At some point in my three hours of interviewing Indrani* I
began to cry. I was embarrassed, and even more so when
she apologized. It was absurd that she should feel guilt for
wounding my American sensibility with the reality of her
life. In my defense, it was her own tears that provoked
mine; on top of the hardships she was so calmly recounting,
it seemed too cruel, too unjust, to see tears gathering
in her eyes. Unlike me, however, she fought hers back and
kept talking.
Indrani was the first person to apply to AUW, but that fact is far from her most distinguishing feature. She remains the prototype of what AUW hopes to achieve in its ambitious experiment to change the region, to catapult young girls of impoverished, rural, and refugee backgrounds into positions of leadership, giving voice to a silenced gender. Many girls cite increased confidence as a result of their five months at the Access Academy—one even claimed her friends no longer recognized her, her gregariousness that stark a change. Yet Indrani will always be removed from the fray, quietly disengaging herself to stand at a distance from the gripping banalities that so naturally form the day-to-day lives of young girls. Clothes and boys are of little interest to her. Indeed, Indrani has started telling those who ask that she has a boyfriend at home, just so she can be left to her thoughts. It is not that she lacks confidence or is anti-social by nature, nor does she dislike the company of those individuals in particular. Indrani is simply twenty-two going on forty and cannot pretend otherwise. A sorrow burns in her eyes, lit from within, and her days are laced with worries that no one but her nineteen Tamil classmates can ever understand. Skeptics may view AUW’s mission as quixotic, but Indrani will become the university’s greatest asset, its strongest proof that one opportunity, one changed life, can become the change felt by nameless more.
Indrani was born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka in 1986. Her family is Tamil. Her father, an engineer, was killed before she was born. Her mother has never quite been the same, refusing to marry again and rejecting party invitations, or staying on the fringe of family functions. She now works as a college deputy principal and her son, Indrani’s older brother, just graduated from university in the capital city of Colombo. When Indrani was three years old, the family moved from the southern province to the north, fleeing the approaching Sri Lankan military. Life in war-torn Jaffna was lived under the constant threat of violence. Indrani wasn’t allowed to go to school by herself and when she returned home in the afternoons, her mother would make her go to an aunt’s house so she wouldn’t spend time alone. Such precautions, overzealous by many standards, are necessary in a city marked by an ethnic conflict that rages unbeknownst to much of the world.
The Sri Lankan Civil War started in 1983, but the ongoing conflict is borne out of long-standing tension between two of Sri Lanka’s predominant ethnic groups: the Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the mainly-Hindu Tamil minority. During British colonial rule, resentment arose among Sinhalese toward the Tamils on the charge they were the beneficiaries of British favoritism. Sinhala nationalism blossomed after independence was achieved in 1948, bolstering the ethnic divide, and feelings on both sides steadily grew more vitriolic until all-out war erupted in the early ‘80s. Since then, most of the fighting has taken place in the north between the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil rebel group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.). Yet violence is pervasive throughout the island nation, as the Tamil Tigers’ devastating attacks in Colombo during the 1990s and the recent killing of Sri Lankan politician D.M. Dassanayak just outside the capital in 2008 demonstrate. A cease-fire brokered by Norway in 2002 led many to hope for a long-lasting peace; continual fighting on both sides, however, rendered that peace agreement meaningless. In early 2008, the Sri Lankan government extracted itself from the truce and the war resumed in earnest.
Amidst this political turbulence Indrani managed to become an excellent student. She notes with pride that Jaffna is Sri Lanka’s most educated city with a 100% literacy rate, a feat that becomes more impressive due to the constant disruption the war poses. When Indrani was young, the Sri Lankan military captured Jaffna, a Tamil hub.
Fighting meant electricity blackouts, and Indrani’s government school remained open only on days there was electricity, creating an educational environment that was erratic at best. As Indrani puts it, “If I have electricity today, I don’t have it tomorrow.” Frequent military roundups also displaced the family from their home; for one or two months at a time. Indrani, her mother, and her brother would escape to temples and other communal spaces. It was a climate in which “Anything can happen at any time.” Although the family always set aside money and dried food to prepare for such events, they often had to rely on the generosity of the local NGO and people to provide for them. Indrani was therefore in and out of schools from a young age. In fifth grade she only studied in school for two months—despite this, she got 23rd rank in the country on her A-levels. On top of her considerable academic achievements, she also mastered classical dance and music. When asked how she juggled all her commitments, she simply replies, “I never waste my time.”
Learning in such a climate imbued Indrani with a sense of injustice that demanded action from a young age. In seventh grade an orphan joined Indrani’s class. Indrani was in charge of collecting forty rupees from each of her classmates, an extracurricular fee that the government did not cover, despite providing a free education to most Sri Lankans. When it was the new girl’s turn, she started to cry, explaining to Indrani that she had lost her entire family to the war and couldn’t afford the forty rupees. Indrani befriended the girl and visited her orphanage where she met one hundred orphans in all, many of whom had been orphaned by the violence. The visit left an indelible mark on Indrani. She began to collect money for the orphanage, saving a portion of her allowance in a tin every week. The night before her birthday she opened the tin to discover six hundred rupees. She smiles as she describes how she went to the orphanage the next day laden down with savings and birthday money to give to the children. It is a tradition she has continued ever since. Indrani decided early on that no matter what she studied in school, “I [would] emphasize my mind, works and deeds and thoughts, everything, through social work.”
