All
events are seen through the eyes of Tamil characters such as Sivan and Thevar.
On the one hand, Kanagar, one of the refugees sees the time of the British rule
as “the best of the whole of” their history, for there were no “wars, no
fights. They made roads, rail roads and established estates. There was justice
and fair play and religious freedom and all the people lived amicably, like one
family”, and in addition “Jaffna people secured high ranking jobs here and went
to Malaya and Sinapore and earned their fortunes”(26-27).
Sivan and
Essem, on the other hand, mourns the death Indira Gandhi; “if not, things
would’ve been definitely different” (31). However, Ganeshan, a character
Santhan seems to approve of, asks Sivan whether he could “deny that it was they
who had fanned the unfortunate embers of displeasure among us and managed to
build out of it a flame of enmity in which the whole island is burning now”
(90). Interestingly, Captain Vanpar looking for LTTE informants and activists
identifies the Tamil refugees as “You … Sri Lankans!” and Sivan echoes the
label in his mind.
According
to Vihanga Perera in his web article “‘The Whirlwind’ taken after ‘Elephant
Pass’: of putting Santhan and Nihal in the ring”:
From a purely political perspective, the novel
stands out as an account of the interruption of civil life in a Northern Lankan
Tamil village upon IPKF entry. This interruption and the dilemmas that follow
of having an “alien” on your “home soil” … is graphically captured by Santhan
...The novel begins abruptly and ends without resolution. It is almost a
reflection of the very displacement that is dealt with in the work.
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