Under a full moon, I was on the night train from Colombo to Batticaloa. As we raced past towns, Buddhist temples and houses, festive lanterns indicated celebrations of the long poya weekend. Amidst this tranquillity, a year after the end of the war in the country, some friends in Batticaloa had wanted me to see the changes in the area. Seven years after my last visit, I was anxious about what I might find: the resettlement of those affected by the war; the much-talked-about development initiatives; and what these meant for the east, with its murky politics.
With very little news coming in, at times Colombo had seemed very distant from the east. The war had come to an end in the east three years ago, with the government announcing that it had driven out the LTTE and that the war front had moved to the north. For a few years thereafter there was much attention paid to the east, particularly with successive elections and the government's economic reconstruction initiative, called the Eastern Awakening. However, the severe escalation of the war in early 2009 in the Vanni and the subsequent humanitarian crisis, including the internment of hundreds of thousands of displaced people, created a major shift in attention, with both international and national attention turning to the north.
As my train sped into Batticaloa district in the wee hours of the morning, past towns that had seen great violence in the past, the beauty of the region came alive. Both the district and town of Batticaloa are dominated by water; the landscape is marked by the sea, lagoons, rivers and canals, and dotted with bridges and fishing boats. The district's economic geography – agriculture, livestock, fishing – is likewise intrinsically intertwined with water.
The following day, I travelled to Veppavattuvan, a village many kilometres north of Batticaloa town and off the old Badulla road from Chenkalady. I sought to understand what resettlement had meant for people living in the interior of the district. Until 2006, this village of about 150 families was LTTE-controlled territory. With the escalation of the war in 2006, the people in the area were displaced, their livelihoods disrupted and most of their houses damaged.