Gorilla Read online

  Even in the midst of this trying moment, the image of teaching his father the finer points of political thought made Rocky Raj want to laugh. Let whatever happens happen, Rocky Raj decided, leaving the problem with St. Anthony, and he made preparations to leave for the Kunjan Fields sentry point.

  The Movement gave Rocky Raj a J.R. grenade and a tiny bottle of cyanide to carry with him.

  * * *

  The Movement’s green van dropped Rocky Raj off on the North Road, next to the St. Anthony’s statue. It was about half a kattai’s distance to the sentry point (people used to calculate distances in kattai instead of kilometres, in those days)—the van couldn’t go right up to the sentry point because that would be too dangerous. For if the army caught sight of it, it would be showered with shells.

  Rocky Raj gave a salute to St. Anthony, and began walking towards the sentry point. Some Kunjan Fields folks looked at Rocky Raj in amazement. Some called out greetings. Rocky Raj straightened his shoulders and walked with his chest out. When he realized that the news of his arrival in Kunjan Fields in the Movement van would have reached his home by now, his head began to ache.

  ‘Dirty’ Santha* was in charge of the sentry point at Kunjan Fields. Rocky Raj worked as his right hand. The day Rocky Raj arrived, it was decided that three cylinders would be burried in front of the Mandaitivu junction. Overnight, Rocky Raj and the boys began to dig up the road. The Kunjan Fields population was very happy to help out. All through the night, the working boys were provided with tea from the homes of Kunjan Fields.

  The first cylinder was buried at a two hundred yard distance from the boys’ sentry point, the next one at another two hundred yards from there. Rocky Raj and three boys carried the third cylinder as close as they could get to the army camp. They crawled through the bushes and dug up the ground, and buried the cylinder as quietly as they could. When they came back, they brought with them some of the empty food and drink containers thrown away by the army.

  Johnny bombs, boundary charges and claymores were things that came into use later. In those days, the boys used cylinders. Cylinders are round tubes about eight or nine inches in diameter. The tube is about three or four feet long. It is usually made of mid-level steel or hard plastic. You pack the tube tightly with explosives. With the explosive material, pieces of iron, bicycle parts, bolts and nuts are mixed. The filled tube is then sealed off on both sides with cement. In the center of the explosive is the detonator. You can attach a wire to this detonator, drag the wire to whatever distance you want, and at the necessary moment set off the cylinder by sending an electric charge through the wire. This cylinder is not an ordinary explosive. It was a cylinder charge that lifted an armoured car and flung it in the air in Mannar.*

  The boys carefully buried the three cylinder wires in the ground and dragged their lengths back to the sentry point in readiness. And now, with the army and the Movement waiting in readiness for war upon the Farm Bridge, the Island people were forced to use the sea (like they had about fifteen or sixteen years ago) to go to the city of Jaffna. They took the route of Velanai; Aralithurai, Thambatti, Karainagar, Allaipiddi, and Navanthurai.

  After returning to the Kunjan Fields sentry point, Rocky Raj did not venture out for two days. But the desire to visit his home kept running through his mind. ‘Maybe after my having left home for the Movement, Papa has changed for the better,’ he thought. He took the bicycle, told Dirty Santha where he was going, and left. Dirty Santha called out, ‘Gorilla, if you can, ask your mother to cook something for all of us.’

  Rocky Raj was soon riding around around his house. He couldn’t see his father anywhere. He parked his bicycle against the fence and entered the hut silently.

  Genoa looked at Rocky Raj and didn’t say a word to her son. The minute Michael Raj saw him, he pulled on his shirt and left the house. It was Princie who sat next to him and gave him all the news, including how their father had fought with the clerk’s household. She was fond of her elder brother, and thought him smart, quiet but absolutely fearless. There was a sharpness and at the same time a grace in the way he spoke, ate and dressed. When he got angry, he never spoke; he hit out without caring who or what he hit. He had even hit their mother.

  After she finished, Rocky Raj said, ‘Well, sister, the kinds of games Papa has been playing so far will all have to come to an end. If he doesn’t stop acting like this, the Movement will break his limbs and force him to take to his bed.’

