This is an English translation of "Aazhiyaal", a short story written by Australia based Srilankan writer Theivigan Panchalingam. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
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The wild grasses on either side of the road with a thick
undergrowth of flame lilies leading to the Elena residential area were bearing
a layer of dust on them. Ceylon Rajan’s suspicion that someone had come there
in a vehicle had now been confirmed. The smell of dust brought him the truth
that the danger, which he was prepared to face, did make its entry into his
house when he wasn’t present. He ran fast towards his house. He felt that his
heart had fallen into his abdomen. There was no sound around the house. He
could hear only the clack of his footsteps as he was running.
Sooner he opened the gate, did he see his daughter Monora
standing on the outer veranda of the house, crying. The incident that he was
trying to avert with his regular vigil around his house had now occurred. They
had abducted his wife, Nimini.
He didn’t know how to comfort his daughter, who came running
and hugged him. Rajan’s lips were shivering. His voice, which had almost lost
its strength to comfort his daughter, had settled on his face grimly. Anger,
emptiness, and helplessness were vying in his eyes.
The wind that blew across the Yuvaru land brushed his skin
like fire.
He walked fast to the captain’s house carrying his daughter.
Some women from the other side of the residential area came out of their
houses, seeing his fretful walk at a distance. The speed of his walk revealed
that he was not in a position to reply to anyone. Frequent bouts of Monora’s
sobs had been reduced to beats and were settling on his shoulder.
Everyone in that residential area seemed to be a little aware
that they would abduct Nimini soon. All the women from the Elena residential
area had earlier warned Nimini to stay away from the eyes of “cart men” ever
since she was carrying a three-month pregnancy and her stomach was showing its
mild bulges. Their warning, “Be careful this time,” often fell on Rajan’s ears.
Many of them were abducted earlier when they were pregnant. With all these,
Rajan always remained alert.
Two weeks ago, it was Nimini who expressed her desire to
visit the Black Stone beach on the western shores of Yuvaru along with Rajan.
She told that she wanted to show Rajan the paintings drawn on the distended
black rocks amidst the stretch of aloevera bushes which had been housing the
undying roars of sea wind in it. She had begged him many times that she wanted
to explain to Rajan in person the divine appeals of aborigines in those black
stone paintings to prove they also had a faith in gods.
Rajan was very much aware of the dangers. He had experienced
it once and therefore flatly denied it in the first place. But, on that day, in
the morning when she sneaked under his bed sheet and repeated his usual
nagging, “Can we go today?” as she wiggled his nose, he found himself
surrendered. He gently pinched her cheeks as she was lying on his chest and
said, “We can make it tomorrow.” The soft flesh of Nimini’s cheeks, which
settled with a gentle resilience of rubber, was still exuding lustre even after
his pinch.
There was no vehicular movement in the barren land lying on
the rear of the Elena residential area. Rajan thought that he could take that
route to reach the seashore. Both of them went out on a walk before the evening
light fell into the horizon. Taking a beaten track diverted from the aloevera
bushes, they reached the black stone beach without facing any problems.
Nimini introduced those aboriginal paintings carved with
sharp stones thousands of years ago to Rajan. It was their belief that the only
god of their dreams was still living in those paintings, she explained. She
held Rajan’s fingers and gently moved them along the edges of those paintings.
Rajan felt that he was journeying on the paths of history along with Nimini. A
mild tremble as if being united with an inexplicable power even after removing
his fingers from the paintings was still permeating in him. Nimini relished the
amazement seen in Rajan. She felt both pride and happiness flooding in her for
bringing Rajan there.
When they left, they seemed to have forgotten themselves. As
he could learn something new, Rajan kept talking about it with Nimini all the
way. They were oblivious of the beaten track at the rear and were walking home
by the public road. The seashore paintings had lessened their anxiety, which
they carried while going there.
A moment before they took a turn to reach the Elena
residential area, the men in a jeep, which went past them fast, were looking at
Rajan and Nimini intently.
Nimini was very happy that day. Her dark eyes and thick lips,
which emitted shyness, were still shining all through the way they took
for their stroll to the seashore. Her strong, dark lock of hair that would
never get untidy in the wind was holding her tightly. That day, Rajan felt the
same pinch of love he had when he first met her.
2
Most of the tribal people on the western side of Australia
living in Yuvaru land were mostly hunters. No one from Nimini’s family ventured
into the forest after they lost her younger brother while hunting. They felt
that killings and living in the forests had sown an irretrievable allergy in
their family. Nimini’s father was bedridden for months after his leg hit a
poisonous wood stick and then died. After these two deaths in their family,
Nimini and her mother started living as far away from forests as they could.
