ரூபம்

Translated from the original Tamil short story rūpam (ரூபம்) by Shobasakthi. The original story is available at his website. If you have any questions or feedback, please contact ez.iniyavan@gmail.com.
Warning: Towards the end of this story, there is a description of an act of extreme sadistic cruelty inflicted on a prisoner. If your sensibilities would be offended by such a vivid description of cruelty, you are advised not to read this story.

When he reached the doorstep of the neighbor’s house, Mahinda Rajapakse was giving a speech on the television. He sat by the doorstep and turned his head to look at the television. “It is my responsibility to ensure that you can live with dignity and self-respect, I am the leader of all the people in this country,” Rajapakse was saying in Tamil. Rajapakse’s face filled the entire widescreen display of the television. This was the first time he saw a television with such a large screen. It was flat, modern, and had impeccable sound quality. Perhaps the neighbor’s son had sent it from Saudi Arabia. He turned his face to look at the street. It was engulfed in darkness.

When he was a little boy, he constantly nagged his mother to buy a television set. Their sole income was his late father’s measly pension. It is that money that allowed his mother to keep him and his sister from starving and in school. At that time, the neighbors had a black-and-white television. He and his sister visited their house in the late evenings to watch television. For some reason, his sister was not interested in television. But he was afraid to come here alone in the dark. Therefore, he begged his sister to accompany him. He would sit on the ground with his eyes glued to the television. After some time, his sister would start to murmur, “Can we go home now?” He would not even hear her words. In desperation, she would secretly pinch his thigh. He would then plead, “A little longer.” The people at this house would serve them tea and boiled palmyra tubers. His sister would be embarrassed. He would accept them for fear that they might not let him watch television if he declined.

At home, he would play television by gluing a piece of white paper onto an empty matchbox, cutting out the middle part of the piece of paper, and painting the sides. There would always be some matchbox television sets in his school bag. When he was a little older, he started going to the village high street to watch television. The color television set at Meena Cafe on high street was always on. He would watch television as though he was bewitched. His eyes would shine. No program bored him. Often the broadcast signal was poor, and the television would just show a thousand white dots instead of a moving picture. He would imagine that they were a thousand people running. Sometimes there would be only video without audio. But he would create a matching soundtrack in his imagination. If there was only audio, he could imagine matching pictures. When there was a power cut, he could stare at the screen for minutes on end without batting an eyelid. All he needed was the television set. He could imagine the rest, sounds and pictures. He would return home only when the shop closed.

His visits next door to watch television had become less frequent. His village was located by the side of a highway connecting two cities. The high street lay next to the highway. On those days when the army patrolled the highway, the high street would be deserted. As soon as people heard army vehicles at a distance, shops would be shuttered immediately, and people would hurriedly scatter. Whenever the army passed the high street, they invariably expended some bullets. Those were just warning shots. The army never left the highway to enter the village.

On those days when the high street shops lay shuttered, he would go to the neighbor’s to watch television. By then they had bought a small color television set. Since he had grown up, they would insist that he sit on a chair. They would serve him snacks and tea. He was too shy to accept. The lady of the house was indeed a close friend of his mother. They were close enough to each other that on minor emergencies, they exchanged sugar or tea or some such. He, however, was reluctant to be obliged to anyone. But on the matter of watching television, his reluctance did not stand in his way.

When he passed the age of playing with matchbox televisions, a small color television set did indeed make its way to his house. His sister became a teacher, and gave her first salary to his mother, who then combined it with her savings to buy him a color television. He asked his sister to sew a beautiful cloth cover to protect the television set. His school bag no longer carried matchbook televisions. Instead, he always carried a TV guide in his bag.

As soon as he returned from school, he would sit in front of the television and would not budge. He would sit there like a statue. His mother called him to eat, repeatedly. After the tenth call, he would rush into the kitchen, grab a plateful of food, and rush back to sit in front of the television. But his schoolwork did not seem to be affected by this obsession with television. He always came near the top of his class. Once he told his sister, pointing to the television, “This is more useful than our teachers.”

He missed out on university admission by just a few grade points. He was somewhat disheartened. He studied all day. As soon as it became dark, he would turn off the lights in the room and watch television until midnight. His mother would say, “Don’t watch television in the dark, son, you would ruin your eyes.” He never even heard her warnings.

When he was twenty, the army entered the village for the first time. When village folks heard that the army was on its way, they grabbed whatever they could and fled to save their lives. His sister was then teaching at a city school and lived in a rented room in the city. So, he and his mother decided to flee to the city. All their belongings fit in two suitcases. He secured the television set on his bicycle’s carrier. He put his mother and the luggage on a vehicle that was going towards the city along the highway and followed it on his bicycle.

