Life in my home village of Sandilipai North
The sand lane beyond our compound on the left fizzled into two broad paths turning right and left. The right one led to two cottages, one of which later belonged to my uncle, a retired stationmaster whom I visited in 1952. The path on the left split into several footpaths leading to numerous destinations. Immediately to the right was a large mature palmyra estate with towering palms, scant leaves and large clusters of fruit. Sunlight seeped through the leaves to give life to lantana and thorny bushes behind which adult men and boys found privacy for calls of nature. Crows scavenged and kept the area clean. Through that estate, footpaths led to the seaside resort of Keerimalai as well as to fishing villages, to our farm and other farms and to the bilingual (Tamil and English) Kantharodai School. The strikingly straight path by the estate went past stretches of small, young palmyra trees. These were palmyra estates, heavily laden with foliage which led to Ilavalai, my grand-aunt’s village. Palmyra provided housing and succor to her numerous relatives.
Ambiavagar’s daughter, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren visited in 2017 and visualised how he traversed this lane in his early days.
Footpaths branching to the left from the straight path led to Nalava and Pariah ghettos and an open area where men and teenage boys played games, especially the traditional Thadchi. Beyond these ghettos, were similar landscapes of farms and palmyra plantations through which one could pass through before reaching Changanai.
The Palmyra
The palmyra tree held great fascination for me. While answering the call of nature, I would see dry leaves fall and hear the merry, rustling sound of young leaves dancing in the breeze. I remembered a Tamil saying I had heard on occasion without understanding why people said it. Translated literarily into English the saying was “When old leaves fall, young leaves laugh.” However, at home, I noted that old leaves were carefully used for our roof and fence and that cut up stems were used as fuel for cooking.
I have more to share about the palmyra. Toddy tapped from it was a potent form of alcohol for Uncle Shanmugam. It wound up his courage and gave him strength to beat up Nalava labourers. The juice extracted from the ripe fruit was boiled into delightful candy that could be kept for long periods and eaten at leisure. The seeds were planted in beds, and would grow spikes that were used as food in various forms. They could be boiled and eaten, or boiled and dried to be eaten in the future. Alternatively, it could be dried raw and pound into flour for cooking into porridge with prawns, fish or meat and beans — a favourite food as a delightful variation from rice and ragi. The palmyra nut is very tough. Using an idiom, we refer to the Jaffna man as “a nut.” J.B. Jayaratnam claimed such a man as ‘a nut that cannot be cracked’; and the world knows that the Tamil Tigers have not been cracked by the vastly superior number of the Sinhalese population despite having a world supply of arms, a navy, air force and support from the Indian army. [This was written in 1997 when the situation was very fluid. Ambiavagar hoped for peace]
The dried palmyra leaf also served as parchment. It was a favoured medium for preserving horoscopes. Almost every individual used to have a horoscope that was based on the date, time and place of his or her birth. Every family would have a bundle of neatly rolled palmyra leaves that were the horoscope of their family members.
Horoscopes
From time to time, my mother, uncle or grandmother produced a set of neatly cut and bound parchments leaves with engraved writing. These were horoscopes and the parchments that were ever lasting. Well, the old leaves had lost their merry laughter, waving and swishing in the breeze — but had become useful for man and outlasted him for generations!
I heard my mini horoscope read. My stars spelt much bad luck for my parents and other close relatives. Eventually I was told that it was my malignant stars which had caused my father to desert my mother and me and later caused my mother to succumb to galloping tuberculosis (TB) when I was only 11. Thus, I was to blame for all the misfortune and to be thrust into the guardianship of my stepbrother who also died when he was 44.
More evidence of my bad stars was that my father, having abandoned me, went on to became a trader, married a third time, had more children, proceeded into manufacturing aluminium products, and became wealthy. Meanwhile, my mother who clung to me died of galloping TB. My grandmother who kept me at arms’ length lived past 90. Uncle Shanmugam reaped a cluster of daughters and no son. The girls, not having any dowry to attract respectable husbands, eloped with whatever males they could trap and my uncle, despite his addiction to alcohol, lived past 90! In one respect, the reading of my horoscope turned out to be wrong. According to it I should have died at 67, but I am 92 now.
Castes
I came to know all too well, the path to our farm by which my uncle used to take me and the path to Kantharodai School walking there with other boys. I was also familiar with the path to the ghettos by which I went sometimes to tell the Nalava workers to go to the farm for work. Nalavas and Pariahs were untouchables living in squalor. My mother had forbidden me from entering their ghettos. It had no meaning for me. Out of curiosity, one day, when sent there to give an order, I went into the Nalava ghetto. Immediately some Nalavas knelt down and begged me to go away saying that my uncle would burn down their cottages for letting me go there.