Even before Nimini met Rajan, she had already kept herself
away from the forests. She had developed a natural aversion and fear for
forests. But the sea offered her a different experience. Deep sea and its waves
were the sources of her ecstasy in her. She had dreamt many times of waves
hitting the edges of her heart, foaming, and got up smiling on late nights,
being choked up with it, and would sleep. The roars of waves were closer to her
heart than the sounds of trees in the wild. She had learnt the art of swimming
and interacting with the waves since her tender age.
She had written with a sharp stone at the bottom of a dubru
tree when she went out hunting along with her father that her prince would
emerge only from the belly of the sea. Sooner she became an adult, she started
teaching the children studying in a small hut school lying on the road to the
sea shore from the Elena residential area. She met Rajan there. He was then
known as “Ceylon Rajan.” Putting it precisely, she met him for the first time
near the well of the school.
Nimni could very well recollect what had happened that day.
She was teaching the children some songs of sleep. Suddenly there were
big-sized trucks moving towards the seashore near the school. Throwing away
their play sticks, the children in school got up and looked at those trucks.
White men in large numbers hopped off the vehicles that halted at the abandoned
trenches that were once used for pearl fishing. For people around, it wasn’t
very difficult to know why those men had arrived there.
It was then when the tyrannical hands of colonialism had been
sucking the blood of aboriginals’ country through its guns. It was the time the
people of Yuvuru fought the British army commanded by William Gladstone that
entered the Western Australia on the frontier villages and were defeated. The
people of Yuvuru were burning the headless torsos of hundreds of men, who
fought for their land, on the grass mounds after their chopped heads were taken
away by the army. Sending the heads of tribal leaders, who challenged their
authority, to Britain was considered a sign of great valour in Gladstone’s
army. A glorious land with thousands of years of heritage was being fenced
around and hunted with the guns of colonialism without any obvious justifications.
All the people who migrated due to fear and encroachment,
living in the Elena residential area, were once living a prosperous life in the
middle of the city.
Within two weeks of the vehicles’ arrival on the coastal
lines, some gun-wielding men went to every household and directed the people to
come to Thotiya ground. On the first day, there was a skirmish between the
gun-wielding men and the villagers living in the coastal area lying beyond the
Elena residential area, who refused to obey their orders. At that time, a
meeting with Elena residents was going on in Thotiya ground. Suddenly, gunshots
were heard from the coastal area. Those who were yelling “We’d do what you say”
were sitting on the floors of Thotiya grove rose, panicked at the sounds of guns.
The sounds from the coastal area were louder and continuous. Men were running
helter-skelter, wailing helplessly. The birds rose up in flocks above the
forests that spread across inward. The noise of vehicles carrying gunmen,
speeding towards the seacoast, was heard.
The next day, Nimini and her mother visited the house on the
coast where the mass murder had been orchestrated. The gunmen had shot many
villagers dead and killed them the way blue whales used to be slaughtered. The
parts of their bodies were beyond recognition. The heads were totally chopped
off. The house not fully burnt in the fire was hanging on their beams.
Seriously injured old men were found sitting near the headless bodies and
crying out dirges. Every nook and corner of the village bore the signs
of women brazenly dragged out and vehicles that violently moved around that
area. When Nimini’s head started spinning at the unfamiliar stench of death
along with sea wind, her mother pulled her away from there and led her to their
house immediately.
A large number of people were brought in a month for pearl
fishing. Yuvuru’s men were curiously watching those men roaming with unfamiliar
appearances and speaking unintelligible languages. Even if death and fear were
lying under their feet, they never lagged behind in their attempts to know what
was waiting to happen on their lands.
A vast stretch of bushy land near the Thotiya ground was
completely cleaned overnight. The sounds of machines brought in various shapes
filled the air in the succeeding nights. A bright lamp at the top of a pole was
throwing its light all around throughout the night. The work was in full swing
under the light. The residents of Elena climbed on treetops just to have a
glimpse of this light. Within a month, there appeared sixteen houses in that
stretch of land.
When Rajan introduced himself to Nimini, he said he was one
of those men working there and living in inthat residential area. Nimini saw
him wearing a blue shirt, black pants, shoes weighing nearly four kilograms,
and shyness that almost equalled the weight of his shoes.
Those men who were offloaded along the coast for work looked
strange in the eyes of Yuvuru’s people. They saw those workers bearing a
complexion that stood somewhat in between the gunmen and them. But Rajan’s
complexion, which looked almost similar to Nimini’s, and his eyes, which
carried an attractive, perennial opulence, did pull Nimini towards him with an
inexplicable charm since the day she first met him.
