Stories of the Wind

The day was still tender; the air cold, foul and unforgiving. For some reason the sun was hiding her face from the earth. Darkness ruled over the eastern coast of Sri Lanka. A small hut in Pottuvil stood decidedly facing east, eagerly waiting for the arrival of dawn.

Inside the hut Ruban lay on a termite-ridden mat. The mat offered little comfort. Ruban’s bare body shivered as a strong breeze crossed over from the sea. His mother was already up and had set about her daily routine. Ruban could hear his mother washing the few pieces of culinary they’ve been using for years.

Ruban woke up to the rattling sound of Aluminium hitting the floor. Then he heard his mother. ‘Ruban.’

He slowly got up and wrapped up his body in a thin piece of blanket. It was difficult to predict the time. Ruban guessed it to be around five. He was wrong: the clock was nearing seven.

Something about the day was simply not right. Ruban’s internal clock rarely lied.

‘Amma is there tea?’ he asked, despite knowing the answer. A cup of tea had become a luxury for the family in the last few months. Poverty had taken its toll.

A sad expression spread across Ruban’s mother’s face.

She still remembered that night: the night that changed her life, forever. That was the night she lost a half of herself. That was the night her husband was shot dead. That was the night she had made tea with love. 

Something was not right about that day too. Nature had a strange way of predicting (bad) things. One could always sense it coming.

*
Vasanthi’s husband, Selvarajah Vetrivelan (alias Kutti), was associated with the political wing of the TELO. Kutti was an educated man from Jaffna. He graduated from the University of Peradeniya with a first-class degree in Political Science. His comrades were from rather backward communities in the east.

For Lankan Tamils mid-eighties was a period of unquantifiable chaos. Black July was only the beginning. Seemingly adhering to the Second of Law of Thermodynamics ‘disorder’ increased in the country.

Kutti and Vasanthi were based in Jaffna in 1985. Ruban was barely seven years old then. The couple had tied the knots back in 1975. Listening to one of Kutti’s rousing speeches at the Nallur Temple about liberty and freedom was all it took for the twenty-three-year-old Vasanthi to fall for the slender young man. Kutti always had an aura of confidence about him, and Vasanthi loved it.

That night though, Kutti was not himself. An agonising sense of uncertainty hung in the air. Kutti knew that they were coming for him. He knew that his life was going to end.

The moon was nowhere to be seen.

Around four hundred TELO men, mostly from the east, had been mercilessly shot dead by the Tigers in the morning. Fighting had broken-out between different Tamil militant groups. The meltdown between the militant groups was not an unexpected one. Yet, the manner in which the fighting unfolded was entirely unanticipated. The Tigers were the chief culprits for the blood bath. It had been a red day.

Ironically, all these groups shared a common goal – the liberation of the Tamil people. Quest for power blurred the shared goal, as always.

Kutti knew that a marksman would be sent for him. No, he knew that one was already on his way. As one of the key leaders of the TELO, Kutti knew that ‘running’ was not an option. They will hunt him down, one day. Let it be today, Kutti resolved.

It was around ten o’ clock in the night. Vasanthi sensed that something was wrong. The tension in the air was almost tangible.

After putting Ruban to sleep, Vasanthi set about making tea. Once done, she settled near Kutti. She was clad in a batik nightdress. Kutti admired her subtle beauty in the flickering light of a candle. Except for that candle, the house was in pitch darkness. The air was unusually hot that night. It was almost as if the trees had started breathing out carbon dioxide at double the usual rate.

Her face shined gold. Her eyes spoke words that only Kutti could comprehend. Vasanthi’s tea came with love. Vasanthi planted a kiss on her husband’s cheek. Kutti was unmoved. They sat in silence, for a long time.

Kutti, as if struck by some force, abruptly took his loving wife’s hand and whispered, ‘you have to run away with Ruban’. The words slowly sunk in. 

The day Kutti had anticipated was here. Her worst nightmare was slowly taking life.

They had gone through the details of this before. Kutti had been expecting this for the last two weeks. Vasanthi knew what was coming, and she knew what to do. And that was the worst part. Kutti had explained to her at least a dozen times what to do, when time finally came.

There was no excuse. She had to run, as planned.

Vasanthi got up. Kutti held her close for a few moments. Tears streamed down his face. Vasanthi’s muffled sobs filled the atmosphere.

Waking up Ruban did not take long. Kutti had packed everything they would need – a lot of money, and some clothes – neatly into a small bag.

Then she was gone.

*
Around midnight Kittu heard footsteps approaching his front gate. They had come. Three of the LTTE’s finest marksmen pounded the door open. For about five minutes gun shots pierced the quiet of the night.

Kittu lay dead, soaked in blood. Kittu went down fighting.

Then there was silence.

*

After spending the night in her mother’s house, Vasanthi boarded a bus to Batticaloa very early the next morning. The journey took a long time; it was nine in the night when she finally reached the house of one of Kutti’s best friends.

Her life would never be the same.

*

Ten years had passed since that night.

Memories from her life before that night was all Vasanthi treasured. She kept Kutti alive in her memories. She would talk to him all the time. Kutti was restless inside her head, today, as if the strange weather bothered him. Vasanthi smiled to herself when she realised the absurdity of her thoughts.

But, then, she had been doing this for the last ten years.

Ruban folded the mat and pushed it to the back end of the hut. An uneasy feeling filled him as he unbolted the front door and stepped outside.

It was about to rain.

Moments later, heavy drops of water came pouring down on the shed. Ruban rushed back inside and slammed the door shut behind him. It never rained in July.

Vasanthi sat crossed-legged in a corner. Ruban rested his head on her lap and closed his eyes. The loud noise rain drops made against the piece of tin sheet that covered one side of the thatched roofing blacked-out all other noises. Vasanthi could still remember very vividly the eerie silence of that night; especially the silence that followed a few gunshots. It was a month before she would admit (to herself) that Kutti was dead.

The door flung open. Vasanthi found herself staring at a group of men wearing uniforms of striped green and yellow. Without a word, they dragged a screaming Ruban away from his mother into the thick jungles.

It was a while before it dawned on Vasanthi that Ruban had just been conscripted by the very organisation that took Kutti’s life away.

Her son would soon become one of their ‘own’.

He would soon be fighting a wretched war that only a handful of people from either side of the ethnic divide desired.

He would soon die.

Her son would die for the group that killed her husband.

The reality of it all was too harsh. This had to end.

*

For Vasanthi, this time there was no ‘running away’; there was only ‘running into’.

Screaming, Vasanthi rushed out of the front door. The sea was close by. She plunged herself into the mighty waves of the Indian Ocean, and drowned herself to death. Her body floated in the waters, eyes wide open.

She was finally liberated, from the miseries of her earthly existence. She was reunited with Kutti, in spirit.