Dhritiman Chaterji visits the island nation and sees how things have changed

I remember a time, not that long ago, when getting around in the Lankan capital was an obstacle race from one checkpoint to another. Out of town, one carried one’s ID at all times, was polite to the Police and Army boys when one was waved down and, if one ventured northeast to Trincomalee, one was advised to drive down the middle of the road because you never knew what dangers might lurk on the sides. To the North, the Jaffna Peninsula was an absolute no- go for individual travellers unless your suicidal tendencies were dangerously acute. All that has changed quite dramatically. The roads are first rate and the checkpoints have gone.

We whiz along the familiar Colombo- Kandy road, climbing gently, veer east to Kurunegala and then northwest again towards Dambulla to pick up the iconic A9 Kandy- Jaffna highway as we enter the flat Vanni country of the North Central Province near historic Anuradhapura. It’s hot in the Vanni and tourists are thin on the ground in Anuradhapura but lunch at the old and sprawling Tissa Wewa guest house is as graceful and relaxing as always. The terrain becomes tabletop flat as the A9 pierces due north to Vavuniya, a name familiar only from war dispatches.

Soon enough, we’re in Killinochchi. As we approach the town through lawns being swept spotlessly clean on either side, the War Memorial looms- a massive, modernistic concrete cube with a bullet embedded in it and a flower blossoming from the fissure in the concrete. Interpret the symbolism as you will. Killinochchi slumbers in the afternoon heat and looks for all the world like any provincial Lankan town. As we stop for tea at a wayside shop, evoking mild curiosity as I suppose any visitor from India, especially Tamilnadu, would, it is difficult to imagine the turbulence of the town’s recent past. Seized by the LTTE in 1990, re- taken by the Sri Lanka Army in 1996 and wrested again by the LTTE in 1998, Killinochchi became the de facto administrative headquarters of the Tigers for 11 years before falling finally to the Army in 2009, with the LTTE retreating eastwards towards the coastal town of Mullaitivu.

A BBC report from 2009 describes the devastation: ‘In Kilinochchi there was hardly a building with a roof. Shops were in ruins or pockmarked with bullets, a huge water tower was lying on its side.’ The water tower still lies on its side, memorialised as a kind of bizarre installation.

And so on to Elephant Pass, that finger of land lying across the Indian Ocean to the east and the Jaffna Lagoon to the West, joining the mainland to the Jaffna Peninsula. The landscape is stark, spirit level flat and bleached in the glare of the sun. Memories of troubled times linger in a checkpost, a diversion and a desultory checking of our driver’s papers. Memories linger on both sides of the highway too- pitted walls, blasted buildings and signs warning of landmines. More settlements show themselves and soon we enter Jaffna town. This is when we realise that our driver has no Tamil and doesn’t have a clue about Jaffna. We know that we’re in for interesting times!

One of my favourite Lankan writers, Romesh Gunasekera, says wryly in a recent story that, given its recent past, it’s not surprising that most northern towns have a Hospital Road. Sure enough, Hospital Road in Jaffna is where the action is and we look for someone who can guide us to Vaddukoddai, where we’re going to be staying. Needless to say, neither we nor our driver have the slightest idea about where it might be. A trishaw driver leads us part of the way and points us in the right direction to Vaddukoddai, about 15 kms northwest of Jaffna town.

Through flat, arid land on one side and the gentle ripples of the lagoon on the other, we end up, finally, at a sprawling old bungalow in the quiet village, right opposite the wall of Jaffna College. Are the pockmarks we see on the college wall the ravages of nature or the signs of a more recent conflict?

It turns out that Vaddukoddai is important to the academic history of the Peninsula, the Batticotta Seminary having been established in 1827 by American missionaries. In 1867, it became the secular Jaffna College. As we lick ice cream from a cart one afternoon outside the College and look on at the boys and girls playing on the grounds inside, we have to remind ourselves that things were not always so normal.

The old lady who cooks the most delicious meals for us and the young man who looks after our every need at our quiet, secluded hideaway are delighted to chat to Tamil- speaking ‘outsiders’ but don’t really want to talk about what things were like during ‘those times’. The times were bad, a lot of people fled the village and the Peninsula and the gracious mansion needed a lot of repairs after peace came back. This is all we are able to get out of them.

The June heat is overpowering and we venture out into Jaffna town only in the early evening. The city centre is busy and bustling, the markets are full, a spanking new shopping mall has just opened. Jaffna is trying very hard to present a business- as- usual face to the world. But many of the buildings look old and tired. Shops are shuttered. Facades crumble. The signs of neglect and trouble are hard to escape.

