My amma and appa used to tell me stories about their childhood growing up in Sri Lanka—the Pearl of the Indian Ocean as they called it. Amma wove tales of mischief and close-knit neighbourhoods and how children delighted in the simple pleasures of candies and buns from mobile vendors in Colombo. Appa took a more serious tone, reciting to me late-night debates he had in Sri Lanka’s north, Jaffna, about the merits of both violent and non-violent resistance to oppression. My understanding of my mother country is formed by my parents’ memories. However, their recollections are often incomplete due to trauma and the difficulty of explaining harrowing experiences to someone alien to utter devastation.

My parents grew up during the height of the Sri Lankan Civil War which lasted from 1983 to 2009; a period which tore the country apart by creating ethnic, class and religious divides. As put by the Harvard International Review, the war was mainly underpinned by conflict between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) insurgent group. Once again, a struggle between Sri Lankan civilians and their government due to political instability is creating a restlessness which can be heard across oceans. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s former president, and Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s former prime minister, are part of a ruling family which has had a monopoly of political power in Sri Lanka since 2005. In July, one human rights group filed a criminal complaint seeking the arrest of Gotabya Rajapaska for alleged war crimes during the civil war. Protests and demonstrations have recently sprung to life due to their poor handling of Sri Lanka’s finances, resulting in the country defaulting on its debt payments. Food inflation has risen over 57 per cent and petrol and gas are now scarce commodities.