The workers who were settled in the houses in the Thotiya
ground had been brought as far as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. Those who
were brought from Ceylon were given a prefix, “Ceylon,” with their names to
facilitate an easy identification.
On the first day, when Rajan came to the school well to
collect water to fill in the baskets, Nimini found their communication very
difficult as the language posed her a big problem. But, within the half an hour
of their acquaintance, they felt that they had known each other for long.
After the Thotiya ground had started getting new houses,
Nimini went to each household in the Yuvuru region, brought many children to
the school, and taught them lessons. She was eager to arrange adequate
infrastructure in the school so that she could spend more time teaching.
The school well got rid of the layers of algae sediments due
to its frequent use and started producing fresh water as ever. During one of
the school holidays, Nimini took Rajan to a hillock standing near the border of
Yuvuru city. One could entirely devour the beauty of the city with their two
eyes if they stood atop the hillock. They could enjoy the magnificent beauty
that the land carried, along with the clouds from the hilltop. They could enjoy
the hair stands of the forests that were sending out the sea wind filtered.
While all these were the wonders of nature, the kisses they shared while
relishing it did also become as pure as nature.
The language, which seemed to be relatively crippled between
Nimini and Rajan, had now become smoother.
One day, when Rajan introduced himself, telling her that
Ceylon’s northwest region, Mannar, was also a coastal town like Yuvuru,
Nimini’s eyes widened as if seeing the dotted patterns of the aboriginals.
Those wide, dense, devouring eyes were the ones Rajan loved in her the most.
They added a grand lustre to her dark skin. Those eyes owned a strong vision
that no one could easily distract.
Rajan informed her that when he went to a town known as Kali
in the south in search of livelihood from Mannar, luckily he could find a job
in Australia for pearl fishing. A big ship which left that place brought a
large number of men for pearl fishing to Australia, he concluded.
Nimini once again remembered the dream of her sea prince, smiled
at him, curling her lips inward, and then gave out a broader grin. Rajen went
nearer and held the remains of her ancient beauty, which hadn’t still been lost
in her, in his hands. Kissing her cheeks, he bit her studless earlobes fondly
as he groped her face with his lips. The sea wind gently witnessed Ceylon
completely conquering Australia and left.
Rajan’s daily chores began at dawn and ended at dusk,
involving a search for pearls like a hound driven off into the sea. He had to
dive into the dark holes where the sun’s rays never entered, holding his breath
through the coral rocks, and come out after collecting the oysters. Putting
them in his waist pouch, when he comes out of the water, his English master
would be waiting in his layout boat, flapping his goat ears as if waiting for
its prey.
Rajan’s sea trips were comfortingly refreshing with his
thoughts about Nimini. It had become his habit to segregate the oysters with a
smile on his face underwater.
After three months of their courtship, Nimini informed her
mother that she was going to marry Rajan. Her mother didn’t accept that
proposal and offered no reason for her refusal either. She was categorical in
her terms that Nimini shouldn’t marry anyone, not alone Rajan. Her mother’s
life was full of personal losses. Nor was she composed in thoughts. It might be
possible she had resolved not to think. At her old age, she had hard learnt and
acknowledged that living and dying as a slave would lessen her woes. Nimini was
aware of it. But her mother’s boorish stand on Nimini’s way to marry Rajan
triggered her anger that overwhelmed her love for her mother.
“It is not only you; I too don’t have a father and a
brother”—Nimini kicked a water-filled mud pot one day in a fit of anger and
threw it away. Nimini’s mother pulled out a whale hide from the inner ceiling
of the house and slapped Nimini with it. The hide missed its target and hit
Nimini’s right shoulder.
After the school hours that day, Nimini took Rajan to the
hillock and told him that they had to marry immediately. The bruise on her
shoulder was burning with the salty wind of the sea. Rajan massaged her bruise
gently with his palm and dried up the blood stains. Nimini’s eyes, which were
blankly staring at the expanse of sea, slowly closed once and then opened.
Yuvuru’s customs demanded that a nuptial relationship would
be recognised only after the birth of the first child, even if it was
solemnised by both families. Apart from this, if a foreigner wanted to marry an
Australian aboriginal woman, he had to pay a criminal bond amount worth five
Ceylon rupees at the local court. As per the agreement, Rajan’s monthly wages
were just twelve rupees at that time, with an increase to fifteen rupees in the
second year and then twenty in the third year. These were the laws enforced by
the Europeans when they brought the labourers.
