Saanvi's Revenge – Part One

Sri Lanka. © Bruno Barbey

It is known with the shapes of a teardrop pearl hanging from the tip of India, or as its “tear”; for the Greeks, it was Taprobane, for Pliny it was the “other world” where everything was upside down, while for the Chinese traveler Fa-Hsien, the island was not inhabited by humans but dryads and naga,

the serpent deities, and it was called “the Island of Gems” by the Chinese as well as the Tamils of southern India, and was Ceylon for a long time thanks to the British; but for its people, it has always been Sri Lanka, “the Island of Splendor”. In the Mahavamsa, the legend of its origin is narrated, with the beautiful daughter of the Indian King Vanga and the lion who fell in love with her and conceived with her two twins, whose son of one of them, Vijaya, was chased by his father together with seven hundred of his followers, embarked on a boat until they reached the coasts of Lanka, falling exhausted on the red laterite sand that stained the palms of their hands, giving that name precisely to the island of Taprobane: “Bronze Hand”. Also sung in the Ramayana, Lanka was the place where Ravana, the demon king of Ceylon kidnapped Sita, the bride of Rama, and to free her came with an army of monkeys led by the monkey general Hanuman, who ordered a stone bridge to be built to cross the strip of sea that separated Lanka from India, now known as “Adam's Bridge” in the Gulf of Mannar.

 

Precisely in that portion of land in the north, centuries later, Saanvi was born at 9 and 47 minutes of a sultry and humid morning, under the sign of Taurus: obstinate, methodical, and introverted.

She lived with her family in a small gamma* in Nallur, near Parantan-Pooneryn Road, in a blue-walled cottage in the greenery. She lived there with her mother Rani, her uncle Sarvananthan and his family.

Her father Kamal Raj had died when she was still young, even though all the photographs in the house were still upside down, as on the day of the wake*.

All but one, the largest above the small wooden cupboard, framed roughly and with the glass cracked zigzag like a lightning bolt in the night, with her father embraced by Velupillai Prabhakaran* in one of the many political rallies her uncle also attended, Kamal's brother.

The photo was so faded it looked like it came from the last century.

The sideboard was the only wooden furniture in that house, the chairs and table were plastic in mismatched colors. Electricity came and went, mostly lampuwa were used, kerosene lamps that were moved as needed.

They had no beds, the uncle slept with his wife and three children in a room, while Saanvi and her mother in the room that was also the living room: they all slept on the floor on the paduru*, then in the morning Saanvi rolled up the carpets and tied them to the ropes hanging from the roof of the small kitchen, while the mother swept the ground with the ilapatha*.

Early in the morning she would go out in the back of the house, a small courtyard enclosed by low brick walls, in which there was the stone bathtub where Rani, her mother, was already bent intent on washing clothes on the square edge of the tub and as usual went towards the well, she grabbed the edges of the iron bucket fixed to the pulley with both hands after dipping it into the bottom of the well, and she threw it over her head in a splash of water that sent flying all the birds that pecked on the ground near her. Saanvi remained for a few seconds with the eyes closed to enjoy every fiber of her soaked body completely awakening, while with one hand of hers, she removed the hair stuck on her face.

Photo captured from video by Nivetha (Village life in Jaffna Sri Lanka VLOG 3 | Nivii06)

Even though she was skinny, Saanvi had strong muscles. Her height had taken it from the father while the dark skin color was the same ebony tone as her mother. The wrists and ankles were thin but her feet and hands were as strong and lumpy as a woman's, despite her just turning thirteen.

She grabbed a bowl with the idiyappam* from the low table in the kitchen and sat on the threshold of the passage that led to the back: there were no doors in that house but only cotton or jute curtains, like the thick blue one that hid the bathtub on whose edges the mother had just finished washing clothes. The little girl liked to have breakfast looking at Rani from behind squatting in front of the tub, and counting the white elephants in a row, one on top of the other, printed on her robe one day black, then green, blue, but the elephants always remained white, while one of the many cats that went in and out of the courtyard rubbed on her leg, meowing and sniffing the bowl in her hands.

After breakfast Saanvi began to help her mother with house chores, her task was to grind the spices and chilies with the miris gala*.

After all, she didn't mind staying at home with her mother, if it weren't for uncle Sarvananthan.

Since his brother died, he had taken up residence in the house and was ranting from morning until night.

