When Amma arrived that night, she kissed him, whispering his name and nothing more as her tears fell. She held his face, stroked his cheeks and smoothed his hair, as if remembering him with her hands. He pulled her towards the settee, but she shook her head and prised her hand from his. She drifted away towards her bedroom, faltering briefly outside Lali’s doorway.

Rajan stared out of his window that night. His mother cried herself to sleep, calling, ende kollonthai, ende kollonthai, my child, my child, while he watched the moon. It floated above them like a glowing pancake.

•

Every day, Rajan read until it was dark and then he read by candlelight. He meticulously scraped wax from the bottom of the dish with his foot-ruler. He would re-use it with a new wick tomorrow. Years ago, Lali had shown him how; she was very careful. For his birthdays he never asked for books because they were so expensive—he could borrow books—instead he asked for candles.

His grandmother laughed when he told her he had finished all of the school textbooks by the age of fourteen. She looked at him with pride, spat three times to ward off the evil eye, and asked him, ‘Rajan, what are you studying? If you’ve finished all the books from school, what else is there to learn?’ His mother never asked him this. She said every generation should have the chance to be better and freer than the one before it. So she kept buying him candles and, when she could, she bought him books.

His cousins laughed and rolled their eyes whenever Amma quoted Auvayar, saying: ‘Katrathu kai mun alavu; kallathathu ulahalvu—what we have learned is the size of a fistful of earth; what we haven’t learned is the size of this world.’ Rajan loved the legendary poetess, whom the gods allowed to live on the moon so she would always be with the Tamils.

Rajan’s classes were taught in English at the local American missionary school. He learned Sinhalese as well, but Tamil was the language he loved most. When he called out to his mother in the middle of the night, it was in Tamil. When he remembered his sister, it was in Tamil.

After Lali’s death, Amma rarely left their house, but once a month she travelled to Jaffna town to visit relatives and buy medicines. Appa didn’t allow the village apothecary into their house anymore, so Amma’s medicine box had to be stocked by the town doctor. Rajan was quick to help his mother with her errands, and during school holidays, he was allowed to stay in town with his cousins for a few weeks longer. Amma smiled, knowing why he wanted to join her. He loved the library and its endless shelves of Tamil literature—manuscripts that chronicled the history of the Tamil people.