The Seasons of Trouble (18 page)

The PTK bunkers were rife with arguments about the hospital shelling, the rising number of injuries, the food shortages and displaced and separated families. But the hardest developments to digest were conscription and the loss of confidence in the Tiger leaders. Pottu Amman, people said, had all but lost PTK. Since January, Tamil villagers had been appalled at the Tigers’ casual neglect of people’s safety in the battle zone. They did not inform villages about sieges and set off landmines on approach roads. Cadres camped among the civilians in bunkers, exposing people to both LTTE fire and retaliations from the military.

Because of the Tigers’ callousness, many began to look for ways to shield themselves from the onslaught. Over the radio and over loudspeakers, the Sri Lankan military was promising shelter to civilians in the Thevipuram no-fire zone. ‘If you stay in your villages, we cannot guarantee your safety,’ they announced. ‘Go to the no-fire zone. Move with your families there. There is food, water,
and security there.’ Panic-stricken thousands rose from the bunkers and filled the roads that led away from PTK.

Above Mugil’s bunker, feet ran helter-skelter. People were packing to leave. ‘I didn’t think I would be alive to see this happen in the Vanni,’ Father said. ‘Putting our heads willingly into the lion’s mouth … Has it come to this?’

Leaving, however, was not proving easy. Just as the Tigers had done in the nineties with the Jaffna exodus and often in the Vanni thereafter, they were ordering the civilians to stay or move with them during battle. Mother reported seeing a young man loudly berate the LTTE for turning against their own. They had lit tall fires around exits from PTK, he screamed, preventing people leaving for the no-fire zone.

One evening, when Divyan came to see them, he described seeing charred bodies all around PTK, contorted in the last moments of failed escape. Taking her aside, he admitted to Mugil that disenchantment had crept into the forces. ‘This time is different,’ he said. ‘Since Kilinochchi fell, some cadres are not sure what they’re fighting for. They still fight like machines, but in the breaks they talk about surrender.’ That thousands of civilians were making it to the no-fire zone, defying the LTTE rules and trusting the enemy, was to him a sign of both their desperation and defeat.

There were still thousands who stayed in the Tiger-held areas—from injury, allegiance to their leaders or fear. Criticism of the LTTE was not easy for most; loyalty was not just a generations-old habit but also considered a duty in guerrilla war. Some were sure the Tigers would have a reasonable explanation for what seemed like utter betrayal. Mugil heard it said over and over again: ‘They
must
have a strategy they have kept secret from us. We must stick with them.’

Mugil’s family was clear on one thing: they could not bring themselves to trust the army, especially after the hospital bombing. Going to the no-fire zone, they felt, was a sure way to die at the enemy’s hands. Mugil was also certain the young soldiers would not spare her and Amuda.

Having a member of the family serving in the movement made leaving doubly difficult. Divyan had to return to duty that night
and didn’t want his family to act without him. ‘Stay in the bunker,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to get a driving assignment at Vattapalai.’ He would get in touch with Prashant, too, and let him know that’s where they would go next. ‘Give me a few days.’

FOR PEOPLE IN PTK
, days and nights passed in phases of cowering from rain or missiles, foraging for food and repairing bunkers—actions to which there was no other purpose than to prolong survival. More than a month had passed since Kilinochchi was captured, and taking shelter was becoming dreary. Dulled by the routine and tired of crouching underground, people began to test their limits. In dry afternoons, they walked far from their bunkers to stretch their legs, stopping to chat with acquaintances and leisurely going about life-threatening tasks.

Both rumours and facts were exchanged as bunker room
vetti pechu
, or idle talk. Telephone lines were down and satellite phones were rarely available; gossip was the primary source of information. People gleaned lessons from new arrivals who told horrific tales from other places and of the miracle of their escape. They hung on the words of barefoot analysts conversant in military strategy, seeking to understand the impact of losses and wins. If a long-range missile hit a school at quarter to two in the afternoon, how long before another was launched? If a pellet from a cluster bomb lodged itself in your leg, why would amputation be the only option?

Children ran around near the sandbags, playing hide and seek, hopscotch and war games, shooting each other with twigs. A Catholic pastor who was among them held daily prayers for the Christians; many Hindus attended for the solace of swaying in group prayer and for the comforting sound of the pastor’s beautifully crafted words.

At one such gathering, Amuda met a schoolmate who, since her wedding, had moved to Vadduvakal, near Mullaitivu town. This woman had returned to PTK a day earlier, having left Mullaitivu when it fell to the Sri Lankan army. She described how her family had tried to take a boat out of Mullaitivu and into Vavuniya or Jaffna. But the missiles had come from the sea, too, killing her
teenage son, parents-in-law, and most of the twenty-odd people on the boat.

Amuda was shaken. She related this to Mugil back at the bunker: ‘What I can’t believe is that Mullaitivu has fallen to the army, and we find out only now, after ten days! Which world are we in? Next, our mother will die, and we won’t know the date on which it happened.’ It was perhaps an idle comment but it alarmed Mugil. How could chronology be possible when minutes became weeks in the darkness of bunkers and a day was lost in a moment’s explosion? She had to regain her grip on time. She tore a long strip from her mother’s already ripped sari and turned it into her version of a tally bar. Beginning with 25 January, the day Mullaitivu fell, she tied one knot for every sunset. A count of every day they survived.

But the knots would not record how hard it was to make it through every single day. Death and serious injury were becoming more familiar, but the most dreaded killer was hunger. Mugil hated its slow onset and the maddening paralysis it brought. Malnourished children and famished adults shrivelled. To put out the burning in their stomachs, they made rash decisions and took risks. They fought over morsels, dove into burning jungles and rushed frantically to food supply lines, wherever they were.