He had made up his mind that Saanvi, having already celebrated her kotahaluweema*, should have started thinking about finding a husband, but Rani had always objected, replying that she had to finish school first.

Her uncle seemed to be living in an archaic past; although Selvarasa Pathmanathan had been arrested in Malaysia* decreeing the definitive end of the dream of creating a sovereign socialist Tamil state in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, known as Tamil Eelam, and Mahinda Rajapaksa had been solidly in government for six years, he kept talking like a Tiger, continually claiming Tamil pride.

“Never forget,” he said with wide eyes like Durga on Saanvi's face, “who we are! We are the descendants of the Dravidians, those who came from South India well before Prince Vijaya, although Sinhalese love to boast that they were among the first! It was the Dravidians who founded the kingdoms of Jaffna and Anuradhapura!”

As if twenty-six years of civil war weren't enough to sow death and pain for the whole country.

Although most of the time her uncle would sit with his face spread over crossed arms on the plastic table in the living room, stunned by the arack*: he drank so much that his daughters teased him saying that with his breath he could kill the flies.

It was like this, he was sitting with the fat of his ass wrapped in sarama* that overflowed the edges of the chair and the gray glass in his hand, shouting at his wife and his sister-in-law something with a voice mixed with alcohol then puff! He would fall asleep for hours, sometimes with his cheek on the table top and the mouth like a fish's. From morning to night, when he didn't go to the beach to work. By now Saanvi had gotten used to it.

When she didn't have the patience to wait for the arack to take effect, she sneaked out of the courtyard and went to play with her cousins in the trees, climbing in turns to catch the uguressa* they were fond of, while those who remained below screamed with hands cupped in front of the mouth: “Kurangee!” (“Monkeys!”), mocking those who extricated themselves among the branches of the trees and laughed with their hands on the stomachs, before putting all the plums in their mouths, sitting at the foot of the tree.

 

Photo captured from video by Nivetha (Village life in Jaffna Sri Lanka VLOG 3 | Nivii06)

When Saanvi was alone in the afternoon, she loved to dance.

She tied her hair behind the back in a long black ponytail and started dancing as she saw it done during the peraheras*, although she preferred classical Indian dance. Occasionally she happened to see it on the television at the home of her classmates; she tried to remember those elegant movements and to reproduce them within the walls of the courtyard of the house, with the eyes fixed on the mudra* of her hands.

She didn't care about politics; she knew that the whole history of her family was linked to those twenty-six years of blood and struggle. She was not even born yet, but everywhere around her nothing else was talked about since she was a child.

In the family, starting with his father, or among schoolmates, there was no one who had not had someone dear died in some attack or in clashes with the government army: from Colombo to the Buddhist monasteries scattered around the island, from the mountains of the heart of Sri Lanka to the eastern coasts near Batticaloa and Trincomalee. From August 2008 to January 2009 so many people, friends, relatives, acquaintances had fallen in the Mannar district, in the city of Vellankulam, Pooneryn, and Mankulam, right into the surrounding jungles. In all the rivers of Jaffna, in those from Kilinochi to Mullaitivu, liters of blood flowed.

Whenever her uncle was deliriously clouded by alcohol and anger, enumerating the names of his friends’ found corpses in the Vanni jungle*, Saanvi happened to dream at night that in the bucket with which she was showering instead of water there was blood, then she would suddenly wake up screaming and Rani hugged her tightly to calm down.

For this reason, the mother decided to leave that house to the Sarvananthan family and approach the center of Jaffna, in a small house in a side street of Moorthavinayakar Road, where she could attend Canagaratnam M.M.V. Stanly College.

Sure, she would miss her cousins, the smell of the sea that sometimes enveloped the house from the Indian Ocean to the north, the little Nallur Murugan Kovil close by, even if it looked more like an old farmhouse rather than a temple. She sure wouldn't miss her uncle and his arack stench.

 

Anuradhapura, around 1870

Sarvananthan loaded their few belongings into the van and escorted them to their new home, while Saanvi and her cousins sat in the back that smelled of rotten fish, holding each other at every turn. A corner of her father's photo with Prabhakaran peeked out from a pouch, the only thing her mother had chosen to take with them as a memento of him.

“Don't play too much with that nonsense of dancing!” Uncle spoke in a loud voice as he drove, with Rani looking at the greenery beyond the roadside so as not to hear him. “You're grown up now, think about finding a husband quickly!”

“Yes, bappa*! Okay, bappa!” Saanvi repeated from behind, grimacing with the face and cross-eyed to make the cousins smile in front of her.

