Dhara’s voice softened. ‘Your mother has asked you to have the ceremony because changing from a girl to a woman means something. It doesn’t mean what it used to, but it still means something special. In years to come, your body will create life, and you will look back on this change—this gift—and you will want to thank God for it.

‘Your Amma wants to honour that gift. Marriage and the rituals of family life don’t mean anything to you now, but when you get older they will; and when you have your own children, God willing, they will mean even more to you.’

Smrithi finally agreed.

CHAPTER 16

Vanni region, northern Sri Lanka, 1990

On the day before Smrithi’s Samathia Chadangu, Dhara took the train to Vavuniya, the last town controlled by the army. She kept her promise to Nala and never went back to Jaffna. But every month, she went as far north as the army checkpoints allowed her.

‘I’m training medical students at the District Hospital,’ she told the soldiers in Sinhalese at the first checkpoint. At the last checkpoint she spoke in Tamil to the soldiers from the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Her hand strayed to the neckline of her churidah blouse to check the buttons.

The Indian Army had negotiated a doomed peace accord. The Tigers would not lay down their arms. The Sri Lankan Army stepped back and moved to crush a Sinhala rebellion in the south. It relinquished the north to the Indians, and rape, torture and execution simply became words, buried in the mass graves of their victims.

From Vavuniya station she took an auto to the hospital. A colleague there had provided her with papers and a regular alibi. She checked in and, hours later, casually walked out. She was met by the boys. They travelled by car on the narrow, dirt back roads. She kept the window down and tapped nervously on the car door.

They switched vehicles twice and continued on foot for hours. The first few times she did this were exhausting. Later, she grew used to it. She learned to wear long-sleeved clothing and thick-soled boots. She could cope with heat but not mosquitoes or infected cuts.

The jungle dripped darkness. Plants entwined with no beginning and no end. Hard hues of green and brown were peppered with flourishes of magenta, pink and yellow; tissue-paper petals fell softly around her. Palmyra trees rose from the earth like fortress walls. She was unsure whom they were protecting. She looked up into the camouflage of the tangled canopy above. The only sound was the syncopated harmony of insects and birds; and the disharmony of approaching gunfire. The jungle was ageless and implacable. It waited patiently to receive the dead.