Gorilla Read online

  He stuck the money into his shirtsleeves and continued walking. After passing the village proper, he arrived at the southern seacoast, and began to walk along the coastline towards Velanai. Then he ran for some distance.

  He alternated between running and walking. After about an hour and a half, he arrived near the Mother of God’s church. It was from there that the Movement had promised to take Rocky Raj to the training camp.

  * * *

  Next to the beach, there was a piece of forest-like land with vegetation growing wildly all over the place. Within that jungle, the Movement had built eight large huts out of woven palm leaves. They had cleared a small part of the jungle to make an athletic playing ground. On that field, they had divided everybody, according to height, into four rows of twenty each. In the first row, Rocky Raj was seated sixth.

  Rocky Raj took a quick look around the group. They varied from thirteen and fourteen year-olds to men who looked like they were in their thirties or forties.

  The person in charge of the training camp came and stood in front of them and stared at the assembly.

  ‘Hey, you there. Sit properly with your knees folded, on the ground, man.’ Rocky Raj, who had been sitting on his heels, sat down with a plop. ‘Damn. I get scolded by the master on the first day itself,’ Rocky Raj thought with great unhappiness.

  Then came a small speech for all those who had come here for training.

  ‘Those who do not wish to take their training now or who are thinking about returning home need to tell me right now. After the training begins, if you leave half-way or even think of leaving, you will be punished.

  All of you need to get up at 4 in the morning. At exactly 5, we start the physical training. At 8, breakfast. Then we conduct a few classes. After lessons are over, lunch. In the evening, after 4 o’clock, arms training. At 6, we will play some game or the other. By 7, all of you should have finished your dinner and dispersed to your sentry points. Right now, in this training camp, discipline is the most important value. We need to create order. Now we will pass out a piece of paper to all of you. You need to fill it out carefully and sign it…’

  They gave everyone a form with questions about name, address, and age. Some of the boys consulted with the trainers on how to fill out the form. When he heard some of the boys call the trainers ‘sir,’ Rocky Raj was surprised. ‘What is this, a school? I will address them as annan, older brother,’ he thought to himself.

  Rocky Raj carefully filled out the form he was given, read the ten conditions in it thoroughly, signed his name as, ‘A. R. Raj,’ and handed it over to the one in charge. The tenth condition given was as follows:

  ‘If you were to leave or be asked to leave the revolutionary Movement, and you then joined another political organization or started a new political Movement, you would be given our Movement’s highest punishment: death.’

  In the forms the boys were given to fill, there was a question about one’s name within the Movement. But the trainer in charge told them not to fill in that blank at this point. Rocky Raj had thought hard about the name he would wish to assume within the Movement and had brought it down to three choices. The first name was Sangiliyan, the second Arafat, and the third, Netaji. But finally, he decided upon Arafat.

  The trainer in charge looked out at the assembly and announced that they were going to be given their Movement names.

  Rocky Raj felt greatly excited—he was going to name himself anew. But there was a niggling thought in his mind; ‘Arafat’ might be flung to the ground.

  Because, remember how the boys were standing in four rows? Well, there were two trainers who were walking between two rows, naming one person on the right and the other on the left in a swift manner. There didn’t seem to be any thought in the process. As the trainers called out the names, the boys would hurriedly write them out on the form. Though however carelessly the ones in charge came up with new names, there was a connection of sorts between the right hand name and the left hand one.

  Reagan—Jimmycarter

  Rajini—Kamal (The two super star heroes of Tamil cinema, who throughout the late 70s and 80s were seen as markedly opposite to each other in terms of looks, attitude, and the roles they played.)

  Manian—Akhilan (Two writers from Tamil Nadu who were seen as two opposite poles of popular Tamil literature.)

  Malli—Nangi (Sinhala words indicating younger brother and younger sister, respectively.)

  When the organizer came to him, for a moment Rocky Raj was tempted to ask to be named Arafat. But he felt too afraid to open his mouth. Maybe there is some reason for the Movement to name us in this random fashion, he thought.

