Butterfly & Blue Sky

Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today

 Image Credit: mariko

'Blue skies, shining on me
Nothing but blue skies, do I see!
Grey days - all of them gone -
Nothing but blue skies, from now on'...

I taught a student a few years ago, whose creative writing project was a short story of 8,000 words. Its setting was the conflict in Sri Lanka in the mid-1990s. The protagonist of the story was a soldier, forcibly recruited and trained by a terrorist group. My student was of Sri Lankan origin, studying in Australia.

Her teachers praised the resonance and quality of her writing, but found the subject matter 'unrealistic'. Because the soldier was a child soldier. And in what monstrous reality would 8 year old children be abducted from their families and tortured, and trained to kill? In Sydney, such a notion seemed literally unbelievable. Yet, my student had thoroughly researched the story before writing it. And now, a decade later, a film-maker in Sri Lanka has interviewed former child soldiers, whose stories show that the horror in that parallel universe was real.

The documentary film 'Butterfly' has been made by Vishnu Vasu, to document the survival and experiences of the child soldiers, recruited in the last decade of the war, and who are now young adults. To make this film, he travelled to the remote regional areas where these survivors live. The film is short (45 minutes). It can be viewed in its entirety in a lunch hour. But its impact is permanent, and exponential.

The interviews are interspersed with long shots of the bleak landscape, and these images are underscored by haunting vocal and instrumental music. The former child soldiers survived by escaping their captors, fearing retaliation and retribution which was levied on their families. Their close family ties and bonds, their feelings and loyalties, were used against them.

One grandmother had her sons and finally her only daughter taken away from her, forcibly recruited, and killed in the conflict. She says sadly that she thinks of her children every day of her life. Their loss is so painful it makes her want to end her own life, but she must continue to live, because she has her children's own children to care for.

She gestures to three young children, playing nearby. The boys are helping a young girl find her balance while they play in a pond. They are smiling. The sun is shining on them. This is at last an image that my student's Australian teachers could recognise.

One young man was compelled by the terrorist organisation to work as a driver, and was ordered to blow up the vehicles holding the injured, ill and disabled children, who were deemed to be liabilities by the terrorists, because their injuries made them unable to be utilised in combat. Experiencing this unimaginable enforced cruelty has impaired this young man's essential identity: the sense of personal moral decency that we all need, if we are to respect ourselves. He will carry this damage all his life.

The picture that emerges from the stories is the surreal exact opposite of a children's cartoon where happy 7 and 8 year olds, in a country so free of danger that they need no adult supervision, have safe but fun adventures in landscapes where every virtual tree and flower is whole, and perfect: where the grass is a gorgeous, vivid green, and the skies a brilliant & beautiful blue.

I asked the film-maker about the way he ended the documentary - with a simple spoken tribute to the young survivors of this devastating experience. It is a blessing: 'May the children be well. May they be well, and happy'. Like most Sri Lankans, I have heard these words many times, as part of the METTA meditation, but I have never been so affected by them as I was when hearing them spoken in the context of this film.

This is why I asked the film-maker whether I could interview him. That interview follows this article. I asked that the faces of the children in the photographs accompanying the story be shielded from view, to protect their identities.

The film shows the viewer very clearly a reality that is awful to comprehend. These child soldiers lost their identities as children: their innocence, their joy, the wonder and curiosity and freedom and spiritedness all children should have. They lost it, but they did not mislay it: it was taken from them, by force.

Instead of being educated, they were conscripted, drilled and tortured; instead of being cared for, they were deployed; instead of being loved, they were used.

I believe, from the research my student in Sydney shared with me, that the use of child soldiers in conflict situations was a deliberate strategy used to disorient the adult soldiers who, facing them in battle, could not bring themselves to shoot children. This gave those who used the children as human weapons a devastating tactical psychological advantage, generated by inhumane cunning, & cruel objectification.

The film is called 'Butterfly', after the beautiful, fragile creature which is associated with change and transformation, due to its emergence from a long period of formation, in a cocoon. The title presents us with an almost unbearable reality: that we live in a country where our most vulnerable and innocent citizens were not only unprotected, but actively harmed, during the most impressionable time of their lives.

This film offers a clear conclusion: that assisting the emergence of these our fellow citizens is the only way to restore our relationship with them. This assisted emergence would include carefully thought-out, culturally sensitive and sustainable processes of rehabilitation. With a focus on organic and intuitive, humane personal contact rather than imposed and arbitrary material and monetary handouts.

