--Pradeep
Jeganathan
The seats in the front were better than those in
the back. First, because you could see and hear the teacher better,
and also, because the benches weren’t wobbly like those at the
back of the classroom. But mostly, the tops of the long desks
at the back weren’t smooth; they had little trenches in them where
children had cut their names and shallower but broader cuts made
as they etched away at their frustration. This unevenness made
your letters go wiggly if you wrote in a thin exercise book.
“If you want to get a good seat in front
for the rest of the year, go early to school tomorrow,” Krishna’s
mother had said the night before, and he’d known she was right.
He got to school at 6:45 in the morning, 45 minutes before school
began. Krishna could walk to King’s College in five minutes from
Mountbatten Crescent where he lived; lots of the boys lived far
away, and spent a lot of time commuting in buses and trains that
were crowded and unreliable. Still, by the time class began all
the seats were full.
Krishna was in the front row, trying
to get used to the new room that was the seventh grade classroom.
The walls were coated with hunu, which gave them a rough texture
and a bright white color. Pasted all over the walls, all around,
were brightly colored posters and maps from last year’s class.
There were several of the human body -- cross sections of hearts
and lungs, livers and intestines; and various maps of Lanka, in
blue, green and yellow. Between the windows of the right hand
wall was a large calendar, the days crossed off until the 17th
of December, the last school day of the pervious year: 1974.
On the wall above the blackboard was
the national flag: a fierce gold Lion glowing on a blood red cloth.
In the Lion’s paw was a naked sword. On the back wall was a mural
of the medieval battle between the two Kings Duttu-Gamunu and
Elara. Duttu-Gamunu’s army was lighter skinned than Elara’s. The
two Kings were atop elephants, and the darker skinned warrior,
Elara, was bleeding badly. On his shield was a Tiger. At the side
of the victor was a Buddhist monk, holding aloft another gold
and crimson Lion flag.
Krishna breathed deeply, trying to calm
himself, looking away from the mural. Recently, he had been getting
attacks of asthma more and more frequently, and his father had
delved deep into one of his medical textbooks, and given him breathing
exercises, to strengthen his lungs. Krishna exhaled, thinking
of the ana-pana- sati breathing meditation, he had learnt last
year in school. It wasn’t that different, he thought. Anyway,
breathing deeply calmed him when he did it each morning on his
bed at home, watching the soft colors of the refracted sun that
shone through the windows of the bedroom.
The teacher came in. Dressed in a white
cloth, and a long white shirt, what they called ‘national’ --
he stood out brightly in front of the freshly cleaned blackboard.
His thin black mustache almost blended with his dark upper lip.
He kept his bag on the on the large, solid wooden table in front
of the class.
The class greeted him together, “Ayubowan,
sir.”
“Ayubowan,” he said, in Sinhala, holding
his hands together.
“Now we will recall our religions for
a moment,” he continued, and led them in the chant most knew so
well “May all beings free of sorrow, free of illness, may they
be healed… “ The Christian boys were quiet, hands crossed behind
their backs, eyes lowered, but Krishna joined in the chanting,
feeling calm and collected. He liked being a Buddhist. His Hindu
parents hadn’t been upset when he had said he wanted to change
his religion, even though his relatives had been outraged, when
they heard of it.
Next to Krishna in the front row was
Lal. Lal lived a few miles away, but Krishna knew Lal’s father
had driven him to school; it had been easy for him to come in
early. His clothes looked freshly washed and ironed, unlike the
shirts and trousers of the other boys that were already sweaty
and grimy from long bus rides. He was chanting the stanzas too;
his parents were active Buddhists, who always financed the annual
Maha Prith festival at the school, the grandness of which was
noticed and appreciated by lots of the teachers.
The religious observations over, the
teacher, Mr. Dharmadasa, sat behind his table on his high backed
chair, his left hand circling the spiral at the end of the arm
rest. He began reading out the names in the register. Each boy
stood up when his name was called so that he could be marked present
and the teacher could learn his name. He droned on, going down
the list, lifting his eyes as each boy rose and sat again. “Nikamal
Balasuriya, Lal Edirishinha, Anura Gajanayake,… H.D. Rohana.”
Rohana got up from his seat at the back
of the class. Lal giggled from his seat in the front row, loud
and confident. He turned and whispered to Krishna in English,
“He has a servant’s name.” Krishna heard him, but didn’t reply,
thinking that wasn’t right to say. The other boys turned back,
almost in unison, to look at Rohana.
