Saanvi's Revenge – Part Two

Sri Lanka © Bruno Barbey

Saanvi and her mother set off early in the morning.

Rani used up the little money she had put aside in recent months to buy the two tickets for the bus from Jaffna to Puttalam, on the west coast of the country: about 2000 rupees, plus the money for the return ticket.

The bus was a shiny Ashok Leylands, all painted blue, decorated inside with plastic flowers and Ganesh figurines, with two loudspeakers croaking Hindi songs at full blast throughout the journey. Most of the seats were occupied, with a constant buzz of voices, crying babies, and flashes of arack and spices.

It took seven hours of travel, with a couple of stops, before arriving at Puttalam station. Fortunately, the highway took pity on the bus's worn shock absorbers and Saanvi was able to sleep a few hours with her head resting on her mother's legs.

At only fifteen she was changing places for the second time, but now it was even more difficult because she also would have to part with her mother.

She couldn't cry but in her heart, she felt a great pungent rage for that past which, when she closed the eyes, took on the appearance of her uncle's buffalo face. Rani stroked the daughter's hair as if she could read her every thought.

At Puttalam station, they took another bus, smaller, which in an hour and a half-devoured the A3 Puttalam-Colombo Road to Pulichchakulama Road, where they got on a tuktuk that took them to the home of Aunt Komala. It was already late afternoon when they arrived, all sweaty and tired as if they had walked there from Jaffna.

Udappu was then as now a coastal village of about fifteen thousand souls, mostly Tamils who fled the north during the civil war. Even her aunt – whom Rani actually didn't even know well – had sought refuge with her family many years ago, tired of the pain and fear she felt for half of her life when she lived in Jaffna.

She was waiting for them at the front door.

“Maalai Vanakkam!”*

“Vanakkam!”

The two women embraced while children came out of the door like ants from an anthill.

Saanvi looked at that house much larger than their home, with the pink exterior walls and red columns at the corners of the patio.

The aunt was a little woman with a plump, dark face like mangosteen, more than her mother, but without a wrinkle, which made it difficult to tell her age. Her neck was stocky and short and marked by a thin horizontal black line that curved it in two parts as if an invisible thread was choking her. Her wavy hair was shiny and sepia-black; two small pointy breasts resting on the swollen belly that looked like the carapace of a turtle giving it the shape of pear on two thin and short legs. But the sweet smile made her instantly sympathetic to the little girl.

“You are the famous Saanvi, the best dancer in the whole of northern Sri Lanka!” she told her, bending a little to look into her eyes and stroking the tired face; she replied with an embarrassed smile and they went into the house.

If their home in Nallur was small and seemed crowded with their uncle's family, this one in which Komala lived was overflowing with people, it seemed to be more in a pola* than in a house: children ran everywhere entering and exiting the doors of the rooms while some women rested on the ground. Komala introduced Rani and her daughter to the women in the house and they fed them a nice plate of kottu* prepared in the morning.

In that house lived the families of the two brothers of the aunt, but a few days ago a cousin and a niece with their families had also been added because the next morning they would all go to the Sri Veerapathra Kali Amman Kovil temple. Rani stayed with them for only two days, couldn't be longer because she needed to work and still had to give an explanation of their sudden escape to the uncle.

The puja* at the temple was a way for Rani to pray for her daughter's future. That was her request that she made, in her heart, to Ayyanar* as she moved the lamp with the burning wicks.

Saanvi would stay for a week in that village and then follow her aunt to Duwana.

Before getting on the tuktuk that would take her to the bus station, Rani hugged her daughter tightly and whispered: “Don't worry, I'll talk to your uncle. Then as soon as I can I come back to see you. You think about studying, don't get in trouble, and help your aunt.” She slipped 800 rupees that had been left over into her pocket.

That was the first time Saanvi had tears in her eyes – she hadn't cried for her father either, but she was too young then.

