El segundo libro transcurre a finales de los ochenta, en plena guerra civil donde el gobierno usaba la guerra sucia contra los grupos separatistas e insurgentes. Nuevamente una protagonista, en este caso médico forense, vuelve a su tierra natal Sri Lanka donde ya no tiene vínculos familiares, en el contexto de un comité de investigación sobre las violaciones de los derechos humanos.
De la época colonial en Sri Lanka (del libro Cinnamon Gardens [CG])
Sobre Colombo:
-Colombo, with its fine port, its midway position between East and West, was one of the great junctions of the shipping world in the 1920s. It was thus of immense importance to the commerce of the British Empire. Yet, the city had none of the chaos of masonry, the hustle and bustle that one associated with the other great cities of the East, be they Singapore or Shanghai or Bombay. Instead, the principal impression of Colombo was that of trees and water.
-In the middle of the city was the extensive Beira Lake,
-the Fort, the commercial district of Colombo, had broad streets with grand, whitewashed buildings.
-The only part of Colombo that possessed the chaos and scramble of other large cities was the Pettah, where the colourful bazaars were always raucous with the cries of vendors, the fierce bargaining of women shopping.
-Cinnamon Gardens, a suburb of Colombo. A century ago, the entire area had been a protected cinnamon estate cultivated by the colonial masters for gain, the cinnamon peelers almost bonded slaves, the price of cutting down a tree, death.
Los puntos de vista que se exponen abajo son en motivo de la comisión Donoughmore del Imperio Británico que llevó a cabo una investigación para valorar posibles cambios de gobierno en sus colonias.
1)(Definición de mudaliyar)In the days before European domination, a mudaliyar, in the domain in which he held sway, had served as a representative of the king. The British had continued the mudaliyarships, but now it was an appointment by the governor based on loyalty to the Empire. The mudaliyars served as interpreters to the British government agents in the different provinces of Ceylon, and they helped the agents execute colonial policy. They were also Legislative Council members.
2)-“Besides, self-government would be fatal to this country economically,” the Mudaliyar continued. “We are a mere dot in the ocean. Without the might of the British Empire behind us, we would be reduced to penury. Let us first put our house in order, show that we are worthy of self-government, before it is granted to us.”
3)-"Universal franchise would be the ruin of our nation.”[...]"It would put the vote in the hands of the servants in our kitchen, labourers, the beggar on the street. Illiterate beings to whom the sophistication of politics is as incomprehensible as advanced mathematics to a child. It would lead to mob rule.”
4)-"If every man’s voice is to count equally, the voice of those who think will be drowned out by those who do not think, because they have no leisure to think. This position leaves all classes alike at the mercy of unscrupulous opportunists.”
5)-"most people who appoint themselves champions of the downtrodden are simply self-aggrandizing.”
6)-"Has British imperialism been such a terrible thing for us? It has brought so many advantages, railways, rule of law, postal services, electricity. I, unlike so many others, would be very unhappy to see the British go.”
-“Yet do you not feel that our – your very own – horizons are limited by their presence, their biases.”
- “I think that their renowned bias is often the fancy of those who are too indolent for the stern realities of life. I am sure that, in the absence of the British, someone else would be found to blame.”
El punto de vista del Congreso Nacional de Ceylon, que quieren una Ceylon sin el imperio británico:
1)-“Divisions are appearing where I didn’t even know there were any.” He lit himself a cigarette. “Up-country Sinhalese versus low-country Sinhalese, Karava caste versus Goyigama caste, Moors, Malays, Christian Tamils, Hindu Tamils, Buddhists, and so on and so on. And not a bloody bugger is thinking nationally, except us in the Congress.”
2)-Between you lot and the damn Kandyans wanting their separate state, you will split this country into a thousand pieces.” “It already is in a thousand pieces,” Balendran said. “You Congress chaps just refuse to see it.