Society did not permit untouchables to wear turbans or shawls, to enter our homes or our temples. Custom forbade their women to wear blouses and decreed they cover their breasts with the end of their saris. The Nalava men found employment on farms and rice fields, and climbed trees to tap toddy and pluck nuts. The women pounded grains, shelled them in pounders but custom forbade them from touching the product. The Pariah men were scavengers, criers of village news and dancers who led the hearse at funerals. Goldsmiths, carpenters, undertakers, fisher folk, dhobies and barbers were of intermediate castes. They could enter our homes and temples and render service but not behave as social equals to drink and eat with us or inter marry with us.
My reflections tell me that all these taboos are ridiculous. The people of all castes looked alike, spoke alike and prayed to the same deities. All observed similar moral and ethical codes, showed equal care for others. From childhood, I have never seen any justification for caste distinctions. I have come across several of the so-called lower castes, who were as respectable men and women as my fellow ‘superior’ caste of proud Vellalahs. However, even in my later years, in Singapore and Malaysia I heard some members of my community talk with pride about their superior caste and regard with contempt a well-educated person such as doctor, lawyer or engineer because he belonged to a lower caste. Yet, those very same people would “kiss the feet” of a rich or powerful person of another community even if he had risen to wealth and fame from humble beginnings of occupations such as disposing of human waste.
Mother, Me and Religion
Religious influence in my childhood was negligible. There was a Subramaniam temple near my school. The few times I went there, I felt an overwhelming sense of God’s presence. My mother attended a Pillayar temple near our home, and she took me there to play with other children. Mother’s education consisted of listening to the reading of Mahabaratham. But she did not share with me any of the tales from the Mahabaratham, or explain the rituals, rites and festivals, or teach me to pray. She observed rituals such as Thai Pongal by boiling rice in a large pot in front of the hut. The Tamil New Year saw her praying at the temple and giving me a new loincloth. On Deepavali morning she placed a row of lights, consisting of tiny wicks dipped in coconut oil to light the path from the gate to the door way. After an oil bath, she gave me a new loincloth and a shawl. At lunch, I had the most sumptuous meal with goat meat curry as the main dish. Amazingly, it was a family affair with my grandmother, uncle and aunt joining us and not indulging in the customary verbal battle over properties. On Fridays, she fasted and before her single meal at noon, she would look at the sky and call, “Caw, Caw, Caw.” Crows would fly down and she would feed them. She explained it was an offering to God to show her gratitude, and I wondered what she was grateful for.
The Jaffna Tamil
There is no reliable historical evidence of how, when and from where the Jaffna Tamil, my community, came to Ceylon (renamed Sri Lanka in 1972). It is believed that we came in different waves, from India, partly from the Tamil community and partly from the Malabari community, more than 2,000 years ago and that periodically, we ruled the entire island of Ceylon. In the 17th century, when the Portuguese invaded Ceylon we ruled only over Jaffna. The majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils never lived in amity except under British rule. The Jaffna Tamils had spread out from Jaffna onto the mainland, especially along the eastern coast, occupying and developing those areas and becoming the major community in some of them. Moreover, Jaffna’s land being largely arid and dry, meant that the people had to work very hard to produce crops. The British rule gave Tamils the opportunity to study English. Christian missions, in particular the Methodist Mission, attracted converts in large numbers to Christianity with offers of free education and even scholarships. Therefore, they took to English education in large numbers, much more than the Sinhalese, and became lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, accountants, technical workers and clerks. They crowded into the cities and towns all over Ceylon. Out-growing their demand for employment in the country, many migrated to other British colonies, particularly Malaya and Singapore.
When Ceylon became independent after World War II, the majority community, Sinhalese, became the rulers with a preponderant majority in Parliament. They made Sinhalese the national language and enacted laws to overturn the commanding position of Tamils in all walks of life. That gradually led to Ceylon not only look like a tear drop on the map, but a country flooded with tears that diluted great floods of bloodshed by rioters and whole-scale slaughter by internecine fighting between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. Hundreds of thousands of Tamils migrated to many parts of the world; the country’s economy and productivity are in dire straits but the fighting had continued. The Tamils wanted Eelam, a separate state, but the Sinhalese did not agree. The world just looks on!
Now for an anecdote that is not a legend but a fact. Jaffna boasts of a bottomless well that I heard about when I was a young boy. I checked it out to be a fact. Near the village of Puttur is the Nilavarai Tidal Well which at the depth of 145 feet has an underground connection with the sea, resulting in the lower one third having very salty water.