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from reporting Tamil militant activities. So Indra and her family had not heard about the immediate reasons for this bloodlust. The Tigers’ number two, Seelan, had been killed in Meesalai in Jaffna in a shoot-out with the army. To avenge this, some of the other top leaders had detonated a powerful mine, killing the thirteen soldiers. Eight of the soldiers were under twenty years old.
    The ping-pong of murder and counter-attacks in the north turned into mass killings in Colombo. The mobs targeted Tamils who lived among the Sinhalese: on Monday, they cornered and attacked the city-dwellers in Borella and Wellawatte, nestled between the sea and Colombo’s busiest bazaars; on Tuesday, it was Kandy, where a deputy inspector general spotted goons with short army crew cuts; on Wednesday, it was Badulla and Negombo, where Sinhalese men burned and beat fishermen and traders; Passara on Thursday. The course of the violence, it seemed, was a wave emanating from Colombo.
    The radio anchors predicted that President Jayawardene would order a curfew and that any ruffians found loitering in the streets would be arrested. As the families huddled around the transistorradio, Indra’s brother said he wished the curfew would be declared soon. His Sinhala friend clucked. ‘Are you crazy?’ he asked. ‘Then you’ll stay inside your house and these madmen on the street will know exactly where to find you.’
    Indra shivered. She had not considered this possibility. How could everything turn against them like this? If people had seen this coming, why had they allowed the soldiers’ dead bodies to be brought into Colombo? The news said the police had protected Tamils in some places, like in Kurunegala, where an inspector drove away most of the mobs. But overall, the police were mute spectators, even collaborators.
    The government was setting up refugee camps for Tamils on the run. Her brother suggested they go there, but his Sinhalese neighbour’s wife would have none of it. ‘Let’s wait till it stops fully,’ she said. So for four days they stayed in the neighbour’s house, eating rice and week-old sambol twice a day. The women took turns putting the children to sleep and washing their soiled clothes. They didn’t talk much.
    The men drank arrack as if it were their lifeblood, but without their usual banter about how this MP stole that many lakhs and that councillor got this or that person transferred to get his son-in-law a job. Political discussion felt trite at a time like this, when its effects hit so unnervingly close. Red-eyed from sleeplessness and drunkenness, the men cut sorry figures: tragic characters whose gloom could change nothing.
    On the day news anchors began to analyse the massacre in the past tense and denials started to pour in from government departments, Indra’s brother and wife left with their children for the refugee camp in Colombo. They planned to go from there to Jaffna, where all the Tamils seemed to be fleeing to be among their own. Rather than joining them, Indra had taken her sons on an overcrowded bus to Nuwara Eliya. When she arrived, John maintained a relieved silence; he had listened to the radio and there were, after all, police everywhere. Perhaps he knew. Beyond mentioning her brother’s injuries, Indra couldn’t bring herself to talk about it either.
    A few days later in Nuwara Eliya, as Indra heard the approach of the mob, she realised she had not fled far enough: the violencehad reached the hills. There was mayhem in the line houses where the workers stayed. As Indra was feeding Sarva breakfast, she heard two sounds: the mob howling their intention to ‘cut up the Tamil dogs’ and the plantation workers shouting at her to ‘Get away from here! Get lost!’
    Neither said why, but Indra understood. Earlier, someone had pleaded for her to leave, saying that if she, a Jaffna Tamil, stayed, they would all be attacked. They had asked her to go up to Tank Hill nearby, but Indra knew she would