 

“Sailboats”. Sri Lanka, 1880

Now that the other families had also returned to their villages, the atmosphere in the house had become more placid, still animated by the cackles of children.

There was also a small television and a few books thrown on the floor.

Saanvi made herself as useful as she could, scraping the coconuts sitting on the hiramanaya*, or going to the market to buy what was needed.

Komala's husband, Andiran, worked in a restaurant in Negombo, which is why they had moved to live further south, near the city, so it was easier for him to come back a few hours on weekends. They too had changed regions and homes, like many of the families in that village, both for work but mostly to escape the pain and remembrance of relatives who died in the civil war.

The next morning the aunt had offered to apply coconut oil to her long hair, as Rani did in Nallur, to make it shiny and strong, and Saanvi often kept Komala company in her favorite moment: sipping a good hot tea at the ginger sitting on the sofa watching her favorite teledrama, “Paara Dige”*, broadcast on Swarnavahini at 8.30 pm on television.

In rare cases, the little girl managed to tune into some Indian channel that was broadcasting dance, even if the signal came and went, and as soon as she turned off the television she ran out into the courtyard, in solitude, and danced, danced...

Komala had noticed this and was watching her, in silence, sipping her tea and smiling.

Life in that village for Saanvi seemed like an eternal present, a bubble of space and time waiting to move south. Most men lived with fishing, and she knew the smell of arack that gushed from small houses and huts. By now fishing was no longer enough to feed poor families as it once was, so in recent years men had added to the sea the collection of toddy, the palm sap from which to distill the liqueur.

On sunny afternoons Saanvi walked to the beach. She loved to sit with her feet stuck in the warm sand and watch the oruvas* dart over the sea and then moor in front of her, filling the beach like large colorful striped shells, with the sails blowing in the wind. Before her eyes the sea of the Laccadives and the sun breaking on the waves multiplying in infinite flickering splinters of brilliant light. She was thinking of her mother, her uncle, of the destiny of being born in a region that has stained many families with blood, like her own, or of being born on the coast opposite the one where she was sitting now and being swept away at ten o'clock in the morning of December, by the tsunami – a little life among more than 40,000 killed in that catastrophe.*

Since her coming into the world, unaware of everything, and already with a heavy legacy of hard-to-heal wounds.

This is why she loved to dance. It was her way of forgetting about everything. Certainly a better way than uncle's arack.

We all have something to forget in our life and everyone chooses their own way of doing it.

 

Sri Lanka, 1870

Saanvi greeted everyone in the house and with her aunt got on the bus that would take them to the other city in a couple of hours.

“Nanda*...?” The girl asked Komala, sitting next to her.

“Tell me...”, “Is there a television at home in Duwana?”

The aunt smiled with her round face and black eyes, swinging her head to the side of her: “Of course there is! What my days would be like without the sufferings of Aluvihare!” And they both laughed heartily.

The bus took the A3 back towards Colombo along the Moha Oya River.

Saanvi remained for a long time, during the journey, with her forehead stuck to the glass of the window, observing the alternating profile of the vegetation and the cities punctuated by the white domes of the dagobas* of the pansala, by the gopuram of the kovils chiseled with small painted figures of three hundred million colors how many are the Hindu deities, from the crescent moons of the mosques to the crosses of the churches that were increasing more and more, approaching the Kochchikade junction; there they get down and changed into a dark red CTB line Tata bus along Poruthota Road to Duwana. Saanvi now saw only crosses and churches.

At the bus stop they got off and the aunt said to her niece: “Welcome to Duwana.”

Then they got into a tuktuk. “Nearby is the Pallansena Three-well Taxi Station”, said the aunt to the girl, “You can go anywhere you want in a few minutes.”

They finally came home, not far from the riverbank.

At first glance, the village to Saanvi didn't seem too different from Udappu, a fishing village, if it weren't for the fact that it was surrounded by churches and everyone listened to speak Sinhala.

