Rarely do we have relatives who live anywhere near a hundred years. And it is a greater miracle to have a grand aunt – Louisa Arulamma Thambyrajah, born on 6 February 1911 and a relative of both writers – who survived one of the most brutal episodes of war in her late 90s. On 13 February 2009, as the battle between the military and the LTTE raged in the Vanni, in northern Sri Lanka, Arul Aunty and her close relatives were rescued from Suthanthirapuram by the advancing forces. Before this, the Vanni population had been moving deeper into Mullaitivu week after week in search of shelter. Tens of thousands of people, pulled by the threats of the LTTE and pushed by the firing of the advancing army, dug bunkers for shelter as they made their way eastwards. Hearing of the countless people suffering from starvation or succumbing to injuries, news that Arul Aunty and her relatives had escaped the war was unbelievable to us. It was merely good fortune that helped them escape the horrors of the last two months of the war, a period of even greater brutality than the previous decades.
As we contemplate the years of suffering the Vanni people endured under the repressive power of the LTTE, not to mention the bombing and the onslaughts of the military, Arul Aunty's life is a reflection of the great challenges that ordinary people have experienced in Jaffna and the Vanni. Listening to her, one gets a glimpse of Jaffna society of more than half a century ago, as well as life in the Vanni in the years before the 'final war', as the daily existence was usurped by the prominence of the LTTE. Life in Jaffna, or the Vanni during the war years – in its social makeup, means of earning livelihoods, the development of the region and the struggles of the people – is far more complex than publicly portrayed.
Coming from a lineage of converts to Christianity by American missionaries, Arul Aunty was the daughter of a priest. Her later childhood and formative years were spent at the Uduvil Girls College, a boarding school in the Jaffna village of Uduvil, founded and run by American missionaries. At the time, boarding schools for girls brought together Christian and Hindu girls, and consisted not only of formal instruction but also compulsory cleaning and work in the kitchen. Many of the girls went on to become teachers and educationists, and Arul Aunty, on finishing school, went back to her hometown of Chavakachcheri to help in the church and teach Sunday school.
A refuge
It was during this time, in 1927, that Mohandas K Gandhi, on the invitation of the Jaffna Youth Congress, visited Jaffna. Gandhism and an all-Ceylon nationalism, propagated by the Youth Congress, was in the air. Credited as the first anti-colonial movement in the country, Gandhi's values caught the imagination of the younger generation. Arul Aunty recalls our grandparent's wedding, where our grandmother wore a kathar, or handloom, sari at the insistence of our grandfather. Simplicity was the demand of a community that had previously emphasised and subsequently reverted to cherishing extravagant weddings. Gandhi's visit to Jaffna would tax our grandmother, Arul Aunty's older sister, as she parted with her gold bangles in response to Gandhi's request for donations for the empowerment of the oppressed castes.