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I wrote this piece in 1992. I thought of republishing it pretty much in its original form, with all the awkward footnotes intact (I was in my twenties then. So forgive me!). I did update some of the footnotes with current information where it made sense. These are prefixed with “(New)”. Thirty years after writing this piece, I wrote two more pieces about my life in Kharagpur. They, too, appear on the same website.

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This was in 1984. Sri Lanka was descending into a nightmare that was quite unlike the Orwellian one. A complete year hadn’t passed since the anti-Tamil riots of July ’83. At the time of the riots, I was a first-year student in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Peradeniya. The riots hit us days before the first year examination. Already reeling from an in-campus anti-Tamil riot earlier that year, the Tamil students from Jaffna fled back to the North of Sri Lanka.

Prior to the riots, my family had been living in Matale, a little town in central Sri Lanka. My mother had been teaching in the local convent school for over 20 years. My father was an Education Officer. After the riots, it was certain that we were not going to continue living in Matale. My mother quit her job right away. We renovated our house in Thirunelvely, Jaffna and moved in. My sisters were admitted to the local ladies’ college¹. My father continued to work in Matale, while trying his best to get transferred to Jaffna.

I was in a state of limbo. The students of Southern Universities who lived in Jaffna formed a makeshift organization called the Displaced Students Union. The major demand was that all Tamil students from the Southern Universities should be transferred to the University of Jaffna. It was rather unrealistic in the case of engineering students because University of Jaffna did not have a Faculty of Engineering at that time²! But most of us were too dazed to be realistic. I certainly was dazed. Deep down, we knew that our lives had been changed irrevocably. Yet, most of us never actually paused to ponder how deep the change was. Those who did, often took drastic action. Every day, we heard of young refugees in Jaffna “vanishing’” to join the various Tamil militant movements.

Most of us were deeply affected by the riots. Yet, we retained a certain pride and righteousness. The Tamil Struggle was still “clean.” Not a single innocent civilian had died at the hands of the Tamil militants, compared to the hundreds massacred by the security forces and the mobs in the South.

The first shock to upset this rather romantic smugness came when the University of Peradeniya announced the first year examinations again. The Displaced Students Union decided that we should boycott the examinations. It was clear to many of us that there was little likelihood of the engineering students being transferred to the University of Jaffna. Some of the students decided to break the boycott and go to Peradeniya to take the examination. The union reacted with surprising intensity. At the Jaffna bus stand, young girls who dared to break the boycott were dragged out by their hair, off south-bound buses. (Tamil women usually had long hair done up in plaits. It was rather convenient for dragging them out.) That was the first blow to our myth of a “clean struggle³.”

It was clear that I needed to get out of Sri Lanka if I were to have any hope of continuing my education. I applied to several places in North America. Everywhere, I wanted a transfer admission to the second year so that the time spent in Peradeniya wouldn’t be a complete waste. Everywhere I met with the same response: the universities would send a form letter which would begin with nauseating intimacy and forced joviality. The gist of their messages was: “We would love to have you; but you see, you haven’t really completed the first year in your school. So there.”

The repeat examination for the first year was held in early 1984.By that time, the Displaced Students Union had all but disbanded. Almost all the Tamil students in my class showed up for the examination. We also started attending second year classes. But something was missing. I knew I wasn’t going to last long in Peradeniya. The only problem was that there was nowhere to go. Only two possible places remained: University of Oslo and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). In late May, I was offered admission to Oslo, with the possibility of financial aid. I still had to foot the bill for the air passage and the expenses during the first month in Oslo. My parents were somewhat apprehensive about sending me to Norway. My father had the impression that the Scandinavian societies were very permissive⁴.\footnote{} There was stiff competition among the applicants to the IITs. I did not think I had a good chance of getting in. I felt really low when the IIT admission offers started coming in and I didn’t get one. Several of my friends were offered admission. Not all them were planning to accept. Finally, about two weeks before IITs were about to re-open for the new academic year, I got the telegram telling me that I have been admitted to the program in Computer Science and Engineering at IIT, Kharagpur.

