The Wall

A Civil war had been going on between the Tamils and Sinhalese in a little island country known as Srilanka. This is a love story defining the desperation in the people's lives.

†******†******†******†******†******

How is it that as young children Kumar and I climbed the wall with ease?

As children, we held hands, played and ran towards that wall and went over it with ease.
Beyond the wall lay the sea.
Perhaps that is the magic that drew us.On a sunny day, the sea sparkled like an emerald under the sun. There were shells of all shapes and sizes to pick up. There were sand to build castles with.Only, the sea always broke down our castles.

Because of the influence of our homes, we spoke in English with a smattering of Sinhala and Tamil words thrown in.
But there was never any problem in communication then. We were happy, unrestrained, no barriers between us.

But today.....Have we come to a parting of ways?

Or is it possible, is there a chance, a dream, that one day there may be no wall between us and the sea, that we may walk hand in hand as adults, like we did as children?
This time we will walk along the railway tracks, sit on the rocks and watch our own children play with sand and sheep's. Or is that only a dream?

Alone in my room overlooking the wall, I ponder.
Can hearts, can feelings change when there is an upheavel in a country?

In north and along the eastern coast, a war is still going on.
Kumar's home is in Jaffna. It is from there that the Eelam Tigers began their war. Now they want to build a wall across the land. Make a separate race, a separate country.
How will this affect my Kumar? Will he want to desert me and join his own race?

I cannot love or marry anybody but Kumar.
Did we not grow up as friends?
Escaping from the beehives of apartments that formed our home, we had the wind ruffle our hair as we laughed.
We had not been aware then of the difference between us, he being a Tamil and I, a Sinhalese. But today there is little of that laughter left in us.....

When did Kumar begin to change or did I change? Or were we changed?

I look at myself in the mirror. I have changed from a child into a woman.
My hair is long and I have plaited it into a thick, long rope. But my lips are compressed and eyes are swollen with crying.
Why am I crying? Because I am left alone?

My mother is at her shrine, praying. Each day she buys fresh flowers and lays them to die at her little altar. Does she expect me to lie down in self sacrifice too? I will not marry any one of the people she keeps proposing.
If I cannot marry Kumar I will not marry anyone. So is there any purpose in mother praying, seeking astrologers and marriage brokers? Even if the environment has changed, I will not.

I will remain steadfast in love and friendship.

To me human relationships matter more than civil wars.
How can Kumar be my enemy when we have grown up together? But what does Kumar feel towards me. He has become unfathomable of late. Have people and events changed him?

Kumar's father died when he was an infant. He knew only his mother. Mrs. Yogeswaram made up for both his parents. She is a strong, determined and proud woman. She is undefeatable. Even after becoming a widow, she did not lose hope.
Her arms and neck are always covered in gold ornaments l, and she wears a nose ring with sparkling ruby set in it, the way Tamil women do.

Until the racial riots of 1983, Mrs.Yogeswaram kept a clean fat near ours in block B. The sea air blew fresh into both our flat and ours.

As a child, I roamed freely in and out of her house, just as Kumar had come and gone out of ours. We were two friends, with no barriers between us. I recall mango leaves strung across Mrs. Yogeswaram's flat door and a picture of the goddess Ganesh and goddess Lakshmi. Inside our flat, there was a small shrine to the Buddha.
Mrs. Yogeswaram used to take me alone with them to enjoy the festival of Deepavli. She used to rub holy ash on my forehead give me presents of coloured bangles from the wayside bangle sellers.
Kumar used to eat milk and rice with is during Sinhala New Year. On the festival of Wrsak, he used to help us hang out paper lanterns and even accompanied us to the temple, dressed in white. Our lives and culture were intermingled.

Then slowly, the restrictions set in. Gradually an invisible line was drawn between us. Mother told me not to disturb their privacy anymore, not to hang about the Yogeswaram's flat, nor was Kumar to visit ours.

"You are no longer a child" she said in reply to my questions.
"You are turning into a young woman. It is no more seemly that you keep going into a household that holds only a mother and don't, if there were girls, sisters, then it would be different. But there is only the son. "

"But Kumar is my friend, even without my sister." I exclaimed.

"You must now develop friendships that can lead to marriage."
I attributed it to my growing up then which had made my mother's attention turn suddenly towards me.
Why did she guard me, force me to make friends with compete strangers? Why did she discourage my friend of so many years, the one I had grown up with?

