School closed early today…
Dilrukshi Fonseka-23 Jul, 2013
Image from Asianews.it
School closed early today. Amma was looking very jumpy when she came to pick me up, but she wouldn’t tell me why. When we went to get Loku and Chuti, Chuti was nowhere to be seen. We walked all over school looking for him and finally found him running around with a chair in his hand looking to ‘hit someone’. Amma gave him a good scolding. Serves him right.
On the way home we saw a group of aiyas dancing around an uncle whose hands were tied to the lamp-post. They were pouring bottles of talcum powder on him, and he was starting to look like a ghost. They were laughing. He was looking sad. I think he was the uncle who worked in the Pharmacy we sometimes bought our Multi-Sanastol from. Amma said it was better if we looked straight.
Lots of Aiyas. Lots of police uncles too.
Amma stopped to buy groceries. We asked for Icy-Chocs.
Later in the afternoon we found our neighbour’s servant boy standing in our garden holding a siri-siri bag with his clothes in it. He was crying. Amma was angry, but she wouldn’t tell me why. Sena, hoisted the boy over the wall back into our neighbour’s garden. Chuti thought we should have kept him on our side, because he could have been a fielder.
We weren’t allowed to play cricket that day.
Thaththa came home with uncle Gnana, that aunty and their son. They were also looking sad. Thaththa was looking worried but he wouldn’t tell me why. I had to give up my room for them. I wasn’t happy. Seela was asked to make more string hoppers for dinner. She wasn’t happy either.
We were allowed to stand at the gate for a bit. But I was not to tell anyone I had given up my room. I am not sure why.
I saw an Aiya removing a piece of glass from his foot. It was bleeding. There was a lot of blood. It must have hurt him alot. One of the police uncles gave him a ride in their jeep. That was nice of him.
Sena kept asking us to repeat the words ‘Baldiya’ for fun.
I am hoping we won’t have school tomorrow.
(July 1983. Unlearn. Relearn. Teach. Remember.)
Home
This is the view from my home.-Tehani Ariyaratne-23 Jul, 2013
Groundviews30 years ago, I was not even alive but if I had stood in this same place, looking in this same direction, I would have seen the black smoke choking the air, perhaps seen flames rising from building and cars; I would have heard the screams of the tortured and the victorious cheers of the mob; my nose would perhaps have filled with the acrid smell of burning rubber and wood, and I would stepped indoors, into the safety my ethnicity afforded me.
For the last two months now I have been immersed in 1983; that week of mayhem and bloodshed and misery, and I have looked upon this view with a renewed sense of home. I have met an old lady whose eyes filled with tears as she spoke of lost wedding photographs; a young man who talked of his father patrolling their street to keep everyone safe; a woman who longed for home after she fled to India; a son who spoke of broken parents and a daughter who remembered midnight feasts with her friends who came to hide.
The reality of Black July is a horror I cannot imagine, and yet have, vividly, through the stories I’ve heard. I have tried to imagine what it must be like to stand in a burnt garden, staring at the charred rubble of what was once my home; to find bits and pieces of my belongings scattered in the winds. I have tried to envision moving on from that and cannot.
Some people made new homes. Some rebuilt, some relocated, some preserved, some forgot. And some never regained. For some, home is still an elusive idea, a faded memory of safety and belonging. For that, for taking away someone’s home, their heart, their sanctuary, we must never forget.
###
Editors note: The author is part of a project, curated by Groundviews, that brings together leading documentary filmmakers, photographers, activists, theorists and designers, in Sri Lanka and abroad, to focus on just how deeply the anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983 has shaped our imagination, lives, society and polity.
The resulting content, featuring voices never captured before, marrying rich photography, video, audio and visual design with constitutional theory, story-telling and memorialising, has no historical precedent.
The project is an attempt to use digital media and compelling design to remember the inconvenient, and in no small way, acts of daring, courage and resistance during and after Black July.
Read more here.