Once the initial euphoria died down, the magnitude of the changes about to take place began to sink in. I had no idea where Kharagpur was, except that it was in the state of West Bengal. I wasn’t sure if my parents would be able to pay for my education. Financial aid from universities themselves is unheard of in that part of the world. I also would have to start from scratch. I had turned 20 the previous December. The two years of work that I put in at Peradeniya would be wasted. One providential aspect to all this was that among my friends, there was one other person who was also offered admission to Kharagpur. His name is Manoharan. I had grown rather close to Manoharan during the preceding two years. He is a diminutive brahmin from Jaffna. He was more or less on my wavelength, which is a rarity for someone like me who borders on being a freak. Mano’s family didn’t have a lot of money. He didn’t know where the money was going to come to pay for his education in India. His father worked as a postmaster. His mother had recently passed away. That was a terrible blow to the family. But Mano took it very well.

That weekend, my father came home from Matale and announced his decision: he would sell the little house that he inherited from his parents in order to pay for my education in India. This was a momentous decision. To understand why, one should know a bit about the curse called dowry in Jaffnese society. A woman is supposed to bring a sizable amount of dowry into a marriage. The dowry could be in the form of cash or assets. In Jaffna, a woman born in a middle class family must bring a house as part of her dowry. Of course there were exceptions; but this was prevalent enough to be considered a general rule of thumb. My father had inherited a little house in Kuppilan, his ancestral village about 10km north of the city of Jaffna, from his parents. My parents had also built their own house in Thirunelvely⁵. But I have three sisters. Therefore, my family was one house short, so to speak. To give up a house under these circumstances was a monumental sacrifice.

Mano had the same problem. His family owned a house. But he has a sister. It was considered unwise to risk selling the house⁶. Fortunately, Mano’s father found a relative living in Canada to lend Mano the money that he would need in the next four years.

Once it became clear that Mano and I were headed towards Kharagpur, presumably to spend the next four years, we got down to a flurry of frenzied activity. There were so many things to be done: getting the visa, tying up loose ends in Peradeniya, buying the ticket. In the next few days, I did a whirlwind tour of Kandy, Peradeniya and Colombo. There was little time to ponder on the implications of this journey. Even though I had been away from my family for extended periods of time (I lived with my maternal grandmother in Kokuvil for a few years), I had never been alone. I had never been abroad. All that didn’t seem to matter. I only wanted to get back to being a student again.

Relatives and friends who heard about my impending departure, came to visit me. Without exception, they had horror stories about how the Indians would take unsuspecting newcomers for a ride. I was repeatedly asked to always keep an eye on my belongings. I was also asked to be careful about food and drink. My father got his degree from Madras⁷ Christian College. He screwed up his stomach so badly while he was there⁸ that he has suffered from various stomach disorders ever since.

My father wanted me to fly to India, even if it was going to cost rather a lot. He always wanted to do things with a touch of class. But Mano would have none of it. He was running the show on borrowed money. He wasn’t going to be frivolous. We decided to travel down to Thalai Mannar and take the famed ferry to cross the Palk Straits⁹.

On July 16, we set out from Jaffna. We were already late because the new academic year started in Kharagpur on the same day. Mano’s father was accompanying us till Thalai Mannar. We had enough money in hard currency to support us for a month or so, assuming that the evil Indians that my relatives portrayed for me didn’t relieve us of our precious belongings. Good-byes were said without any outward display of emotion. My father mentioned that we may not be able to come back for as long as four years, which turned out to be a prophetic observation. What was unsaid, but was fully grasped by everyone present, was the fact that I was escaping from danger, leaving the rest of my family behind. Being a young Tamil male, I was the most vulnerable in the family to be a victim of the senseless violence. In the eyes of the army, and most Sinhalas, every young Tamil male was a potential militant¹⁰. Now I was going away to escape that danger. Until then, the family had always stuck together. We suffered through two major ethnic riots. During the latest one, when a family friend offered to shelter us kids, we declined because we wanted to be together always, no matter what was in store for us. Now, for the first time we were breaking apart out of necessity. This meant that I had to come to terms with the possibility that my family could be obliterated while I was in India. During the next four years and more, this was the single most important factor that shaped my personality and attitudes. That warm July morning in Jaffna, all of us sensed that this good-bye was meant for more than that particular trip.

I was filled with a mixture of excitement and worry. The bus journey to Thalai Mannar was rather dull, except for a customary breakdown en route. My uncle Nesa was supposed to come meet us at the Vavuniya bus stand.

He didn’t show up. We noticed two rather good looking girls in salwaar kameez¹¹. We made a mental note to check them out in the ferry the next day. This was the age when one looked at the world as made up of girls, girls’ fathers, girls’ mothers, girls’ brothers, girls’ grandmothers and so on. No matter how perilous a situation we were in, we always noticed girls. Such is the carefree nature of youth!