From then on, I began to meet Kumar in secret. Our formerly open friendship became something furtive, hidden. After school we met in ice cream parlours and tea shops and in the evenings we climbed the wall and sat on the rocks and talked or just sat silent, watching the sea in motion. No more sand castles, no more seashells.

My father believes that the uprising in the north did not just happen.
It began with a build up of frustrations and tensions and unhappy events that led to a crisis. He has no sympathy for the Tamil people, for Kumar. He hates the terrorists. He says that I must not trust those whom I have known for years, as they may be enemies in disguise.

Kumar has nothing to do with racial discrimination nor violence, that I am certain. When he finished school, he was not interested in politics but only in doing well in his accountancy exams. We used to discuss our futures together, sitting on the sun warmed rocks. I wanted to become a trained teacher and he an accountant.

Why did we choose careers that would serve us even out of our motherlands? Did we sense that we had no future here?

Kumar is twenty two, very serious, very intent in what he feels and does. This is the first big change in Kumar. He does not speak with me as early and frankly as he used to when we were children. Tall, thin, dark, his thick glasses often hide even his eyes from me. Very often we just sit on the rocks and let the sea speak for us.

Once, he said " When the sea is deep and clam once more, one must be aware. There may be dangerous currents beneath its surface. It is easier to read the sea when it is in turmoil."
Kumar does not talk of love yet. As yet his hanfmd has not touched mine.
One day, mother bought a proposal of marriage for me. It was a distant cousin of ours I had not met in years.

"I am only twenty mother. I do not want to marry just yet."

"I was married when I was 17."

"Girls married young in those times. Today, we have so many more opportunities. I want to teach, earn my living first."

"And what does your father say about your thoughts?"

"I have not asked him yet. Besides, it is my life.".

"If I had spoken like that yo my mother, I would have been slapped in the face."

"I told you mother, times have changed."

Father spoke to me next "We don't want you to be alone in this world should something happen to both of us."

" I won't be alone. I have Kumar."
I saw mother exchange a look with father.
They said nothing further buy every morning, Father watched me over the edge of his newspaper with steel-rim glasses resting firmly on his nose.
"What terrible things ate happening. If only I had a gun, I would give the lamppost treatment to these Tamils myself. And instead of condemning such acts of brutality, the Tamil people Herr are in sympathy with the terrorists."

"That is, after the riots of 1983," I protested." Until 1983, the Tamils were our friends, but when their houses were attacked and burnt down by our people, they obviously began to mistrust us."

"Our people? who started the attack?" Shouted father. He cleared his throat, calmed himself and continued in a low but hard tone.

"Don't make a mistake my child. I am not giving a cent of your dowry to any Tamil. Not one cent."
I looked at mother who was crying.

"What are you talking about? Kumar and I have not talked of marriage. We are just good friends." I looked down at my own hands and found them knotting without my will.
'We are no longer a united family.' I thought. 'We are already divided in our own family'

That evening Kumar told me his mother wanted him to accompany her to Jaffna.
"But you haven't been to Jaffna in years. Why must you go now when there is a war going on? You might be killed."

He avoided looking at me." Mother says it is because we haven't gone for years that we must go now. We must no longer alienate ourselves from our brethren, our people."
"Your people,my people..." I began to cry. I knew Mrs.Yogeswaram was feeling the same way as my parents. She was trying, in her way, to separate us. Probably she was taking Kumar to Jaffna to get him married to a Tamil girl.

"I don't want you to go." I said.

"Can I let mother go on her own, undertake that long and dangerous journey alone?"

"Will you come back?"

"I would like to go......." Kumar said slowly "to see what is really happening there. Sometimes I feel I am two people. The one who lives in Colombo, thinking and feeling like a foreigner, and the other who seeks his roots..."

"You feel like a foreigner here? Where you have lived your entire life?"

"Don't cry." He begged "None of us can help changing with the tide of events."
The sea keeps changing colours under the sun's rays. One moment it is blue, then gray, and then a deep, dark unreadable colour. It is the sun playing with the sea. I wish it would remain constant.
Kumar spoke fiercely "One day when I am a qualified accountant and you a
full-fledged teacher, maybe we can cross that sea and find a new country where we can live in peace together, where we will be accepted together."

Then I clung to him, crying " Let us do that, please let us do that! Don't let your mother persuade you to marry someone with a big dowry, someone of your own kind...."

Kumar withdrew himself abruptly, " I am not going to Jaffna to get married. I am going to see my homeland, to know what is happening and to tend to our neglected affairs and property there. Our old, ancestral home is now being occupied by terrorists."

"But once you get there, you might change your mind or the terrorists might keep you or...some girl"
Kumar smiled. It was rare for Kumar to smile.

