The Seedlings

They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. - Mexican proverb.

Arun

He still remembers crouching behind the sofa, his hands shaking as he listened to the voices of the strange men that had come to their house. He was in a pair of shorts and a cotton t-shirt, a faded image of Superman that he liked to place his hand on as he fell asleep. Arun had wanted to wear one of his brother’s instead but his mother insisted. He also remembers his mother pleading, her sobs intersecting coherent words. There was only coldness in the voices of the men who spoke. Finally, he decided to peek, conjuring up courage to see what was happening. That was when he saw his brother for the last time. Krishna had stood tall and defiant as he was asked to go with the men to the police station. The men who were standing under the dim light of the porch looked ominous, their faces barely human in the shadows. But, there was one figure among them that would haunt Arun for the rest of his life. At first he was unsure of what he was seeing. The figure did not seem to have a face and instead all he could see was a featureless brown mass. It made the hairs on his arm stand on end. The boogeyman; the faceless, featureless monster of his nightmares. And before his young mind could understand anymore he heard the creature talk, a simple yes. Between the screams and shouts of his parents, his brother was dragged away, his skinny brown body flexing as he struggled to free himself from the clutches of the men. All Arun could do was to lie on the floor and curl himself up into a ball, his six-year-old mind trying to make sense of what he had just witnessed.

It was only years later that he found out that the boogeyman he saw that night was real and not a figment of his childhood imagination. Unlike the creature of his nightmares, this bogeyman was tortured and coerced into giving up names and nodding yes to identify his comrades. Arun also found out that these young men were made to wear a gunny sack on their faces to help them be anonymous, with just two holes for their eyes to see the unsuspecting victim. This was the bogeyman that walked silently through the Wednesday market on the main street of the village or through the muddy tracks of the town fair grounds, his mere presence cutting a pathway through the crowds, a miracle of sorts. Looking back, he remembers that it was indeed a strange time. A time of horror and bloodshed that had become part of everyday life; bodies burning on a funeral pyre of burning tires, the smell of burning flesh and rubber floating through the air as children walked to school, neatly placed decapitated heads around a pond of lotus blooms. An adult now, he still remembers the fear that was constant and running through his veins, the uncanny feeling of nights where the lights were extinguished on the whim of a group of men.

Not even fiction nor imagination could make up the strange disconnectedness of those times.

Krishna

His body now lay under layers of soil, leaves, branches and debris. He was now one among seventeen. Not a sign left of the blood, the pain or the fear that gripped those young men as they waited for death. Not a sign was left of the rush of adrenalin and mad frenzy of the men who stood, their hands shaking as they prepared to shoot the men in front of them, some not much younger than themselves. Not a sign. All that was left was the memory of the earth that bore the bodies of the seventeen young men, their flesh and bones becoming a part of the soil that wrapped them, their essence mingling with that of the soil around them.

They were the remnants of that strange time, stranger than the strangest of fiction. They were the proof that would not go away.

And they bided their time.

Arun

He smiles now as he sees the wall of his bedroom. Time stands still as he looks at the layers of photographs covering the wall next to his bed. Even after all these years his parents had not removed them from the wall, leaving them to yellow and age unmolested. A part of him wishes they had erased all traces of his lonely adolescence, but another small part of his heart was grateful they had not. Arun sat on the bed and faced the wall, looking carefully at the collage of randomly placed photos. He was looking for something. It was a photo of a young girl. Gently, he started to lift and move the photos, discovering layers underneath; a chronicle of his obsession.

In those days, he had been searching. Searching for the brother he had lost. Fueled by the deep shadows under his mother’s eyes and her unrelenting hope that Krishna would return, Arun had started taking photos of crowds. His own fragile hope that Krishna’s face would magically appear in a photo, changed but recognizable, and his parents finally exhaling that breath they had been holding for years thereby freeing him to breath on his own. But before his mind was consumed by his search, there had been a photo. It was of a young girl, not more than twelve years old, her hair lighting up in the afternoon sun, her eyes crinkling as she smiled for him. The girl next door who had been his friend through the years his parents searched frantically for their firstborn, an unlikely refuge from his own sadness and loss. When he had felt like a ghost, his parents looking right through him their own grief overwhelming their senses, it was Indira who had helped him feel like he was not a mere figment of his own imagination.

