Monday, October 29, 2012

In post-war Jaffna, a slow piecing back of life

NIRUPAMA SUBRAMANIAN

October 28, 2012

LETTER FROM LANKA The Tamils in the northern part of the country are struggling to rebuild their lives after three decades of conflict

Pavalochini and her husband Ravikumar make a living selling bicycles. They sell them for Rs.49 a kg, for scrap is what the bikes are: rusted, twisted, bent out of shape, the tyres long gone after three years out under the scorching sun at the “bicycle graveyard” near Mullaithivu.

From their home in the Konapulam camp for the displaced in Valigamam, Ravikumar sets out once or twice a week on the 95-km journey to the graveyard.

There, Pavalochini said, he goes about collecting every scrap of metal left behind by civilians and the LTTE as they retreated stage by stage to a narrow strip of land in Mullaithivu in the final stages of the war in 2009.

Buses, vans, cars, and thousands of bicycles, damaged by the heavy shelling and their remaining parts rusted, are still heaped by the side of the road. Scrap hunters like Ravikumar forage for the good bits, especially bicycles, and bring them back home to sell.

“There are some Muslim dealers who buy these cycles for Rs.49 per kg,” said Pavalochini, as we sit talking in the shade of a mountain of bicycles in her front yard. “It might fetch Rs.65 a kg if we took it to Colombo and sold it ourselves in the scrap market, but think of the transporting costs.”

Many others in the camp are in the same business. The other day, said Pavalochini, she had to feed the children in the neighbouring house. Both parents went off scrap hunting to the graveyard, and did not return for two days.

The wartime scrap heap is a reminder of how recently the fighting ended. It also underlines how Jaffna and its people are still struggling through a layered past and present to come out of three decades of conflict and war.

Post-war Jaffna is very different from what it used to be. For one, there is no more the blanket of darkness and fear that used to fall at night, the dread of the torchlight-flashing sentry at checkpoints, and the long whistle of shells as they flew in the air before landing on their target with a deep explosive thud.