"There is a saying among the Jaffna people that though the shade of a tamarind tree is cooler than any other, the son of a widowed mother cannot sleep under one because then in his sweet sleep he will forget his mother, to whom he owes his life."
I am silent, afraid to ask more of him, because of the power his mother has over him I have to content myself with the future, with hope that one day we will run away..together..hand in hand...

The moon will be powerful tonight.
Mother will go to the temple and I will lag behind her, moving as if drugged among the white clad devotees who were once .y people. Mother will carry a tray of white jasmine flowers and incense and oil for the lamps which she will light near the Bodhi tree. She is going to pray for me to get over the this obsession over Kumar.
She has got a new proposal lined up for me and wants it to work.
That is why she puts on a pious face, dresses in white and traces the route to the temple.
Water will be sprinkled on the white jasmine flowers and they will be laid on the altar. Somehow, the flowers have become me. I can see myself, in the full bloom of youth, sprinkled with scented water and laid to die on the altar.
As the flowers will slowly die, deprived of sun and water, so will I wither and shrivel, my heart died inside of me.
Mother will go to the wishing well in the temple premises and drop a coin, closing her eyes and making a vow which she will repay when I have married the one she has chosen for me.

Strange, but at that very moment Mrs.Yogeswaram may be praying to the same god in a different garb for Kumar to give me up. The Hindu gods have a place in Buddhist temples.
Will the power of the two prayers combine to settle pur fates? Have mothers got a complete right over their children's fates? Can they be happy knowing we are unhappy?

Kumar has been away in Jaffna for many months now. I received only one letter from him and yet no word about his return has come to me.
Every morning as an excuse for brainwashing, Father reads out loud news items which formerly he read to himself.

"Terrorist landmine kills three soldiers and a policeman"

"Northern terrorists massacre Dinhala villagers, butcher innocent children.."
To counteract, my mind keeps slipping back into 1983.

How unknown persons had forced entry into the Yogeswaram's flat,raided it and snatched the gold chain off Mrs.Yogeswaram, torn the earrings from her earlobes and then dragged out her fire, setting fire to it. And how mother and father had taken them to our flat for safety because they were only burning Tamil houses. Father has forgotten his own kindness. He has changed.
"Terrorists swallow cyanide in preference to being captured." He reads in a hard tone.
Why has all the softness and humanity gone out of him? With everyobe hard and unrelenting, where is the chance for peace?

I am alone in my room, facing the wall which we used to climb with such ease, Kumar and I.

How is it all going to end?

However deeply I feel, however much I think, I realize that thinking and feeling cannot halt the winds of change. I can only wait. Wait and pray that those who wage war will realize that true peace and happiness can come only when all barriers are broken and we become one.
Then even the sea cannot break our dreams and bring down our castles.....

Author's Note

Please do leave a review if you liked it :)

xoxoxoxoxo
Romalina

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

You are a amazing writer. I like the emotional journey and the battle to find love in hard times.
'However deeply I feel, however much I think, I realize that thinking and feeling cannot halt the winds of change. I can only wait. Wait and pray that those who wage war will realize that true peace and happiness can come only when all barriers are broken and we become one.
Then even the sea cannot break our dreams and bring down our castles....."
I like the above lines a lot. Life is hard. Few times does life fall right. Thank you for sharing the outstanding story.
Coyote

[Romalina]

Thank you for that kind compliment :)

[Coyote Poetry]

Was my pleasure and you are welcome.

[Solar]

Beautifully written - love struggling to survive in the midst of violence and hate.

[manojdev]

Being a Tamilian myself, I think you have captured the cultural beliefs during those times( exists even now) very well. You seem to have great empathy for your characters, and the research effort put in clearly shows. It's a great story:)
Regards
Manoj

[Romalina]

I am Indian. Being neighbor countries does give us an opportunity to share in your culture and help in times of crisis. I have simply tried to capture the feelings of a girl's heart. I am really happy you liked it :)

[ghostlyhearts]

This is a wonderful story full of emotion. I could picture the beach and their castle, being wiped out by the sea. The struggle she faced not being able to marry whom she wanted. I love how the wall starts out as a physical location then slowly turns into an emotional one. You did well!!

[Romalina]

Thank you so much for the kind words :)

[Romalina]

Thank you so much for the kind words :)

[ghostlyhearts]

You are welcome!

[Nani Mino]

i loved the story very much .what kind of challenge! also your words attract our attention and feeling .go on

[Romalina]

Thank you so much :)