so my dad arrived at home and his whole body was shaking and he said that there are burnt bodies everywhere in Chavakachchri – Market area and lots of civilians shot dead.

After Indian army arrived in Chavakachcheri we all moved to “Yettaalai” because of the shelling. Yettaalai is bit further down from Chavakachcheri so shells won’t reach that far. Only thing I can remember during this time was that we all run away from place to place very often because of those shelling and bombing. There were absolutely no schools, nobody went to work and only thing we did was running to place to place as refugees. I can still remember sometimes we even stayed in the bunker for the whole day and sometimes we go and stay in some temples because we believed that we will be safe in the temple.

One day my father took my mother and aunty back to our house to take some cloths and rice/ food and on the way back to Yettaalai they saw a shell coming on the sky and my aunty and mum jumped off from the bicycle to lye down on the ground, but unfortunately they jumped on a thorn bush and they were bleeding when they got to Yettaalai, they were laughing about what happened; because what they saw wasn’t a shell it was a firefly.

Every household had a suitcase/ sack full of their cloths and other emergency stuffs. These suitcases/sacks, we won’t touch them unless we had to run away from our house. It usually contains two pair of cloths, Soap, Shampoo, Torch light, Panadol, Bandages, Plasters, Match boxes, Candles, and biscuits/ dry food; and then my parents will have secret pockets on their cloths to carry money and jewelries since there were no bank facilities.

Finally Indian army captured whole Tamil area and there weren’t any shelling and we all returned to our home. Because we still had to make our living and survive. After we returned my brothers were captured few times by the Indian army under suspicion. Once my elder brother almost got shot, because one of our aunty was sick and he heard the news and he was running from our house to their house and Indian armies were hiding in the bush and they rounded up my brother and caught him and took him to their camp. My parents went and talked to those armies nothing happened and they wouldn’t let my brother go, then my dad went and saw the army commander and he proved to them that my brother is a student then they let my brother go, even then my brother was arrested few more times (it is very common for any Tamil boys/ girls to get arrested under suspicion).

All Tamils’ homes were searched and inspected regularly. Something will disappear (Stolen) from at least one of Tamil’s house in our area every time army came for inspection. Where there a mother and her daughter live in the house, they will ask their neighbor to come and stay with them because there were few rapes by the armies. So people were scared and don’t like to leave any female(s) inside the house or alone without anyone else’s company.

At this time I was just a little kid, who doesn’t know much except my personal experiences and studies. I was rehearsing for a drama called “Ilan Kumanan” for “Vijaya Thasami”,  for the Goddes festival. It is celebrated for 9 days and known as "Navarathri" my second elder brother ran away and joined Tigers and he ran away with few of our cousins and his friends.

As my mum is a blood-pressure patient, she became sick and she wouldn’t take any medication until she sees my brother. She doesn’t want to be treated until she sees my brother. She became very sick and she couldn’t be able to talk, her whole body was frozen like she was paralyzed. We were all scared and that was the first time I saw my father crying. Somehow my elder brother met some Tiger commander and finally my brother returned home after 18 days.

After he returned, my father didn’t want to keep him in our home or homeland any more because if the army finds out that he joined tiger and came back they will come and get my brother, so my father kept my brother at his friends and relatives places for few days and he finally send him to UK (when he was only 15 years old) in February 1989.

Most of the teenagers and all other kids that I knew joined Tigers at this time (especially after Thileepans’ fasting unto death people started joining Tigers heavily), and it became harder and harder for any teenagers or youths to live in peace. So my father send my elder brother to UK (He was 18 years old) in September 1989.

My parents sacrificed a lot already for us, but to send my brothers away they sold few of their traditional lands (lands passed by generation to generation) and half of their paddy field. I wouldn't say it was only my parents did this sort of sacrifices, there are almost in every Tamil family they have at least one person in overseas, they send away their kids overseas with the hope that at least their children will survive and if they survive they will help the family get away from all these horror. That’s why you can see lots of Tamil people who came to overseas as refugees, they work hard, study hard and they don’t even worry about what sort of job they do.

I have a perfect example: I knew this man in Melbourne; I called him Ganesh Uncle. He used to be a principal at this school in Jaffna and after he came to Melbourne he did cleaning and a factory work… He sponsored his wife and his two kids couple of years ago. There are lots of people like him. Unfortunately Ganesh uncle is passed away few months ago because of cancer. His wife, she used to be a Science and Math teacher in Jaffna, now she is doing a cleaning job and supporting her family. When they arrived in Melbourne they were 40+ years old and they couldn’t be able to get any jobs in their field and also the lack of English was another reason (They can speak, write and understand English, but remember English is only their second language).

Tamil youth who has grown up in overseas, who’s calling people ‘FOB’ think about what you are doing/saying? Yes they might be Fresh Off the Boat but what would you do if you were in their situation? You wouldn’t like if someone from another community calls you a curry. Calling someone a FOB is same as you making any racial comments or discriminating someone. So may be you can think about it!!!