Free The Seasons of Trouble by Rohini Mohan Page B

which she knew nothing. She, too, thought it best that way. It was daughters who had to be protected; sons had to be free. Otherwise they’d become weak mamma’s boys, as her brother had warned long ago.
    But now Indra wondered if this moment she faced with Sarva, this black mark on their family, had come because she had at some point decided it was okay to look away. She had repeatedly pulled him out of the worst situations a Tamil boy could get into, but perhaps that wasn’t enough. For all the thoughts she wasn’t privy to, all the times she knew he had lied to her, all the missed opportunities, she felt an aching guilt.
    She pulled out old photo albums to remember the children they had once been, easier to keep from harm. Most of them were black-and-white pictures of Deva, in the crib, in the rice-feeding ceremony, crawling, walking, crying at the ritual head-shaving,going to school in uniform. Sarva’s pictures were only a handful, but all in colour: a posed family photo taken in a Negombo studio when he was barely a few days old, a fungus-infested picture with his grandparents in the Jaffna house, and a couple of passport-size photos taken in primary school. By the time Carmel, her last, was born, the family owned a Minolta camera, a gift from her brother, who had emigrated to America. These pictures were in full colour, from Carmel sleeping to his dribbling attempt to eat mangoes; from Carmel running in a temple to his riding an uncle like an elephant. Even her sister’s son Darshan, six years younger than Sarva, had baby photos from India, where they had stayed for a bit just after he was born and before his father left for Dubai. Of her grandchildren there were countless pictures, and more filed away on Deva’s laptop.
    Of all her children, Sarva’s childhood had been the hardest to record. Her family had been uprooted again and again while he was growing up, their very existence then under question. How many times had she run with him from the battle and fire that raged around them—dangers from which she could not really protect him? They took photos to celebrate, document, and freeze moments worth remembering—but larger tragic events had upstaged so many of Sarva’s milestones. Most of his moments had been unphotographable, happening against a background one didn’t want to immortalise in a photograph and amid the disarray of their constant migration.

    ABOUT A MONTH after Sarva disappeared, someone who worked with the American’s office said they had received permission ‘for immediate family to visit the detainee’. Indra asked if she could take Sarva some food. She got his aunt Rani to make a fish curry the way he loved it. All her emotion, she invested in a lunchbox.
    Early on 26 July 2008, Indra and Rani went to the Green Pass police station. They did not notice that it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the July 1983 riots.
    In the police station, there were several others like them, the distinct dejection and confusion on their faces setting them apartfrom other visitors. A social worker, a Tamil from a missing persons’ community group, accompanied them. He said Sarva was being brought here from Harbour police station.
    At around four o’clock, a circle of policemen brought in a hunched man. He was handcuffed and seemed unable to walk. The policemen were dragging him slightly. When he lifted his eyes to look around, his swollen left eyelid stayed shut.
    Indra rushed to him with a wail. Someone held her back and dragged them both to a bench in the corner. She was feeling everything but the relief she had anticipated for weeks.
    ‘What is this, kanna … ?’ she asked, holding his hands. Sarva began to cry. She had brought him the lunchbox, but starvation did not seem to be her son’s biggest problem. There were cuts on his face, his hands were bruised, his eyes hardly opened. He was wearing a putrid shirt and someone else’s slippers. His feet were turned in.
    ‘Get me out, Amma,’