Families stroll on the freshly laid seafront promenade. The Provincial Council chambers and other Government buildings look bright and new and the low- slung Jaffna Fort oversees it all. Built originally by the Portuguese in 1618, demolished and rebuilt by the Dutch in 1658, wrested later by the British and, in more recent times, tossed between the Army and the LTTE, the Fort has been battered and bruised by history. Inside, wide open grounds, stacked rubble and the skeletons of buildings tell the by now familiar story of conflict and destruction. On the battlements overlooking the ocean, young couples lurk, seeking whatever privacy they can find.

Early one morning, we head northeast from Jaffna to Point Pedro. The name and the history of the place evoke a sense of adventure. But the journey itself is short, uneventful and quite prosaic. A very good road speeds past neat little towns.

The vegetation here is more lush than further south. And soon, we are at land’s end where the Bay of Bengal meets the Indian Ocean. Fishermen’s dwellings, fishing boats on the beach- it’s all quite undramatic here at the northernmost tip of the Island. It strikes us again what an accessible place Sri Lanka is. We could set out from here and get to Dondra Head, the southernmost tip, which we’ve visited earlier, in no more than, say, 9 hours.

The ease and pace of travel in this beautiful country never ceases to amaze us, used as we are to covering vast distances over many days in India.

We head due west along the coast, the road narrower and bumpier now. We’re going nowhere in particular, but in the general direction of the major port of Kankesanthurai. We stop by the roadside to explore an ancient brickwork temple we’ve just spotted, fronted by a colourful new one. Temple renovation is very much a part of the northern landscape, as much a sign of optimism and hope, we sense, as of faith.

A man sitting under a tree comes up to talk. We won’t get to KKS, he tells us, it’s still out of bounds, but, by the way, and only if we’re interested, we’re at the birthplace of Prabhakaran. And if we care to step off the road, we can see the piece of land where his ancestral home once stood. We are interested and we do step off the road to stand on an overgrown plot surrounded by neat village homes. Just another quiet afternoon in a nondescript village. But we can at least boast that we’ve been to Velvettithurai, unlike most travellers. We curve back northwards through inner roads. We are looking for Swami Gauribala Giri’s Ashram. We’ve heard of the German Swami from friends who knew him and others who knew of him. And the stories tell of a colourful, cult like, hyper hippy figure. Born Peter Schoenfeldt, Gauribala set up the ashram, built around a small Murugan temple, in 1945. The Ashram feeds 40- 50 people every day and more than a thousand on Fridays. Funded by well- wishers in the Island as well as from abroad, the ashram tries to fund students and provide things like bicycles and reading glasses to those in need. In the counterculture days of the 1960- s and 70- s, the Ashram and the Swami gave refuge to people we know who were seeking solace and, who knows, salvation. Finding one’s way around in the inner parts of the Peninsula is not as easy as on the mainland. The roads are not as well signposted and people tend to give you directions with reference to landmarks which, of course, are unfamiliar to you. But we get to Thondaimanaru eventually. A freshwater aru flows into the sea here and the village, dating back to the Chola period, is dominated by the imposing and brightly painted Selva Sannidhi Murugan temple. We walk down to Gauribala’s Ashram and are received warmly by the assistant secretary, a retired postmaster, who seems to be pleased that we’ve taken the trouble

to make this journey. We spend an interesting couple of hours chatting and are treated to a delicious Jaffna Tamil lunch served in the traditional way. Our Sinhalese driver is clearly not used to eating seated cross- legged on the floor but is soon devouring his rasam sadam heartily.

For the first time on this trip, we talk politics and current affairs, hesitantly at first, more fluently later on. Of the postmaster’s 4 sons, one joined the LTTE and died. Another went missing. He and his family left the Peninsula during the troubles. The Northern Provincial Council is hobbled by lack of

resources and of power. Work opportunities for the young are few. There is sadness and a barely expressed bitterness about the past and a lack of optimism about the future. What surprises us is the hope, the certainty almost, that India will help bring better days to the Peninsula.

We leave the Ashram in the late afternoon and head southeast, looking for the mini desert of Manalkadu. Our progress is hesitant as always, with people we ask being unsure about where exactly we want to go and why exactly we want to go there. But with faith in our hearts and Google Maps on our phone, we find ourselves off the beaten track amidst looming sand dunes. This extraordinary and incongruous landscape has been home to small, isolated communities for a long time. We climb one particularly high dune and find ourselves in a small cemetery, with the ocean stretching away down below. Next to the deserted coastline, we see a new settlement of neatly laid out red- roofed homes.

Back to Jaffna, our rural refuge and the generous hospitality of our cook and caretaker. Our time in Jaffna is almost over.

In the meantime, we have made a quick trip to Kayts, one of the many islands that ring the Peninsula. That story must wait for another time and another trip to explore the islands properly. For now, we must go back to the mainland- not another country but certainly a different reality. We have seen a land upon which lies an uneasy peace. We have seen people on whose faces smiles are struggling to break through once more, but only just.