For Lankan Tamils, a gateway to India

by Ranjitha Gunasekaran

(October 08, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) There’s sand in eight-year-old Darshan’s ears as he disappears with a blue toothbrush in search of sweet water. His family crossed the strait to reach India the previous night. They were dropped off on a sandbar near the ghostly Dhanushkodi, and spent the night with other refugees shivering on a wet beach. In the morning, they woke up to a film shoot.

Darshan looks a little disoriented and homesick. He nods slowly, reluctantly. Yes, he wishes he was still at home. His mother Sumathi, however, knows better. There is no looking back.

“My husband died two years ago of a fever. My three brothers were held for ransom by the Sri Lankan Army. They demanded Rs 10 lakh. And now I hear that the Tigers are recruiting child soldiers again. We had to leave,” she says, eyes fierce yet slowly filling with tears. After years of moving from place to place in Sri Lanka, she took her three sons, aged eight, nine and 10 and set out. The journey from Vavuniya to Mannar, a matter of a few hours in normal circumstances, took six days as they hid from the army, hid from the Tigers, until they finally reached the shore. From here they could take an illegal ferry to India and safety.

“It cost Rs 13,000 for me and Rs 6,500 for each of the boys. The boys refused to get into the boat — they didn’t want to leave and were so scared, they started crying,” she recalls. The nearly six-hour journey was shared with 14 others in a country fishing boat. For Sumathi and her co-passengers, though, it was worthwhile. They could finally hope for a good night’s sleep.

Kokila, another recent refugee, feels the same way. “We had a home and property but you can’t sleep at night and there’s danger at every corner.” So, along with her husband and two young daughters she came to India. “We have no intention of going back until things are more peaceful in Sri Lanka,” she added.

Many of the refugees who have risked so much to reach India and safety stress the importance of peace and a livelihood, but as many dream of going back home. “What sets these refugees apart is their resilience and the ability to keep going. Most manage to pick up life where they left off,” says G Gladston Xavier of the Social Work Department of Loyola College. He works closely with the refugees and is a regular visitor to the Mandapam Camp in Rameswaram.

Police officials working at the camp and aid workers admire their courage and their instinct for survival. “We don’t bring out a newborn baby for at least a month, but these people brought a three-day old baby across the sea,” a police officer recalled.

He also tells of the “team” that escaped from the camp and made for the Mandapam shore. “Four women and a child aged less than three waited 24 hours on the beach without food, shelter or protection for a ferry from Sri Lanka. That was the ‘team’. The women had work back home, and the child was their neighbours’. They wanted her to be seen by her grandfather. Imagine their courage and faith,” he marvelled. “And the child… to wait for an entire day with no food and never a cry.”

Residents of the Mandapam Camp are slightly confused by this admiration. For most, the worst is behind them. But the thought of home is like a splinter in the heart. Eighteen-year-old Murali admits that he and his friends pine for home at times. “But we know such thoughts are not fruitful, so someone changes the topic and makes sure we cheer up,” he says.

Rosemary, now a counseller with the Organisation for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation, has been in India for 10 years. She has worked as a coolie, woven mats, broken rocks, all just to survive and keep her two daughters in school. “There is a guarantee of life here but we are not well-off so we work very hard,” she explains. She doesn’t want to take her girls to Sri Lanka until the war ends, but the children, who don’t remember anything of life there, consider it their true home.

The refugees leave their land only reluctantly, but they see the sense of it, much like the Selvams, both teachers, who came to India last year only because they were old and yearned for peace. It’s not safe to stay in one place too long so people keep moving within the country. There is a large population of internally displaced persons in Sri Lanka, many of whom come to India as a last resort.

“We can’t live peacefully in our home,” Selvam says. “We have shifted at least five times within Sri Lanka in recent years. Now we are too old (76 and 70) and our children who live abroad said it was time to leave. Now that we are here, there’s no point in regrets,” his wife adds. Life is to keep living, after all.

(The names have been changed to protect identities) The writer can be reached at ranjithagunasekaran@epmltd.com - Sri Lanka Guardian