JUSTICE

7 year old Anishka sits alone in the dark late at night, cat on her lap dog by her side, the television is on. She cannot sleep but that is about the only problem. As she focuses her attention on the television, all she sees are people brutally being murdered, women crying and effortlessly struggling to leave behind the remains of their dying children whose body parts were scattered by bombs and lives been lost with a blink of an eye. A tear slowly begins to trickle down her smooth delicate face as she murmur these words to herself without fail to stop, “When is my turn to die, when will I become like them.” Then and there she realises that she is a lucky sod.

Anishka is a Sinhalese. Her parents were raised and born in Sri Lanka. They later died due to health problems and poor Anishka was taken in by an Indian Tamil family at the age of one. She never got the chance to know who her real parents were or what it felt like to be a Sinhalese. The Indian Tamils were shipped to Sri Lanka by the British in 1940s. The British gave good benefits to the Tamils over the local Sri Lankans. This angered many Sinhalese and when the British left in 1948 and granted Sri Lanka its independence, the Sinhalese decided to take their revenge slowly by changing some policies. Little had they known that these changes would results in millions of lives being lost

Little Anishka did not experience a normal childhood, she grew up in an environment where little children her age were holding guns and shooting at whomever they please, men and women been brutally beaten up and left half naked to die on the street. She lived in constant fear all her life. Even in a place she called her home, Anishka was the centre of her step parent’s anger. She was the punching bag, be it school or home, her life was centred around violence. Her step parents would vent their anger on her or beat her up for every problem they encountered because of the Sinhalese. Poor Anishka was brought up to hate her own kind.

“Ah ma, please don’t make me go to school today, I…I p-p-promise to be a good girl if you let me g-g-go with you to work,” stuttered Anishka in agitation.

Slowly lifting her arm, her mum smacked her across the face and accused her of being disrespectful, “Don’t you ever think you can control my decision just like the Sinhalese do!” she said out of breathe as though she had just run a race.

Trying to be strong, Anishka lifted her frail, weak body as she struggled to put a sentence a together, “s-s-sorry, ah ma, I w-w-won’t d-d-do it again.”

She picked up what looked like a torn plastic bag which was on the verge of breaking, opened the door and headed for school. Trying to fight back tears; with fail, they slowly streamed down her pale rough cheeks which looked like they have not been washed in months. As she entered the school gates, she felt the cold stares of her Tamil classmates come upon her. Though Anishka was a Sinhalese, she was raised Tamil and that was the only language she was exposed to. She therefore went to a Tamil school. The Tamil students in her class shunned her as well. Some of them were afraid to talk to her as they themselves were taught to hate anyone that did not look like them.

“My brother didn’t get a place at the university after he worked very hard for it, my mum says it’s because of people like you,” cursed the boy angrily at Anishka.

Filled with tears in her eyes and confusion she tried to fight back, “Don’t compare me to them, I’m Tamil, I’m one of you not them,” she cried as she tried to convince her schoolmates.

Realising what was going on a teacher rushed to her side as she reprimanded the boy, “Anishka is one of us, stop treating her as an outcast.”

Anishka was relived as she heard the school bell go off, she quickly grabbed her back pack and with a heavy heart she dragged her feet home. On the way home she tripped over dead bodies of helpless people, crying in pain, people shouting to her across the street, “go back were you belong, you not wanted here.”
“Maybe if I join the LTTE my parents and schoolmates would realise that I am really one of them and they will be much nicer to me,” she thought to herself. Instead of heading home that day, Anishka headed to an army camp where she heard that they trained young children to be brave and fight for their people. Anishka’s need for acceptance led her into hatred for innocent people who did nothing wrong.

All little Anishka wanted to do was to be loved and accepted for who she was by her friends and loved ones. Instead she realised the only way to get that was to loathe and kill people that had done nothing to her in exchange for love that she longed for. Little did she know that the people she was killing, were people of her own race.