As soon as they unloaded the bags with the clothes and some kitchen utensils in the house, they all went together to eat ice cream at the nearby KANI Ice Cream, as a farewell from their uncle's family.

 

The new life made Saanvi happier. It was much better to be with his mother even though the house had just two rooms and a small courtyard outside with the well and the bathroom.

The school was also not bad, and there were many brightly colored temples and gopurams, the towers of the main entrances, richly carved in the style of Dravidian architecture. The next year they lived in the Nallur district, Rani brought her daughter and watched the famous Jaffna Nallu Festival, the largest Hindu festival that took place every August in the Nallur Kandaswamy temple, soaring in the sky with its four gigantic gopurams, attracting tens of thousands of faithful in a single day.

Saanvi was thrilled. The mother had adorned her hair with garlands of jasmine and decorated her face with a very large green pottu*. She had taken care many times with her daughter not to ever move away from her even an inch. Saanvi was entranced by the human tide that enveloped her in the humid heat of the morning. Her stature did not allow to see beyond the human wall of colored saris and the bodies of men bandaged at the bottom by the white of the lungi and naked beyond the waist as the rule for the temple, with sweaty faces and the forehead marked by two or three stripes horizontal white. She sometimes saw a kavadi, a semicircular yoke with peacock feathers at either end, swinging over the crowd.

The same happened to her during the Ther Thiruvila, the Festival of the Chariot which always took place in the same temple, in September. Never in her life had Saanvi seen such a jumble of emotion, sound, transcendence, and devotion, used to the little kovil from the area where she was born. Here she saw bodies rolling on the ground among the dust side by side holding coconuts, elderly women going into a trance with their red tongues out, boys hanging on iron hooks planted in the skin of the back dangling from flower-decorated piers, dozens and dozens of bearers of kavadi martyred by needles and pins that pierced them in the cheeks and in the body, dancers and musicians who advance between the two wings of devotees who kept separate, with thick ropes, the crowd from the hundreds of men who in the middle raised the silver throne “Simmasanam” in which sat the god Shanmuhar and his wife in luxurious robes, shouting “Aro Haraam!”

Sure, it was a simple life and they couldn't even afford to go for ice cream at RIO, because the Sundae Special cost 300 rupees there, but she had never been a high-demand girl.

When Saanvi came home from school she helped the mother, especially when Rani went to clean the fish just caught on the beach to make some extra money. Not only was she skilled at grinding spices with miris gala, but she had also learned to cook: when she came home from school and her mother was still outside, she loved making the parippu* ready, which was the dish that came best for her and among Rani's favorites.

With the money earned with the fish, her mother bought something in the kadas* near the house, and in the evening they ate early and then went straight to sleep, after praying at the small altar in the room, one next to the other on the paduru.

 

Jaffna Nallu Festival

The problem was her uncle. At least once a week he went to see them and never missed an opportunity to lecture his sister-in-law. It was as if he felt compelled to take care of them after his brother died.

Each time he came up with the name of a possible candidate for Saanvi's husband; he kept repeating that school was a waste of time and dancing was foolish. That at the Nallur fish market they were constantly looking for women and girls to clean the fish they had caught.

Saanvi listened from behind the kitchen wall, occasionally spying on her mother intent on dissuading Sarvananthan from continuing to look for a husband for the daughter because school was the most important thing at the moment; that they were fine in that house and didn't need help.

But every week her uncle became more and more pressing, especially if he was already stunned by the arack – then he also became aggressive with his black elephant size.

He would point to the photo hanging on the wall and start screaming, “What was the use of your husband's sacrifice? Of my brother?! Isn't it painful enough to have had to give up the dream of our own Tamil sovereign state? Does he also have to witness the decline of his family due to a daughter who prefers pirouettes to marriage? If our great Velupillai Prabhakaran had still been alive, by now I would have already sent your daughter into the jungle with a rifle in hand: at least she was useful for something!”

Then he suddenly appeared from the kitchen door making Saanvi jump, planted his alcohol-red eyes in those of the girl, and roared with the index finger pressed to the center of her chest: “Get ready that next week I will come with a friend of mine: he's interested in meeting you, he's a good match!”

And he staggered away to the van leaving Saanvi shaking from head to toe.

That was too much even for Rani.

Reluctantly she decided that her daughter should leave Jaffna. She told her in the evening about a family of an aunt who lived in Udappu, a village not far from Negombo.