  Genoa who had been sitting silently in a corner all this time, spoke up. ‘That man is threatening to break your limbs and make you take to your bed.’

  When Rocky Raj heard this, he became very angry. He got up and left the hut in a huff. Outside, he saw his father squatting on the ground right next to his parked bicycle.

  Rocky Raj bowed his head and walked up to his cycle. But as he tried to get on the bicycle to leave, Gorilla suddenly sprang up and caught its handlebars. Rocky Raj refused to looked up. He tried to pedal but the bicycle wouldn’t move.

  Gorilla shook the bicycle once and asked with a sneer, ‘Well boy, does the Movement keep you on as its cook?’ Rocky Raj felt his hands and legs begin to tremble. He dropped the bicycle and lifted his veshti, tying it up high, thug style. Gorilla leapt back. Rocky Raj then picked up the fallen bicycle, straightened it and began to roll it along. If his father opened his mouth one more time, Rocky Raj decided, he was definitely going to beat him up.

  He rolled his bicycle along for a couple of minutes. There was no sound from Gorilla. He got on and began to pedal.

  Then he heard Gorilla yell out behind his back. ‘Dey, I don’t want you coming back here anymore. This is not a whore’s house for you to come and go as you please.’

  It couldn’t have been even five minutes after Rocky Raj’s speedy departure when Jeyaseeli came running. ‘I heard that Rocky is here… Where is he? Inside the house?’

  Before Jeyaseeli could close her mouth, Gorilla gripped her lips shut with his hand and slapped her across her face.

  ‘You bitch, it is because of you that he has ruined himself this way. You kept acting like you were helping with his education when you were actually sending him into the Tigers’ army. Have you come here to watch a show?’ He kicked her hard on the hip.

  Jayaseeli fell on the ground and curled up in pain. She began to yell, ‘You woman-beating piece of pubic hair! Dirty Satan! Aren’t you ashamed to beat up a weaker person? You are a sanitary napkin, soaked in menstrual blood! Don’t you have any shame? Hey you, city trash, did you set your husband upon me, and watch him beat me as if you care nothing? I will go immediately and get the Tiger army to come and place your husband behind bars. Watch me.’ Holding her aching hip, she walked away slowly.

  ‘Hey, tell the Tiger army to come and put this behind bars,’ shouted Gorilla, lifting his veshti and exposing himself.

  Princie was listening to everything, seated in a corner of the hut. She crossed herself a hundred times. ‘Aiyo, Sacred Mother of God. Take me away from here. I cannot bear to live any longer with Papa,’ she wept. It was at that moment that she saw a way out.

  * * *

  When he saw Jeyaseeli at the sentry point standing in her usual manner and wiping at her teary eyes, Rocky Raj leapt behind the sandbags and took cover.

  It was Dirty Santha who interviewed her and Jeyaseeli acted out a nice little drama for him.

  ‘Look here Commander, Rocky Raj is my nephew. When I went to see him at his house, his father, Gorilla beat me up terribly. And when I threatened to complain to you, he yelled some uncomplimentary things about your Movement. You need to bring him in for interrogation,’ she said.

  Dirty Santha gave her a piece of his mind and chased her away. After Jeyaseeli left, one of the boys at the sentry point began to imitate her movements, wriggling around like her, and went around saying, ‘Look here, Commander…’ Everyone laughed.

  Poor Rocky Raj felt deeply humiliated. It was after this that he decided that he was never going to visit home
again.

  A few days after this incident, Rocky Raj heard that there had been a ceremony to celebrate his sister’s first menstrual cycle, and that his father, Gorilla had, as usual, behaved badly during the ceremony.

  Rocky Raj decided to go and see his younger sister. He wanted to take her a present so he went straight to Jeyaseeli’s house, called her out into her front yard and told her, ‘Aunt, I need two hundred rupees.’

  ‘What is this, Nephew? I hear that you guys have taken in a lot of money as taxes from the shops in town. You should be giving your aunt some money,’ she giggled.

