Tear Drops (DRAFT 6)

Amala kept hearing the shrill sounds of her mother calling her from across the field. It was time for lunch and she had to help her mother deliver food to her father who worked at the rubber plantation. Amala’mother would have completed packing food for her husband and her twin elder sons, Aryan and Chelvam. Amala was still lying down on the puffy grass patch chewing on dried grass. While enjoying the breezy wind, the Amala’s attention was captivated by every word of Parvati granny, one of the village grannies who often talked about the tales of Ceylon, an olden term used for Sri Lanka.

Amala got up, brushing away dried grass from her light floral skirt which Mrs. Horns, the teacher from England, presented her with. Amala waved goodbye to Parvati granny and sprinted away. She was gasping for breath when she reached her two roomed house shabbily built at the outskirts of the rubber plantation.

Seeing Amala, her younger brother Ayan eight that year, shouted out,

“Akka, where were you? Mother has been looking for you for a long time”. He stressed loudly on the “long” word, mischievously.

Amala shushed him and tapped his rear end and went inside quietly. Her exhausted mother was busily steaming banana cuisine to sell in the evening market. Amala grinned at her mother and then ran out of the house carrying the food. She walked along to the rubber plantation to serve the men, their lunch of sweet potato porridge and salted fish with small raw onions.

Amala’s hope was to follow Mrs. Horns to Britain soon as she mentioned that Amala can live with her while studying to become a teacher there. Amala has been living with high hopes with that in mind ever since.

Two years passed by and it was 1950, Amala woke up with a jolt as the baby woke her up abruptly. She carried the baby tenderly and slowly began to feed her. Thripshika, the four month old, who looked up at her mother with innocent eyes and Amala looked fondly at her daughter. She looked at her husband who was lying beside her, lost to the world after a long day at the rubber plantation. Amala’s mind went to Mrs. Horns whom she sent off at the harbour a year ago, with her dreams washed off by the ship liner as the teacher slowly started to dissappear further away from her view. Amala’s mother died of jaundice which changed her life thouroughly. Slowly starting to adapt to the new family life, Amala, like the other million girls in Sri Lanka, let go of her dreams and moulded into one of them. Amala put her baby back to sleep and found her eyes drooping into darkness.


Amongst the political commotion, Amala’s siblings and daughter started growing up and she did multiple jobs to cope so that she can help to assist her husband whose rubber plantation job went downhill due to the discrimination efforts of the Sinhalese people.

As active demonstrators, Amala’s husband and brothers were often arrested by the Sinhalese police and were thrown into prison for long weeks. Amala strived to keep her eight year old daughter from starving and slogged hard as a maid, working at rich people’s houses. Thripshika grew up like her mother in every senses Amala realized, as the years went past. When Thripshika sat for her SATS, Amala skived and saved for her daughter’s studies but the Sinhalese politic corruptions made Thripshika end her studies abruptly.

The government declared a state of emergency in May 1958 and relocated more than 25,000 Tamil refugees from Sinhalese areas to Tamil areas in the north. Amala relocated her house three times to escape the Sinhalese tortures which took her father’s life on one fateful night.

That was when Thripshika fall in love with a Sinhalese navy officer for which her whole family showed disapproval except for her mother. Amala got Thripshika married off to Veer Pritam, the Sinhalese navy officer on a bright Sunday morning in the outskirts of their village temple and watched them board the ship liner and again she waved her hands to a loved one till they disappeared from her eyes.
Amala was delighted to find that Thripshika had entered the local university in India and had started to study literature like she always wanted to. In July 1983, communal riots in Sri Lanka erupted which took Amala’s twin brothers and her husband’s lives.

Amala’s son-in-law came to Sri Lanka with Thripshika and this time, Amala crossed the border, and as she went up the ship liner, with her daughter, as her tears dropping heavily, she felt as a sixteen year old girl once again, who kept waving her hand as the liner cruised away and this time,her motherland slowly started to disappear from her view, with her dreams lefts at the shores of Sri Lanka.