Women in aftermath of war

TUESDAY, 14 AUGUST 2012

Pix by Pradeep Pathirana

Peace activist Lillian Wald once said that women, more than men, have the ability to strip war of its glamour - its outdated heroisms, patriotisms and perceive it for what it really is; a demon of destruction and hideous wrong.

Sitting on the rough, mud thatched door ledge of her little shelter, Nadaraja Letchchami’ (31) has her eyes fixed on the horizon, as if in a trance. Her trail of thought shatters as her son hugs her. Cuddling up to her warmth, his tiny arms around her neck he asks, “Amma, ende appa engey? (Mummy, where is daddy?)”. After almost three years of whipping-up stories of his father’s whereabouts, Letchchami has now run out of answers.

Letchchami and her husband Wilson Nadaraja never shared a regular life. As if spending every second of their lives in mortal fear wasn’t enough, Nadaraja received orders to join the liberation battle when Letchchami was expecting her son.  “He never thought twice about joining the LTTE because either ways he knew it would end in death,” she said.

She gets up and walks into her little shack and comes out with a laminated photograph. It is an image of a young man and a young girl possibly in her teens, coyly posing against a studio backdrop. She says it’s the only picture of them together; the only memoir of the father of their only son. “The last I saw of my husband was in Wanni. When the battles grew fierce we decided we had to flee. My husband arranged for my son and myself, to travel and went to my mother-in-law’s house to help her. We agreed to meet in Trincomalee,” Letchchami says. But they had not reunited as promised.  

Today, Letchchami lives with her four-year-old son in a little shack they have built for themselves in the backwoods of Kilinochchi. She works as a seamstress. They had left the IDP camp last year and during the release, she had received Rs. 25,000 for the construction of the shack and sanitation facilities and dry rations sufficient for nine months. “But once the rations ran out, the assurance of a daily meal was little. Now I work extra so that my son and I can have a good life,” she says; an innocent smile lighting up her face.  

The little one, without a grapple with the harsh realities around him does not wish to be bothered by the qualms of the adult world. He carefully takes the photograph which Letchchami holds and hugs it. Life is hard without her husband, Letchchami says, but she is not willing to give up her fight to find him. “I have visited every possible government establishment to get information about my husband and yet I still haven’t been able to know whether he is dead or alive. I’ve been told to forget, to give up hope. But I know that he is alive, I know he will come for us someday,” Letchchami says with certainty.

This young woman is one of the many imprints left by the conflict. With no stable income or financial assistance and a child to take care of, Letchchami represents the plight of the hundreds of young widows in the North, living in the depths of poverty. She has no plans or ideas for her child’s future, but eagerly awaits her husband’s return – which may or may not happen in her lifetime.

Robbed of their land                                                               Read more...