  Rocky Raj stood silently without answering her. Jeyaseeli went inside her hut and brought out four fifty rupee notes that she had kept hidden, rolled up tightly, somewhere. She stuck the notes into Rocky Raj’s pocket and, looking both ways to see if any one was listening, began to whisper. ‘I have a problem, Rocky. Every day, in the evening, some man comes here and stands in the dark, whistling and throwing pebbles at the wall of my hut. The tracker, Thambirasa Kunjiappu looked at the footprints and told me that they were made by Sebastianpillai master. I too have my doubts about that Sebastian. That man, after chasing away his wife, is now trying to find another woman. Why don’t you go give him a hard time?’

  Rocky Raj moved his head in something that was neither a nod nor a shake as he got on his bicycle.

  His thoughts about Jeyaseeli were particularly vicious as he rode away. ‘This ground is so hard that even if lightening were to strike, it would leave no mark. She expects me to believe that the fellow was able to read a footprint off this ground. And then she, the goddess of chastity, comes to complain.’

  He went to the Royal Fancy Traders at Vangalavadi junction, bought a women’s Mondia wristwatch for one hundred and ninety rupees, and went to see his sister.

  This time too, Rocky Raj rode his bicycle twice around the house. No one seemed to be at home. He rang the bicycle bell once. Princie came out and seeing her older brother, smiled at him. She signaled with her hands that their father was not at home.

  Rocky Raj in and sat with Princie. ‘I cannot continue to live with this abusive man,’ she told him. ‘During the ceremony, right at the moment when it was time for the ritual bath, Papa humiliated the guests by asking them whether they had all come for the free food. Everything was ruined. My mother is not like a mother to me at all. She is more like a sister, terrified of Papa. Take me away to a convent or someplace or I will take some poison and kill myself.’ Princie wept hard.

  Genoa had been sitting in a corner of the hut listening quietly to Princie’s outburst. She came up to Princie and grabbed the wristwatch Rocky Raj had given to his sister. ‘The minute that man, sees this, he will pawn it and drink it all away,’ she said as she wrapped the watch in a plastic shopping bag and stuck it into the woven matting near her. ‘This girl has come of age, she needs to be given good food… there is nothing here,’ she said softly.

  Rocky Raj was disturbed greatly by what he was hearing. When he heard that his younger brother too was running about behaving like his father, he felt anger bloom within him. He said nothing as he got up, took his bicycle and went back to his sentry point.

  That night, Gorilla’s hut caught fire and burnt down.

  Somehow Gorilla had heard that Rocky Raj had been home. The minute he entered the hut he had grabbed his wife and daughter and beaten them both thoroughly.

  He ordered Genoa to take the Phillips radio, Princie’s schoolbooks, the pots and pans from the hut and the bench, and lay them in the yard. Next he went to the store, got some kerosene and set the hut on fire. As the house burned, he shouted, ‘O! There is a red horse flying in Rocky Raj’s house.’

  When his neighbours came running and asked him in shock, ‘Why are you burning your own house?’ he answered blithely, ‘Well, if the tiger from the forest enters your home, you have to burn your house.’

  * * *

  Gorilla had another nickname too: ‘Ja-ela.’ Genoa’s relatives used this name; when Gorilla had been courting Genoa, he had told her that he was a police inspector from Ja-ela. And seeing Gorilla’s smartly turned out self, Genoa’s relatives had believed him.

  Now, Gorilla had an old checkbook from a Ja-ela bank. There were a couple of ancient looking checks in it with barely legible writing. Who knew if this bank even existed anymore! Gorilla searched and found the checkbook, stuck it into his waistband, and with a pencil stub behind his ear, went around with a plan in his mind.

  The officer in charge of the Island area, Osheila, visited the sentry point at Kunjan Fields one day and gave it a thorough checking. But the boys had been very careful in their maintenance of the sentry point. Then Osheila got an idea in his head and insisted that he needed to take a good look at the northern seacoast. So Rocky Raj, with Osheila on the handlebar of his bicycle, began to pedal down the northern road.

  Just then, a tall man came running out from the side of the road and waved his arms, signalling for them to stop. ‘Who is that?’ Osheila asked Rocky Raj. ‘That is my father. A knock on his head would be good for Tamil Eelam and for me,’ Rocky Raj said softly.

  As the bicycle drew up to where he was standing, Gorilla in one leap grabbed and held on to its handlebars. The bicycle shook as it came to a halt and Osheila jumped down. Rocky Raj put the bicycle on its stand, and resting his foot on a low wall, waited.