3)-“After all, we are one country, one people. Why can’t we just exist amicably.” Balendran did not reply. He felt that Sriyani’s sentiment dismissed the obvious fears and concerns of the Tamils. When limited franchise was granted in 1921, six years ago, the Tamils, who until that time had been treated by the British as a majority community, alongside the Sinhalese, found themselves a minority because of the numerical superiority of the latter. The behaviour of the Sinhalese members of the Ceylon National Congress had done nothing to assuage the fears of people like his father about a Sinhala Raj. When the Tamils, after the 1921 elections, had requested a special reserved seat in the Western Province, the Sinhalese had refused. Balendran felt that the Sinhalese politicians had been obtuse in the matter. By granting this minor request, they could have easily won over the Tamils to the Congress. Now he felt that it was too late for sentiments that suggested they should all simply exist amicably.
El punto de vista de la Asociación Tamil de Ceylon que no se fían de que el Congreso Nacional de Ceylon representará a las minorías:
1)-“Why should we support your Congress on self-rule when you are going to ask the commission to abolish communal representation?” the man from the Ceylon Tamil Association cried.
-“Communal representation simply forces people to think in terms of their race and not as a nation,” the Congress man replied. “We are proud to take a stance for territorial representation.”
-“And that is why we will never support your claim for self-government.”
- “You may be content to live in a servile fashion under the British, howling and bowing like coolies, but some of us are more manly than that.”
- “Give us a British Raj any day to a Sinhala Raj.”
El punto de vista del imperio Británico (a través de sus agentes de gobierno en las colonias):
1)-The British government agents in the provinces of Ceylon understood the problems of the common man and what solutions needed to be implemented. The Ceylonese élite who sought self-government had scanty knowledge of how the common man lived, had very little real contact with him. They could thus hardly assert the right to represent him.
(Y el punto de vistá de la gente corriente, en respuesta a lo anterior:) 1)-These claims were made with disregard for the crippling poverty and illiteracy, the terrible health and sanitary conditions that colonial rule had brought to the “common man.” There was, however, an element of truth to it. For the common man knew that self-government would not shatter any of the shackles that held him in his position of feudal subservience. He would simply exchange one set of masters for another.
2)-"What in God’s name is the point of a free Ceylon when that freedom is only to be enjoyed by an oligarchy of the rich and high born? Congress, British, it’s all the same.”
Y lo que pasó al final:
-While this would be the first time any executive power had been granted to the Ceylonese, the most important departments – the Treasury, External Affairs, and the Public Service – remained in the hands of British officers.
-The commissioners, displaying a reformative attitude that put the Ceylonese to shame, had recommended universal franchise, making Ceylon the first Asian country to receive it. This, Balendran knew, was perhaps the greatest reform the Donoughmore constitution would bring. With universal franchise, the semi-feudal structures of Ceylon would begin to loosen.
Historia reciente de Sri Lanka (del libro Anil's Ghost [AG])
-FROM THE MID-1980s to the early 1990s, Sri Lanka was in a crisis that involved three essential groups: the government, the antigovernment insurgents in the south and the separatist guerrillas in the north. Both the insurgents and the separatists had declared war on the government.
-Every side was killing and hiding the evidence. Every side. This is an unofficial war, no one wants to alienate the foreign powers.
-So it’s secret gangs and squads. Not like Central America. The government was not the only one doing the killing. You had, and still have, three camps of enemies – one in the north, two in the south
-The terrorism of the separatist guerrilla groups, who were fighting for a homeland in the north. The insurrection of the insurgents in the south, against the government. The counterterrorism of the special forces against both of them.
-So much for the international authority of Geneva. The grand logos on letterheads and European office doors meant nothing where there was crisis. If and when you were asked by a government to leave, you left. You took nothing with you. Not a slide tray, not a piece of film. At the airport, while they searched her clothing, she’d sat almost naked on a stool.
