The Grease Devil Is Not Real

By Hannah Tennant-Moore  June 15, 2012
An old wives’ tale returns, revealing post-war Sri Lanka.
Photo courtesy of Indi Samarajiva

During my first two days on Sri Lanka’s Jaffna Peninsula, I heard about the Grease Man from everyone who spoke English. He smeared his naked body in oil to evade capture, the villagers told me, and then snuck into homes to commit random acts of violence. Most people said he sexually assaulted women, or bit their necks and breasts. One boy told me he had knives for fingers, which he used to cut out people’s organs while they were sleeping. He hid in trees, the villagers believed, waiting for the right moment to pounce upon his victims—women drawing well water or children using the outhouse. One man thought Grease Men were just common thieves, profiting from the rumors to take advantage of a cowed populace. But most people spoke of him in the singular, as if he were a mythical demon. What everyone agreed on was that the Grease Man was either protected by government soldiers or was a soldier himself.

During Sri Lanka’s thirty-year civil war between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority and the mainly Hindu Tamil minority, Jaffna was the unofficial capital of the separatist Tamil Tigers. The LTTE, as the Tigers are known in Sri Lanka, was vanquished in 2009 in a no-holds-barred offensive that killed tens of thousands of civilians in five months. Since then, the Sri Lankan Army has occupied the Tamil-dominated areas of the North and East. Shortly before I arrived in Sri Lanka last August, the government had lifted restrictions on travel to the formerly contested Northern Province. I had backpacked throughout Sri Lanka before and was eager to see a new part of the country I loved.

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