When he reached the city, he sold the television set. He got very little money for it. He went to the shop of a relative and left his bicycle there saying that he would be back shortly. He then walked to the bus stand and boarded a bus. During the four-hour journey, the bus crossed twenty checkpoints. He got off by the side of the highway and walked towards the forest through paddy fields. He asked for directions from the people he encountered along the way. Although it was dark, moonlight lit up the forest. He walked all night along a forest path and reached a village. There was a training camp run by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Perhaps because he joined the militant group after walking through the forest, his nom de guerre became kāṉakaṉ, meaning “forrester.” But his comrades called him ‘Jungle.’ It became a legend in the group that if Jungle was at the forefront of an attack, then that attack was sure to succeed. It was as if he was born to wage war. His left eye was called ‘strategy,’ and the right eye ‘bravery.’ His left leg was called ‘steady,’ while the right ‘speed.’ Countless were the sieges that he broke from the front. Eventually he lost the leg called ‘speed’ in an aerial bombardment, only ‘steady’ remained.

He walked around the camp using a crutch. He was careful not to let his mother or sister learn that he had lost a leg. Even when there was a ceasefire, he did not go to visit his mother. He made sure that she did not know where he was. Only a year later, they saw him on Tiger television. The very next week, his mother and sister came to visit him. It was an amicable meeting; not like he had imagined. His mother stroked the stump that remained in place of his right leg. They chatted with him enthusiastically and left.

He was the presenter for three programs on Tiger television. Among them, the half-hour show called ‘Liberation Songs’ was immensely popular. He collated popular songs by singers like Sānthan, Thēṉisai Sellappā, Sukumār, and Chiṭṭu. The lines of poetry he recited before presenting each song, and his booming voice, rich in modulation and tone, and laden with emotion dazzled many listeners. Once Sānthan told him, “You have many more fans than me,” and laughed.

When people saw him outside, they mobbed him. Because he was seated whenever he appeared on television, most people did not know that he had lost a leg. When they saw that majestic voice hobble along on a crutch, their faces fell. Some mothers would hug and kiss him. Perhaps they remembered their children whom they had lost.

He received a lot of fan mail. Some of them were love letters. He would read them alone with a smile and tear them up. “Our girls now dare to write love letters to the militant group itself,” his lips would murmur.

During the ceasefire, a music troupe from Vaṉṉi toured Europe to hold performances for the Tamil diaspora there. He accompanied them as their producer. Many event organizers had insisted that he come with them. When they were served alcohol on the plane, the singer next to him asked half-jokingly, “I haven’t tasted alcohol for such a long time, shall I try?” His frown in response made the singer say with resignation, “There is nothing wrong in having some alcohol, but it is not good for the voice,” and leaned back into his seat.

The gluttony in European cities caused him stomach aches. People kidnapped him almost violently to take him home to feed him. Whenever he appeared on stage, the youth in the audience cheered uproariously. When he returned from Europe, his suitcase was full of expensive gifts. A customs officer at the Colombo airport held up one of those gifts and asked, “Would you let me have this?” With a smile, he motioned with his hands to indicate his agreement.

As soon as he returned to the camp, he distributed the gifts among his comrades. What remained for him were three greeting cards expressing love. Two of them were received in Paris while the third was in Switzerland. The Paris cards were written in English. The Swiss card had a third-rate love poem in baby-talk Tamil. He did not care for what was written on the cards. But he could not bring himself to tear them up because they were beautiful. Once back at the camp, he did indeed tear them up. He told endless stories about Europe to his comrades into the wee hours of the morning. He believed firmly that as long as the Tamil struggle had the support of the diaspora, no one could defeat it.

When his unit took the decision to surrender at the Naṉthikkadal lagoon, he wanted to swallow his cyanide pill and die on the spot. But his commanding officer said nothing would change if he killed himself. Once the guns, uniforms, dog tags, and cyanide capsules were buried in the ground, his unit scattered and dissolved into the sea of people. He did not want to bury his cyanide capsule. He tucked it into his waist and walked along Naṉthikkadal. There were about twenty men, women, and children waiting in a boat to cross the lagoon into the area under control of the army. The plan was to leave when the shelling by the army subsided. He left his artificial leg behind and boarded the boat with just his crutch. The boat started when the shelling stopped. He threw his cyanide capsule into the sea.

Only when the boat reached the shore did they notice that there was a row of soldiers lying on the ground with guns at the ready awaiting the boat. When they disembarked, they heard the command, “Undress yourself and come forward.” “Sir, we are just ordinary people.” they shouted back. The command for undressing was repeated. When they hesitated, there was a barrage of gunfire from the shore. The sea water throbbed under the gunfire. Men, women, and children were stripped naked, and their bodies were searched for hidden explosives. Everyone was then marched, still stark naked, for about a kilometer. They were allowed to put their clothes back on only then, just after they were herded onto a bus. He kept his head bowed. He did not want to look anyone in the eye. The bus traveled for hours. When babies cried of thirst, hunger, or heat, their mothers slapped them into silence. When the bus stopped at the Vavuniya detention camp, he climbed down from the bus with his eyes firmly on the ground. While he was waiting in the queue of people, someone tapped him on the shoulder and called out ‘kāṉakaṉ’ in a hushed voice. He jerked his head upward to see an army officer grinning at him. The officer took the crutch in one hand and helped him stand up with the other. When he stood up, the officer handed him the crutch, supported him by his shoulder, and took him away.