-these guys who are setting off the bombs are who the Western press calls freedom fighters…. And you want to investigate the government?’ - ‘There are innocent Tamils in the south being killed too,’ Sarath said. ‘Terrible killings. You should read the reports.’
-The night interrogations, the vans in daylight picking up citizens at random. That man he had seen taken away on a bicycle. Mass disappearances at Suriyakanda, reports of mass graves at Ankumbura, mass graves at Akmeemana.
-The country existed in a rocking, self-burying motion. The disappearance of schoolboys, the death of lawyers by torture, the abduction of bodies from the Hokandara mass grave. Murders in the Muthurajawela marsh.
Sobre las observaciones forenses:
-The next corpse brought in had flail fractures on the rib cage. It meant he had fallen from a great height – at least five hundred feet – before hitting the water belly-down. The air knocked out of the body. It meant a helicopter.
-she put her hand out and held her palm a millimetre over the flesh to take in its body heat. Its. Not his or hers anymore.
-‘there are trace elements you can find in bones – mercury, lead, arsenic, even gold – that don’t belong to them, they seep in from the surrounding soil. Or they can move from the bones into the adjacent soil. These elements are always passing into and out of bones, whether they are in coffins or not. Well, in this skeleton, there are traces of lead all over him. But there is no lead in this cave where we found him, the soil samples show none. Do you see? He must have been buried somewhere else before.
-‘Twisting happens to bones that get burned when they are “green,” that is, flesh-covered. An old body whose flesh withered away with time and then was burned later on – that’s the pattern with most of the Bandarawela skeletons. This one was barely dead, Sarath, when they tried to burn him. Or worse, they tried to burn him alive.’
-Street bombs, usually containing nails or ball bearings, could cut open an abdomen fifty yards from the explosion. Shock waves travelled past someone and the suction could rupture the stomach.[...] the shrapnel and fragments that flew through their bodies, magically not touching any vital organs, were harmless because the heat of the explosion would sterilize the shrapnel. [...] And there was deafness or semi-deafness, depending on which way one’s head was turned on the street that day.
-Thank God it’s not a full moon. Poya days (fool moon) are the worst. Everyone thinks they can see. They go out and step on something. [...] Mortars, Claymore mines, antipersonnel mines which contain gelignite and trinitrotoluen. And I’m the doctor! That last one results in amputations below the knee. They lose consciousness and the blood pressure falls. You do a tomography of the brain and brain stem, and it shows haemorrhages and edema. We use dexamethasone and mechanical ventilation for this – it means we have to open the skull up. Mostly it’s hideous mutilation, and we just keep arresting the haemorrhages…. They come in all the time. You find mud, grass, metal, the remnants of a leg and boot all blasted up into the thigh and genitals when the bomb they stepped on went off. So if you plan to walk in mined areas, it’s better to wear tennis shoes. Safer than combat boots.
- (about women) they were better at dealing with calamity in professional work than men. They were geared to giving birth, protecting children, steering them through crisis. Men needed to pause and dress themselves in coldness in order to deal with a savaged body. In all her training in Europe and America she saw that again and again. Women doctors were more confident in chaos and accident, calmer in dealing with the fresh corpse of an old woman, a young beautiful man, small children.
-Anil had worked with teachers who could take a seven-hundred year-old skeleton and discover through evidence of physical stress or trauma in those bones what the person’s profession had been.
-He had seen cases where every tooth had been removed, the nose cut apart, the eyes humiliated with liquids, the ears entered.
Datos de interés:
-[CG]"Centuries of imperialism have completely obliterated the culture.”
-[CG]"the sites of our glorious past, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.”
-[CG]In high-caste Tamil society, the marrying of cousins who were the children of sisters and brothers was held in esteem.
-[CG]numerous Jaffna Tamil Christians who were employed in the Malaya Civil Service and railways by the British.
-[CG]Jaffna, because of its arid, infertile environment and its proliferation of missionary schools, had provided the necessary recruits to Malaya.
