Chapter 1: Clouds

In the Year of Our Lord 1952, Mr Herbert Sundarampillai died in a car crash, leaving behind a week-old son, a widow, and considerable wealth.

Mrs Shanthi Sundarampillai, a qualified music teacher, in typical upper-middle class fashion, continued to teach Western music at Chudukillli Girls’ College and accumulated more wealth. She hired an Aachi to take care of the infant, Harold Sundarampillai. Bottled milk and Aachi’s petty stories was all that Harold knew.

Years went by, and Harold lived a monotonous life. His average day began with waking up to the sound of his mother going out to school. Aachi’s mumbling would keep him occupied for the next four hours. When the mother returned home for lunch break,the mother and the son would sit at the opposite ends of the long table and eat in silence; Aachi’s salt-less cooking rarely helped the mood. Mrs Shanthi Sutharampillai was a busy bee. She seldom returned home early: she was an accomplished pianist and the school kept her busy. There was always something to attend in the evenings – a choir practice, an evening worship at the local church, a birthday party, and the list was long. She would return home tired and, usually, in a bad mood. Harold rarely received anything more than a few words from his mother.

Life was different back then. In the 1950s Jaffna moved on bullock carts and push bikes. Life was slow. And a child went straight to school – no pre-KGs, LKGs or UKGs. Harold started schooling in 1959, as a seven-year-old, at The School of Saint John. His mathematical genius soon attracted the attention of his teachers and the loathing of his classmates. Just as any parent, Mrs Suntharmpillai was proud of her son. She started the habit of presenting a candy every time Harold brought home a medal. This trend, sadly, continued to Harold’s Advanced Level days. It was always a candy; nothing more, nothing less. While showing remarkable talent in mathematics, Harold also excelled in other subjects. V. V. Good Student. His name became popular among the school circles and in Jaffna town. The mother utilized every single opportunity that came her way to boast about her little boy’s academic exploits. Ladies of the local church, in particular, had a hard time.

However, Harold struggled to make any acquaintance at school. He hardly uttered anything voluntarily: his replies, too, were short and to the point. With both his hands folded neatly inside his kalisaan pockets, Harold would wander aimlessly in the school premises. Staring at the sky and kicking the ground with his leather-soled boots was his favourite leisure time activity. Adding to the already long list of out-of-the-ordinary characteristics, he was a head taller than the rest of his classmates and possessed the strength to knock-out someone from two grades above.

As Harold grew into his teens he developed a flaring temper, earning him the nick name ‘Mr Kettle’. Needless to say, this only made Harold worse. His academic achievements – which continued to multiply with age – were soon over-clouded by numerous stories of Harold’s temper outbursts. A story, fondly called ‘Puffs of Steam’ – a narrative of how Harold’s ears emanate steam once every hour – began its circulation when Harold was twelve and continued its rounds till he entered University seven years later. The church ladies returned the favours of Mrs Sundarampillai in the hundreds: Puffs of Steam was their favourite.

Chapter 2: Thunder

The day the results of 1971 Advanced Level Examinations were announced was a black day in Sri Lankan history. It was a day of mourning, in Tamil areas. The Sri Lankan state introduced a standardisation system with the intention of reducing the number of Tamils in the universities. Jaffna, the centre of academic excellence, was the most affected district. In spite of standardisation, Harold qualified to study engineering at the University of Peradeniya. The Sundarampillai household, which had every reason to celebrate, too was in melancholy. After checking the results on the school’s notice board, Mrs Shanthi Sundarampillai went straight to the candy shop and returned home in jubilation. Harold, who had stopped communicating with his mother except in cases of utmost importance, found the outdated candy-gesture an insult and screamed at his mother. Mrs Sundarampillai wept for two days; Harold locked himself up for two weeks.

The incident effectively ended all communication between the mother and the son. It also left a lasting mark on Harold’s life. It was the last time he let his temper get the better of him: instead he learnt to swallow it. Mr Bottle. His anger subsided to frustration. Harold’s world began to shrink: He began to spend more and more time on his own. He spent the period between the arrival of results and the commencement of university reading philosophy, battling with numbers, and grappling with science. He never stepped outside the house gate in all that year.

Harold packed his suitcase and left without a word when the day of departure finally arrived. Aachi was devastated and died within a week. Mrs Sundarampillai, not surprisingly, continued her dreamy existence – gold, silver and gossip. Bon Vivant. She killed her time preparing notes and applying make-up. Harold’s Advanced Level performance had pretty much silenced the church Ladies. Each Sunday that followed after that black day, Mrs Sundarampillai came up with a new story to bore the Ladies with – Harold is such a darling … He finished a thousand-page book on mathematics yesterday you know … Oh yes, he loves Western Music, could be a tenor himself … He sang a lullaby last night … Lovely … Lovely … Boy does he not love it when I play the piano. The Sunday after Harold’s departure, she recited such a moving story of her darling boy’s departure it left a few of the Ladies in tears.

A year within the confines of four walls had multiplied Harold’s growing frustration. His yearning for motherly love had gradually transformed into a complex emotion. Was it sadness? Was it anger? Was it hatred? Or was it a combination of many feelings? He had started interpreting many incidents from his childhood in an entirely different light. During that period Harold stopped going to church; stopped saying prayers from the five-generations-old Anglican Prayer Book; and stored his father’s Bible (KJV) somewhere unreachable. He had started developing a strong distaste towards the class system that prevailed in Jaffna. Every injustice, he failed to stand-up against, in his nineteen years of mortal life, revisited him in those cold, dark, restless nights. He realized the magnitude of his own depravity. His heart had started to ache for a free life. He desired a life free of his mother, a life free of those disturbing dreams, and a life free of his own self.