We roamed the port-town in the evening. I sat down on a ramp facing the Palk Straits glistening in the setting sun, and wrote a postcard home. Thalai Mannar was teeming with humanity. There were madams, open halls that served as resting places, where the passengers could spend the night free of charge. We were privileged; Mano’s father used his membership in the elite postal corps to elicit an invitation from the local postmaster to stay the night.

During the middle of the night, Nesa māmā¹² turned up. Having missed me at Vavuniya, he and a friend came all the way down to Thalai Mannar, a few hundred kilometers away. They had searched all the madams and somehow traced us to the post-office quarters. I was in no mood to inquire the details. There was little time to talk. We went back to sleep. In retrospect, it seems like a foolhardy thing for Nesa māmā to have done. Young Tamils roaming around in the night were asking for trouble. Being a port-town, Thalai Mannar had a significant military presence. But then, Nesa māmā always loved to do foolhardy things. As a cricketer for Kokuvil Hindu College, he was known for his towering sixers¹³. He did that even when his team was losing!

Before sunrise, we trundled down to the ferry terminal. Knowing the postmaster elevated us in stature. We didn’t have to wait in line like other lesser mortals. The postmaster was a nice sort of a person. All he asked in return was to bring back a pāi (straw mat) from India when we returned. As it turned out, we never returned to Thalai Mannar. And so the postmaster’s kindness remains unreciprocated. We got through the checks without incident and started walking down the quay. Nesa māmā and his friend waved to us from the side of the quay. (Four years later, when I left for the US, it was again Nesa māmā who bid me the last good-bye at the Katunayake International Airport in Colombo.)

All through my childhood, I watched youngsters go away to study, mostly in England. That was the pinnacle of success\footnote{¹⁴} and it was always celebrated in style. There were elaborate “send-off” ceremonies to the fortunate few who went abroad. As a starry-eyed young boy from a middle class Jaffnese family, I dreamt of the day when I would be “sent off.” But that was in the seventies, when the “snail was on the thorn, God was in His heaven and all was right with the world.” Nineteen Eighty Four was different. If you could get out, you got out, without making a big fuss of it. Besides, India was just next door. Going away to India was not as exalted as going away to the City of the Queen. So, we boarded the ferry in the most unceremonious manner.

If I recall correctly, the ferry that plied between Thalai Mannar and Rameswaram was called SS Ramanujam. Every day, it made the trip in one direction. The trip lasted three hours. But the period during which neither shore is visible to the naked eye was likely around an hour. It is an eerie feeling to watch the shores of one’s home recede, particularly when it happens in an agonizingly slow manner.

I don’t remember whether we actually managed to locate the two girls that we had noticed the previous day. If we did, then the encounter must have been phenomenally dull because I remember nothing of it. We did however run into an elderly lady. She claimed to be a veteran ferry traveler. The ferry had two “classes.” The upper class, which was literally so, cost Sri Lankan Rs. 240 (around US $10, at that time). The upper deck had plastic chairs. One could also walk up to the stern and watch the sea and feel the wind against one’s body. The lower class didn’t have all these luxuries. They had little portholes to look out of. That was all. They had to sit on the floor. Naturally, it must have cost much less than the upper class. This lady described how she was stranded once without enough money and was actually forced to—gasp—travel in the lower class. We made appropriate clucking noises to express our horror and sympathy. By the way, this lady apparently had a daughter studying in Madras. So, she did fit pretty snugly into our world view!

Around late afternoon, the ferry anchored off the coast of Rameswaram. The quay that used to be there got wiped out during a cyclone years earlier. One had to use a row-boat to get to the shore. The kōpuram\footnote{Tall tower-like structure adorned with elaborate sculpture. Most temples in South India and Sri Lanka have a Around late afternoon, the ferry anchored off the coast of Rameswaram. The quay that used to be there got wiped out during a cyclone years earlier. One had to use a row-boat to get to the shore. The kōpuram¹⁵ of the famous Rameswaram temple was in full view.

