Lankans can’t queue. Unless you define a queue as an amorphous curve with multiple entry points. This appears to be a gathering point for those with questions about their death. There are multiple counters and irate customers clamour over grills to shout abuse at the few behind the bars. The afterlife is a tax office and everyone wants their rebate.
You are pushed to one side by an Amma with a young child on her hip. The child stares at you as if you have smashed its favourite toy. The mother’s hair is caked in blood which stains her dress and smears her face. ‘What about our Madura? What has happened to him? He was in the back seat with us. He saw the bus before the driver did.”
‘How many times to tell madam? Your son is still living. Don’t worry, be happy.’
This comes from the man from the other counter, who wears a white smock and an Afro and looks like Moses from the big book. His voice rumbles like the ocean and his eyes are the pale yellow of beaten eggs. He repeats the title of last year’s most annoying song and then opens a ledger book of his own.
You take another picture, which is what you do when you don’t know what else to. You attempt to capture this car park of chaos, but all you see are cracks in the lens.
It is easy to tell who is staff and who isn’t. The former carry register books and stand around smiling; the latter look unhinged. They pace, then stop, then stare into space. Some roll their heads and wail. The staff do not look directly at anything, especially the souls they are counselling.
Now would be an excellent time to wake up and forget. You rarely remember your dreams and, whatever this is, the chance of it sticking is less than a flush or a full house. You won’t remember being here any more than you remember learning to walk. You’ve taken Jaki’s silly pills and this is just a trippy dream. What else could it be?
And then you notice a figure leaning against a sign in the corner, dressed in what seems to be a black garbage bag, who looks to be neither staff nor customer. The figure surveys the crowd and its green eyes shine like a cat’s under headlights. They fall upon you and linger for longer than they should. The head nods and the eyes do not break gaze.
Above the figure, a sign reads:
DO NOT VISIT CEMETERIES
Next to it is a notice with an arrow:
-› CHECKS AT LEVEL FORTY-TWO
You turn back to the woman behind the counter and you try again. ‘This is a mistake. I don’t eat meat. I only smoke five a day.’ The woman seems familiar to you, as perhaps your lies are to her. For a moment, the jostling seems to stop. For a moment, it feels like you are all there is.
‘Aiyo! Every excuse I have heard. No one wants to go, not even the suicides. You think I wanted to die? My daughters were eight and ten when they shot me. What to do? Complaining won’t help. Be patient and wait your turn. Forgive what you can. We are short-staffed and looking for volunteers.’
She looks up and raises her voice at the queue.
‘You all have seven moons.’
‘What’s a moon?’ asks a girl with a snapped neck. She holds the hand of a boy with a cracked skull.
‘Seven moons is seven nights. Seven sunsets. A week. More than enough time.’
‘Thought a moon was a month?’
‘The moon is always up there, even when you can’t see it. You think it stops circling the earth, just because your breath stops?’
You understand none of this. So you try another approach. ‘Look at this crowd. Must be all the killing up north. Tigers and Army killing civilians. Indian peacekeepers starting wars.’
You look around to see no one listening to you. The eyes continue to ignore you and glisten in their blue-green hues. You look around for the figure in black, but it has vanished. ‘Not just up north. Down here also. Government is fighting the JVP and bodies are piling high. I fully get it. You must be busy these days. I understand.’
‘These days?’ The woman in white scowls and shakes her head. ‘There’s a corpse every second. Sometimes two. Did you get your ears checked?’
‘My hearing is fine. I take photos. I bear witness to crimes that no one else sees. I am needed.’
‘That woman has children to feed. That man has hospitals to run. You have photos? Sha! How impressive.’
‘These are not holiday snaps. These are photos that will bring down governments. Photos that could stop wars.’
She makes a face at you. The chain around her neck is an Egyptian cross, once worn by a boy who loved you more than you loved him. She fiddles with it and screws up her nose.
It is only then that you recognise her. Her toothpaste ad smile had been all over the newspapers for much of 1989. The university lecturer slain by Tamil extremists for the crime of being a Tamil moderate.
‘I know you. You are Dr Ranee Sridharan. Couldn’t make you out without your loudspeaker. Your articles on the Tamil Tigers were superb. But you used my photos without asking.’
The thing that makes you most Sri Lankan is not your father’s surname or the holy place where you kneel, nor the smile you plaster on your face to hide your fears. It is the knowing of other Lankans and the knowing of those Lankans’ Lankans. There are aunties, if given a surname and a school, who can pinpoint any Lankan to the nearest cousin. You have moved in circles that overlapped and many that stayed shut. You were cursed with the gift of never forgetting a name, a face, or a sequence of cards.
‘I was sad when they got you. Truly. When was it? ’87? You know, I met a Tiger with the Mahatiya faction. Said he organised your hit.’
Dr Ranee looks up from her book, she gives a weary smile, and then shrugs. Her pupils are clouded white, as if stuffed with milky cataracts.
‘You need to get your ears checked. Your ears have patterns as personal as your fingerprints. The folds show past traumas, the lobes reveal sins, the cartilage hides guilt. All things that prevent you from entering The Light.’
‘What’s The Light?’
‘The short answer is Whatever You Need It To Be. The long answer is, I don’t have time for the long answer.’
She passes you an ola leaf. A dried palm leaf, said to have been used by seven rishis three thousand years ago to write the fortunes of everyone who would ever live. Angular incisions would rip the grainy texture, so South Asian scribes developed sensuous curves on lettering to stop the leaf from tearing.
‘Did you take photos of 1983?’
‘I did indeed. What’s this?’
The ola leaf has the same words written in all three languages. Circular Sinhala, angular Tamil, scribbled English and not a rip in sight.
EARS _____________________
DEATH ____________________
SINS _____________________
MOONS __________________
STAMPED BY__________________
‘Get your ears checked, your deaths counted, your sins coded and your moons registered at Level Forty-Two. And get it stamped by a Helper. She closes her book and, with that, the conversation. You are replaced at the front of the queue by a man in bandages who will not stop coughing.
You turn and face the people behind you. You raise your hands like a prophet. Always the show off, you were. Always loud, except when you weren’t.
‘None of you ghouls exist! You are phantoms from my snoring brain. I have swallowed Jaki’s silly pills. This is hallucination. There is no damn life after death. If I close my eyes, you will vanish like farts!’
They pay as much attention to you as Mr Reagan does to The Maldives. Neither the car crash victims, the abductees, the old folk in hospital gowns, nor the late lamented Dr Ranee Sridharan, notice your outburst.