The next day, Nimini came to the Thotiya residential area and
stayed with Rajan. She commuted to the school from there.
Rajan felt that the land had blessed him with Nimini’s love.
Nimini offered him the fully steamed sweet potato when he returned home every
evening after work. She would go to the forest along with other women from the
Elena residential area to collect salty grasses to make a delicious gruel for
Rajan. She would go to the coastal village, collect the fertilised eggs of big
fish usually caught with enormous nets, roast them with sea cucumber, and
introduce newer tastes every evening.
During the nights when the moon wasn’t nearly visible,
Nimini, with all her exquisiteness, would be ready to guzzle down Rajan. For a
trifling soul who was washed ashore like an injured sea bird on the Yuvuru
land, Nimini looked like an angel. Facing her beauty, for Rajan, almost
appeared like facing the sea.
One day when they returned home after paying the criminal
bond amount at the court, Nimini informed Rajan that she had gotten pregnant.
No one in Yuvuru town could have ever experienced in their life the happiness
they felt that day. Rajan grew impatient to hold the priceless pearl he was
going to see in that new country. Rajan’s going to the workplace and coming
back home were fully occupied with the thoughts of his baby. Nimini’s beauty
assumed different appeal every day. She was blossoming like an angel of the
Thotiya area.
That day, when Rajan was out for work, some gunmen who came
to Thotiya ground in a jeep went straight to Rajan’s house. They dragged Nimini
out of the house, who just came out to open the door hearing the knock on the
door, and threw her into the jeep without entertaining any questions. One of
those men was holding a bunch of Nimini’s hair in his hand while the other was
tying her flexing legs as if they had no need of showing any tinge of concern
for a pregnant woman.
The jeep ran fast to a far-away place from Thotiya ground,
where the pearl fishing was undertaken. The sea wind gusting into the jeep was
making a ghastly sound. Nimini was yelling out, helplessly. Those men, without
removing their legs from hers, were busy talking among themselves. One of them
bent down, twisted Nimini’s nipple, and kicked her on her buttocks.
The jeep entered a building on the coast. They dragged her
into a shed made of tin. Her thick lock of hair got tangled with the molester’s
fingers. They dragged her and threw her on the floor. There were seven other
women lying on the floor. They were all pregnant women. Their hands were
untied, and they were sitting on the floor with their legs spread wide. Nimini
had not seen them anywhere in Yuvuru town. But they were all aboriginal women.
The bruises they bore on their body proved that their arrest was not easy. Two
of them had their foreheads almost torn and were bleeding copiously.
When Nimini was thrown on the floor, no one took the effort
to look at her closely. They were all blankly staring at the tin-sheeted walls.
The sunlight penetrating through the holes of the ceiling was falling into the
shed-like tubes. Nimini was yearning for someone to speak to her. She just
stared at them feebly as if expecting them to offer their look so that they
could cry together. But they were lying as stiff as black stone statues.
All those women were taken into the sea for pearl fishing
three times a day for a week. Rajan had seen the gunmen abducting pregnant
aboriginal women of all ages and taking them to different sea fronts even
before he was brought to the Yuvuru region. When he asked the captain who used
to lead them in the sea why the pregnant women were selectively handpicked for
pearl fishing, the reply from the captain pained like a melted sea wind thrown
into one’s ears.
“Oxygen retention capacity of pregnant women’s lungs is far
greater. If they dive into the sea, they can withhold for a longer time
underwater. Adduction of pregnant Aboriginal women across the country to get
them deployed on the sea fronts where pearl fishing is undertaken has been in
force since the day Europeans stepped into Australia,” the captain said. His
words weren’t harsh, though. There wasn’t an inclination of boasting about it
as a sign of their valour in his voice. His plump, seasoned cheeks reflected in
their entirety the qualms of men who joined the army for the sake of money. He
stared at the sea, as if trying to hide his heavy heart. The men in the boat
noticed his predicaments.
Since the day they came to know about it, all, including
Rajan, decided to perform their duties with sort of a detachment from this fact
as if they weren’t in any way related to it and shut their mouths for the wages
of twelve rupees they received.
But Rajan never thought that they didn’t have qualms about
abducting the wives of the labourers working under them. He never thought, even
in his fantasy that those guns would enter the doors of his house.