By the time we reached the gates, a long lineup has already been formed. Evidently most of the other passengers were seasoned hands, and knew what was in store. We joined at the end of the line. The influence of the Sri Lankan postal corps did not reach across international boundaries! We got onto a row-boat. The rower’s assistant started going around¹⁶ asking for money. I was all ready to give what he wanted. But Mano stopped me on my tracks with a few well chosen threats. Mano was always more street smart than I. We disembarked into a huge hall which was full of people in a hurry. First we had to get our passports stamped. There was no lineup for this. Just a melee of bodies much like a scrummage. Mano pulled off a Houdini trick and returned with our passports duly stamped. Now we had to queue up for the customs check. The lineup was depressingly long. We joined up at the end of the line and struck up a conversation with our neighbor. We were going to be in the queue for a long while; it made sense to be civil to our neighbors. After a while, we remembered that there were supposedly separate queues for students. We spotted an extremely tall security officer who looked more like a basketball player. We walked up to him and asked him if there were separate queues for students. He had this permanent snicker on his face. He simply said, “go stand there,” pointing to the head of the queue. We were more than happy to oblige. After a while, our erstwhile neighbor noticed us. He wasn’t amused. We tried to weakly mumble something to explain how we got there. He would hear none of that. After a while, he quietened down.

The customs officers and their underlings relished their temporary demigod status. One of them asked Mano if he knew what the letters “IIT’” stood for. Since we didn’t carry any items of interest¹⁷, we didn’t have to spend too long at the customs. We were supposed to collect our passports at the exit. There were a bunch of people sitting at the table at the exit. We were asked to pay 20 rupees and were given a receipt for 6 rupees. Outside, the gate-keeper wouldn’t open the gate unless he was paid two rupees. I did. Mano didn’t. We got onto a rickshaw¹⁸ and headed to the railway station. The rickshaw puller extracted some ridiculous amount of money for the ride. This was our first ride in a rickshaw. It is a pretty ghastly sight to watch the rickshaw puller struggle. One feels positively inhuman being the payload in a rickshaw. People who are used to riding in a rickshaw seem to think nothing of it.

The railway station was strange. There were no queues at the ticket counters. We could see people inside. A street urchin asked if we were going to Madras. “I could get you a berth in the train; It is going to leave in ten minutes. You won’t get a ticket if you just stood there,” he warned. We tried to catch the attention of the people inside. But they continued to ignore us. I was getting restless. The urchin offered to take us to the station master’s door to prove his bona fides. We didn’t want a berth. But we wanted tickets. We went along with him. He stopped us outside the door, confidently wandered in and triumphantly came out without a scratch. We could see the station master hunched over a thick ledger. He didn’t look up. I convinced Mano, feet dragging all the way, to get our tickets through the little urchin. We didn’t know how else to. The kid took twenty rupees from us, disappeared into the office and soon re-materialized with two tickets, each valued at 7 rupees. He explained that they were old stock and the price is indeed 10 rupees each, which we of course didn’t believe. We wandered into the platform, and true enough the train was all set to leave. The urchin now wanted to be paid for his “service.” We clambered aboard. There was no place to sit. We put our luggage in the overhead racks. The compartment was full of fishmongers, mostly women. The place reeked with piscatorial aroma. One of the women started talking to us. We were visibly tired. She offered us water from her little bottle made of some nondescript material. We were touched. This was an act of kindness from a total stranger, precisely the type of person my relatives had warned about.

We hadn’t eaten all day. Just before the train pulled out, I bought a meal parcel from a hawker. Mano didn’t want any. The train was virtually crawling. It was also going to take longer than 24 hours to reach Madras via a circuitous route. We were planning to get off at a place called Mānamadhurai. where the train was supposed to reach the next morning. We planned to take a bus from there to Madras. All our plans were based on hearsay. The women said that it would be quicker to get off at the next station at a place called Mandapam and take the overnight bus to Madras. There was a portly gentleman traveling in the same compartment. He seemed knowledgeable. He confirmed what the women said. But the women were concerned because we had already bought tickets to Mānamadhurai. They couldn’t understand why we were willing to sacrifice a big sum like ten rupees that we paid for the tickets. They live in abject poverty.

When the train stopped at Mandapam, I got down and asked the driver how long he was planning to stop in that station. He had trouble understanding my Tamil. I had to switch to English¹⁹. He said he would wait for about ten minutes. I ran all the way to the level crossing, about 200m away, where the bus was supposed to be waiting. Sure enough there was one, with “Chennai” (Tamil for Madras) written in Tamil. I ran back and told Mano, who was inside the train, to get down. In his hurry, Mano banged a heavy piece of luggage against the forehead of the kind woman who gave us water. She had tears in her eyes. Mano tried to apologize. But we had to leave in a hurry. Among all the swindlers, it is ironical how we ended up hurting the only person who was concerned about us.