He still remembers taking the photo. The camera had been a gift from his uncle for his birthday, an expensive gift for a boy his age. His parents were stunned into silence as he was presented the camera, his uncle refusing to listen to their arguments about the expensive hobby. It was he who had provided Arun with the money when he needed to buy film or when he wanted to get the photos processed. It had been his uncle’s way of helping the teenager who was visibly suffering from the effects of his brother’s disappearance. The camera in turn had given Arun a means of contributing to the search. But more importantly it had given him a space to be himself, removed from his parents overwhelming sadness.

When he finally found the photo, it showed signs of being forgotten; the edges were bent and the color washed out. Yet, there she was, her smile somehow shining through the years. Arun smiled as he walked out to the living room of his parent’s house. Everything looked just as he had remembered as a teenager, the only difference being the flat-screen TV that he had bought for them when the old one had given out.

“Hey, I found it!” he said cheerfully as he held up the photo. His parents smiled and the young woman sitting on the couch with them turned around. She was blushing as she walked towards him, taking the photo in her hand.

“Oh geeze!” She said as she stared at her much younger self, the awkward grin and crinkly eyes of the young girl smiling in the photo.

“What do you mean? I took great photos even back then……your photo was one of my first.” He said taking it from her hand. She rolled her eyes comically and stuck her tongue out.

Arun wanted to kiss her then but, he resisted remembering that his parents were in the living room with them. Although he no longer lived in the same house and owned a small thriving business of his own there was still conventions he had to follow.

“She looks even prettier now.” Said his mother, smiling at the young woman standing next to him.

“Thank you, Auntie!” Indira said grinning, a slightly more adult version of her smile on the photo.

For the first time in his adult life Arun could feel things falling into place. Meeting Indira had been the catalyst; their chance encounter at a mutual friend’s birthday and their almost instant recognition of each other had rekindled his teenage affection for her. And to his surprise she had been the first to confess her feelings to him. And over the course of the year that they had known each other he could glimpse into the years in between her family moving away and their reunion, to the woman that she had become, shedding away features of the young girl he had known to becoming the woman he would fall in love with.

“Do you still think of Krishna?” She had asked him, only a month after they had met. Her boldness had taken him by surprise and he hesitated to find an answer.

“Yes……. I still do.” He had finally answered.

She had touched his arm gently, her face conveying that she had already known the answer.

“He will always be a part of your life.”

Arun nodded his head in agreement. Even though he had decided to stop his obsession of finding his brother, there was still times he would find himself scanning a crowd, his heart leapfrogging as he waited for a moment of recognition. He would then check himself, berating his own naivety. His own child-like hope of seeing Krishna again never giving him a chance to completely find his peace.

“You just need to accept that truth. It might help you move on.” Indira had said.

“I have moved on……” He protested.

She simply nodded in disagreement. At that moment, he had felt found-out as if she had invaded a deep private part of him without his permission.

Krishna

The hillside where the young men lay, the grave’s existence long forgotten had become a site for the expansion of the village temple. It had always been part of the land of the temple but for as long as anyone could remember it had been left to its own devices, the trees and the undergrowth running their roots ever deeper as the decades passed. Long forgotten, the land had been able to keep its secrets secure. But It was one of the men weeding the undergrowth that had hit a human skull, cracking it with the strength of the blow of the shovel. He had been trying to root out a large Castor tree that had grown unheeded, its roots running deep into the rich ochre soil. It was hard work in the mid-day sun, sweat pouring from the sides of his temples, he had been getting frustrated but once he realized what he had accidentally struck his expression changed to that of fear. There had always been rumors, spoken in the safety of one’s home, among family. Like many who lived through those strange years of the country’s history the man too had learned to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to what he saw and heard around him. Everyone was complicit, even though many were not ever aware of their complicity. Caught between the government and the insurgents, ordinary people like Mahinda had no other option but to remain silent and hope that their sin of complicity would never be found out. That the horrors that he had witnessed and ignored would not visit him or his children in the future.