Rohana was looking down. Lal had laughed
because Rohana didn’t have a first and last name like most other
boys. The way his name was put together was different; it was
fashioned in a sort of rural way with the name of his village
preceding his own given name.
Rohana’s face, burned dark brown by
the sun, grew darker. He had a forced smile on his face, but Krishna
could see that his fingers were pressed to the top of table, and
his nails were moving on the surface. He was short – face oily
and pocked marked with patches of lighter colored skin on his
neck and chin, patches of sweat showing on the sleeves of his
shirt where it met his body. His shirt was creased and stretched,
and one button was a safety pin.
“Ah! Rohana,” the teacher said, ignoring
Lal. He continued down the list. “Yugg.. Yoganadham,” He called.
There were giggles at the strange name. Krishna stood up. “Say
your name,” the teacher said, in Sinhala.
“Yoganathan, Sir,” Krishna said.
“Ah!” The teacher opened his mouth to
speak and then stopped himself. He put on his glasses and looked
at the register again.
Then very quietly and gently he asked,
“Oya ‘Tamil’ da?” Self-consciously he replaced the usual Sinhala
word Demala with the English word Tamil.
“Yes Sir,” Krishna replied in Sinhala.
“Did you study in Sinhala right from
the beginning?” the teacher asked.
“Yes Sir.”
“Is that allowed?” the teacher wondered
softly.
“It was my parents’ choice.”
“Are both your parents Tamil?”
“Yes Sir.”
“You didn’t have any problems with the
language?”
“No Sir.”
“You have siblings?”
“Yes Sir.”
“And they are in the Sinhala class also?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Good, very good.” Mr. Dharmadasa nodded,
and closed the register, for Krishna’s had been the last name.
Demala was the usual word in Sinhala for a Tamil but Krishna’s
Sinhala speaking teachers would rarely use it when they talked
to him. Krishna liked it when they used the English word. It made
him feel accepted, a friend not an enemy.
After finishing with the register Mr.
Dharmadasa said, “We must now appoint a monitor. Who was the monitor
last year?” he asked.
“We weren’t together in the same class,”
said Lal, “but in my class I was the monitor.” They had mixed-up
the parallel classes at the end of the sixth grade, as they did
every so often.
“I see,” the teacher said. “Anyone else?”
He looked around thoughtfully, his eyes resting on the boys who
were well dressed. “I, sir,” came the cry, from several places
in the room.
Lal’s friend Anura was louder than the
others.
“We were monitors together, sir,” Lal
said, pointing at Anura. Anura was sitting in the fourth row of
the class. He was dressed as well as Lal. But his father’s car
had broken down on the way to school, so he had only come in at
7:25.
Lal and Anura were appointed head and
assistant head monitor, respectively. Four other were appointed
house monitors. Most of them had been monitors before.
Before starting the day’s lessons there
was something else to be taken care of. “The class needs a cane,”
The teacher said, smiling thinly. “Who will buy a cane?”
“I will bring a cane Sir,” answered
Lal.
The next day, along with the cane, Lal
brought a little mechanical game to school. It was a tiny white
plastic maze, covered with a transparent plastic top. You had
to maneuver the three, dainty shining silver balls, through the
maze into the space at the center, by tilting it gently, to and
fro. His father had got it for him in Singapore. No one in class
had seen anything like it before. Every one wanted to play with
it.
Since the Social Studies teacher was
absent that day, the class had a free period. Soon Anura was sharing
Lal’s seat in the front of the class so they could play with the
toy together. This cramped Krishna who was sitting next to Lal
on the bench. Krishna was angry with Lal because he hadn’t let
him play the game. He took his bag, which he usually kept at his
feet, and placed it as a barrier between Anura and himself. This
further reduced the space on the bench, as the bag was full and
thick.
“Don’t come any closer than this,” Krishna
said to Anura, his hands on his bag.
“Take that ugly bag away,” Anura replied.
“There isn’t room for it.”
“No, there is room for my bag, but there
isn’t any room for you,” said Krishna.
Anura stopped playing the game, turned
towards Krishna, put his hands on the bag and started pushing.
Krishna pushed back. Just then the teacher from the next class
walked in.
“You boys are making far to much noise,”
he said.
Seeing Anura and Krishna he said, “What
are you two trying to do?”
Anura stood up.
“Is this your seat?” he asked Anura.
Anura was silent.
“Get back to your seat, right now,”
the teacher said angrily and walked out of the class. Krishna
could see a long cane in the teacher’s hands, which were clasped
behind his back. He ran up to him, his shoes skidding in the fine
sand scattered on the cement floor.
