The Seasons of Trouble (52 page)

By the time he boarded the train back to Swansea, a weight was off his shoulders. He allowed himself to feel a flicker of optimism. He took his shoes off and stretched his aching legs under the seat in front of him. From his window, he saw stripes of snow between the tracks, like the back of a zebra. Slums passed, then the retirement communities, and the undulating acres of grey farmland, waiting for summer before they burst into colour.

The coffee cart came by, and he spent three whole pounds—more than half a day’s stipend—on a cappuccino and chocolate-chip muffin. When the coffee man left with an effervescent ‘Enjoy!’ Sarva felt a rush of belonging.

30.

April 2013

‘
HELLO, AMMA
. I got the letter from the Border Agency,’ Sarva had said on 30 March. ‘It is thin.’ A thick envelope meant a rejection letter along with all the documents he had given the agency. A thin one would contain a simple letter of acceptance and instructions about how to collect his visa.

Indra had prayed out loud. ‘Open it now!’

He had fallen silent on the phone. Then he read: he had been approved for asylum; he would live in the UK with a refugee visa for five years, after which he could be considered for permanent residence. He was free.

Kaalum odale, kaiyyum odale
, Indra told all the activists and relatives when she called them to share the unbelievable news—she had lost the use of her limbs when she heard. Some of those she called did not pick up the phone; she laughed that they must have expected another Sarva crisis, another appeal for help for the fifth year in a row.

A round of promised temple visits and much relieved crying later, Indra readied herself for the next challenge: finding Sarva a suitable bride. She had to ride the wave of good fortune. She had to engineer a match before her son turned into a lovelorn teenager again, in some stubborn relationship with a girl who was all wrong.

Sarva had collected his visa and been efficient about immediately securing a full-time warehousing job in an Indian-run factory that manufactured plastic lids. He would soon leave the Swansea asylum house and move to Luton, near the factory. He was ecstatic but also heartbroken: Malar was gone, he would have to say goodbye to darling Niru, leave behind his friends who were still checking their mail every day for an interview letter. Sarva was restive when it came to living among people who couldn’t fathom the warped world he came from.

But Indra didn’t allow him to mope about the break-up. ‘These are normal setbacks,
kanna
,’ she consoled. ‘You have to learn to take them in your stride.’ She believed a marriage would help him heal, induct him into life as it should be.

On the evening of the Tamil and Sinhala traditional New Year in mid-April, Indra tried to call Sarva. She was in Colombo and had seen an astrologer that morning about a potential match. To speak to her son about it, Indra needed to use Viber—a new free Internet phone application Sarva had introduced her to—but found that her data pack had run out. She yelled out to Rani that she was stepping out of the house for a phone refill and would buy some spinach if she saw a fresh bunch. She walked to the stationery store just around the corner from the apartment.

The shop was one of the oldest in the area, and behind the counter were the owner’s teenage son and daughter. There were no other customers, and the daughter was chatting in whispers with her girlfriend. Another boy, slightly older than the rest, seemed to have dropped in from the adjacent grocery store to pass the time. When Indra walked in, she found them all laughing about something on the small television on the counter. She asked the owner’s son for a 1,000-rupee Internet coupon.

As the son rummaged in a box, the older boy teasingly asked the girls in Sinhala what they were talking about.

‘Not about
you
,’ the owner’s daughter replied in Sinhala, giggling with her friend.

‘I know, I know,’ he laughed, and then added, ‘You girls don’t have school?
Anh
, I forgot! Happy
aluth avurudhu
!’

The daughter wished him a happy New Year back, but her friend was quiet.

‘What, your friend won’t wish me?’ he teased, half in English and half in Sinhala.

‘Maybe she doesn’t celebrate it,’ the daughter said and the girls giggled again.

‘Why? What are you?’ the boy asked. Looking at the owner’s son, he repeated the question. ‘What is she? Muslim?’ He looked at the friend again. ‘Why won’t you wish me?’

Surprised at the turn in the conversation, the friend slung her handbag on her shoulder and got ready to leave.

‘Okay, don’t answer,’ the older boy said. ‘Show me your ID card, then we will get to know everything about you.’ He looked for approval from the owner’s son, but the boy was uneasy. The girl got up and shook her head at the owner’s daughter, as if to say she would see her later.

The Sinhalese boy continued his discomfiting flirtation. ‘What are you hiding? Show me your ID, show it!’

Indra took her coupon from the owner’s son, paid for it, and left the shop.

ON THE NIGHT
of New Year’s Eve, Tamizh kept on whining throughout the bus journey from Point Pedro, protesting because he had to share a seat with his older brother. Maran threw screechy tantrums, demanding Divyan’s phone, and when he got it, played the snake game till the battery died. At one point, when the boys started to punch each other, a groggy Divyan twisted Maran’s ears and shook Tamizh by his shoulder. ‘I will tell
amma
that you pinched me,’ Maran wailed, but cried himself to sleep after that.

At quarter past nine the next morning, they reached the Pettah bus stand in Colombo. It was swelteringly hot. At the enquiry desk, Divyan asked for the bus routes to Borella, where the TID office was located. ‘There’s one leaving in five minutes across the road,’ a Tamil man at the counter said.

‘That is CTB, no?’ Divyan asked. He rarely used the state-run
Colombo Transport Buses because most of the conductors spoke only Sinhala. ‘What about private?’

The man at the desk told Divyan the bus numbers. ‘Some routes have changed because of road repairs.’

