Wanderers in Eternity – Chapter 5 (Page 1)
5
AJITH
1983
Ajith who was sitting on the front seat of the jeep looked at the passing scenery with half closed eyes. All one could see outside was the dreary dry desert sand. In the distance, the mango trees and the palms raised their heads in a blue green. Even the pedestrians were lethargic. The afternoon was welcoming the evening with elongated shadows. The figures of the cattle and the men tiring here and there in the fields appeared as silhouettes to Ajith.
In front of him on the main road were the other jeeps of his army unit. Ajith was in the eighth vehicle in a convoy of twelve jeeps.
Ajith thought of eight as an unlucky number. This was a memory he had brought with him since his early childhood. Ajith received the news of his only brother Lionel’s death on the eighth of April. April 8, 1971. At the time Ajith was eleven years old. His brother was twenty one. At times Ajith wondered whether he and his brother were so far removed from each because of this ten year age difference. He still remembered how his brother coddled him lovingly when he was very small. But as he grew older his brother became very stubborn. Obstinate fool, the eldest in the family, is this how you are growing up? Shouldn’t the eldest child be an example to the younger siblings? Ajith could almost still hear such words that his parents directed at his older brother.
Now looking back, Ajith felt that his brother somehow passed the exams and entered the university to get away from home. After entering the campus, rarely did Lionel come home. Once he mentioned that Peradeniya, where the campus was located, was a thousand times better than Colombo.
Ajith could still remember walking in the Peradeniya botanical gardens when he went to see his brother with his parents. It was indeed a very different and beautiful world. He wondered why such a pretty place full of trees and flowers was not visible anywhere else? Why couldn’t such a world exist everywhere? Suneetha, Ajith’s older sister who was holding his hand during this journey through the wonderland, told him that one day she would live in a house with a garden like that.
Sister Suneetha….. Ajith’s only sister. She had taken her first steps away from him to create such a new world. Last year she got married to a young doctor named Asanka Mallawarachchi. The newly weds were now living in Badulla. Once in a while in the letters she sent home, Suneetha wrote about her garden and the flowering plants she was growing there.
Rarely did Ajith get to see Suneetha’s letters. After joining the army he went home only once in a while. Mother often wrote letters to the army camp. It was from her letters that Ajith got any news about his sister.
Ajith realized that his sister got married on an eighth. Eighth of June to be exact. Though that was a day to celebrate, deep down Ajith felt a sadness that his only sister was leaving the nest forever, to start her new life.
Brother’s body was brought home on the eighth. The news about brother being shot by the police and dumped in a pit was received by father through a friendly inspector in the police force. Those days there was a restlessness everywhere. Even now Ajith could almost hear the wails and moans of sister and mother.
Amidst her tears mother commented that brother followed a wrong path because of his association with bad company. Ajith felt that mother said this out loud as an advise for him as well. “Now, son, don’t you grow up like your brother,” mother said later on. But Ajith did not have the talent to enter the university. Though he studied very hard, he could not even pass the G.C.E O Level in one sitting. He got distinctions only for Buddhism and Math. When he sat for the exam a second time, he passed the subjects of Sinhala and History.
“This one is very good in Math,” mother said lovingly. “Even from a very early age he has been excellent in mathematics.”
This was true. In every test, Ajith received 100% for math. He was the one who taught math even to his older sister.
“I think it is time we sent him to do a course in accounting” father said when Ajith failed O Level for a second time. It was through father’s urging that Ajith joined a special class in accounting.
Here Ajith got friendly with another student named Buddhi Gunasekera . Buddhi always talked about joining the army. It was because of Buddhi that Ajith started getting ideas about the army.
When Buddhi gave up accountancy and joined the army, Ajith also made the same decision. He wanted to take the same path as his friend. Occasionally did Ajith see Buddhi after joining the army.
Buddhi received his training in Diyathalawa. Ajith was there only for a little while and then he was transferred to Ganemulla. During training Ajith faced hardships which he had never ever faced in his life before. To him, that education which he received while crawling in mud under barbed wire., crossing rope bridges, carrying heavy guns facing gunfire was an experience which made him understand more about humanity. But his parents gave their consent reluctantly. Ajith said he wanted to fight for his country. He truly had the intention of fighting for his mother land. It was when his brother’s body was brought home that he learned that his death came about while fighting as a terrorist in a failed revolution.
Though he heard that his brother was shot in the chest he never saw the wound. Lionel’s body was brought home dressed in a funereal outfit. Ajith felt that there was a certain pain and a frustration registered upon his brother’s face. Lionel’s lips were shut tight. His eyes were shut with the eyebrows frowning upward. As if a certain anger were left in those eyes.
When mother and sister wailed out loud, Ajith also cried. But father was stifling his tears.
Once when Ajith went to the garden, he heard something someone said to father. “In a way, Victor you are lucky,” the man said. “Some of the kids’ bodies have not even been found. That principal Jayasekera’s son. There was no body there. They have shot so many in the army camp and buried all together in one pit.”
Father went silent.
Ajith listened while the other man went on talking. “I hear that in some places they gather bodies and pile them up and burn them with rubber tyres. Mr. Meegasthenna told me that there were seven bodies like that burning on the Kandy road. There were some rubber slippers nearby. Mr.Meegasthenna said that some of these kids had never walked out to the street without slippers on their feet. They were all from well to do respectable families. They have gone astray and have ended up burning in rubber tyre infernos.”