They would go together to ask that aunt for permission to live with them, then Ranvi would return to their ancient home. Saanvi was sad for her mother and also worried that her uncle would not take well the news.

They remained embraced for a long time and so they fell asleep at night, stretched out on the mat lit by a moonbeam, between the rhythmic beating on the wall of the tails of the geckos in love.

TO BE CONTINUED...

*Gamma, village.

*When someone died it was tradition, during the wake, to flip the photographs in the house upside down so that the people in the photos were not possessed by the spirits of the dead.

*The Tamil Tigers for the Liberation of the Homeland, commonly known as the Tamil Tigers or LTTE, was a terrorist, communist ideological and nationalist Tamil paramilitary group present in northeastern Sri Lanka. Founded in May 1976 by Velupillai Prabhakaran, the group has waged a violent secessionist campaign against the Sri Lankan government since 1970, in order to create a sovereign socialist Tamil state in northern and eastern Sri Lanka known as Tamil Eelam. This led to the outbreak of civil war in Sri Lanka, which began in 1983 and ended in 2009, when the Tigers were finally defeated by the Sinhalese army during Mahinda Rajapaksa's presidency.

*“Pan Pedura” (or paduru), is a multipurpose Sri Lankan mat, that has been in use  since the ancient ages. In the past, almost every Sri Lankan home used to have several of these mats for different purposes. Once it is a tuckaway bed, next a surface to dry paddy, spices and other dried foods, sometimes, a dining table and the mat when put on the verandah, serves as seats in old Sri Lankan village mud houses. The raw materials or fabrics used for this traditional mat are the varieties of pan reed that is freely available in the river and lake banks. The raw pan reeds are first  boiled in natural dyes to start the process. And only then does the art start. Two dried pan reeds of the same length are vertically placed together, running parallel to each other in the manner of a rail track, then a third is brought into the frame and placed horizontally to tie up the two. The continuation of this interlacing process will finally result in a colorful handcrafted mat.

*An ilapatha is a palm wand broom that is used for brushing surfaces such as the porch.

*Idiyappam is a culinary specialty typical of the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is also called noolappam or noolputtu in the Tamil language due to the word nool which means “string”.

The recipe, very simple, involves the use of only rice or wheat flour, salt, water and ghee. It's generally served as a first course, accompanied by curry-based dishes, such as potato curry, egg, fish or meat, and a coconut-based chutney sauce. Sweetened coconut milk can also be found in some areas of Kerala. The color, typically light, can become slightly brown if wheat flour is used.

*Miris gala is a spice grinding stone common in all kitchens in the country.

*Kotahaluweema is the coming of age of a girl celebrated after her first menstrual period, more commonly known as the occasion on which she became a “big girl”. While in the past this would have meant her availability on the marriage market, today it is an excuse to party, where traditional rituals are followed by gifts and fun.

*Arack is an alcoholic distillate obtained from toddy, the palm sap.

*President Rajapaksa declared victory over the Tigers on 16 May 2009, after 26 years of conflict. The rebels offered to hand over their weapons in exchange for their own safety. On May 17, the head of the Tigers' foreign relations department, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, admitted defeat, stating in an email that “this battle has reached its bitter end.” Selvarasa Pathmanathan took Prabhakaran's place at the head of the group, but in August of the same year he was arrested in Malaysia and extradited to Sri Lanka.

*Sarama is in Sinhala the sarong that men tie at the waist to cover their legs as in many parts of Asia.

*Uguressa, small red plums.

*Peraheras, procession of dancers, drummers, singers, elephants adorned with fire bearers, who animate the processions during the festivals.

*Mudra is the position of the hands in dance and yoga: each of them has a name and a meaning.

*The Vanni jungle was the last stronghold of the Tamil Tigers during the offensive of the Sri Lankan Army which saw the conquest of Kilinochi, the LTTE capital, and of Mullaitivu: in that jungle the last rebel fighters were hunted and, with another 300 thousand Tamil civilians were forced to a tiny coastal area northeast of Mullaitivu.

*Bappa, that's what the uncle is called.

*Dottu is the colored dot on the forehead between the eyes that women use as decoration.

*Parippu is a typical dish of Sri Lankan and Indian cuisine that combines basmati rice with dahl, or a stew of red lentils, for this recipe cooked in coconut milk and with many spices.

*Kades are the small shops and mini-markets.

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