Apart from us, there was a woman and a couple of others waiting to buy tickets for the bus. Presently, a conductor showed up and started issuing tickets. Apparently there was a limit of 20kg of luggage per person. There was yet another “official” to weigh the luggage. He weighed it, pronounced it to be under the prescribed 40kg and demanded 15 rupees for his labors. When we protested, he threatened to load our luggage on the roof racks of the bus so that we would have to pay in Madras as well to have it unloaded. Finally, we claimed we didn’t have any money to pay him. This was not totally untrue. All our money was still in traveler’s checks²⁰. The weighing expert was disgusted at the penniless ceylon–kāranga²¹.

The conductor watching all this, found a novel way to punish us. He noticed the food parcel I was carrying and declared that since our luggage weighed exactly 40kg (this was news to us) the parcel put it conveniently over the limit. Therefore, we had to pay “additional baggage charge.” He promptly wrote out a ticket for six rupees. Now that this was quasi-official, we had no choice but to pay up. But at least, we were firmly on our way to Madras, our first major target. That made us rather content.

The bus started travelng through the highways of Southern Tamil Nadu. We passed town after town. Quite often, we recognized the names. Most of the Tamil literature and cinema available in Sri Lanka originates from India. Local movie makers and publishers just cannot compete with the onslaught from Tamil Nadu. Consequently, we were intimately familiar with the Tamil Nadu way of life. The converse was not true. Ceylon–kāranga always remained an enigma to the Tamils of India.

A woman in the bus struck up a conversation with us. She was a simple rural woman. When she found out that we were headed to some point near Calcutta, the capital of the state of West Bengal, she admonished, “jāmān ellām pathram” (be careful with your luggage). This was the pits! When the relatives back home warned about the evil Indians, they were mainly talking about Tamil Nadu. For most Sri Lankans, trips to India were mainly confined to Tamil Nadu alone. Apparently, the evilness in the vicinity of Calcutta far exceeded that in Tamil Nadu!

Around midnight, we stopped at Thiruchi for a long break. I walked around and found posters on the walls by various Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups. There were people walking around even at midnight: a young couple, a middle-aged woman and her son, a group of youngsters on bicycles. I felt a certain elation bubbling out of me. This was a free land similar to the one I remembered from my childhood. This was a land where a Tamil need not walk around with lurking fear. This was the land “where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.” I was glad to be there.

When we stopped for breakfast the next morning, we were almost at the gates of Madras. There was a little coffee-kiosk with the sign, “Unemployed Graduates Association.” India has colleges virtually in every street corner. Graduates with degrees in liberal arts or science are dime-a-dozen. Sri Lankans tend to look down upon such people. One has to do really well at the British style G.C.E. (Advanced Level) examination in order to get into a Sri Lankan university. People back home were quite unimpressed by our decision to go to India to get our degrees.

Around mid-morning we rode into the City of Madras. It felt so familiar from movies, magazines and books. Years later, when I saw New York City’s skyline, that, too, didn’t feel like the first time. I might have drawn the silhouette blind-folded; talk of cultural imperialism! As we drove through streets whose names we already knew, I couldn’t help wondering if, some day, I would walk these streets as a more respectable person, perhaps one with a job, instead of as a refugee. Three years later, when I spent a summer working at the Hindustan Computers Ltd. in Madras, I almost convinced myself that this was the city I would spend the rest of my life in. There were other reasons for such optimism…but I digress.

We got down at the bus stand in a place called T.Nagar. My father had recommended that we stay in a motel called “Everest Hotel” by the main railway station. We got into a bus that was headed in this direction. Luggage is disallowed in the city buses of Madras. If you had luggage, you hired cab or an auto-rickshaw, which is a motorized three-wheeler. We didn’t know all this. Even if we had, I doubt if we would have been willing to risk being literally taken for a ride by the auto-rickshaw driver. The bus driver noticed our luggage when he boarded the bus and promptly ordered us off. When we opened our mouths to complain, he realized from our strange accent that we were a bribe-opportunity. He let us stay and hinted that he wanted to be paid. We tried paying him with Sri Lankan currency, which he didn’t want. He sighed and let us travel anyway.

The clerk at Everest Hotel closed the ledger the moment he heard we were Sri Lankans. This was a shock. In 1984, Tamils in India were overflowing with concern for the plight of their Tamil brethren in Sri Lanka²². Everest Hotel was apparently ahead of their times. This may also have had something to do with the fact that we looked like dirtballs, unwashed and unfed. The clerk was nice enough to point to another motel that was willing to take in Sri Lankans.

