Women of War

In Batticaloa, a woman sits as the twilight sets, besides her dead husband staring unconsciously into his sunken eyes as the bloody halo slowly grows darker on the sand under his head, in Colombo a mother sobs relentlessly for her abducted son her face pressed against the worn out cement, in Trincomalee a woman puts up a futile fight to stop the ‘boys’ from taking away her 12 year old boy and deep in the remoteness of Matara a newly married woman reads a telegram informing the death of her soldier husband, a female Black Tiger cadre wakes up to another day unsure of surviving it, and a pregnant woman sits uncomfortably in a heaving boat looking at the never-ending sea hoping for a glimpse of her refuge, Rameswaram.

What does it feel to be a woman of war? Whether you are living in Mannar, Trincomalee, Puttalam, Moneragala, Colombo or as a refugee in India, Switzerland or Canada, or as a migrant housemaid in Kuwait or Cyprus, you are a woman of war. The war is your second skin, like being Sri Lankan, like being a Tamil, like being brown, like being black, like being yellow. They are all second, third and fourth and ....., skins, not something you can peel or tear off. Gone are the days when the war was a remote, disjointed occurrence. Today the war is everywhere. From the minute you wake up, to when you get into a bus, when you stand in the railway station after a hard day's work waiting for a train, as you wait for your child to come home from school, as you try to ignore the looks the ‘whites’ give you when you get into a bus or a train, when you watch your husband give the ‘boys’ their monthly payment, when you walk with the other women in their yellow and red saris in a Pongu Thamil procession, as you watch your daughter’s cultural item on the stage at the Maha Veerar Day celebration. The war is everywhere and we are all women of war.

People talk about human resilience. That we pick up the pieces and forge ahead. But is resilience alone sufficient to keep us going, and will this resilience always be with us? Will we not break under the pressure of this resilience at some point? Will this resilience erode us of our right to be human? Will it lose itself to indifference and apathy? And what will the ultimate repercussions of this be, especially for our society? Today this resilience is no longer good for us. It has sold itself to indifference and apathy and has eroded the need in us to fight for a better society, to say no to the violence, to the killings in the name of race, religion and caste. As human beings we make mistakes, miss opportunities, but we also have the ability to learn from our mistakes, to learn lessons from our history, not to repeat them. Our beliefs change as they are constantly challenged by what is happening in the world, as new truths and atrocities are revealed. Women of war fill into many roles, as mothers, as wives, as activists, as soldiers, as refugees. It is only in a war situation that a woman is more than the equal of a man, as a victim or as a survivor. But what would be our ideal role? Would it be as a fearless activist who brings to light the atrocities against her people? Like Rajani Rajasingam Thiranagama? A woman who realised that the rebellion for the rights of her people, was really a rebellion gone wrong, and sought to record the atrocities against her peoples by the Government as well as the militant groups who were the pilots of 'rebellion' and paid the ultimate price for it. Like Rajani there are many exceptional women creating a special niche in the history of the war in Sri Lanka, fighting for the rights of the peoples, fearlessly exposing the perpetrators despite the severe culture of impunity. But, what about the scores of real life women of war who stay muted, fading into the bullet ridden walls of destroyed homes, and the crowded alleys of the cities? As they suffer in silence, do they not decide the tomorrows of their children? As they turn a blind eye on the atrocities around them aren’t they depriving a better future from their children? What can they do that is different, without really having to be exceptional? By being a mother, a wife, a sister or a friend cannot these women of war really become exceptional women? Maybe the answer lies in the issue of resilience, in not letting it become indifference or apathy. In knowing that the war is in reality futile and that there must be a change in our beliefs for the better and not for the worse, because as women of war, we have a bigger and more important role, as mothers and wives and sisters and friends, in nurturing attitudes and a culture of progressiveness. So as women of war can we not really be, ‘exceptional’?

Image: © Tanuja Thurairajah