Sooner he heard that Nimini was abducted, then Rajan felt
that he had been tied with a boulder lying at the bottom of the sea. Felt
desolated. Only when Rajan, who was till then thinking that Nimini and the sea
were his world, learnt that Nimini, who was about to show him a new world soon,
was beaten before being abducted, did the reality that slapped him in the face
pain him—that he was no more than a slave there. Rajan sunk into despair like a
hired animal struggling for breath after it was nearly killed. He felt birds
circling above his head.
He ran to the captain.
“Nimini knows swimming. She doesn’t have to bring pearls.
Even if she could get some amount of sand, it will do. Within two weeks she
would be released,” the captain told him nonchalantly. Rajan believed in his
old age.
Rajan knew that the abducted women would be released. But
there were instances when the women had sustained neck injuries while being
pushed into the sea and died. Some of them were even killed after being
abducted. These news kept coming through his mind and troubled him one after
another.
The absence of Nimini had its toll on his house. The walls of
his house spoke to him in her voice. He would climb onto the hillock and
vacantly watch over the town in the evenings, fancying the ocean swallowing up
Yuvuru town in a night and return of Nimini in that deluge. The sea seen on the
horizon and trees standing around were found wearing a thick blanket of
darkness.
They didn’t permit Rajan to dive into the sea for pearl
harvest. They took him to the border area of Yuvuru for laying gravel and road
repair work.
On the fifth day, while passing near Rajan’s house, the
captain told him that he would be in charge of the boat carrying Nimini and
others and assured Rajan that Nimini would be back in five days and left,
smiling, as he went on pressing the jeep’s horn.
Unable to contain his enthusiasm, Rajan ran to his house and
then to the hillock. He felt like crying thinking about Nimini in solitude.
That time, Nimini’s mother intercepted Rajan on the gravel road leading to the
Elena residential area as she came to know about the abduction of Nimini
unexpectedly.
She babbled, uttered feebly, and chastised Rajan, throwing
invectives on him till her eyeballs jumped out of their sockets. She hit the
ground with a black stick ferociously, yelling out loudly. Then she ran to a
tree and vented out her frustration on it. Her anger left the tip of the black
stick, breaking into a brush of five-six filaments.
She wept, leaving him no time to inform her about Nimini’s
return. The truth is, it was because of this that Nimini’s mother didn’t accept
their marriage, hitting the bottom of Rajan’s heart like a wave hitting rock.
He broke down deep within, knowing her enormous perseverance for the sake of
love for her daughter.
Each drop of the tears that Nimini’s mother shed fell onto
the ground, announcing loudly a message about how the motherhood of an ancient
land, on which the elements of aggression were still ruling, had to fear for
the things both in her womb and outside.
She—the one who had lost her husband and son, the one who was
very fearful not to lose her daughter along with the fetus, the one who
outrageously reproached Rajan without any qualms—was now lying dead as an
orphaned corpse in her house in the Elena residential area a day before the
captain assured Rajan of Nimini’s return. Hearing the news of her death, when
Rajan reached her house, he saw the black stick, which she had forcefully
thrown on the ground a day ago, lying at the doorway.
A five or six women from the Elena residence came forward,
lifted the dead body, and burnt it somewhere near the coast.
Rajan thought his life had started afresh from the flash of a
lightning.
A hurried journey. A love affair faster than that, which
consummated in marriage; the pregnant wife as a prisoner in the sea; the death
of her mother in her absence.
Rajan felt Australia had been offering him a lot of things
other than his usual monthly wages of twelve rupees. The next day, the captain
brought Nimini back and left her in his house.
They cried, not very certain of the misery for which they
were shedding tears. Nimini went to the Elena residential area and was sitting
in her mother’s house stretching her legs. She had been very much hurt by her
mother that she couldn’t even cry for her. It would be comforting if she could
get to watch someone crying, she thought.
Those five or six women who burnt her mother’s body brought
three bags full of grains and some meat of common quail wrapped in a big leaf,
gave it to her, and left.
The wind flowing outside was truant, coming in and going
outside their house as if searching for someone. Rajan brought in the milk from
the wooden tumbler he had kept, placed Nimini’s legs on his lap, and gently
caressed those legs of that ‘bird’ that was carrying the feathers of
his life. The nearness of the man who would be carrying her love forever had
just blown out the anguish that had been heavily oppressive on her.
They shifted their house from the Thotiya ground labourer
residential area to Nimini’s mother’s house permanently. In the ninth month, Monora
saw the new world. She received that new world, from the family replete with
deaths, into her hands. Rajan built his wings in the waves and flew in the
Yuvuru’s sky. He fancied carrying Nimini and Monora on his two wings, crossing
the oceans to pay a visit to Mannar. The front yards of all the houses in the
Elena residential area saw their dawn with Rajan’s smirks, and they went to
sleep listening to his voice with unending laughter.