Now she was really starting to feel distant from her mother.

The closest school was in the center of Kochchikade, and each time she took a quarter of an hour by tuktuk to get there and back.

As agreed with her aunt, Saanvi would help around the house to cook, grind the spices and grate the coconut, wash the clothes and go to the market when needed, in exchange Komala would give her a few rupees for the tuktuk, and something more: after all, the aunt was happy there was the girl with her, it was a way to feel less alone and then they had reached a pleasant harmony, especially when it struck 20.30 in the evening and positioned themselves in front of the television for those thirty minutes of torment and ecstasy of Aluvihare and Nanayakkara.

Saanvi, in the afternoon or when her uncle returned at the weekend, she preferred to walk, also to give them a little intimacy. There weren't many houses and she had two choices each time: walk north along the banks of the river or go west to the beach. On one side were the straw palm shacks hanging from the edges lapped by the freshwater of the Maha Oya, on the other the white sand with the horizon furrowed by the sails of the oruvas and paruvas *.

As she walked through the earthy alleys Saanvi noticed how the men watching her weaving the nylon nets for fishing with the outrigger canoes as well as the women sitting on the doorstep or in the courtyards bent over the miris gala.

It wasn't long before the villagers started whispering as she passed.

Saanvi, one evening, said it to her aunt but Komala immediately turned off her speech: “You will soon get used to it, don't worry. On the contrary! Why don't you show me some dance moves? I've always liked Indian dance!”

The girl's eyes lit up; she jumped to feet, pinched her ponytail tightly, and began stamping her feet and bending the body, wringing her hands in Bharatanatyam style as if a Vadya Trayam* were actually playing in the small house.

 

“Lacemakers”. Sri Lanka, 1880

The next day, at the market, a fish seller asked her in Sinhala: “Are you the girl who lives with Komala?” Saanvi nodded.

“The one from Jaffna...,” the man continued, while another older fisherman, sitting smoking on the edge of a wooden cart to the side, looked at her and added: “It is true that your father was one of the LTTE? All of you did some damage...” Saanvi slipped the fish from the merchant's hands, left him a couple of coins, and ran away, while the tolling of the church bells filled the sky.

The child began to feel that the river a few steps from home was like a fracture that separated her more and more from the mother: nostalgia bit her chest and that evening she could not eat anything. The aunt noticed it, she saw a shadow in Saanvi's eyes that extinguished her wild adolescent beauty.

“Did you know that there is a small Indian dance school not far from here?”

Saanvi felt like she was jerked by the hand of Lord Murugan. She looked at her aunt with open mouth, she seemed not to have understood her words.

“Really, nanda?”

The aunt nodded smugly: “Tomorrow, I'll take you there after school.”

Her niece threw herself with all the weight on the woman and hugged her until she almost dropped shoulders to the ground.

As if by magic she had already forgotten what had happened at the market and she fell asleep staring at the ceiling where she saw choreographies of shadows and reflections of the moon.

In the afternoon they walked to a house as big as that of their aunt in Udappu, with blue walls and ocher wooden columns in the patio. From the windows came an Indian melody and rhythmic clapping of hands. Above the door was a plaque engraved in a beautiful script with “Sanchalana” – perfect movement, its meaning.

Saanvi, before approaching the patio, pulled at her aunt's robe and asked: “Is the teacher Tamil or Sinhalese?”

Komala looked at her a little annoyed: “She is Sinhalese, but enough of these stupid questions! Sinhala, Tamil, Veddahs, Burghers, we are all Sri Lankans, aren't we?!”

The girl bowed her head, nodding: “Yes, aunt, sorry.”

“Guruthumi* Anuradha? Guruthumi?” She called Komala aloud from the door of the house.

Suddenly the music was silent as well as the clapping of the hands.

An amber-skinned woman appeared at the door, her long straight hair tied behind her back, with a golden robe that hinted at her agile and firm body. She must not have been more than fifty.