Harold went to Peradeniya deeply disillusioned and dispirited. The indifferent life he led throughout the campus years reflected this. It was the thought of fleeing from Jaffna - fleeing from his mother - that took him there. He did not have any ambitions in the engineering field, or in money. The thought of getting married never occurred to him.

Yet, he continued to shine as a student. He was one of the brightest students in his batch over hundred pupils. Lasses and raggers stayed out of Harold’s way: lasses were not interested, and raggers sensed danger. Professors maintained a relatively better relationship. This was mostly because they did not feel threatened by Harold’s unambitious soul.

The final year exams arrived almost six years after Harold bade farewell to Jaffna. It came as a shock when Harold – widely expected to top the batch – packed up his luggage and left to an undisclosed location, a few days before the final distinction paper. Most thought that Harold had left to join the Tamil militant cause. The UGC (University Gossip Commission) theorised that he had eloped with some KGB Girl (Kandian Govi Buddhist). None cared.

Chapter 3: Lightning

Harold Sundarampillai, in fact, walked five-days-and-three- nights to Paranthan. He took nothing except for two of his worn-out khaki kalisaans, two cotton shirts and fifty rupees.

What drove Harold to Paranthan was neither a desire to join the Tamil militant cause nor a KGBG. It was Harold’s desire for a free life that persuaded him to make that choice. It was the thrill he found in solving mathematic problems that sustained him through the six-years of Peradeniya life. The degree meant nothing for him – Mr Harold Sundarampillai (BSc Eng.). For him, it was merely a symbol of arrogance - the of academics. In the first nineteen-years of life, in Jaffna, he had heard much of degree-holders. People belonging to the upper-echelons of the Jaffna society were always full of Degree-holder Stories. How-to-fetch-a-fat-dowry and how-to-act-smart were the prime parables. Harold had personally experienced the haughty attitude of the educated. The very thought of posing in front of a camera with a scroll and black coat made Harold sick. He had seen his own lecturers treat mediocre students badly: his school teachers were no different. Why, even his mother was the same.

Paranthan, in 1979, was a place of little significance. The only remarkable place in the whole area was the Paranthan Chemical Factory. It was as close to Jaffna Harold would be. In a patch of fertile land, offered by a kind-hearted local, he built a shelter made of Palmyra poles. He spent most of his time in the back lawn where he cultivated kurakan and corn; he also reared a few hens and a goat. Harold’s life was quiet; but solitude would haunt him for a few more years.

Harold’s redemption came in the form of a three-year-old boy called Nirmalan, who lived a-few-hundred-meters away.

The boy’s mother, Nimala, as a fifteen year old, was forced by her father to work in a Jaffna brothel. Nimala would leave Paranthan at dusk by the Yaaldevi Express and return via the morning coach from Jaffna. Most of her earnings, upon arrival, would be snatched by her father, who also had the habit of beating up his wife regularly. Nirmalan was the offspring from a fateful night with a Jaffanese businessman. To meet the financial needs of her child Nimala continued her Yaaldevi rides.

Nimala’s mother introduced the boy to Harold. Under Harold’s guidance Nirmalan learnt mathematics and English: he showed rapid progress. Nirmalan’s intelligence excited Harold more than mathematics. This excitement slowly blossomed into affection. Soon, Harold found himself caring, even loving someone. Almost a year after the first interaction Harold, all but literally, adopted the child. In 1987, Nirmalan moved in with Harold and lived there happily for a year. They lived their days eating from the same plate, solving mathematic problems on the sand, sharing stories and dreaming together.

Chapter 4: Rains

Month passed by. The ethnic conflict had blown into a bloody civil war. The country was a lesson in chaos.

It was daybreak on the 28th of November 1988. Nirmalan, now six, was at the railway station to receive his mother. The station was empty except for a few officers. ‘Yaaldevi is getting late,’ the Time Keeper informed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, two IPKF personnel marched inside the railway station, cursing in raw filth and open-firing at everything that crossed their sight. Two bullets dug their way through Nirmalan’s skull.

A few Paranthan-based LTTE cadres had earlier gunned down five IPKF soldiers, in celebration of their Leader’s birthday. What transpired at the railway station was the IPFK’s idea of revenge. The two went around Paranthan creating mayhem – raping women, killing children and setting fire to crops.

The station master, who had avoided death by hiding behind his desk, ran panting to Harold’s house. The ill news hit Harold hard. Harold’s world immediately began to darken. He never thought that his happiness would be so short-lived.

He bolted the door and settled on his hand-made stool. As he dragged the stool closer to the only table inside the hut, memories of his Jaffna room came flooding back. Teak wood furniture, the smell of varnish, polished floor, ah yes… that massive bed, the walls… those ghostly walls, his mother’s face. Memories failed to kindle any emotion. Harold felt the empty-feeling from the Jaffna days’ creeping inside his heart. The stool creaked under his weight as he sorted out the drug dosage. He had purchased the drugs the very day he first met Nirmalan. The boy was the reason Harold decided to live for another day. He sensed the beauty of life in the three-year-old. Now, Harold’s sole link to life lay slain on the platform – bleeding and disfigured. The reason for existence was no more.

Harold flushed the contents down the throat with a gulp of water. He rolled out a mat and lay down. After life – he didn’t care; one life was painful enough. November rains began wetting the earth.