In the Belly of the Beast

This alone makes A Long Watch: War, Captivity and Return in Sri Lanka, Boyagoda’s story as told to Sunila Galappatti, worth reading. Boyagoda was commanding the Sagarawardene, one of the two biggest warships of the Sri Lankan navy at the time, when two boatloads of Sea Tigers blew up the vessel near Mannar on the west coast. Eighteen of the 42 sailors on the boat were rescued, 22 were killed, and two, one of whom was Boyagoda, were captured by the LTTE. The two sailors discovered there were 20 other prisoners from the army.
They were all moved from place to place as the LTTE lost territory to the Sri Lankan forces, took back some, and lost some again in those years.

The two dominant themes are that Boyagoda was not a “traitor” as the government and many others believed; secondly, the LTTE were not cruel to him. Indeed, they were good to him, respected his seniority in the navy and treated him and the other prisoners he was with reasonably well. He and the other sailors were declared to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) early, which ensured they would not be mistreated. The book details daily life as a captive, Boyagoda’s conversations with his cell-mate Vijitha, the sailor from his ship, the regular meeting between the prisoners and ICRC, reading newspapers and books provided to them by the ICRC delegates. Over the eight years, the LTTE became so used to having them around that they allowed them to lock their own cells, cook their own food, and hang about outside the cells during the day.

In Boyagoda’s telling, it was the government and the navy that fell short, making no particular effort for his release, and also putting out the word in the media that he had betrayed the government. Boyagoda discloses that the LTTE did offer to release him if he would become their man in the south, but that he did not succumb to this temptation.

This story, of LTTE kindness to a Sinhalese military man, might have been impossible to tell so publicly and escape unscathed just 18 months ago, when the Rajapaksas were in power. Or who knows, the Rajapaksas may have pounced on it to denounce their old rival Chandrika Kumaratunga — who was president at the time of Boyagoda’s captivity — for abandoning 22 military prisoners, despite knowing the LTTE was holding them.

In general, for a Sinhala military man to harbour anything but hatred for the kottiya — Sinhala for tiger and slang for LTTE, and sometimes for Tamils — is to invite accusations of treachery. That said, even Tamils who have suffered at the LTTE’s hands would be surprised at this benevolent side of a ruthless movement that eliminated every rival Tamil leader and kept an entire population under its unrelenting grip till the bitter end.

Boyagoda, too, realises that as a high-ranking military man, he was “a show prisoner” and a bargaining chip. He doesn’t see them but knows that the LTTE has more Tamil prisoners than Sinhalese, and that it treats them brutally. But the book, says Galappatti, is about his reality. That, though, is both the book’s strength and limitation.

Boyagoda tells his story in a matter of fact way, and Galapatti, a former director of the Galle Lit Festival, has explained in an essay in The Wire how she hewed close to Boyagoda’s even tone in order to be faithful to his story. There are no other voices in the book. Galappatti has said this was a deliberate decision in order to remain true to the intention of her collaboration with Boyagoda , which was to tell his story.

The result is a stark, uncluttered narrative. There aren’t too many explanations, interpretations, or other points of reference. The telling is so pared down that it could leave those unfamiliar with the war struggling to understand both the enormity of a 30-year-conflict in a country of 22 million people, and that of Boyagoda’s own experience. Indeed, the book has an impersonal feel, almost as if he was recounting someone else’s story. For instance, while press reports about his release speak about Boyagoda falling at his mother’s feet, hugging her and his wife with tears welling up in his eyes, the book does not have this detail.

Focused as the narrative is on his treatment by the LTTE, it does not linger too much on his thoughts and worries about home, his wife and three sons while he was in captivity. On his release, he has to rediscover his sons, all grown up while he was away, who now see him more as an “uncle” than a dad. Tragically, a son dies in an accident a few years after he returned.

Galappatti’s explanatory essay offers more information on the question of Boyagoda’s alleged collaboration than the book itself, along with her own questions and doubts as she interviewed the commodore. But she says she set them aside as irrelevant to the core of the story. “I told myself it didn’t matter to me whether Commodore Boyagoda collaborated with the LTTE; that in a hundred years’ time we would allow the smaller complicities of small men trying to survive a war.” I found myself wondering why it was necessary for Galapatti to write this, almost a self-review. After all, not all those who read the book would read this, and vice versa.

That aside, in the fraught post-conflict atmosphere of Sri Lanka, which is still grappling with issues of accountability for war crimes and justice, the book tells us that it was possible for one man to rise above his circumstances and not feel hatred towards the enemy, and for some members of the LTTE to treat a person from the enemy ranks like a fellow human being. The commodore clearly intended this to be the main takeaway from his story, and that is what it is — not more, not less.