Monora adorned Yuvuru town as an incarnation of Nimini. “Did
you swallow the pearls I brought? Monora’s eyes shine that way?” When Rajan
teased her, Ninimi would roll her eyes wide and smile. She would cuddle Rajan,
who seemed to be born anew with his smiles. Rajan was happy to see her
reconciled with the loss of her mother and completely come out of it.
When Nimini informed him that she was pregnant in her third
month of carrying, Rajan jumped out of bed as if the sea had fallen onto it.
Nimini shed a streak of a smile, placed a strong kiss on his forehead, and told
that the land of Yuvuru had been blessed with the presence of her husband.
“My mother has already come in me. So, this must be
my father.” She gave him a demure smile as she was stroking her belly. Her
voice sounded without understanding the looming danger.
While leaving for work the next morning, Rajan went to the
captain to meet him in private. All throughout his way, Rajan felt that he was
standing alone on the coast, facing the waves of ebbing on the shores of
Yuvuru.
On his arrival in Yuvuru after spending his leave in the
Australian mainland, the captain came to know about Rajan’s child. He didn’t
have the opportunity to meet Rajan in person. As soon as he saw Rajan, he
scooped him up, cuddled him, and wished him with a loving punch in Rajan’s
stomach.
“What’s the name?”
“Monora”
“Sri Lankan name?”
“No. It is Nimini’s choice.”
The captain nodded his head and smiled. It was evident that
he was so pleased with Rajan.
“I have a humble request for you, Captain. I just ask this
treating you as my father.
The captain wrinkled his forehead as if it was an unexpected
question and further tightened his wrinkles, throwing an intent look at Rajan
to see what it was.
“Captain, Nimini is pregnant now.”
Rajan was grasping the captain’s hand tightly when he uttered
these words. Rajan was standing so submissively as if not only the secret help
he sought was lying secured in those hands, but also the lifeline of his
family. His palms were sweating more. The captain felt a mild tremor in his
hold.
The captain patted him on his shoulder and said, “Ceylon
Monora…a good name indeed,” as he got into his jeep. Rajan believed in the
captain the way he believed in the waves. He trusted him as a redeemer who
would guard his family against all fears. He gave him black gram paste and
steamed sweet potato whenever he went to him.
When he took Monora to the captain for the first time, the
captain had a tough time looking in the baby’s eyes. He grinned with
uneasiness. He, being a representative of the British Empire that had gobbled
up that land, was guilty of being unable to look into a petite child’s eyes.
Rajan didn’t miss noticing his dilemma. Pretending not to be aware of the
captain’s predicaments, Rajan presented a pleasing countenance in front of him
for his blessing of the baby. Noticing the uneasiness in the captain at seeing
the baby, Rajan decided to show his baby as frequently as possible to the
captain. He believed that keeping the captain as one of his family members
would ensure a safety cover for Nimini.
3
Raj couldn’t bear the pain of betrayal when his trust in the
captain was broken. The very thought of the one who should have safeguarded
Nimini as his family member had in fact backstabbed him with his vile smiles on
him, and Monora made even his tears boil with rage when trickling down.
The captain was not found anywhere that day. All the camps
where Rajan enquired about his presence gave him negative replies, which
further infuriated Rajan. He strongly believed that the captain had
deliberately hidden the fact of Nimini’s abduction from him. Missing Nimini,
betrayal of the captain, and the pain of being thrown into a solitude—all
combined into one and made him roam on the gravel roads like an animal, which
Yuvuru had never seen.
That night, he left Monora at his ‘Singapore’ friend’s house
in the Elena residence and was walking restlessly between his house and the
sea. The hisses of the birds that looked like owls from the big trees standing
along the inner line of the gravel road sounded like an oracle in him
announcing the bad omen.
Big vehicles kept moving past Elena's residence frequently
that night. Rajan kept shuttling to the street corner from the residence,
restively looking for the captain’s jeep in the headlights of the vehicles.
Suddenly, he ran towards his house, went to its backyard, and
pulled a bent black stick from the thatch. He cut the stick with a kitchen
knife and shaped it for easy handling. The stick, which was otherwise too
strong for anyone to cut it easily, bore the brunt of Rajan’s enduring frenzy
and fury with each swing of the knife on it. Once done, he sharpened the end of
the stick. The sweat flowed down his body as if a poison tree spread its roots
across one’s body.