-[CG]Ceylonese women in Malaya always came back at the beginning of their pregnancy. Medical facilities in Malaya were backward when compared to Ceylon,
-[CG]Karava Sinhalese with Karava Sinhalese, Goyigamas with Goyigamas, Burghers with Burghers, Tamils with Tamils, and so on.
-[CG]that great work of Tamil philosophy, the Tirukkural
-[CG]Renunciation was the first step to true meditation,
-[CG](since Hindus had only one appellation, it was customary for them to take a Christian surname.
-[CG]She belonged, she knew, to that group of women from Europe who had married non-European men as an escape from the structures of their world, a refusal to conform. What they did not know, could not have known, was that these men, so outcast in Europe and America, were, in their own land, the very thing women like her were trying to escape.
-[CG]“During the 1915 riots between the Muslims and Sinhalese.”
-[CG](about Sinhalese pronunciation of English)mispronouncing his “w” as “v,” elongating short vowels, substituting “p” for “f.” And, from time to time, he dropped his “the’s” and “a’s.”
-[CG]How strange and ridiculous they looked, the women in particular in their cumbersome Edwardian dresses and hats against the tropical landscape. “This was before the dress reform movement,”
-[AG]Les Misérables. A book so much a favourite, so thick with human nature she wished it to accompany her into the afterlife.
-[AG]Bodhisattvas – their twenty-four rebirths –
-[AG]brought in only to paint the eyes on the Buddha image. The eyes must be painted in the morning, at five. The hour the Buddha attained enlightenment. The ceremonies therefore begin the night before, with recitations and decorations in the temples.[... ] only the mirror receives the direct image of the glance being created. No human eye can meet the Buddha’s during the process of creation.
-[AG]It was finally realized that while European culture was old, Asian culture was older.
-[AG]He traced each letter on the Stone Book at Polonnaruwa, a boulder carved into a rectangle four feet high, thirty feet long, the first book of the country,
-[AG](about sinhala tradition) When a malefic man married a nonmalefic woman, she did not necessarily die. But if a woman did, the man would always die. She was henahuru, literally ‘a pain in the neck.’ Though more dangerous.
-[AG](about tamil tradition) three trees in the garden. A mango, a murunga, and the pomegranate. Murunga leaves were cooked in crab curries to neutralize poisons, pomegranate leaves were soaked in water for the care of eyes and the fruit eaten to aid digestion. The mango was for pleasure.
-[AG]A dog followed them and she remembered Tibetans believed that monks who hadn’t meditated properly became dogs in the next life.
-[AG]the four main rivers – the Mahaveli Ganga, the Kalu Ganga, the Kelani Ganga, the Bentota Ganga.
-[AG]For you cannot survive as a monk if society does not exist. You renounce society, but to do so you must first be a part of it, learn your decision from it. This is the paradox of retreat.
-[AG]in Europe a new artificial foot cost 2,500 pounds. Here the Jaipur Limb was made for 30 pounds – cheaper because Asian victims could walk without a shoe.
-[AG](la descripción del cirujano que fue secuestrado) he was polite with everyone because it was the easiest way not to have trouble, to be invisible to those who did not matter to him. This small courtesy created a bubble he rode within. His gestures and politeness disguised an essential lack of interest or, if not that, a lack of time for others on the street. [...]He thanked people for nothing much and he didn’t ask for anything unless it was badly needed.
-[AG](about fear) this nerve bundle which houses fear – so it governs everything. How we behave and make decisions, how we seek out safe marriages, how we build houses that we make secure.
-[AG]‘Most of the time in our world, truth is just opinion.’
-[AG]Sarath believed in truth as a principle. That is, he would have given his life for the truth if the truth were of any use.
Comida:
-packets of lamprais,
-egg rulang and curd with jaggery.
-String hoppers, pol sambol, chicken curry.
-(comida favorita del protagonista) uppuma in the morning, ravva ladu spiced with cardamom (de cinnamon gardens)
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