Thulasi’s Diary — Jaffna, Journalism, and other stories — 4

One late afternoon at the end of August 2002, I finally reached Jaffna after a particularly arduous journey.
The A9 road had just re-opened after several years of war, due to the newly signed ceasefire between the Sri Lankan State and the LTTE.
The road then was little more than a barren dirt track nude of even trees for miles on end. Both the Army and the LTTE had cut down the trees down the entire stretch for miles on end to avoid ambushes from the other side. The barren landscape, save for Army Checkpoints upto Vavuniya and LTTE checkpoints thereafter, was depressing.
I could see nothing but an expanse of red soil and dust billowing up at my face through most of the journey. I tried closing the window but it became suffocating inside the little non a/c van I was travelling in — so I opened it again — to be greeted with more dust blowing heavily onto my face, body and hair. I was thoroughly dirty and grimy by the time I reached “home.”
But at least, I joyously thought, I was home. At long, long last.
The home I had left at the age of three. The home I had carried with an aching sense of loss through all my childhood — the red floors, the wide verandah, the multi-hued garden; the old, comforting scent of a grandfather, the loving warmth of a grandmother, the protective loyalty of our beautiful black and white dog Nakulan…

My grandmother had been dead five years by the time I returned home. We had not been able to come see her, the path had been closed. Nakulan had been dead and deeply mourned more than 10 years. My grandfather, touching 93, was still alive but bedridden and ailing. And I, I was 21.
Officially an adult.
Emotionally still a naive child.
A child whose trauma at suddenly leaving had never healed.
A child who expected to be miraculously healed now just by the mere act of returning.
All the lack of rootedness and sense of belonging I had felt growing up abroad, I had expected Jaffna and that home to almost immediately resolve.

Nobody anymore would stop and ask me where I was from, I fondly imagined.
Nobody would tell me to “go back home where you belong” either.
I was back in a place where I belonged and such questions and attitudes automatically did not belong. Heh heh.

My loving grandmother was not there anymore but at least my grandfather was — as was an aunt and uncle living with him. I had family, I had cousins, I even had two new dogs in place of the irreplaceable Nakulan. They wouldn’t replace him — growing up in a country without any dogs, we had had only photos of Nakulan and my father’s many tales of the dogs he had himself grown up with to sustain our yearning for a pet of our own.
I retain memories of Nakulan coming to check on me at various neighbourhood houses I might happen to be in, at the time I’d lived back here.

As a toddler, I was apparently very cute and thus in high demand among the neighbours. One or the other of them was always spiriting me away for a few hours to play with at their houses. Nakulan didn’t take well to the idea but he couldn’t do anything about it as my mother allowed it. So he took to regularly dropping by every hour to check for himself that I was being well looked after by these neighbours he clearly did not trust.
Dogs as I subsequently realized are not all that respected in Jaffna — yet I remember the decorous respect with which my neighbours would show Nakulan into whichever room I was then in, in their house — “See? She’s alright,” they would tell him placatingly. He would satisfy himself that I indeed was, and then turn and go away. Not for long though. He’d be back soon for yet another inspection.

I just cried, writing this.
Unconditional love and protection like that, I have since searched for all my life.

Even though I had left aged just three when my family fled some months after the ’83 riots, I managed to retain some early memories of Jaffna. Glorious, incandescent memories of a fun filled, comfortable existence — sounds of laughter echoing through the hallways; the serenity and stability of adults who always acted calm, composed, indulgent and happy.
No-one’s world had turned upside down at that point — that would come post ’83 when we had to suddenly leave — there would only be two adults to look after me thereafter instead of the entire neighbourhood on top of a loving extended family. Two adults going through various stressors of their own which they did not handle very well — and I could not understand why.
All that I understood, even by the age of 21, was that I had been sublimely happy until the age of three and then that happiness had suddenly been snuffed out. Leaving in the first place was the primary cause for this suction effect on our collective happiness as a family, I reckoned. Coming home would resolve it.

And so, I found myself full of hope as I alighted that August evening at my long lost home, even as the skies overhead darkened.
Jaffna was not welcoming to its prodigal daughter.