  Gorilla caught hold of Osheila’s hand and stood for some time without saying anything. Then he put his left hand on his cheek and looked at Osheila with an expression of great sorrow. Rocky Raj wondered, ‘What is he trying to do now?’ Gorilla next pulled out the checkbook from his waistband and the pencil from behind his ear, and with a flourish, wrote out one of the expired checks and gave it to Osheila with both hands stretched out, as if with great respect.

  ‘Son, aren’t you the Commander? Son, here, I have written you a check for one lakh rupees. Please take it and release my son,’ he said. Osheila took the check, gave it a glance and turned to Rocky Raj with a smile. Rocky Raj said nothing as he loaded Osheila back onto the bicycle.

  Gorilla disappeared quickly, back into Kunjan Fields. ‘His death will be at my hands,’ Rocky Raj told Osheila in deep anger.

  * * *

  The boys were informed by walkie-talkie—from the Lucky Seven base in Pungudutivu—to arrange for as many boats as possible to enter Jaffna through the northern Paravai Sea at Kunjan Fields.

  Rocky Raj halted the boats that were running on the transportation line, and went to the homes of those whose fishing vessels were pulled up and lying on the beach, to organize about eight boats altogether. But whatever might be the emergency, it was impossible to fit a motor onto the boats and take them out to sea. For the navy would usually fly overhead in helicopters to rake the waters. If the boatmen were running sails or using oars, they didn’t have much of a problem. But if they used an outboard motor, they would definitely get shot at from the helicopter. If you sailed west from Kunjan Fields, you hit the Karainagar navy camp; if you went northwards, you reached the Jaffna army camp; in the east was the Mandaitivu mini camp. It was as if the Sri Lankan army had arrested and put the whole sea behind its bars.

  In the meanwhile, the boys at the sentry point were jumping with excitement. Were they going to be going on some kind of a hunt to bring back weapons? Or was some major political figure like Nedumaran travelling? they kept asking each other.

  Suddenly, a fleet of trucks came down the great North Road at high speed and stopped at the St. Anthony’s statue. It was where the boats were all kept in readiness. Osheila was in the first truck. There were six trucks in a row behind him, all filled with corpses laid out in rows.

  The whole beach began to stink of blood. Rocky Raj ran up to the trucks and stared at the dead bodies. After a minute he couldn’t stand straight, and he sat down on the ground, overcome with nausea. There were about fifty dead babies, little children, men, and women.

  They had all been sliced up and hacked to death.

&nbs
p; The boys began to load these bodies—without hands, legs, heads, some of them still holding babies—onto the boats. The boats were going to Navanthurai. In Navanthurai, there were trucks waiting to take the bodies to Jaffna General hospital. The Kunjan Fields people, crying in anger and sorrow, helped load the corpses.

  As usual, that morning the Kumudini launch* had set out from Neduntivu. It usually travelled straight to the Kurikattuvan jetty at Pungudutivu. But today it had been ordered to go to the navy camp at Nainativu. The navy planned to check passengers and arrest the young men and women it wanted, and only then allow the boat to proceed to Kurikattuvan jetty at Pungudutivu. And then, by 10 in the morning the Kumudini launch would pull in at the jetty at Pungudutivu.

  But that day, even before the launch could reach the navy camp at Nainativu, the navy ships went searching for Kumudini and surrounded her in the middle of the sea.

  The navy killed every single soul on the boat. The navy stuck a sword into the chest of a baby— he couldn’t have been more than six months old—sliced his penis off and stuffed it into his mouth. None of the passengers on the launch survived.

  The Kumudini should have docked at 10 but at noon it was still not to be seen. After 12, the people standing at the jetty at Kurrikattuvan saw it out at sea. When they noticed that the launch was not sailing towards the jetty and was instead floating around, they organized a boat and went over to it. Horror awaited them on the Kumudini. Somehow they managed to bring her back.

  * * *

  After loading all the corpses onto boats and sending them on their way, the boys sank into the sea to wash away the stench of blood. Then Osheila promised, ‘The time has come for the navy to be destroyed.’