Let’s Talk About Incest

*Reader discretion advised: This was a difficult post to write and does not make for a pleasant read. The title of the post is self-explanatory and if you are sensitive about reading related material, please close the tab now.

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Authorities in Sri Lanka are not particularly skilled in the art of making sensible statements to the press.

When I clicked on the twitter link this morning, I was confronted with this article on Daily Mirror Online.

The Police states that 1637 cases of rape were reported this year.

Emphasis on reported for posterity.

The article goes on to state: ‘SP Rohana said girls between the ages of 13 and 16 are especially vulnerable and are party to these cases… These underage girls should be taught about the consequences of their behaviour. Also the parents and their children should have a strong relationship, he added.’

What’s wrong with this picture?

I cannot help but wonder about all that goes unreported in this country. Not just rape.

And the authorities want 13-16 year old girls, victims of statutory rape, to take responsibility for their behaviour.

As a nation, we possess a remarkably short memory and more shockingly, a complacent silence that forms a shining veneer  of South Asian morality, which covers up every manner of sin we perpetrate, endure, or worse those when we encounter but ignore or look the other way. When it comes to education, we push for children to become doctors but never push for them to be educated in matters of health science that possess very real and important sway over their life decisions and more importantly, abusive relationships that exploit their circumstances and ignorance.

I do not wish to dwell on laws and definitions of rape or incest, but rather recount a couple of incidents I encountered. Unreported incidents.

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A few years ago, when I was researching labour in Sri Lankan plantations, I sort of unintentionally got mixed up in somewhat of a chase.

As part of my routine, I spent much of my day with the plantation’s welfare officer. Malar* was only a few years older than I was and her job was to mediate between the residents of the plantation and the management.Healthcare issues featured very prominently in her tasks and she liaises with the clinics, dispensaries and the matronly Mrs. Selladurai who had been an estate mid-wife for over two decades.

One particularly warm day in August 2009 just before I finished up my research, Malar, the plantation’s elderly mid-wife and I spent the better part of a day trying to track down the whereabouts of a pregnant 15 year old girl who had been compelled into an incestuous sexual relationship with her father.

I am horrified to hear that this is not uncommon. Frequently occurring in homes where mothers are absent (often those who have migrated to the Middle-East or Colombo and its peripheries as domestic workers), I am also told harrowing stories of mothers who choose to ignore what goes on in their homes. The reasons for their deliberate turning away remains unclear, but is often linked to alcoholism and domestic violence.

I am extremely disturbed by the number of stories Malar, Mrs. Selladurai and the dispensary’s pharmacist Uma share with me.  The specifics of their recollections are difficult to pen down, even now. Forced incest. Older brothers and younger sisters. Daughters giving birth to biological siblings. Silent mothers. Women being violently forbidden to use contraception by husbands and relatives. Abuse and rape by fathers and brothers in-law. Alcoholism. Suicide. Murder, suicide.

The women are so matter-of-fact about this grotesque local reality. My head spins.

We trudge on winding mountainside paths trying to find this 15 year old girl. We even go to her school. She has skipped the examinations that were happening that day. Her house is empty. Her father is gruff, uninterested and does not want to speak to anyone. The neighbours cradle their faces in their palms and whisper knowingly.

By mid-afternoon we have not yet found her and the mid-wife, both tired and angry calls it a day.

‘I will go in the night and catch her. She is just hiding from me. She doesn’t want to admit that she’s pregnant! ‘ I never found out if  Mrs. Selladurai found her. 

I was naive in thinking that my encounter with such ugliness was at a close. Some days later, Uma and I are off on another welfare visit. On a lonely road, we see a boy no more than 12 with two younger girls skulking in the terraces. The boy disappears into the tea bushes and the girls emerge wordlessly.

Uma goes into a veritable rage. She screams at the boy, demanding that he comes out and face her. She chases the girls angrily.

I am bewildered.