His interrogation began in that small room fenced with corrugated iron. When he was asked for his real name, he said ‘Ravikumar.’ He also told them that his nom de guerre was ‘kāṉakaṉ’.’ The officer laughed, saying “it seems you are also called ‘Jungle’!” He realized that there was no use in hiding anything from them. Yet, he felt that it was his duty not to divulge information as best as he could. As the interrogation proceeded, he was left with nothing to hide anyway. The interrogation was being recorded on a big ledger. The soldiers around him were video recording him on their cellphones. Whenever he bowed his head, they showered him with Sinhala obscenities and made him look up again. “‘Kāṉakaṉ’ is uncomfortable. Stop the filming,” commanded the officer with a smile and the recordings ceased. Everything thereafter proceeded as he had expected.

They kept beating him as if he were a rabbit lying on the ground, unable to move. They surrounded him and beat him with sticks and rifle butts. He did not really know the answers to their questions. They sat him up, held him steady, and cleanly and steadily sliced off a piece of flesh from his thigh above his amputated leg, as if they were cutting a piece of cake. They handed him the piece and asked him to eat it. He pretended to faint and collapsed to the ground with his eyes glazed. They stuffed the piece of flesh, blood dripping, into his mouth. It glided down his throat.

He kept vomiting blood for three days. Even after he was sent to a rehabilitation camp, he vomited often. At mealtimes, if he saw meat or fish, he retched and vomited. He stopped eating meat. There were about two hundred surrendered adult militants in that rehabilitation camp. The six that died of sickness, and the two that died by suicide were replaced by newcomers. The army took care to ensure that the number of inmates did not dip below two hundred.

He was always depressed. Two people in the camp suffered from depression, and he was one of them. The other kept stripping himself and received a beating from the army every day for this. The army officer said it was a ruse to escape from the camp.

A psychiatrist showed up to train fifty inmates chosen from the two hundred. As he was lecturing about how to escape from depression and to be happy, he interrupted, saying, “If we are freed from here and can go home, we will become happy.” Whatever the doctor said, he dismissed it with a flippant response. It seemed like eventually the doctor himself was depressed. The doctor hurriedly concluded the training session for former militants and moved on to a training session with active soldiers.

After exactly a year-and-a-half, he was among the first batch of detainees released from the camp. That batch consisted of those who had lost a limb. The army gave each of them a new vēṭṭi and a shirt. They organized a publicity event at the camp to hand over former detainees to their families in front of the media. His mother had come to receive him. Her face was infected with a happy grin.

His sister had married and was living in the city. His mother also lived with her until now. He thought his mother was taking him to his sister’s house. But she took him to their home in the village.

The house was in shambles. Even doors and doorposts had been burgled away. His mother made cloth curtains for the holes that remained where there were doors and windows earlier. She bought a table, a chair, and a bed for his room. He remained secluded in his room all the time. He remembered telling the psychiatrist that he would be happy if was allowed to go home.

The high street had changed a lot. Meena Cafe where he used to watch television had now become ‘Lanka Café,’ run by the army. There, too, was a television set that was on all the time. He walked past it with his head bowed. He felt as if everyone on the high street was walking with their heads bowed. If his eyes accidentally met another pair of eyes, all he saw was fear.

His mother was saving to get him an artificial leg. ‘Where would I go with an artificial leg?’ He thought, ‘It would be better to use that money to buy a television, so that I can watch it in my room.’ But since saying that would hurt his mother’s feelings, he just stayed in his room in silence. Once a week, he was required to go to the army camp to check in. He went out only on those days.

That evening, he heard music from the neighbor’s house. ‘Happiness is what you create yourself,” he remembered the psychiatrist saying. He lay down with his eyes closed. When it was dusk, he took his crutch and went outside. When he struggled to climb the front steps, Mahinda Rajapakse was speaking on television. Within a few moments, he heard the television being turned off.

The neighbor came to the front door. He told the neighbor that he had come to watch television. The neighbor, with downcast eyes, said that they were about to have dinner and stood blocking the doorway. As he took his crutch and struggled to climb down the steps, he clearly heard the neighbor mumble, ‘‘Kāṉakaṉ’, if you come here, we will get into trouble with the army.’

He stood on the street and took a beedi from his pocket and tried to light it. His hand was trembling. It took four matches before he managed to light the beedi. He fell into this habit at the detention camp. His mother would buy him a bunch of beedis every morning.

He walked with the beedi in his mouth. He was surprised that the neighbor had forgotten his name, ‘Ravi.’ and addressed him as ‘’kāṉakaṉ’. He took drags of the beedi as he walked. Suddenly it struck him how his sister or her husband had not come to visit him even though so much time had passed since he was released.

At midnight, his mother took a small lamp in her hand and walked softly towards his room. She would check on him like this every day. When she saw him sleeping, it gave her great relief.

When she stood at the door of his room and pointed the lamp towards his bed, it was empty. Alarmed, his mother turned the light to a corner of the room. There he sat, motionless, like a statue. His eyes were transfixed on the table in front of him. When she turned the light towards the table, she saw that there was a matchbox standing on it. She exploded into an uncontrollable wail. He sat motionless. His eyes were glowing.