Quickly he squatted next to the skull, and started to move away the soil, much more gently this time. Once he was completely sure that he was looking at human remains he looked around him, as if he had been found out with his own secret. He placed his hand on his forehead and wondered what he should do. Around him the other men were busy, their arms and legs moving in coordinated movements as they cut through the thick undergrowth beneath the Rubber and Teak trees. They seemed to be unaware of his discovery. After a few minutes Mahinda decided to call out to the man working closest to him.

“What is it?” The man asked, his dark black hair matted with sweat.

“Come and look.” Mahinda said, almost hissing his words as he attempted to not alert the other men.

Jagath walked towards him, his curiosity now aroused by the expression and urgency shown by Mahinda. There had always been talk about the fact that the temple grounds held a hidden treasure left there by one of the noblemen of the village as he fled the advances of the bedraggled British army making their way to Kandy. Those had also been times of complicity and violence, each aristocrat vying for a foothold in a country that was about to become a British colony.

“What is it?” he asked again, this time his voice almost a whisper as he looked at the earth that had been cleared by the other man.

“It’s a skull.” Mahinda said, his eyes bulging as he said the words.

“What?” Jagath said in disbelief, his daydreams of hidden treasure dissipating into the humid air.

“Look…….” Mahinda said and pointed at the white bone emerging from the ochre earth, one empty eye socket staring into nothing.

That was when Jagath looked with alarm at the man next to him. He too was reminded of the stories that the empty land had been used as a sight for a mass grave during the insurgency. It had been 1987 and he had been a seventeen-year-old and like many young boys his age he was aware of the sentiments of rebellion and violence that was surging through the country. He knew that his parents had been fearful for his life, that he would become yet another statistic, one among many who had disappeared during that time. He had survived, mainly due to the machinations of his mother who had sent him to stay with a distant relative in Colombo, hoping that the life in the city would ensure that he would stay away from the company of the young men who had organized themselves in the village. He had left the village early one morning, catching the train from Kandy to Colombo, leaving behind his family and his friends, wearing what he thought was his cowardice as close to the ground as possible. When he returned to the village almost five years later, he had been thankful to his mother who he realized had saved his life. Some of the young boys he had grown up with had not survived that strange time, their bodies either burnt in pyres or buried without a trace.

“We have to tell the head priest of the temple and we shouldn’t do anything more. This is no longer our business.” He said to Mahinda.

“Whatever you say……let’s go then.”

The two men started walked briskly on the narrow cleared path through the undergrowth back to where the temple premises began. They quickly removed their worn rubber slippers and started walking barefoot over the thick white sand that covered most of the grounds. The sun had heated up the shiny crystals and it was almost unbearable to walk. The two men skipped over the heated sand, their soles burning at every touch and when they finally arrived at the building that housed the rooms where the monks lived, they sighed in relief as they stepped on the cool ochre earth. A young monk was sweeping the veranda. He looked up at the sound of the men panting.

“Yes?” He asked calmly.

“We need to speak to the head monk please……. it’s something important.”

“Is someone injured?” the monk asked, the broom motionless in his hands.

“No……. but this is important……please.” Mahinda said, speaking between great gulps of breath.

When the chief monk of the temple finally came out to meet the men, they were calmer, the initial rush of adrenalin had died down and they were now left with anxiety. The gravity of what they had discovered sinking in, both men stood silent, each contemplating the implications.

“Reverend, you must come……. I……we found a human skull.” Mahinda spoke as soon as he saw the monk appear at the doorway.

The monk, an elderly man who stood taller than both Jagath and Mahinda, took a deep breath. There was an expression of acceptance, as if the news that the two men just gave him was somehow a confirmation of his own deep seated worries. He simply nodded his head and started walking towards the edge of the temple grounds. Jagath and Mahinda followed behind him, their footsteps stumbling as they tried to keep pace with the stride of the taller man.