“That boy is a dirty boy. Look at him- only 12 years old. The girls 8 and 10.’ She continues to chase him. ‘GO HOME! Have you no shame!’ She picks up a stick, as if to chase a stray dog. A threat.

That boy is from a bad family, she confides in me as we watch them disappear down the hill. He keeps looking back sheepishly. ‘See these people live in such close quarters. This boy has been caught before doing things to his sister and cousin, things that adults do- they see and they try to imitate.’

She does not need to explain further. Bile rises to my throat and I feel like retching.

8, 10, 12.

…

Yes, these girls should be taught. Not simply the consequences of their behaviour.

* Names changed.

P.S. : Sri Lanka’s Campaign for 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence culminated successfully with a series of excellent contributions that deliberate different facets of gender-based violence in Sri Lanka and the launch of a very useful website with multiple resources that deal with violence against women and more importantly what you can do about it: http://www.actnowsrilanka.org/en/.

A Year in Black, White and Colour II

Continued from here.

Cambridge’s May Week in June ended with a bang.

July was for wanderings

Good times with friends

And that little matter of graduation

Along with a final Cambridge sunset

Moved back home

Rediscovered Colombo

The old

But new in a city that had stayed closed up for so long

Time for travels had come (photo by my talented friend Tanya Lazar, you can find more of her photography here)

Some closer to home

Trincomalee

Richmond Castle, Kalutara

Some Far

Petronas Towers, Kuala Lampur

Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, Penang

Batu Caves, Gombak

Spent with good friends

and good food (Raju’s roti canai, Petaling Jaya)

All travels (and good things) must come to an end

With lazy days

And new beginnings

So concludes 2011.

It’s been a blast.

A Year in Black, White and Colour I

This year has been a long one. I’ve felt it pass by in leaps and long drawn out pockets of exhausting slowness, in the incomprehensible way that time does. Contacting and expanding with the matter of fact-ness of a science experiment.

One of my favourite things to do at the end of a year is to look back on it in pictures.

And, my goodness what a clichéd rollercoaster 2011 has been.

There were fireworks on new years eve.

There was so much reading.

Many, many days that resembled this, as I wrote essays looking out on Jesus Green.

February to May looked a lot like this.

Meanwhile,

Spring came to Cambridge.

Flowers bloomed

And bloomed

Adventures were few, but memorable,

Colourful

And always a good laugh.

June rowed into Cambridge hand in hand with a lovely British summer

For some serious relaxation times

And ended in the most exciting way possible – Glee live at the O2.

Which meant seeing Darren Criss live!

To be continued.

Mind Your Language?

Remember that old British show from the 70s aired in Sri Lanka decades later, successfully sending adults and children of the 4-TV-channels-only-1990s-island into fits of laughter?

Marked by hilarity and all kind of politically incorrectness, the show thrived on the comedy of caricatured national and language stereotypes. For those unfamiliar with the show’s premise, it focused on the miscommunications and ensuing amusement in straight-laced Mr. Jeremy Brown’s English as a foreign language class. There were the kerfuffles that followed the quarrelsome Indian and Pakistani, the teasing coquette Francaise and a series of other parodied characters from Spain to China.

Funnily enough like most shows that egg laughs out of ethnic or national stereotypes (Outsourced,  The Kumars at No. 42 and Goodness Gracious Me), the show was probably funnier to the very people that were made fun of. Much like how desi jokes that make fun of brown people are so much funnier to other brown people (Outsourced,  The Kumars at No. 42 and Goodness Gracious Me, Russell Peters: I’m looking at all of you). This probably goes to show that we are indeed puppets of a devious colonial puppet-master ideology subscribing to complex theories of racial stereotypes, the colonisation of the mind and asymptotic mimicry as suggested by Homi Bhaba. That or optimistically, we possess the necessary ability to laugh at ourselves. You decide.

