The Seasons of Trouble (15 page)

Around them, half-lit people bobbed slowly in the expanse, making supper or getting ready to sleep. The bunker next to theirs, however, was abuzz. Mugil’s mother said their neighbours believed that the worst bombing came at night, and they did not want to ‘lie down and die for the army’. No one who took shelter in that bunker was allowed to sleep at night.

Wherever it was in the Vanni, each bunker had a character: its own obsessions, its own schedule, its own fears. One large bunker in Uruthurapuram, occupied largely by the elderly, was lined with
blue tarpaulin hoarded by the occupants, who felt the rain to be their greatest enemy. The residents of a rectangular trench near what was once the office of the Coir Cooperative Society followed a strict roster to maintain a nightly lookout. A disabled former combatant called Manian enforced this with such fervour that even after pneumonia did him in, the bunker’s inmates followed his routine. Next to the Manian bunker was the ‘ladies’ bunker’. This trench, with eight women and seven young children, had become a kitchen of sorts. They cooked gruel or
paruppu
at every opportunity and distributed it to others in exchange for milk, firewood, medicines or groceries. For survival, they were counting on the men’s
uppu kadan
, the moral debt incurred by eating someone else’s cooking.

Packed with splintered households and strangers from different villages, the bunkers created new families with every battle. Years afterwards, bunk mates would recognise each other on the street and greet each other with the melancholic joy of survivors. They would ask if that broken limb had healed, if the family was together, if mother had overcome her paranoia, if the army had finally allowed them to go home, if they were planning to go abroad. The raw bonds forged while crouching underground, among people thrown together by catastrophe, would last a lifetime.

MUGIL
’
S FATHER HAD
been out gathering firewood. On his return, he immediately sat down to ask her if she knew what was going on. Military strategy was his preferred topic of conversation, especially with the daughter he always called his ‘first son’. When he began the ‘battle talk’, as Mother used to call it, Amuda walked away.

Father said Divyan and Prashant had come by some days ago, bringing news: Kilinochchi was captured, and the army had crossed Elephant Pass. Mullaitivu was still standing, but Divyan had hinted that they were surrounded there, too. Prashant, however, had assured him that ‘something will change and we will hit back’.

Father reported her little brother’s assertion with a wry smile. The latest in their family to work with the LTTE, Prashant had the passion of a recent convert. He was good for morale and made a
resolute soldier, but Mugil knew it would be years before he learnt to balance obedience with discretion. Father trusted her instinct, however, and wanted to know if their decision to leave PTK was well advised. ‘We’re being fired at here, so shouldn’t we try to leave for Vavuniya or Jaffna by boat?’

Mugil told him what she had seen on the way—the retreat of LTTE units towards PTK. But she felt muddled about what to make of it, unable to judge if being near the Tigers meant they’d be protected or if they’d end up in the line of fire.

In similar situations since the nineties, the LTTE had usually kept the Tamil civilians with them, even forcing them to leave their villages with the movement of cadres. It had led to hundreds of deaths, but had saved many more lives. Exodus was the very foundation of the Vanni. Cadres internalised the practice: if civilians were removed from the picture, the army would have a free hand to bomb the fighters. And if the fighters lost and ceded territory, inch by inch, the dream of a Tamil homeland would go up in smoke. Keeping civilians around them was the way these guerrilla forces fought. It bought them time and, often, resources.

But on the other side of the line now, Mugil was disconcerted. Had the battle followed them or had they been led into the battle? What if she and her father were dragged out to fight? Perhaps it would be worth the risk to defy orders and leave. Would the Tigers ostracise her family if they won the war? Moreover, leaving the area meant they would have to fend for themselves. Here, the Tigers were accompanied by ration lorries, from which you could buy food. Even if a coconut cost 600 rupees, at least it was available. What would be in store for them at the other end, where the army was? She wasn’t sure she could abandon the saviour and embrace the attackers. If they were not under the Tigers’ care, who could her family turn to? Was it time to tell father about the mango orchard, about her hopelessness? Aloud, she said, ‘We’ve never been surrounded this tightly before. Maybe the leaders know something we don’t. Divyan and Prashant are on duty, we should listen to them for now. Let’s stay put until they return.’

‘Why is Pottu Amman in charge of PTK?’ Father asked next. ‘What happened to Ratnam Master?’

The supreme leader’s special friendship with his right-hand man Pottu Amman had decayed around 2007, when he replaced him with Ratnam Master. If all of Vanni was heading to PTK, her father was puzzled as to why Annan’s most trustworthy commander had not been put in charge.

Mugil realised that Father was speaking to her as if she were still privy to the inner workings of the LTTE. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t sure her leaders even had a coherent plan—that if Pottu Amman was dragging unwilling children into war, this was probably the last stage. But her father wouldn’t believe that. She wasn’t sure she did entirely. So she told him that Pottu Amman was still holding onto PTK while other zones had been captured. ‘So maybe it’s good we have him here,’ she said.

‘He’d better not surrender and sing like the others,’ Father said.

As soon as he said this, the old man, the pregnant girl’s grandfather, seemed to stir awake. ‘Don’t count on it,’ he scoffed, shaking his head in a way that annoyed Mugil. ‘There are so many spies and leaks on our side now. It’s better the leaders keep their plans close to their chests.’