When Mugil heard that some officials from the government agent’s office were distributing
paruppu
, salt and pumpkins in an Iranpalai school, she spent half a day crossing the dangerous A35 highway to get there. As she stood in the food queue, she scanned the hands of those coming back from the counter. Each carried a small pyramid of yellow pumpkin spotted with brown fungus. A newspaper packet held 250 grams of pale
kadala paruppu
—one look and she knew it would be hard as pebbles. The precious salt was packed in pages of used school notebooks, like thumb-sized sachets of holy ash from a temple. She had expected much more; she had brought an aluminium bucket.

‘Come on, give us coconuts!’ yelled a man from the queue, a futile demand that came at least once in every food line. From behind him, a woman’s assertive voice heckled the distributors. ‘You should have told us it was rotten Indian rations; we wouldn’t have bothered to come!’ she shouted. That won a few tired laughs.
The heckler then asked sarcastically if it hadn’t occurred to the government agent to send drinking water. ‘Or maybe you expect us to drink the seawater!’ More nervous laughter.

Mugil watched as the woman marched past her to the front of the queue and grabbed a few food packets. No one protested; the woman wore pants and a shirt. As she walked back, she lifted the rations for everyone to see. ‘It’s running out!’ she said cruelly. Several people broke the line to rush to the counter. That’s when Mugil recognised the heckler’s cocky grin and intimidating broad shoulders. The woman had been one of her first unit commanders.

‘Devayani
akka
!’ Mugil called out.

The woman turned around. ‘Selvi!’ she shouted, using Mugil’s old nom de guerre. She pulled her former protégé out of the queue and hugged her. ‘
Sugama irukkeerhala
? Is your family well?’ she asked. The greeting had survived their region’s many battles; its evocation of family, health and happiness reinforced what they held most dear.

‘Only as well as everybody else,’ Mugil said.

‘Where is that Divyan? Aren’t all of you together?’

‘Most of us. Divyan is on duty. Prashant—I don’t know where he is,’ Mugil said. Did Devayani
akka
have a way to find out? Did she still have a satellite phone?

‘No, I don’t have my phone. Anyway I’m not waiting for orders anymore. I’m done.’

Mugil was taken aback by her senior’s candour. ‘Won’t the main office come after you?’

Devayani
akka
responded with a hollow laugh. ‘Who will they kill if I’m dead?’ she asked. Then, pulling Mugil away from the queue, she lowered her voice. ‘We’re crumbling, Selvi, we’re fighting with each other about what to do next.’ The commander admitted that the Tigers’ weapons were fast running out and that she had let some young recruits escape when she was put in charge of them. She railed against the LTTE political wing for recruiting ‘just anybody off the street, by giving them two slaps’. Her niece was killed at the front, she said, and so was her brother. She was weary of the arguments among the leaders, their collapsing unity. ‘I’m still in uniform,’ she said. ‘But that’s just for show.’

Mugil listened to Devayani
akka
, but half her attention was on the queue. She was annoyed at having lost her place. So when the commander paused, Mugil seized the opportunity. ‘Can I ask you something? Where do you think Prashant might be?’

Devayani
akka
looked confused, so Mugil continued. ‘You remember him? Prashant? My little brother? The eager boy? He was in the bomb-making unit, not on the front lines. I’m afraid he won’t survive all this.’

The commander seemed to pull herself together. She said that just a week earlier she had heard a rumour that many Tiger boys had been sent to an area near Valipunam, which had been a no-fire zone since late January. While one section of the LTTE had tried to stop the masses from relocating, some other leaders sent social workers, engineering department boys and Tiger doctors there to help set up tents, carry luggage or treat the wounded. She suggested that Mugil’s brother had perhaps also been sent there. ‘I’m not sure, okay? It’s what I’ve heard,’ she said.

Mugil began to thank Devayani
akka
when the latter slipped the food packets into Mugil’s bucket. ‘You know how the Sinhalese chaps are trying to win, right?’ she whispered. ‘By starving all of us. That way, they won’t have to waste ammunition.’ She patted Mugil’s stomach. ‘You beat their game and eat as much as possible, okay?’

‘You?’ Mugil asked, but Devayani
akka
was already walking back to the counter.

Late that evening in PTK, the family mulled over Devayani
akka’
s tip-off about Prashant. Father didn’t entirely believe it; he had decided from Mugil’s narration of events that the former commander had all but gone cuckoo. But it was more information than they had had in weeks, and Valipunam didn’t seem too far off. Mugil could make a quick trip there to search for her brother.

The decision made, they began to cook their first meal in two days, and Mugil opened the tiny sachet. Inside was not salt but the crushed dust of a few dried fish, salted by the sea air.

MUGIL LEFT FOR
Valipunam before dawn, before Tamizh could wake up and throw a fit. He was too attached now, always wanting
to be carried, refusing to leave her hip. Maran was lying half awake, and when she stepped over him in the bunker, he mumbled deliriously that he wanted some water. ‘Not one glass, I want a full bottle,
amma
.’ She shushed him.

Valipunam was across the highway, which the army patrolled. On the other side, in the section of the no-fire zone close to the A35, the Tigers were hiding in bunkers and firing at passing army trucks and tankers. She zigzagged across the road, using the vehicles as cover, and walked through the jungle and beyond to the cleared areas, in the opposite direction to the mass of people heading for safety.