Later in November that year, Colombo would be hosting the meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government and a makeover was under way. The Urban Development Ministry was absorbed by the Ministry of Defence and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president’s brother and the defence secretary, had launched a massive beautification drive to showcase the prosperity and peace of postwar Sri Lanka. With military precision, the seaside capital was being transformed: roads were relaid, pavements extended, high-rises commissioned, street-side hawkers and small shops swept away. Low-income houses were razed and public playgrounds suddenly cordoned off. The army now manned parks, malls and beaches. Giant-sized cut-outs of a waving president or his brother beamed at people from virtually every junction. Lawns everywhere warned the grubby public not to walk, play or sit on the manicured grass. Modern, growing, messy Colombo was being reshaped into a thing of sterile beauty.

Carrying Tamizh in his arms, Divyan walked with Maran to his preferred snack shop, run by an elderly Muslim woman. The single table fan in the shop circulated warm air. Sitting on a bench by a window, the boys ate biscuits as he sipped sweet tea.

Outside, Pettah market gleamed in the sun, its sea of DVDs, clothes, mobiles, toys, and electronic goods flowing through and around the private and state bus stations. The capital always overwhelmed Divyan, but Pettah put him at ease. Tamil-speakers ran most of the establishments, and there was a comfortable familiarity and anonymity in the chaos. But this time, the men who sold fake designer T-shirts and handkerchiefs along the pavement were missing, the lottery ticket sellers were gone. A road divider had been heightened and extended along the length of the road to prevent jaywalking. Passengers, shoppers and businesspeople milled to the one zebra crossing, compressed on either side of the road, waiting impatiently for the walking man on the traffic light to turn green.

As Divyan watched, a teenager suddenly darted across the
street before the light changed. Divyan expected the parted sea to converge immediately, for the men and women to shed restraint and follow the rule breaker. Instead, a policeman emerged from nowhere, slapped the boy hard, and dragged him away by his collar. The other pedestrians seemed nailed to the spot.

Divyan’s shirt was plastered to his back with sweat. He asked the shopkeeper for a jug of water to wash his face. Maran and Tamizh saw parotta curry being served at other tables and asked for some. It was 50 rupees a plate, but Divyan had only 300 rupees left in his wallet, which was the bus fare back. He told the boys their mother would be waiting for them, and they had better hurry up if they did not want to miss her.

Three months had passed since Mugil’s arrest, and this was the second time Divyan had been permitted to visit. The first time, a week after her arrest, he had travelled to Colombo for a thirty-second meeting, only enough time for him to give her some clothes and for her to kiss her sons. Since then, he had applied for the ICRC’s visitation aid for families of detainees—they paid the bus fare and gave him an ICRC card to show the police. Today he would have at least ten minutes with Mugil. They took a bus to Borella and walked to the TID office.

Unlike the white colonial buildings the government preferred to build, the office of the Terrorist Investigation Department was an unappealing boxy monstrosity. To Divyan, it was like solid fear. As he walked in, the tittering boys became absolutely silent. When he signed into a register and waited on a bench in the corridor, they hugged his legs. There were about twelve other families. One of them acknowledged Divyan with a smile to Tamizh.

Divyan remembered his own detention like it was yesterday; he was terrified of what he was about to see on Mugil’s face.

Half an hour later, she was brought out of her cell and put next to Divyan on the bench in the corridor. The two policemen took a step back but did not leave. Mugil’s eyes were on the floor. Tamizh threw his arms around her neck and sobbed. Maran complained that
appa
had pinched him on the bus.

‘What is this?’ Mugil scolded Divyan mockingly. Her left cheek was marbled blue and red; she had been hit hard, probably just
the day before. Her hands were free, but her wrists were bruised by rope. Divyan put his hand on her knee. She flinched.

He gave her a plastic bag with a change of clothes, underwear, a pair of rubber slippers, and a packet of sesame balls that she liked. They spoke in a wary code.

‘The kids are too much,’ he said.

‘What do they eat?’ she asked. ‘Rice, chicken, dal?’

He nodded. He cooked what he knew.

He said he had not worked for weeks because he didn’t know where to leave the boys. Since Mugil’s and Prashant’s arrest, Amuda had asked Divyan not to come too often, not to impose familial responsibility on her when there was little familial affection left. ‘I guess she has worries of her own,’ Mugil said.

She asked hesitantly if Divyan had gone to see Prashant. Maran, who was listening to their conversation from her lap, piped up, ‘
Appa
says he doesn’t care if Chitthappa rots on the TID fourth floor.’

‘Your brother is an out-of-control big mouth,’ Divyan spat. She sighed.

‘You’re okay, no?’ Divyan did not ask directly about the TID or the detention. She made a show of being all right, smiling painfully.

‘There are eight other women with me in the cell,’ she said, as if that were somehow an answer.

Neither spoke of when she might return; they could not know. She asked him what would come next. ‘They may offer rehabilitation,’ he said. ‘Just take it, accept everything. We can’t do court and all.’

A policeman grunted for them to finish. Maran refused to let Mugil go, simply repeating no, no, no, dragging the syllable out in desperate complaint. Tamizh asked her when she would come home. Mugil threw a worried look at Divyan. He told her she had better leave.

After Mugil was taken back inside, Divyan asked an officer when he could visit again. Stay in touch with her on the phone, the officer snapped, there is no need to keep coming.

Heading back to Pettah on a bus, Tamizh and Maran stared out the window, dazed. They would be fine once they were home,
Divyan thought. They would forget to ask for their mother in a few days. On his next visit, he would have to find someone to look after one of them. This family trip was too draining and made Mugil anxious.