This was a familiar refrain. Traitors—
throhis
—were the ghosts of Vanni. Everyone believed in them but few had evidence. They were considered the hidden rot in an otherwise perfectly healthy system, and leaders didn’t think twice before putting a gun to their heads. Anyone could prove a traitor—it could be a friend, relative, or comrade—and, since there was always the threat of army torture, no one could be sure of not becoming one some day. Every combatant feared succumbing to coercion and divulging strategic secrets. So throughout training, each fighter was warned that a moment of weakness could mean the death of thousands of Tamils, perhaps even his or her family. The fatal cyanide vial, which every cadre carried, was the potent symbol of this dread of the
throhi
. Biting on one, and committing suicide on capture meant you avoided the shame of betraying your community.

Treachery was not solely a matter of divulging secrets to the enemy. Infractions of protocol or convention could prove unforgiveable—a sign of disloyalty, for instance, or a desire to cut ties with the LTTE. Privileging family over the Tamil nation, harbouring
personal ambition or merely demonstrating critical thought could damn you. The price for questioning the LTTE’s actions was death. Rajini Thiranagama, a former combatant, wrote about the atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan army and the Indian army stationed in the north in the late eighties, as well as similar crimes of the Tamil militias, including the LTTE. It was the Tigers who killed her in 1989. Thiranagama’s co-authors, professors from Jaffna University, fled the country, fearing the same fate. The Tigers had always been a tough outfit, but once they had hunted down their competitors among the militants and emerged as the unrivalled leaders in the Vanni, a ruthlessness entered their bones. They didn’t tolerate any view that contradicted their propaganda.

Lest their comments be carried to the high command, Vanni’s residents largely avoided talking about the workings of the LTTE unless it was to eulogise the movement. Doubt or negativity among civilians, it was said, would hinder the Eelam mission. Death, fear, depression, none of it was considered a good reason for a Tamil to retreat from the Vanni. Prabakaran once said in his annual speech on Martyrs’ Day that traitors were ‘more dishonourable than enemies’. Lost battles were blamed on betrayal, and considerable energy was spent on rooting out spies and informers.

Her community blamed the ongoing war squarely on someone it considered, as did Mugil, to be the greatest traitor of them all: Colonel Karuna, the eastern wing commander, who had been close to Annan but broke away from the Tigers in 2006. Since then, the Vanni was inching towards decimation.

Mugil was wary of spies, like everyone else, yet reluctant to encourage the gossipy direction of the grandfather’s comment.

‘They won’t all turn out to be like Karuna,’ she said. ‘We wouldn’t have come so far without loyal fighters.’ She would have said more but was afraid her recent doubts would become obvious.

‘Oho! How could they know of our hideouts if
throhis
hadn’t blabbed?’ the grandfather argued. ‘Oh, how will we win with people stabbing us in the back all the time? We need to support the movement at this time.’

Mugil didn’t understand how this man could gabble on about
throhis
and winning the war when his own grandson had so recently
been forcibly taken by Pottu Amman. She, too, wanted nothing more than for the Tigers to thrash the army, but she had other ideas about who the real traitors were. She was sure it was the political wing that was stealing the children. No sane military would enlist children if they were serious about winning. She couldn’t fathom why the Tiger military leaders weren’t sending the children back. Divyan had been saying for months that they were understaffed, but she thought pushing raw recruits out to fight was inefficient. That’s why her camera had been full of new faces lying dead throughout the battlefield. That’s why the Tigers were retreating like never before. That’s why people were ready to abandon the side they had stood by for decades.

Before she could bite it back, the words rolled out of her: ‘I’ll tell you something,
thatha
. We won’t lose because of traitors. We will lose because of five-paisa ideas like sending out baby recruits to fight an army.’

The old man looked at Mugil pointedly. ‘How have you escaped fighting and run away?’

‘What’s it to you?’ Mugil snapped. Her mother, listening in silence until now, slapped her thigh to shush her.

‘Don’t talk like that,
thatha
,’ her mother told the old man. ‘She has done her duty already. Now she’s come home to her children, that’s all. My son and son-in-law are still in the field, anyway. We’re doing our duty.’

Mother then looked at Mugil pointedly and asked her to serve the food on the leaf plates. She called Amuda and her kids. ‘Enough of this useless talk. Shall we eat?’

Quietly, they ate their first meal of the day, digging into the banana flower
poriyal
(made without coconuts or chillies), boiled
kadala paruppu
and rice. Mugil’s mother had a lifetime’s experience of making do with limited ingredients, but this was a stretch even for her. A UN truck had brought vegetables and rice, but Mugil’s father had not even made it through the crowd that milled around the distribution area. Mother had then fallen at strangers’ feet, crying about her hungry grandchildren, begging for a share of their supplies. One woman had given in, but only after Mugil’s mother handed over a thin gold bangle for five handfuls of rice.

That night, Mugil prepared to sleep on the highest level, her favoured position in any bunker, from which she could keep an eye on the ground. The grandfather, however, announced loudly that it would be better for the ladies to sleep on the lowest level. Mugil had a mixed urge to both laugh and scream. He wouldn’t have dared speak this way if she were in uniform or if her husband were there.

Lying down in the bunker was impossible; there were too many people. They made space for the pregnant girl to sleep on her side, and the other women sat upright. Maran curled up with his cousin. Kalai slept across her grandmother and Amuda. Tamizh, still awake, sat listlessly on Mugil’s lap. She patted his back. It was cold, but the bodies pressing against each other were comforting. Mugil felt her eyelids shut, even though gunfire rang out at close range.