Washed and combed, we came down to the lobby and found a huge map of India. For the first time, we knew where exactly was Kharagpur! The reception clerk told us that it would be impossible to buy tickets on the train at such short notice. He suggested that we use the services of the specialist in the motel, who would get us the tickets we want. Clearly, it wasn’t going to be a favor. We had been bitten too many times. We were wary of deals like this. The clerk beckoned some other Sri Lankans who were staying in the same motel to corroborate his story. They did. Now, this was different. We felt we could trust the Sri Lankans. Besides, we were already late. We really needed to get to Kharagpur as soon as possible.

We ventured out in quest of food and a post office to send the customary telegram home. On our way, we wandered into the Madras Central railway station. There were fifteen seats available in that night’s Howrah Mail, a slow train going towards Calcutta. There were fifteen berths available in next morning’s express as well. And, what’s more, the additional reservation charge for a seat was only two rupees. We couldn’t believe our luck. We congratulated ourselves for not falling into the motel clerk’s evil trap. We bought two tickets with seat reservations. We weren’t going to pay over seven times more for reserving a berth. Few people in Sri Lanka ever traveled in a berth. I never had. The longest rail trip in Sri Lanka lasted overnight. But this was different. The trip to Kharagpur would take two nights and a day. Anyone else would have been horrified at the thought of traveling all the way without a berth. We thought nothing of it.

Also, for the first time at the ticket counter in Madras, we experienced the deferential treatment reserved for IITians in India. IITs are India’s premier engineering schools. Among over a hundred thousand applicants each year, only a couple of thousand managed to get into the five IITs²³. Though not all IITians let this get to their heads, some invariably succumb to this pandering and develop grand illusions about their greatness. Years later, we learnt how to extract the maximum benefits out of the public’s awe for IITians. Standing at the counter, we were merely pleasantly surprised at the civil reaction of our neighbor and the ticket clerk.

That night, we boarded Howrah Mail and left Northwards along the southeastern coastline of India. Everything in India is huge by comparison. Trains have fifty or more carriages; the longest I had seen in Sri Lanka had a little over ten. The big rivers like Godhāvari and Krishnā are more than a kilometer in width; the widest rivers of Sri Lanka paled into mere canals in comparison. The bridges over these rivers were awe-inspiring. The entire length of the train was within the bridge over Krishnā. And this was no toy train as in Sri Lanka. Then there are the plains. Endless plains. Vast expanses that would make one feel tiny and humble. By morning, we had crossed the state boundary into Andhra Pradesh. The language spoken in Andhra is Telugu. We knew enough to recognize Telugu characters as such. But the familiarity we felt with Indian scenes so far was fading fast. We didn’t understand what people were talking around us. Almost everyone else in our compartment was traveling short distances. There was a young man traveling in the same compartment with us. We got talking to him. He was very helpful. We asked him several questions: “what was the climate of West Bengal like?” (extremes), “what were the people like?” (simple and nice), “should we watch out for swindlers?” (you bet). We decided to do our homework right this time and asked him how to say “how much?” in Hindi. We weren’t going to let the rickshaw pullers in Kharagpur know that we are easy prey. We were going to pretend to be seasoned pros!

By afternoon, we had crossed into the state of Orissa. This was completely unknown territory to us. We didn’t even recognize Oriya script. It was rather ironic in my case because Emperor Ashoka, after whom I was named, had his famed change of heart when his conquering armies devastated the Kalinga kingdom, which is present day Orissa. He embraced Buddhism and practiced non-violence ever since. Orissa abounds with historical landmarks related to Ashoka.

Mano had managed to get a Tamil magazine from a fellow passenger. The person in front of me holding an Oriya newspaper, was curiously eyeing the, apparently meaningless, squiggles in the Tamil magazine that Mano was reading. Soon he got talking to Mano. When we stopped for dinner, he got down with Mano and bought him dinner. That pushed us into a state of complete paranoia. To clinch the issue, this man told us that we would be reaching Kharagpur at 3:00 in the morning. He asked to be woken up so that he could bid us farewell. Of course we decided not to!

As we approached Kharagpur, Mano ran into the second danger that my relatives had warned about. His stomach started running amok. When we reached Kharagpur in the wee hours of the morning, it was still dark. Without emotion, I watched the signboards approach. They had the word “Kharagpur” written in Hindi, Bengali and English. This was to be my home. Kharagpur was a major railway station²⁴. The train was to stop here for quite a while. We got down without waking our Oriya friend. He did wake up on his own; much to our embarrassment, all he wanted to do was to bid us good-bye.