“May I go to the bathroom, Sir?” he
asked the teacher.
“Yes, you may.”
He sped off, pleased that he had avoided
asking Lal, the monitor, for permission.
Anura went back to his seat, after borrowing
the toy from Lal. Rohana, who was sitting behind him, peered over
his shoulder. “Will you give it to me when you are done?” he asked.
“We’ll see,” said Anura. “Lal may want
it back soon. That Demalaya is nothing but a pain,” he went on,
still smarting from the teacher’s reprimand.
“What a dog,” agreed Rohana.
“Yes,” said Anura, “why should he catch
a good seat in front?”
“If you give them a little bit they
will ask for everything, that’s what my father always says,” said
Rohana.
“They are always grabbing too much,
that’s the problem,” Anura added, “we should teach him a lesson
during the interval.”
“We want to sit in front too,” Rohana
told Krishna during the interval.
“You should have come early yesterday,
then,” replied Krishna.
Rohana’s jaw tightened.
“It’s the same thing every year,” he
said. “‘Come early’, the rich boys say. It’s easy for you rich
people with your cars. Do you know how long it takes me to get
to school? Two hours, and sometimes the bus doesn’t even come.”
“But I didn’t come by car,” protested
Krishna.
“What lies” Rohana retorted, “all you
Demallu have plenty of money.”
In the back of his mind Krishna had
known it was coming, the dreaded word. If he hadn’t known the
Sinhala people so well it wouldn’t have hurt as much. But he knew
what the word meant to them. He turned and faced Rohana, wishing
the mural wasn’t on the wall.
“Shut up,” he told Rohana.
“You can’t tell me to shut up, you black-lowlife-alien
Demalaya.”
“My family’s lived here for thousands
of years, as long as the Sinhala have, and what’s more you are
blacker then a crow,” replied Krishna who was light complexioned.
“No!” shouted Rohana, “This is our land,
the Sinhala Land, and we have to clean out scum like you. Prince
Duttu-Gamunu did it before,” he pointed at the wall, “He beat
up your jathiya, and threw them out and cleaned-up the country.
But that was a long time ago, and we will lose the little we have
now if we don’t do it again.”
Krishna stared at the mural speechless,
the sweat dripping from his neck, down his back.
They said the Demala invaders had destroyed
the Buddhist temples, burnt holy books and killed monks. But that
was long ago, Krishna thought, and anyhow he was a Buddhist, wasn’t
he?
“Don’t come too much with us,” Rohana
went on, his voice trembling. “We are Lion-cubs.”
Krishna clenched his fist and hit Rohana
on the jaw.
And then they were fighting, the class
cheering Rohana on, calling him Duttu-Gamunu, and Krishna, Elara.
They were so engrossed in the fight
that they didn’t hear the bell ring at the end of the interval.
Mr. Dharmadasa looked very stern when he walked in.
“Why are you two behaving like animals?”
he snapped.
“It’s a Sinhala-Demala riot,” Lal said
smiling. “Krishna hit Rohana.”
Mr. Dharmadasa turned towards Krishna.
“But … but he called me Elara,” said
Krishna, softly, as if this were something private. He was too
ashamed to say that Rohana had called him Demalaya. And he knew
he couldn’t explain why it was such an insult.
“Sit down everybody. There is no need
to be uncivilized and hit each other,” said Mr. Dharmadasa. “We
should not lose our tempers like this. I will cane you both if
I catch you fighting again, we can’t have little Duttu-Gamunu
Elara fights like this.”
He paused to take a breath. “We must
all live in peace and harmony in this country, like brothers.
It is our tradition. We the Sinhala have always been hospitable
to the foreign races. Why, some of my best friends are Tamil.”
He stopped, looked around, and shook his head.
“The trouble with this class is that
it is too undisciplined and noisy. The teacher next-door Mr. Ratnayake,
was just complaining to me. I felt ashamed of you boys. The monitors
should keep the class quiet when a teacher is absent. Where are
those people I appointed as monitors? Why can’t you maintain discipline
in the class?” Lal and Anura lowered their eyes.
“All these quarrels about sitting in
front. I will assign seats to everyone, and that will be final.”
he said. “The monitors will sit in the front row, so that they
can keep the class quiet.”
Pradeep Jeganathan is a Senior
Fellow at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, where he
edits the Centre's scholarly journal, Domains. A collections of
his short fiction, At the Water's Edge, will be published this
spring.
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