Arun

He had been at his favorite kottu shop when he saw the news broadcast, the images of the unearthed mass grave flashing on the TV screen mounted on the limited space of the wall facing him. It was a small shop; an oddity that provided both food and a random selection of groceries. He would drop in after work for a cheap cup of sweet cardamom tea and a couple of spicy vadai’s before heading to the annex he rented, the spiciness of the food complementing with the hot sweetness of the tea. It was a perfect way to end his work day. As he watched the images on the screen, something inside him stirred, an instinct. The first thought in his mind was Krishna. He stood up and walked closer to the TV. The loud chatter of the customers and the constant clanging of the metal blades hitting the metal hotplate as it chopped and mixed the pieces of roti, vegetables and meat that became the kottu to be served, assaulted his ears as he tried to listen to what was being said on the news. He felt frustrated as he failed to discern anything being said on the TV. Arun, walked out onto the pavement and called his parents. It was his mother who picked up and instinctively he knew that his mother that had already seen the news. She had been crying.

“Did you see…….”

“Yes.” She said immediately.

“I’m out and I couldn’t hear anything that was being said on the TV……this place too noisy.”

“The grave is in Kandy……. for now, they have only uncovered five skeletons but they think there’s more….” She continued, her voice becoming shaky as she spoke.

“Amma……” Arun said, his heartbreaking as he knew that his mother was enduring the loss of her eldest once more.

“I’m okay. If you can come home…….”

“Yes, I’m on my way.” Arun said.

As he hailed a tuk tuk from the busy street, he sighed deeply. The traffic was heavy on the Galle Road, and as the vehicle wiggled its way through cars and honking busses carving out the fastest route to his destination, Arun could not dispel the thought that his brother’s body was in that grave. Maybe this time around his family could find a means to move on, to find an existence that did not revolve around loss. For once he admitted the sense of relief he felt at the thought but, it was soon followed by the guilt that came inevitably in its wake. How could his thoughts be so selfish?

Krishna

As the chief monk of the temple started walking past the workers to the clearing where the skull was found, there was a deafening silence as everyone stopped their work and wondered what had happened.

“It’s here Reverend……” Mahinda walked ahead, and pointed at the root of the Castor tree that he had been digging out.

Immediately the monk bent down, his ochre robes touching the soil as he looked closely at what had emerged from the ground. By now the rest of the laborers were standing in a circle around the monk, with Mahinda and Jagath in the front row. There was an air of anticipation as they watched and waited for the monk to make a declaration.  And when he finally cleared his throat, there was a hush as everyone expected him to talk. Instead the monk simply stood up and looked around.

“Listen, there’s nothing more to see here……it’s not some macabre show. There’s human remains here and no matter who it is we have to show respect to the dead.” He said touching his forehead as he spoke.

“Do you think it’s from the times of the kings………maybe buried treasure.” One of the men quipped.

At that the monk looked angry as he scanned the faces of the men to see who had spoken. He took a deep breath.

“No…. it’s not from the times of the ancient kings and I doubt there’s any treasure here. Those are all legends told by our old folk, there’s hardly any proof to their stories. But, ……. what you see here is the remains of the times we live in, the horrors that we have all witnessed in this country. It’s a from a time when there was hardly any rule of law and violence and fear was the norm. So, don’t you dare disturb anything here………it’s out of our hands now.”

“But…….” Jagath said.

“I’m going to inform the police……. it’s their job now……. it’s their macabre job to figure out what exactly happened here.” At that the monk started walking back to the temple. The men moved out of his path respectfully, but as soon as he walked passed they started talking among themselves, their mingled whispers sounding like insects buzzing in the distance. While the other men talked among themselves, Jagath kneeled beside the skull. He touched its surface almost tenderly, imagining it belonging to a human being, a being made of flesh and blood. He thought about the young boys that he had known in his youth, those he left behind as he sat on that train one chilly morning thus, changing his fate. His vision started to blur as he felt a heavy burden fall upon him. And he could not stop the tears of loss; they were tears for an entire generation of youth whose frustrations and dreams had become the weapon for a few who craved power, and they were also tears for his own youth forever tinged by his sense of guilt at being alive to see the future.