Silent fight against convention

Day 05 | Wednesday, November 21, 2018

After Nirasha left, there was very little noise among us, the pensive ones. We missed her and her chatter, but kept walking, hunting for stories in the unknown nooks of Jaffna city. This morning after a breakfast of Idly, which tasted sweeter than I had expected it to be, Shalini akka took us to Gurunagar. Our first stop was St. James Church. Though not large, it was famous and considered to be a holy and blessed shrine. Located near the bustling marketplace of Gurunagar, the Church seemed squeezed in, like a wild flower blooming through a wall into day’s light.

There was a reason why Shalini akka brought us here. The church had been aerial-bombed during the war time, 25 years ago, almost one month before I was born, on November 13, 1993. The church has been renovated with a piece of the memory of destruction preserved, as if to remind every devotee, every visitor to pray it won’t recur.

Architecturally St. James Church wasn’t as appealing as Nallur but the fact that there was a God residing inside revered by somebody, ignited my interest to go and explore its inside. After a brief visit and prayer, we left the church to explore Gurunagar a little further. By 11.15 AM we were at the Gurunagar market. We were told that the market was famous for its female fish mongers. And my first sight of the market with them explained me the alleged fame.

It was quite strange to see them, who despite their female identity and age were battling with sharp knives, cleaning, cutting various types of fish with the practice and perfection of other male fish vendors who are more commonplace. Doing a job usually done or socially accepted to be done by males these women were in a silent yet defiant fight against norms, in a conventional society which demands women to be modest and to be engaged in un-gruesome jobs. They looked rustic to be, smeared in fish blood, reeking of fish, sitting on a wet stool, handling knives like experienced butchers, responding to bargaining customers while chopping off the head of fish in a flash. For me, there was something partly brutal, partly gruesome, yet partly empowering and unconventional in that image. I particularly remember one lady, clad in a clumsy red sari, too fat for the miniature stool she was sitting on, engaged in her day’s business with what seemed to me like years of practice and expertise.

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Note: An excerpt from my travelogue or the ‘memory diary’ kept during my monitoring visit to Jaffna in November, 2018 with MediaCorps Fellows Indunil Usgodarachchi, Nirasha Piyawadani and Mohamed Hazil as they explored Jaffna community in search of stories of post-war revival and of marginalized communities with their hosting Fellow Shalini Charles. The visit was a part of the MediaCorps Fellowship Program implemented by the Sri Lanka Development Journalist Forum in partnership with International Research and Exchanges Board and USAID that I was working on from 2018 to 2020.