He went to the street corner once again and looked around the
coastal area. Something in him was pulling back, preventing him from going far
away from where Monora was sleeping. Yet, the howls of the birds were
disturbing him in the night.
The next day, some gunmen intercepted two men from the Elena
residence, who were coming back from a hunt in the forest, took them along in
their jeep, and gave them Rajan’s dead body, which they retrieved from the
hillock. Five or six jeeps were strolling around the foothills. The Sabrina
birds were hovering above head.
Nimini was permitted to go home that evening when Rajan’s
body reached there.
5
Vakeesan fell unconscious at Mill Park School in Melbourne
that day. He was talking with his girlfriend under the shade of an oleander
tree in the afternoon. He fell down with his eyes looking up, fixedly, and
didn’t regain his consciousness after that. The school principal sent him to
the intensive care unit for treatment.
Vakeesan was living alone in a house under the government
housing scheme in North Melbourne. He was fourteen years old. No parents. He
had no one worth calling relatives in Australia.
Ten years ago, the boat carrying some refugees towards
Australia crashed into a rock near Christmas Island, which resulted in many
being washed away in the waves. Vakeesan was one among the forty refugees who
survived that accident. His father’s death was announced after his body was
washed ashore after two weeks. The navy buried his body as there was no one to
claim right over it. Vakeesan’s mother, who died in the boat accident, was then
three months pregnant. There wasn’t anyone to claim right over the boy rescued
along with other survivors by the villagers living on the coast of Christmas
Island. He was then brought to Melbourne, and after a month, it was officially
declared that his two parents were dead in the boat accident.
Neminatha from the Melbourne Tamil Association would take
Vakeesan to the Cram Town temple during the Pongal and Deepawali festivals. He
would offer prayers in his name by paying eight dollars. He would then buy
Briyani in Wales Spices in front of the temple and leave him in the government
housing with an additional packet of mixture snacks.
To honour the request of Neminathan, I used to meet Vakeesan
once a month to teach him Tamil. My name had been registered in the
Vakeesan-related government documents as “immediate contact,” “well-wisher,”
and “translator” purely on the basis of persons known to him.
When I went to the Melbourne Northern Hospital, where he was
admitted after being informed by the Children Protection Home of Victoria
government that he had fallen unconscious, I found him sitting on the cot, legs
folded, wearing an immaculate white hospital uniform. The nurse and doctor,
adoring his body parts, which hadn’t lost their innocence yet, were asking him
questions in brief sentences and recording his replies.
Not only sentences, Vakeesan would speak even the words in
softer articulation. Most of the time, those who spoke to him would usually
bring their ears very near to his mouth and thus get his replies confirmed.
I spoke to the doctor after a brief introduction about me.
After analysing the sequence of events that occurred, the
doctor inferred that Vakeesan might have seen or heard something that
afternoon, which must have reminded him of his past.
I briefed the doctor about his loneliness after being
orphaned due to the boat accident, the present state of his education, and his
background. But the doctor didn’t seem to be convinced with all these. His face
revealed the signs of his suspicions. H
He rubbed his face with his two hands as he removed his specs
and kept it on the table.
“I need to talk about Vakeesan’s health with the school
principal,” he said.
As they told me that they didn’t have any objections to
sending Vakeesan with me, I took him in my car and left for the government
housing. He was agreeably happy to be out of the hospital. Keeping no prolonged
silence in the car, I struck up a conversation with him.
“Who is coming for the boxing match this time, Vakeesan?”
“New Zealand”
“Oh”
“Next time India comes. Right?”
“Oh”
The usual evening traffic jam of Melbourne city had delayed
our journey to Mill Park.
“What did you carry in the morning for breakfast?”
“Sandwich”
“Mm”
Vakeesan’s composed replies offered me a strength to move to
my next questions.
“Did anyone say anything in the school? What happened in the
afternoon that you fell unconscious?”
“……..”
“Are you afraid of telling me that?”
“...”
“If you are afraid, you don’t have to tell that?”
I stopped the car after reaching his house, picked up his
schoolbag, and went into his room with him. His face had no traces of a
hospital visit.
He drank water from the fridge, poured me a ‘Coke,’ went into
his room, changed his dress, and came out.
“How far is the sea from here, Anna?”
Though it was an unexpected question, his silence did come to
an end with it, and it offered me a hope.
“It’ll take three quarter an hour. Do you want to go there?”
“Yes… Next Saturday”
Holding the water bottle in his hand, he stood there staring
at me, waiting for a satisfactory reply from me.
“Oh…we can go.”
He switched on the TV. I spent time with him, watched the
news, and left.