  Now the trainer was standing between Rocky Raj and the boy on his right, and he named the other boy Rajeev. Then he turned to Rocky Raj and named him Sanjay; just like the two sons of Mrs. Gandhi. The pair behind him was called Sivalai and Mayilai, after the two kinds of bulls.

  Until he went to dinner that night, Rocky Raj introduced himself to the other boys who had joined the training camp as Sanjay. As dinner was getting over, he caught sight of Thayavaramurthi,* who had been working in the kitchen.

  Thayavaramurthi was a classmate of Rocky Raj’s. He lived a mile from his house within the village proper, and he was a bit of a loose cannon.

  Thayavaramurthi had come for training in the batch before this. Suffering alternately from stomach aches, knee pain, nervous ticks, and nausea, on the third day he had run away. The Movement had found him, broken his face and put him on kitchen duty as punishment.

  When Thayavaramurthi saw his classmate, he started as if he’d been slapped on the back. Delighted, he ran up to Rocky Raj to speak with him. But Rocky Raj felt uncomfortable to be seen speaking so openly with one who had been punished; he felt this was not a very disciplined thing to do.

  Thayavaramurthi told him all the gossip surrounding the training camp, laughing at some things, thrilled about others, and shifting into a secretive tone when he mentioned certain matters. Rocky Raj merely nodded as he finished his dinner.

  Thayavaramurthi made a big fuss over his classmate, insisting on calling him, ‘Gorilla.’ In between, Rocky Raj told him that his new Movement name was Sanjay but it was no use; the boy continued to call him Gorilla.

  Rocky Raj didn’t know how the whole thing spread. Within a couple of days, the whole camp knew him as Gorilla. Rocky Raj told some of his fellow trainees not to call him Gorilla and that his name was Sanjay. But after calling him Sanjay a few times, they all reverted to calling him Gorilla. Even the trainer in charge grinned at him when he called him Gorilla.

  Only on his identity card, importantly, was his name listed as Sanjay. His blood group was indicated as B, and the region alloted for him as the Island area.

  * * *

  The training was a bit difficult for Rocky Raj. Usually all the young men from Kunjan Fields were strong and well built from the kinds of work they did: hauling sand, harvesting plantains, burning shells, and heating lime.

  But Rocky Raj had been the studious type, in the habit of walking around with a notebook and an Eelam newspaper tucked under his arm. His body refused to bend to the demands made of it during training. And yet, he was determined to do well in the training sessions. It was a matter of pride for him.

  When they jumped from heights, crawled through barbed wire fences and climbed the monkey ropes, he would try to take part but in a hurried manner, wounding himself badly. Even though both his feet swelled up, making it impossible for him to even walk, he kept training.

  But at the end of the first week, they gave all the boys lessons in target shooting. Rocky Raj, in his first attempt, was able to hit a full and an inner out of the two rounds he was given.

  It was the classes that were held after the morning physical training that caused Rocky Raj some disappointment. When they were first told about the classes, he had thought that they would be on some kind of political thought. But the teacher who taught the class, Sri master, never touched on anyt
hing even remotely political. He wouldn’t even mention something as innocuous as which direction India was located in, in relation to Tamil Eelam. ‘Well, with the kind of advanced political ideology I possess, what is there to learn from Sri master?’ Rocky Raj consoled himself.

  Sri master’s course work was utterly simple and extremely easy as far as Rocky Raj was concerned.

  SMG: This is called a sterling machine gun. The size of its cartridge is 9mm. This gun functions on playback action. Its range: 200 metres; its killing range: 100 metres.

  AK 47: It is called Avdomat Kalashnikov 47. The size of its cartridge is 7.62 × 42 mm. It is gas-operated. Range: 1000 metres. Killing range: 500 metres.

  SLR: It is called a self-loading rifle. The size of its cartridge: 7.62 × 51 mm. It is the earlier version of the Heckler and Koch A3:G3 rifle. They also call its cartridge the NATO cartridge.

  LMG: This is a light machine gun…

  And so the classes went.