“Ayubowan Guruthumi, kohomeda*?”

Anuradha returned to aunt's greeting with a faint smile and a brief bow of her face on joined hands.

Then Komala pushed the girl from the back to make her move forward a little.

“She is my niece Saanvi and she is a very gifted dancer, but she has never attended a school. It would be an honor if she could follow your lessons.” Aunt said in the usual warm, calm tone of her voice.

Anuradha, detachedly, looked at Saanvi without the slightest movement of the muscles in her face or a tinge in the eyes.

“Yes, I heard about her coming to the village. Okay, come in.”

The little girl felt like a blockage in her throat and cold hands. She followed her aunt and teacher into the house, through a first room whose walls hung reproductions of Buddha and white fabrics framed with phrases in Pali lettering.

They entered a much larger and more bare room in which sat a dozen girls of different ages, who immediately jumped to their feet and joined hands to greet the guests.

Saanvi seemed stunned; looked at the pupils, some much older than her, each wearing her kurta or saree, according to age, the bright room with large windows, the mridangams on the ground and the salangai* coiled like snakes near the wall, the iron statuette of Naṭarāja next to the large mirror that covered the entire back wall.

“So let's see how you dance! Come on, come to the center.”

Saanvi was struck by the dry, controlled sound of Anuradha and began to stammer: “Me?... Now?... Shall I dance?”

Komala pushed her from behind: “Go, hurry up...”

Anuradha stared at her with stern eyes.

“You came to dance, right? Dance, then!”

And she began clapping her hands in time, palm to palm, with a loud, dry sound like a breaking branch.

Saanvi approached the center of the room, turning to look at aunt and the other students who were giggling with their hands in front of their mouths.

“Do you dance or sleep?” Asked the teacher approaching the girl clapping her hands even harder while with the voice she punctuated the cadence Ta! Taa! Tajenno-Ta! Takkanam... Taketa! Taketaa! Tajenno-Ta...!

Then Saanvi began to dance, trying to follow the rhythm of Anuradha's hands and voice, but she had the feeling that her body was not in that room, that the floor was slippery and cold. As soon as she met Anuradha's gaze she lost the rhythm, she went out of time, while the girls behind her laughed more vigorously.

The teacher suddenly stopped clapping her hands and yelled at the pupils: “What are you laughing at?! Shut up!”

Then she came face to face to Saanvi, looked at her so intently that she seemed to be digging a well in her soul.

“Forget it, dance is not for you.”

Then she walked towards Komala, leaving Saanvi petrified and out of breath in the middle of the hall.

“I'm sorry attai*, but your niece is too far behind. Try another school, in Negombo there are many.”

The aunt saw Saanvi coming towards them with her chin pressed to her neck, in a surreal silence that exuded disappointment and sadness.

“Okay, Guruthumi, thanks anyway,” Komala answered in a low voice, put her arm around the niece's shoulders and they left the school, walking home in complete silence.

 

Sri Lanka, 1880

 

Saanvi washed in the yard at home and then went out running. The aunt tried to go after her but it was impossible.

“Saanvi! Saanvi! Where are you going? Aren't you going to eat anything?”

But her words were carried away by the damp evening wind.

The girl reached the beach running fast so that no one could see her tears.

She sat on the beach with her feet and hands in the sand as she liked, relaxed her, and stared at the sea until the horizon became a silver thread between the night of the sea and the night of the sky.

If she had had more courage she would have liked to push one of the many sleeping oruvas on the beach into the water to paddle north and wake up the next day at her home in Nallur.

She was beginning to miss her uncle, her cousins, the upside-down photographs on walls.

The teacher at the school had said that Negombo is called “the Little Rome” because many of those ships had sailed from that coast to reach Italy.

She didn't even know where Italy was, where on the globe Rome was.

She didn't care.

She felt only the salty taste of tears between her lips: she wanted to fall asleep in her mother's arms and never wake up again.