I was trying to interweave what the doctor had told about him
with his sudden inclination to visit the sea. My mind was growing restive.
‘If Vakeesan, who had lost his parents in a boat accident,
now wants to go to the seashore, it does appear correct that he has regained
his old thoughts or memories as the doctor has told. But who’d made him regain
all those thoughts? Has he spoken to any such survivor like him in the school?
He is not speaking about it. Even when asked, he didn’t reply. It seems he
doesn’t like to share any such things.
Apart from submitting mandatory reports to the government and
being Vakeesan’s “immediate contact” and “well-wisher,” I grew inquisitive to
know what had happened to him.
I was travelling thinking all these. Vakeesan’s school
principal called me on the way and inquired what had happened in the hospital.
I explained to him in detail what the doctor said and his suspicions.
When enquired, Vakeesan’s class teacher and other students
said that Vakeesan was speaking to a girl student, namely Alindra, before he
fell unconscious in the afternoon.
Alindra had very recently migrated to Melbourne from a state
in Western Australia. The school principal gave additional information—that she
is living near Mill Park School. After she joined their school, she became very
friendly with Vakeesan, he told. They never had any problem till now. The
principal swore on his responsible position and ruled out the possibility of a
fight between them, which might have resulted in him falling unconscious, as he
had already checked the CCTV footage.
I parked my car on the side, and recorded the Alindra’s name
without spelling errors in my mobile phone. I promised the school principal
that I would send him a copy of incident report I kept for sending to Victoria
Children Protection home.
He thanked me and hung up the phone. After reaching home, I
wrote Alindra’s name correctly on Facebook and searched for her.
Alindra was not a white girl. She shone in a golden
complexion, a sort of mixture of black and white. She had either wrinkled her face,
or stuck out her tongue, or just boasted of her assets, which looked overgrown
for her age in almost all her selfie pictures on Facebook. All the pictures
seemed to have been taken somewhere in Western Australia. Scrolling it further
down, it took me to a Black woman’s picture with a sentence below it. “Grandma—Monora,
brave woman who fought for the rights of Yuvuru people.”
I started searching for the Yuvuru land on the internet and
recorded all the details available in the links I visited. But I couldn’t
arrive at a solid inference with the help of those notes despite my skilful
application of logic. That time, I just remembered a professor from Western
Australia who taught economics at Melbourne University. We had known each other
very well till the day we had the last dinner after his retirement. He used to
be curious about Sri Lankan politics. I sent him an email and inquired about
Yuvuru land. Though the distance between Western Australia and Melbourne was
just a three-hour journey, he could easily identify me with my name as if he
was waiting for my letter. He then wrote a reply within two hours. He told me
getting reliable sources to collect information about Yuvuru lying on a sea
coast very far from Western Australia was extremely difficult and gave me a
contact of a human rights enthusiast living there.
I sent that contact an email, and I received a reply after
three days. The human rights activist had sent an email with some scanned
copies of historical evidence pertaining to Monora and her parents that he
could collect from a local library. He had sent a handwritten note that Monora
was an important lady who fought for the freedom of Yuvuru land.
He had written about the death of Monora’s father and the
dead body of a white man found after three days of her father’s death. Monora
became a very brave woman who fought for the freedom of Yuvuru land after many
years after her father’s death—he had noted in block letters. When I completed
reading his email, it was already dark. The moonlight outside was shining
bright, making the night a new day.
Some pictures showing the groups of pregnant aboriginal
women, chained for the purpose of throwing them into pearl fishing, came
through my mind again and again and caused an oppressive pain in me. The very
thought of a slave’s helpless cry made one hundred and thirty years ago still
piercing the deepest parts of the memory of an immigrant without losing its
tenor made my two shoulders shudder in reflex.
On a Saturday afternoon, I went to Melbourne’s North government
housing, picked up Vakeesan, and reached Melbourne’s Brighton beach. His face
looked gloomy. His eyes were evincing that something with pain was still
swimming in his memory. A long, blank stare, which one could see in him even in
his silence, was evident all the way to the beach.
The sea welcomed everyone with its usual force, sending the
white, foamy, unrelenting waves to its shore. The waves that hit the shore as
if being unaware of Vakeesan were retreating to the sea.
Vakeesan got off the car, went near the waves, stood at a
distance where the foamy waves could touch his feet, and looked absorbedly into
the horizon. He threw a disgusting stare at that bluish, vast stretch of water.
An intense yearning—why didn’t his mother come out of the sea alive holding her
breath?—was visible in all the floaters of his eyes.
***Ended***