It was still dark. We decided to wait until daybreak before venturing out of the railway station. Mano’s stomach was getting worse. People were sleeping all over the place. We sat down, always keeping an eye on our luggage. There were vendors selling all sorts of unfamiliar goodies. Strange actors stared from huge cutouts for movie advertisements outside the station. The first rays broke through a couple of hours later. We timidly ventured out. Rickshaw pullers started accosting us. We tried to appear nonchalant. Having done our homework, we confidently asked one of them, “IIT ke liye kithnā?” (how much for IIT?). He answered back in English, “New students? ten rupees.” The little blurb that IIT had sent out mentioned that the rickshaw fare was typically three rupees. But none of them would agree to that. Finally we managed to get one of them to agree for six rupees²⁵.

The ride took nearly thirty minutes. It was exciting. We found some peace in that early morning ride. We had no idea what IIT looked like. In our benevolent mood, we took pity on the rickshaw puller who was really sweating it out hauling two adults and their luggage. We gave him all the coins we had. He must have been laughing away inside. He was already ripping us off!

We had been allotted to the Rajendra Prasad Hall of residence. When we walked into the hall there was still no one up and about. In the common room, we found three guys. They invited us in. They behaved rather strangely. But there is this tradition called “ragging” in many Indian and Sri Lankan universities. Ragging takes place for a couple of weeks in the beginning of every academic year. The stated purpose is to “orient” the new comers to their environment. But often, it was a means for seniors to exploit the unfamiliarity of the freshers, to entertain themselves. Sometimes the seniors could be rather sadistic. We weren’t going to cross these seniors the wrong way. We acted as if we didn’t find their behavior strange. Later on, we came to know that these guys were actually on drugs. They were some of the last drug users at IIT, Kharagpur; the habit was already waning in 1984.

Presently, we met the student officials responsible for the maintenance of the hall. We were allotted rooms in the ‘D’ block, which remained my home, in every sense of the word, for the next four years. During the day, we ran around getting the paperwork sorted. We were almost a week late. Every little official didn’t forget to remind us of this crime. By evening, Mano’s stomach got bad enough to warrant him to be admitted to the hospital. The hospital staff were pretty amused to find Sri Lankans. They would call all their friends to come watch the Sri Lankans. We felt like animals on show! This novelty persisted for a few months. On a couple of occasions, strangers bought us tea when they found out that we were from Sri Lanka. Most Indians had heard of the place Lankā where the daemon king Rāvaṇa lived, according to the great Indian epic, Rāmayaṇa. There is no evidence to believe that Lankā was in what is Sri Lanka today. But we were still curio for the Indians in Bengal. Few had met any Sri Lankans before. It is difficult to tell Sri Lankans apart by physical characteristics alone. This “so-similar-yet-so-different” characteristic may have contributed to our curiosity value.

As I walked back to `D’ block, I felt empty.

The seniors in my wing on ‘D’ block felt strongly about “wing unity.” They all gathered in a room and I was introduced to everyone around. They chided me for not getting their help in taking Mano to the hospital. Everyone had something nice to say to the strange newcomer from a far-away land. Among those already in the wing, there was another first year student called Joy Prabhakaran. Joy was to become my closest friend.

I had my good night’s sleep in a long while. For better or for worse, I was already in Kharagpur and I was going to remain there for the next four years.

The next morning, I heard a knock on my door. The guy outside asked me, “Are you from Sri Lanka?” I thought this must be a venerable senior. He wasn’t. He was a lonely freshman from Jaffna who had already spent five days in this strange land. I was glad to see him and talk to him in Tamil. He was exultant to see me. For a few weeks hence, until I managed to wean him away, Sritharan spent most of his time in my room!

As the days passed, we slowly eased into life at Kharagpur.

The pilgrimage had only just begun.