 

TO BE CONTINUED...

*According to Tamil culture, vanakkam is said while holding the hands together with the palms touching. Sometimes, a slight head bowing is also paired up with this greeting. They say vanakkam differently depending on the time of the day.

'Van' means 'vanangu' (worship). 'Ak' represents the alphabet 'ஃ' in Tamil. Visually, it has 3 dots and in this context, it symbolizes human eyes along with the third eye (the space in between our eyebrows). It is believed that God resides inside every human being at the third eye. So, when they say 'Vanakkam', it's not only intended to greet the person but also the God who's residing in the third eye of the person.

Morning: Kaalai Vanakkam

Afternoon: Mathiya Vanakkam

Evening: Maalai Vanakkam

Night: Iravu Vanakkam

* Pola is the weekly market in the villages.

*Kottu (also known as Kottu roti or alternatively spelled Kothu roti), meaning chopped roti) is a Sri Lankan dish consisting of diced roti (either godhamba roti or roti similar to the type used to make roti canai) stir-fried with scrambled egg, onions, chilies, spices, and optional vegetables or meat, such as mutton or chicken.

Generally, the consumer chooses what and how many of the ingredients are included if someone else is preparing.

*Puja is a Hindu prayer and offering.

*Ayyanar is one of the Hindu deities mainly worshiped by the Tamils in Udappu, but is also worshiped as Ayyanayake by the Sinhalese people.

*Coconut is an essential element in Sri Lankan cuisine. Coconut milk is used in curry and milk rice and grated coconut is used to make Sambola, Pittu, and Roti. Coconut is grated using a hiramanaya (coconut scraper), no kitchen in a village is without one. The person grating the coconut should be seated on the hiramanaya while the body is bent forward. A hiramanaya consists of two main parts: the sitting part and the grater. The part you sit on is made of wood and the grater of steel, with small and sharp teeth for grating the coconut.

*“Para Dige” is a famous teledrama broadcast on Swarnavahini, directed by Saddamangala Sooriyaarachchi. It is the dramatic story of a friendship shared by three boys and a girl: Aluvihare is a person who has not been able to get a new job since she is divorced; her friend finds her a husband who has agreed to divorce Aluvihare once she gets the job. Eventually, she gets the job and starts keeping the fake marriage. On the other hand, a person named Nanayakkara has fallen into a trap of slum gangsters who blackmail him for cheating on his wife. These two stories collide together as slum gangsters are involved in both incidents, making the plot full of suspense and thriller.

*The oruvas are the typical sailing canoes of Sri Lanka.

*On December 26, 2004, tsunamis swept across the Indian ocean, spawned by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. Aside from Indonesia, the island nation of Sri Lanka likely suffered the most casualties, with the death toll reported at 40.000.

*Nanda, aunt.

*Dagobas are the stupas of Buddhist temples (pansala).

*Paruvas is a large power catamaran equipped with kurlon dividers.

*Traditionally, Bharatanatyam performances have been accompanied by the Vadya Trayam (Holy Trinity) of Carnatic instruments: Veena (a plucked instrument), Venu (flute) and Mridangam (drum). These three instruments have specific functions: the Mridangam complements the rhythmic movements of the dancer's foot, the Veena enhances the texture with its range of tala and main strings, and the flute decorates the melodies with ornaments.

*Guruthumi is the more formal way of calling a dance teacher.

*Ayubowan is the greeting between Sinhalese, kohomeda means “how are you?”

*The Salangai is the anklets with bells, also called ghungroo, which are used in classical Bharatanatyam dance.

*Naṭarāja, or Shiva, also called the Lord of Dance or the dancing God; this is the most popular image, and corresponds to the dance called nādānta, the one that according to Shiva tradition performed in Chidambaram (or Tillai), in the forest of Tāragam to defend himself from the followers of the Mīmāṃsā and from the dwarf they had created to attack him.

*Attai, aunt.

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