KAMALIKA PIERIS

Lastly,  Archive of Memory looked at  the Eelam War. There is a brief reference to LTTE activity. Two narrators recall LTTE bombs, one  at No Limit, Nugegoda on November 27, 2007 and the explosion at  Katunayake airport on 24.7 2001. In ‘Chain and bangles’ we are told of LTTE attacks on Sinhala villages.

But the main   focus is the  Sri Lanka army.  the army is shown as the aggressor in the Eelam war. Deaths due to  military attacks were remembered and  grieved over. In Baby Shoe” the narrator’s  son, daughter in law and four children  all  died in an air strike.  In the episode Drum” we are told of a daughter killed instantly.  An air force missile had hit  our bunker. We were constantly strafed from above.  

 Secondly, disappearances. In the episode ‘Teacup” the narrator said her husband  was taken away by the army after a cordon and search operation of May 23 2009. He  could not even drink the tea I had prepared in this   teacup. In the  episode ‘Plate’ the narrators two sons were LTTE so army harassed us a lot. The army  then arrested the younger son and  that was the last time I saw him. 

Thirdly,  destruction of property. In the episode Keys” the narrator said  in 1990 they had to had to abandon our home  as the Sri Lanka army advanced  towards our village, they locked up and left with the keys held by Amma. Thereafter we wandered around, sleeping under trees ,in kovils,  relatives homes and living in rented houses. We were permitted to visit our house only in 2011, when army reduced the perimeter of the high security zone. They went eagerly  flourishing  the house keys, to find that  house  did not exist, only a few walls remained.

 War time desperation is  well illustrated in the episode Water jug”. Grandmother, living in Kokuvil was very caste conscious . laborers were given water to drink in coconut  shells. The family had to leave  for Jaffna town  due to the war. On the way, they became  thirsty. a  low caste woman offered a plastic water jug to  drink from and  grandma took and drank from it.

In the episode ‘Boat engine’  the  narrator says that in January 2009, the entire village fled to the  No Fire Zone. Life in NFZ was horrific. Food was scarce, and there was constant shelling.Their group escaped in a boat,  got lost at sea and were rescued by the navy. The narrator thanked God, not the navy.

The episode Micro light” narrator stated that as the civil war was drawing to a close, Uncle Ray Wijewardene was commissioned to design UAVs for Sri Lanka military surveillance operations.

The army  is given a negative image. In the episode ‘Police form”  the narrator and husband, newly married    were spending their first night at Pegasus Reef Hotel. Army woke them up  at           3 am. and took them away.  they were conducting  a cordon and search operation. There were about 3000 others. We were finger printed, photographed, video recorded.   There was a hooded man with only slits for eyes. He scrutinized each person. If he nodded, that person was taken away.

The army was engaged in sexual violence. In the episodeWhite van”  the narrator, who was a sex worker said she was blindfolded and taken in a white van to  an army camp where she  was sexually abused by countless men for over a week. Then they sent her back.

 In the episode “Chain and bangles’  the narrator who was a soldier in the army, recalls his dead colleague Nimal  who was from a  poor farming family..  Nimal had invited the narrator to his  sister’s wedding. Nimal had told him that  to secure the marriage for his sister, he had  made use of the gold chain and  gold bangles  which he had found buried in the garden of a Tamil home during a search operation.

However,  in  ‘Piano’ the narrator said most middle class families in Jaffna in the 1980 had two prized possessions sewing machine and piano. Aunt gifted  her one in 1986. and she looked after it lovingly, then LTTE said leave Jaffna. When they returned, their furniture was gone, including piano. One night army commander wailed in with piano they had taken it for safekeeping because Chundikuli area was getting  heavily bombed. They brought it back, in pristine condition. One octave was marked ‘sari gama padanisa’.

The episode ‘Bo Tree” takes us to the world of fantasy and  back. The narrator who had lived in Kilinochchi said on his  sixth birthday  in September  1984, his parents had shown  him  a Bo tree in their compound which had put out  shoots that day. The narrator gave the Bo tree a name,  talked to it   and made it his friend.   

 Due to military activity the family  had to leave home in October 2008.  The narrator had cried that he could not leave his Bo tree .He  returned to his home in  Kilinochchi in 2010. There  was a sign board in Tamil with many spelling errors which said ‘this is an army camp.’ Army had  built a stupa near the Bo tree. The narrator was unable to enter  the premises. His father and mother had died in an aerial attack in 2009 and he  had wanted to tell this to the Bo tree. ( concluded)