However, the truth is that while ex-coloniser audiences shift uncomfortably in their seats at race, nationality or accent related jokes in this post-politically-correct world (one assumes), the rest of us poor sods  giggle and hoot in agreement about Indian Standard Time, lecherous desi men (Rasmalaaaaiii) or many a mangled idioms coupled with brilliant comedic timing that the writers of Outsourced were particularly skilled in (cold chicken anyone?).

‘What’s to be did when the happen comes?’*

Even a rambling blog post could not possibly succeed in analyzing Sri Lanka’s language debate: highlighting the need for bilingualism, trilingualism, changes in state policy, society and beyond. Which is why, this is not ultimately a discussion on those particular politics, but rather a whole other social circus.

Having been raised in Colombo, I come from a fluidly trilingual house where English dominated and Tamil and Sinhala followed, a feature more common as a bilingual variant to many other people I know here. The grandchildren of a colonial hangover, we were taught the intricacies of Shakespeare, Eliot and Austen assisted by a turn of the century Longman’s English Grammar Book. Our language education was subject to particular thoroughness coupled with an overwhelming sentiment of shame attached to any mistakes or linguistic faux-pas- pronunciation in particular. Somehow, it was ingrained that mistakes were comparable to indelicate and ultimately unacceptable social blunders. So we grew up with vernacular English language skills, another generation of unwitting neo-colonised with elocuted enunciation and privy to quippy little Sri Lankanisms; like a series of private jokes about how we are so cleverly able to subvert the language of our colonisers. The blackguards!

Among friends and family, burgeoning in our tight little school girl cliques, our discussions flowed almost exclusively in English forging harmless, unmalicious boundaries in those years. The only point I am making with that statement is that it is just the way things were and I suppose, still are. Maybe it was different in other schools, or even for boys, but for us, I reiterate it was just the way things were.

So what does this mean in the grander scheme of things?

When I left Colombo to Britain 5 years ago, there was constant surprise. ‘HOW do you speak English so fluently ‘without an accent’ no less?’

The question, one that I find rather insulting, dogs me around at most introductions. ‘Your English is wonderful.’

Yes, it is. Because it is what I’ve always known, no different from you.

Upon returning to Colombo a few months ago, I begin to notice an even odder phenomenon. The assumption at most introductions that I cannot speak either local language, hand in hand with labels I don’t care to examine here.

The mushrooming of international schools and the popularity of English language education in Colombo (especially) has produced a generation of kids (and salespeople- I’m sorry but this is true) with dizzying accents. These young people have had little exposure to their mother tongues thanks to parents who are desperate to give their offspring a fighting chance in this doggy-dog world. Because English matters in the Sri Lankan job market. It really, really matters.

‘You can follow Sinhala right?’ I am often asked. Tamil is not even a question. I find this irksome, especially where assumptions are simply made with no questions or consultation. You can’t speak Sinhala, or worse, you think you are too good to speak Sinhala.

In these instances, I do not even bother to correct the typos on the labels that have already been pasted.

Much of my own serious education was in English, the language I am thus most comfortable in expressing my thoughts academically and otherwise; something, I do not feel the need to apologise for, particularly given the illogical disdain and labels I frequently encounter. Lately, I have been preoccupied with whether I am unintentionally disparaging people by either making them feel compelled to speak in a language they are uncomfortable with or worse not communicate at all? But truth is, despite my ability throw around an easy colloquialism in either local language, I am able to respond in whichever local language I am addressed in, and surely this is no inadvertent sin?

Language has been a hotly contested issue in Sri Lanka, encompassing decades of political debate and social discussion laying the foundations for inequality and prejudice within the ethnic conflict.

From education, employment and social relationships, language informs stereotypes, forging connections and sometimes-illogical prejudice.

However, when shades of the same language inspire such irrational divides, what hope do we have for achieving any form of cohesion beyond the ethnic issue?

Can we thus aspire to a cohesive bilingual or trilingual Sri Lanka?

* A line from an old Sri Lankan English snobbery joke. And yes, there are many.