  Other interesting things also took place in class. To set off a mine, to light a grenade so that it can quickly catch fire, there is a particular kind of wick used. This wick is pink and is called Kotex. When the teacher mentioned this name in class, some of the boys began to laugh uncontrollably. Sometimes, the teacher too could not help himself and joined in the laughter. At first, Rocky Raj didn’t understand.

  It was only after he asked another boy that he found out that the cotton pads women use during their monthlies were also called Kotex. But he still didn’t see what was so funny about this.

  After all of this, something that Rocky Raj never expected also took place. When the training was coming to an end, when they had finished their last exercises in base withdrawal, night marching, dummy camp attack, and ambushing, the trainees were told that there remained one last exercise. The teachers announced that this was the last and most important part of the training: it was about how to escape from the army.

  All the boys were eagerly waiting for this training. Even those who had avoided the running and falling in the jungle exercise by claiming that they had a thorn in their foot or had sprained their hand, made themselves ready for it. These were the days when young boys were harassed constantly by the army everywhere, on the streets and alleyways. No wonder then that all the boys wanted to know how to escape the army.

  The teachers told all the trainees to sit in a line in front of the largest shed. Almost seventy boys stood in line. When the training had begun weeks ago, there had been eighty students. But halfway through, five had escaped. Three of them had been caught and brought back. Their heads were shaved, and they were made to work in the kitchen.

  The training in escaping from the army began. Rocky Raj was the sixth person in line. A teacher came and took the first boy into the shed. Two seconds hadn’t passed when they heard ‘Aiyo, amma, I am a Tiger. Aiyo, aiyo, I am not a Tiger. Don’t hit me sir, please, don’t hit me. Oh my poor head.’ Everyone could hear the boy howling.

  Rocky Raj glanced at the boys around him. Everyone’s face was dark with fear. They looked at each other in deep trepidation.

  Before the training began, Rocky Raj had seen cases and cases of Elephant House brand soda drinks being carried into the shed. This had never happened before. He had also seen a trainer take a large quantity of first aid supplies into the shed. Rocky Raj had guessed right then that something bad was going down. He had prepared himself for anything.

  The boy who went in first never came out. Then they came for the second boy. They could all hear him scream too. The third, fourth, and fifth boys were all taken in one by one. None of them came back. The horrendous cries of, ‘Aiyo Sir! Please don’t hit me! I am not in the Movement,’ were all that was heard. Next was Rocky Raj.

  ‘I’m ready to meet anything,’ Rocky Raj thought, taking heart in this thought. He gripped both his hands together in front of him, breathed in deeply, and let his heart pump his chest up. He held the image of Tamil Eelam in his mind for a moment.

  There was green everywhere. Wherever he looked, there was greenery. Tiny houses, all pretty and similar, built neatly in a row. In the midst of this green world, men and women with guns on their back were working in the fields.

  ‘Dey, Gorilla, come here,’ a teacher called. Rocky Raj lifted his chest up and walked smartly into the shed. As he entered the shed and before he could get his bearings, a teacher who had been waiting in hiding in a corner of the shed sprang, and with his bent knees kicked Rocky Raj in his chest. Rocky Raj fell down on his back.

  They jumped on him and held him down like a captured chicken. ‘Dey, are you a Kottiya? A Tiger? Did you take any training? Do you know how to shoot a gun? You thug, are you planning on bombing us?’ they yelled as they hit him with sticks, wires and plastic pipes, and beat him to a pulp.

  Was it only the teachers who beat him? The five boys who had gone before Rocky Raj were now standing around with bandages around their bleeding extremities. They too beat Rocky Raj.

  Rocky Raj understood this game clearly now. These people were all Sinhala soldiers from the Sri Lanka army. Rocky Raj had been captured by them. However much they were to torture him, he should not admit that he belonged to the Movement. This was the meaning of this training exercise.

  A boy whose face had already been worked over came up to Rocky Raj and lifted him up. Then suddenly he clapped both his hands together against Rocky Raj’s ears in police style. ‘Ado, Are you a Tiger?’ Then he bent and butted his head into Rocky Raj’s stomach.

