Saturday with FOOD!

 

Chapter 2

1988 – Colombo

 Kayalvizhi opened her eyes and caught a glimpse of the eerie darkness. The stillness of the night was disrupted when somebody switched on the room light. The circadian rhythm of her usual wake up time was advanced to 4 am that day.

‘Wake up, Kayal, wake up,’ her Amma was shaking her from her sleep.

Is Kayal awake?, Appa called out loud from the hall. Kayal, its 4 o’clock, you have to do some revision,’ Amma was shaking her. Gradually, Kayal got up, rubbing her eyes and went to the bathroom.

 

She wore her neatly pressed white uniform and sat with Appa to do last-minute revision in Tamil and Maths till 6.30am before setting off to school.

‘Ah, the bell is ringing. It’s a good omen pillai, vaa’, Mr.Anthonypillai, alias Anton Sir, Kayal’s father, squeezed her hand as a passing cyclist snapped his bell . Appa was relentless,

‘Come, come’, he hurried, ‘Come soon’. Kayal had barely tied her shoe laces when he pulled her to the road and walked two paces ahead towards the bus stand.

It was a quiet Sunday morning and the market opposite was slowly coming to life. Kayal’s early start to the day revealed the morning rhythm of the market. A vendor laid green leafy bunches on a rug on the pavement, the gotukola and mukunuwenna leaves were glistening with the droplets after their first dip in the bucket of water. Another woman washed the carrots, potatoes and tomatoes and stacked them on wooden shelves inside her tiny shop. The fishmonger scaled a thalapath fish, the silvery scales scattering on to the road and the smell of  dead fish overpowering the scent of cheap incense sticks lit up infront of an array of Gods in a tuk-tuk. The sun was peeping through the streaks of white clouds, readying for his scorching dance in the noon.

 The Mount Lavina junction bus stand was a buzzing hub of people and things. On either side of the Salu Sala building there was a bus stand. One for the government owned, red and grey CTB buses and the other for the white and posh private buses. The private bus fair was fairly high so we all had season tickets to go to school on the CTB. The pavements were a canvas of assorted shops. While Sundays were mainly food, the other days had clothes, fabric, plants and even toys.

Today being a holiday of the week, Anton boarded the CTB bus travelling towards Rajagiriya. As they sat down right behind the driver’s seat, Kayal was given the Tamil past paper book to read, again

The bus sped on the empty Galle Road, a rare treat and stopped intermittently mostly to load and offload ten year olds and their parents. TKaya an Anton Sir, got off at the Bambalapitya flats and went to the temple for a brief prayer. Kayal closed her eyes and recited a thevaram as routine, only today it was five songs in a  row, a speciality reserved for exam days.  As they neared the school gates, a sea of sarees and a few trousers greeted them. Anxious parents with stressed out 10 year olds, clutching the cardboard files for the Year 5 scholarship exams.

 “Magal, do you remember what I told you?’ Appa asked and without waiting for a reply he carried on,’ “Read the question thrice before answering’. Tamil parents concern with the educational well-being of their children came with a customary advice laden with authority.

 It usually started as, ‘I don’t mind what they become, or ‘children need to be free to do what they want but ended with ‘Education is our identity’ and the parent expectation of their children becoming a ‘Doctor, Engineer, Lawyer, Accountant or Teacher’. The sought-after civil jobs which Tamils dominated under the British era was still in league for desirable vocations but among a few who braved the odds of the conflict.

 

Kayal scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Being fairly new to this school, atleast one known face from 5C class would give her an assurance that she wasn’t alien to that crowd. The exam was highly competitive. Everyone faced it when they were in Year 5. The outcomes were varied. If you pass you are good, if you score the highest marks, the number 1 rank in the island then you get recognised. Some said you could even go to a better school. Wonder where that was because when Kayal joined Vairavanathan Hindu Ladies College, Appa had vouched she was in the best Government Tamil Girls school in the city.

 

‘Like amma said, go pray,’ nudged Appa again at the school temple. The ritual of removing shoes and socks was tedious to Kayal and it was one of those times she wished being Catholic was convenient. You could enter church with shoes and socks. It was a posh affair to go to Church.

 

Kayal washed her legs at the tap, tip toed in the sand towards the mini temple door and entered the shrine of Varasithi Vinayahar. She prayed for many things. To pass the test, pass it with high marks, perhaps score 100 in both Tamil and Maths. An ultimatum always came with a what next do I want but this is what is expected of me. Setting ambitious goals at a young age in your child’s mind was a skill beknown to Tamil parents.

 

At Vairavanathan Hindu Ladies College, Kayal wasn’t sure what the expectations were.  Students from 5C were not part of any expectations because nobody knew much about the new girls, except their class teacher Mrs. Satkunam. The class was formed in March that year as an exodus of displaced children poured into the only Government Tamil Girls School in Colombo forcing the Ministry to expand the school. Her class had 18 girls from various parts of the North and East. Satkunam Miss, was same as the girls, displaced from Jaffna, new to the school, new to the city, new to the cultural shock of Colombo. Sitting in her class, the girls, suddenly thrust in to a new life, shared a sense of being similar. All of them had disrupted their studies at different phases that year and re-started here. While Kayal hadn’t gone to school for 4 months till she got a place at this school, Vajini hadn’t been to school for 8 months.

 

Mrs. Satkunam slowly fused all of them together - empathising with their individual circumstances, appreciating their limits and supporting them to excel. She encouraged all of them to do the test despite the gaps and delays in their academics.

Colombo was a temporary refuge for most of these children. They believed in returning home if the war stopped or getting out of the country, if it got worse.

Kayal sat at her desk, the invigilator handed out the papers and she drowned in the questions.