memory

I remember standing in the middle of a waste field, four years ago. All around me were large hills, pocked with the green of tea bushes and the black of the Nuwara Eliya earth. In front of me were two community heads, two panchayat heads and their coteries, all male, all wearing sarongs that they had untied from their hips, in deference to the sole female present. I was tired, and exhausted after 10 hours of bone jarring driving and walking up and down these hills and dirt roads. Finally, we had found some land, that someone was willing to donate to build our school. The details of who, and why escape me now. All i remember that day was that the sun was setting, and the hills were casting shadows, and I was there, mediating between too panchayat heads for the land fell squarely between two districts, and both were squabbling over whose jurisdiction the school would fall under. Land title, money (from school fees), power. And me, parachuted in from so far away, yet never ever feeling anywhere else, as though I was absolutely finally at home. And then a phone call came, from as far away as New York I believe, and the connection crackled and jumped, but I heard a voice which to me then, was also home. And I spoke about where I was and what I was doing, a million miles away from the starched world of crisp Pink shirts and heels and banking, where my trainer was beginning to sink into a sea of mud, so waste the land was. And everything felt absolutely right at that moment.

tired

Where do we go from here? I attended a talk the other day about peace in Sri Lanka. One of the speakers was a Tamil activist who had lost her sister to the war (a documentary film was made about her called No More Tears Sister). She happens to be related.

The talk was full of passionate voices, from Sinhala Buddhists to rabid Tamil separatists. Many spoke movingly of people they had lost, and tears sprang to many's eyes. 900 bodies buried here and there. Hospitals where female patients were raped. War, more war, endless war. Even with a cessation of hostilities, there will just be more war.

For the first time however, I was tired. Normally I would have felt full of energy, passion, wanting to do something about it; talking, meeting people. Now, I was simply tired. Exhausted again, the way I was with Sri Lanka. Spent, unsure, uncertain again with nowhere to go. And again, and again that quote came back to me, from someone who was born in my family. and who died in this country and this war that will not stop.

"Some times tears flow uncontrollably and I cannot work anymore. I know I want to be strong, I want to call my historical strength as a woman. I want to remember and hold on to memories of women who conquered the inability and pain. [...] I cannot leave this small country, its belly constricted by hunger and mind blurred by pain. My head tells my emotions — hold on, hold on for one month maybe two — the routine will engulf you — the need of others — disturbs the silence of the tomb. One day some gun will silence me. And it will not be held by an outsider — but by a son — born in the womb of this very society — from a woman with whom my history is shared."