Mosquito by Roma Tearne

     Tearne makes use of a third person omniscient narrator to tell her story. Working class Sinhalese like Sugi and Thercy, middleclass Sinhalese such as Rohan and Theo, Tamil characters such as Vikram as well as the narrator accuse the Sinhalese of harassing the Tamils. The narrator says, “In the wake of independence, the Singhalese had slowly denied the Tamils any chance of a decent education” (44). There is a reference to two Tamil medical students being forced to leave the medical college supposedly due to Sinhala being made the national language. The “Singhala” army is criticized for many crimes of which abduction is the most common. According to Rohan’s Italian wife Giulia, “The army came for them in the night, and then they [people] vanished” (182). Army “detention” houses contain people of all ethnicities, classes, and ages where they are kept under terrible conditions, tortured and killed at will. Vikram, a main character in the novel, was recruited by the LTTE after he had lost his entire family to the brutality of the “Singhala” army. “The army entered Vikram’s house in Batticaloa and raped his mother and his sister. They raped them many many times, Thercy said, beating the palms of her hands against her forehead” (46). Sugi, a Sinhalese, condemns the inhumanity of the army thus: “So much for our wonderful army” (47).

    Consequently, Tamils turn to terrorism. In the course of their struggle the LTTE recruits child soldiers, abducts civilians, and tortures and kills their enemies. According to Gopal, the 247 graves near their camp belonged to Muslim women the LTTE had killed: “They were people who should not have been living there, it was not their land, it was the Tamil land and their husbands and sons were all in the Singhala army” (129). Tamil women are turned into suicide bombers whose “desire for revenge was greater than their interest in life … A whole army of psychologists working tirelessly on them had shaped their impressionable minds” (253-4).

     The role of the artist in a violence-ridden context is discussed in detail in Mosquito. Theo is described as “a man for the Sri Lankan people, the kind of man that was desperately needed. They had heard all about his book and now there was to be a film too about the troubles in this place. It was good, she told her son, the world needed to hear about their suffering” (70). Later, Theo is abducted and tortured first by the army and then by the LTTE. War intrudes into Rohan’s glass-studio for the first time with his friend’s abduction. Shaken, he tells his Italian wife, “We must go back to Europe. I can’t live with this savagery” (159).

     Whatever the outcome of the war, it would leave deep physical and emotional scars on people. The old Tamil cook at the LTTE “detention” house tells Theo, “We cannot speak in normal voices ever again. Even if the peace comes … there is no peace for us” (241). At the end, a change of government brings a hiatus to the war. The narrator who wants the state to account for those who died in the North ironically says, “Suddenly paradise was the new currency. The island began to rescue itself, hoping to whitewash its bloody past” (266).

     At the outset, Mosquito seems to offer a critique of both the LTTE and the army. Yet, as the narrative progresses, the repeated criticism of the Sinhalese by the Sinhalese takes the form of propaganda. All the Sinhalese characters engage repeatedly in “cultural self-criticisms” of their “ethno-nationalism” and the armed repression of the Other by the army.  Sugi warns his employer against falling prey to the often-quoted friendliness of the Sinhalese, “Don’t mistake our friendliness, Sir … We are quite capable of killing” (20). In addition, though violence against the Other is a weapon used by both ethnicities, violence of the LTTE is justified as a retaliatory measure through the story of Vikram. No criticism of the LTTE violence is made by the Sinhalese characters; they seem to accept them as their due or fait accompli. Moreover, the novel problematizes the “heroism” and the “patriotism” of the soldier. Nulani’s uncle is a chauvinistic bully who terrorizes women and children. The army is condemned as brutes by Sinhalese characters such as Sugi, Thercy, Theo, Nulani, and Rohan as well as Giulia, an Italian. The narrator presents Theo, Rohan, Giulia, and Nulani as the native/nativized informers to the West as well as to their own people. Yet, how little do these characters (and may be the writer as well) truly understand their milieu is in advertently revealed by some of the comments made by them on the issue of the war, i.e., Rohan who does not understand the socio-political implications of the language policy for both ethnicities, says, “They are killing each other … Day after day. Over which language is more important. Can you credit these stupid bastards” (94). Most significantly, the novel does not offer a space for a true dialogue between the two ethnicities.

Mosquito, written by an emigrant Tamil writer, allocates a greater portion of its narrative space to criticise the activities of the armed forces and Sinhalese ethno-nationalism. In the process, Tearne makes use of Sinhalese characters of both the middleclass (Theo, Rohan, and Nulani) and the working (Sugi and Thercy) as well as the omniscient narrator as agents of cultural self-criticism. In addition, though there are instances of violence committed by the LTTE, they are invariably made to look like direct or indirect results of the ethno-nationalist activities of the Sinhalese. Consequently, based on the narrative purpose of their writers, these two novels must be listed as engaged in “ethno-nationalistic” projects.