  ‘No sir, I am a student,’ said Rocky Raj, covering his ear with one hand and his stomach with the other as he fell on the floor. One of the boys, Ismail, seemed to know a little Sinhala. He spoke to him in Sinhala early on and harassed him. ‘Ado, don’t lie,’ he yelled in Sinhala as he took a running leap and landed on Rocky Raj’s stomach with both feet.

  Rocky Raj insisted till the end that he was not a member of the Movement and that he didn’t even support the Movement. Because Rocky Raj kept his denial going even after his face was broken, he passed this final training.

  The trainers bound all of Rocky Raj’s wounds. They also gave him a vitamin shot. Finally they gave him a sugary soda to drink.

  * * *

  After the training all the boys were eager for the moment they could enter the battlefield. It was at this moment that the Sinhala army began its massive operation.

  The army was trying to move in all directions. The navy was planning to attack from Kaarai Nagar, and the army was moving out of Naavatkuli, Palaali, and Kankesanthurai.

  The various Movements—EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front), TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization), PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam), ENDLF (Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front), EROS (Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students)—tried their best to tackle the army and were beaten badly. The injured boys filled the wards at Jaffna General Hospital. There were long lines in front of the hospital for everyone from schoolgirls to the very old, as they waited to donate blood for the youngsters of the Movement.

  The army suffered a serious loss. As ambulances rushed to the local airport at Ratmalana and Jayawardanapura General Hospital, in the Parliament Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s party created trouble by taunting, ‘If JR Jayewardene cannot win this fight, give the power over to us.’

  Now even if the different Movements were controlling the army and limiting their movement around Jaffna, they all forgot about the Island district. So in the middle of the night, the army moved from the fort into the Island area.

  Along the Farm Bridge road that lay across the sea, as if they had drawn a line, the army proceeded quickly. At a kilometre’s distance, they set up a mini camp on the island of Mandaitivu. To capture this one kilometre of an empty stretch of a bridge, on that instance alone they killed forty-three people. Till the end, they never gave up that mini-camp, surrounded by the sea on all four sides.

  None of the Movement groups had expected the army to occupy the Farm B
ridge. Now it had access into the Island area. The LTTE Movement decided to take care of this problem.

  At the entrance to the Island area, in Kunjan Fields, the Movement set up a sentry point. It was constructed out of bags of sand and camouflaged with coconut tree leaves, with a hut right next to it for the boys to sleep in. The Movement sent in six well-trained boys with two guns, two grenades, three cylinders and a walkie-talkie. This is how the Movement entered Kunjan Fields and hunkered down there.

  But the Island area, especially in Mandaitivu, Kunjan Fields, and Allaipiddi, was not fit for guerrilla war. The empty fields with their meagre patches of thorns here and there and the surrounding sea make this area treacherous terrain. For during withdrawal, only those from the area, like the Baby Group,* would know the exact points of entry in and out of the sea.

  Taking all these problems into consideration the Movement’s commander in charge of the whole Island area, Osheila, ordered that Rocky Raj, who was from this district, should be placed at the sentry point in Kunjan Fields.

  When Rocky Raj heard the order, his heart stopped. He couldn’t think or breathe for a few moments. ‘Brother…’ he hesitated before Osheila, scratching his head.

  Osheila who had given his orders and was in a hurry to leave, looked at the deeply reluctant Rocky Raj and asked, ‘What’s wrong Gorilla? You don’t want to go there? Are you afraid that you’ll be killed?’

  Rocky Raj couldn’t bear the contempt underlying that question. If he were ordered to go jump into the Jaffna fort with bombs strapped all over him, he was ready. To be asked whether he was afraid to die, as Osheila had asked him, was as shameful as being stripped of one’s clothing in the middle of the street. ‘When you are born to a bad father, you have to listen to and bear everything,’ he told himself.

  ‘No, brother, if I go to that sentry point, I’ll meet up with my family. There could be problems…’ Rocky Raj tried, as a last resort. ‘Look here, Gorilla,’ Osheila said. ‘That’s the way families are. It is our duty to explain about the Movement and our hopes for a new motherland. We have to slowly convince them to support our cause.’ Osheila gave a small lecture.