Michael nodded his agreement and Rajan smiled. The Rotary Club wasn’t as bad as he had thought it was.

•

Rajan sat at his writing table. ‘How much do you need?’ he asked quietly. He hated being in this position. While he didn’t want to say no, he also knew that this could be money wasted.

The man swallowed. Bala hated being in this position too. In all the years that Rajan had known him, Bala had never asked for money.

The man cleared his throat, ‘Three thousand more, I have the rest.’ He spoke softly but clearly, looking Rajan in the eyes.

‘How much is it in total?’ Rajan had expected it to be more.

‘Ten thousand.’

That was a lot of money. He wasn’t surprised Bala had saved the rest of it. He was a good worker. He lived a frugal life and whatever money he didn’t use for rent or food was sent back home or saved.

‘Why do they want to leave? Things are getting better, aren’t they?’ Rajan asked. As soon as he spoke he regretted it.

‘Are they okay?’ he tried again.

‘Yes, of course,’ Bala answered politely.

They had known each other at Colombo General, decades ago. Rajan liked him. Bala was a radiographer; clever and decent, he had helped Rajan to master the changing diagnostic technology at the hospital. Later, in 1984, when Rajan was preparing to leave Colombo, he had urged Bala to do the same. But Bala had a mother, brother and sister. When Rajan moved to Sydney, Bala moved to Batticaloa.

The war went east, and Bala’s mother and sister did not survive. The radiographer was at work when the shelling started, and he had stayed at the hospital. He knew enough emergency medicine to be useful. His mother had called that morning, and assured him that her brother was on his way with a car. Bala’s elderly uncle would take them all to a Sinhalese friend’s house in a nearby village. Bala had thanked God for their friends and put the hospital phone down.

In the end, he couldn’t leave the hospital for days. He kept calling his mother’s house and his uncle’s. No one answered. Finally he returned to his neighbourhood. As he walked through the smouldering remains of his home, he found his mother, sister and uncle. They had been blown apart, the pieces of his family carelessly strewn around, burned and barely recognisable. His profession was the study of bones, so he knew what had happened to them.

It would be years before he could close his eyes without having flashbacks of that day, and more years before he could sleep without dreaming of them. It would take even longer before he stopped wishing he had died with them.