Beyond her father’s death, which she attests irreparably changed her mother but left Indrani and her brother, young as they were, relatively unscathed, Indrani’s life has been continually invaded by violence. These frequent acts of violence rocked Indrani’s already crumbling world. “Why do we have to study? This thing will happen to me also one day,” she thought. But determination to make a difference, to be a leader and to help her people, overtook fear, and learning gradually became her weapon. It is with deep resignation that she says: “Sometimes I feel those things. I suffered. [But] we have to accept everything on fate, or destiny. What to do?”
In 2006, Indrani graduated from high school and abandoned her love of mathematics to pursue an internship at a hospital, entertaining the possibility of going to medical school because as a doctor, she believed she could help the most people. She studied yoga and meditation, both activities she now leads at AUW. She also spent time in the hospital’s psych ward, interacting with young women her own age struggling with mental illnesses, having lost husbands, brothers, or fathers in the war: “They didn’t [even] know how to dress,” she notes. She would come home in the evenings and feel lucky for perhaps the first time in her life, realizing, “I lost my father but I have my mother.” Indrani was then extended a coveted spot in the government bank’s training program. She trained for six months in Jaffna, teaching kids at a local orphanage on the weekends, before passing her banking exam to place 13th in the entire country. She was subsequently offered a place as a permanent employee in the government’s bank in Colombo—a prestigious position for a girl barely 21-years-old. Her mother was ecstatic, but her excitement dwindled when Indrani applied to AUW soon after. Citing the large salary, Indrani’s mother berated her, saying, “This is enough for you. What’s the need to go [to AUW]? Your brother will look after you if you face any problems financially.” But Indrani has never viewed money as the goal—only the means to an end—and the end she seeks has little to do with material possessions. She desires only the “inner beauty of the people.”
Still, she is far from naïve, and recognizes the importance of money in achieving her objectives: “We have to [first] think about the resources we have, and we have to maximize those resources,” she says. Indrani’s decision to attend AUW was rooted in her desire to know this world, to “get more experience about this life.” Only then did she feel she could become an effective leader.
AUW has offered a respite from the war that has come to define Indrani’s existence. Within the Access Academy walls, the ethnic divide that has ravaged a country for decades has rapidly dissolved. At home they may be at war, but here, the Sri Lankan students, nineteen Tamil and eleven Sinhalese in all, are merely a group of girls whose shared nationality in a foreign place means instant camaraderie. Both Tamil and Sinhalese students are quick to identify that Sri Lanka’s political parties are responsible for this conflict, not each other. The two groups seem to make concerted efforts to circumvent any inherent friction.
These friendships, however, are not always immune to strain. Tamils have borne the brunt of the war for decades; the Sinhalese students, who have been by and large sheltered from the violence, can never truly understand what life is like as a Tamil. Like a soldier on leave from war, Indrani also struggles to find a place among girls from peaceful, stable countries who know nothing of her daily struggles, who “have everything, just not the finances.” “How can I explain?” she wonders, “They couldn’t understand.” She and the other Tamil students spend their afternoons hastily checking the Internet for any news from home, looking for reports on the latest suicide bomber, explosion, or raid, and praying for those still there. “Sometimes I can’t control my mind— it goes to my home, to my mother, my brother,” Indrani confesses. It is perhaps a result of these worries that Tamil students rarely complain about the food or the heat, as other students are apt to do: “This is more than enough for us,” says Indrani.
Despite sometimes feeling alienated from her classmates, Indrani is still very involved with the community. She and a few other students established and now lead the community service club. Every weekend the group visits a different orphanage in Chittagong; their latest project involves taking homeless children off the streets and teaching them. Indrani is thrilled to be involved: “I came here to study, it’s true, but my main purpose is to do social work,” she says. She wants to “know the condition of here,” pointing to the many differences between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. She has also made rapid strides in mastering English. Before enrolling in the University, Indrani knew very little of the language, having always been taught in her native tongue.
When I give Indrani a hug at the end of the interview, her compact, athletic body relaxes only momentarily before pulling away, speculating aloud how many people have died in her country during the course of our conversation. “More than seven people, maybe,” she thinks. Her voice rises as she tries one last time to make the American understand the “real condition of existence” for Tamils in Jaffna. She says, “We have to accept. If we go outside we don’t know what will happen to us. That’s why we have a habit to talk about God. Mentally they want to weaken us. But they can’t… day by day it’s a normal thing for us.”
For a young woman who yearns to learn how to lead, Indrani’s innate wisdom and quiet confidence ensure she is already well on her way.