1. High schools in Sri Lanka are often called “colleges.} ↩︎
2. (NEW) It took another three decades before University of Jaffna got its Faculty of Engineering! ↩︎
3. There were more such agonizing moments to follow: when the first non-combatant civilians were killed in a pilgrimage site at Anuradhapura; when whole villages of Muslims were terrorized out of their homes… ↩︎
4. They probably are, compared to the sexual conservatism of an Indic people, like the Tamils of Jaffna. ↩︎
5. (NEW) As it turned out, this house was flattened out of existence by one of the belligerent parties of the Sri Lankan civil war (To this day, we don’t definitively know know which one). ↩︎
6. The turn of events has rendered property in Jaffna rather useless as dowry. Nowadays, prospective Tamil grooms living in Canada expect to get a sizable amount of money towards the down payment of a house as their dowry. (NEW) However, since the end of the war, property in Jaffna has gone up in value, especially with money from the diaspora flooding into Jaffna.) ↩︎
7. Madras (New: now known as Chennai) is the state capital of Tamil Nadu, a state in South India whose inhabitants speak Tamil. ↩︎
8. Jaffnese use sesame seed oil (gingelly oil) for cooking. Under extremely compelling circumstances, they might stoop down to using coconut oil! Anything else would be sacrilegious. Coconut oil was gold in India. Indians tend to use other kinds of oil which didn’t agree with my father’s metabolism. Interestingly enough, during the IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force, which did everything but keep peace) misadventure in Jaffna, I read the account of a reporter from The Telegraph (Calcutta) who spent a few days at the battle front. After being on a steady diet of stuff cooked in sesame seed oil, he described how relieved he was to return to Colombo and get some real Indian food cooked with mustard oil! ↩︎
9. The shallow stretch of water, barely 40km wide, that separates
   Thalai Mannar from the Indian coastal town of Rameswaram. ↩︎
10. In course of time, some measure of the equality of the sexes has been achieved. With the advent of women cadres in the Tamil militant movements, every young Tamil is now considered a potential militant. ↩︎
11. Salwar kameez is an Indian dress which has become rather fashionable in Jaffna in recent times. I think any woman would look adorable in salwaar kameez! ↩︎
12. Tamil for uncle. ↩︎
13. A ball hit so hard that it landed outside the boundary of the cricket grounds and earned six runs. Even though the dividends are high, the risk is high too. One could get out trying to hit a sixer. ↩︎
14. Jaffna was a rather barren place. Most of the industries and development projects were located in the south of the country. Jaffna also had a very high literacy rate (higher than the national average of 85%). Consequently, Jaffnese tended to go out of Jaffna, perhaps even out of the country, in search of success. ↩︎
15. Tall tower-like structure adorned with elaborate sculpture. Most temples in South India and Sri Lanka have a kōpuram above their main entrance. ↩︎
16. Actually, there was no space to “go around” in that roughly 5-metre long contraption that had about 20 people and their luggage stuffed into it. ↩︎
17. India has had strict controls on imports. Bringing in foreign-made goods was always a lucrative and profitable business. ↩︎
18. Originally a two wheeled contraption which is pulled by a human. Nowadays, the cycle-rickshaw, a kinder, gentler version of rickshaw, is more common. It is a three-wheeler, which effectively has half a bicycle attached at the front. Locomotion is achieved by pedaling instead of pulling. ↩︎
19. Jaffnese speak Tamil with a different accent which is often unintelligible to the Indians. Indians liked a leisurely drawl, much like the Southerners of the US. Even English is spoken with a different accent; but usually comprehension was better when English was used. Nowadays, I like to claim that I can slip into Jaffnese or the various Indian Tamil accents with ease! ↩︎
20. (NEW): A quaint instrument which binds your identity document to a sum of money. You could buy it at your local bank and cash it at your destination, after having demonstrated your identity. It was supposedly safer than carrying cash. ↩︎
21. The old English name for Sri Lanka was “Ceylon”. “Ceylon–kāranga” is colloquial Tinglish (mixture of Tamil and English) for Ceylonese. ↩︎
22. In 1992, after the IPKF debacle and the gruesome explosion that blew up former Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, Sri Lankan Tamils are decidedly unwelcome in most parts of Tamil Nadu. ↩︎
23. (NEW) Now there are over twenty IITs! ↩︎
24. Kharagpur was little more than a village. But apart from the IIT, it also had a coach factory belonging to the Indian Railways. Kharagpur railway station has the longest railway platform in the world. ↩︎
25. The standard fare was three rupees. But the rickshaw pullers could spot newcomers miles away. A year later, when I returned to Kharagpur after a vacation, I was planning to act like a naive newcomer and trick the rickshaw pullers into trying to trick me! I thought I could get back at them this way. I deliberately talked to the first rickshaw puller in English. He asked for three rupees! They have a sixth sense about these things. ↩︎