'Butterfly' was screened during the 'A & K' Literary Festival, which took place on April 25th, at the Western Province Aesthetic Resort in Colombo.

It makes sense that the film was shown and showcased here, as the theme of this event was clearly resonant with emergence. Both initiatives were created by people who want to encourage all Sri Lankans to develop hope in our creative culture, and enlist our literary & artistic forces to work on positive projects, using the written, spoken and visual languages that we have available to us.

Elmo Jayawardena described the A & K Festival as an opportunity for all Sri Lankans to give expression to our diverse experiences, and share the common ground we have, in a love of reading and writing: 'a one-nation representation of literature from the pavement'.

In a recent interview, he expanded on his vision for the A & K. It was a vibrant and positive beginning. Some who attended commented that the Sinhala and Tamil language sessions did not, to their surprise, seem as well attended, as yet, as the English language sessions. One attendee said that he 'looked forward to a different selection of participants next year.' This comment conveyed a real sense that there is an untapped wealth of potential contributors from which to choose. Emergent writers, and interested critics and readers, and most significantly writers of all ages & stages as yet unknown, unedited, unawarded and unpublished.

I personally felt a sense of grateful exuberance, at seeing such a genuine diversity of people, of every background and generation, buying books, getting tea and coffee, and snacks from the stalls. The atmosphere was simple, fluid, relaxed and casual. It was peaceful, and although inaugural, and exciting, to me it was characterised by a beautiful lack of fanfare. It was wonderfully everyday, but not at all humdrum. There was a murmuring, humming, buzz of conversation, formed by greetings and encounters, of book-reading people collaborating & co-operating & communicating.

While a long war is being waged, forcing the people of a country to subsist and endure through all its terrible debilitating phases, cultural development, education, social service, and all other forms of civic nurture are drained of their energy. People are paralysed by inertia, deadened by constant dread, cocooned by the repetitive cycles of despair generated by ongoing conflict and chronic devastation.

This sense that we have been cumulatively robbed, plundered of our national resources and pride in our culture and creative potential, is felt by many. The nation's monetary and material losses can be reasonably accurately estimated and measured, and appropriate compensation sought; but the human cost cannot be easily quantified or straightforwardly remedied.

Many Sri Lankan people, when speaking of their own country and people, unconsciously express chronic negativity: 'Oh, we can't expect any better from our people... That is just not possible in this country'. We politely listen to experts on 'Change' sponsored by international interest groups advise us to 'challenge our poverty mindset' regarding the changes that must be made in our recovering nation. They address us from podiums at conferences and forums in the refrigerated ballrooms of luxury hotels. Their sponsored advice, although costly, and kindly meant, is often in its effect felt as a blow upon a bruise.

One of the most important aims of the organisers of the A & K was to 'promote an understanding amongst diverse cultures across the country... (and) promote better understanding and goodwill across communities through literature'. (Per Members of the Rotary Club of Colombo, Regency, who co-founded the Festival).

Creativity requires positive energy, and faith, and optimism. For these to flourish, and a process of cultural renewal to be sustainable, there must be a context of peace, where people are not living at a subsistence level, in a sense of survivalistic fear. Literature challenges cultural ignorance by offering intellectual and emotional access to the lives of others. Insight leads to understanding, and increasing understanding to goodwill. This is the essential sequence of the practice of METTA.

The children who were soldiers during the recent war have experienced treatment others can often neither understand nor imagine. We surely should not speak for them, without their permission. That presumption would be a further invasion and exploitation of their identity. Our different experience, and emotional and geographical locations, impede us from speaking directly with them, so the film-maker through his sensitivity and skill, lets them speak for themselves. He raises questions, to which the answers cannot be expressed in words but in consistent and sustained community action.

So much incremental empathy and goodwill can be generated by communication, and literature, that we can build these empathic bridges on common ground, and cross over them into a world we are making together. Where blue skies can shine, on all of us.

Both 'Butterfly' and the 'A & K' Festival were produced by believers in a better future for all the citizens of this country, who 'marched to this different drum-beat to elevate a thought to a vision and then make it a reality', according to Captain Jayawardena.

Through the spectacle of human experience presented in our creative work, literary & cinematic, through entrepreneurial initiatives and the channels of social media, we can re-evaluate our condition, build personal and national evolutionary momentum, and progress. Not just in measurable commercial terms, but in ways that are more valuable, because they are immeasurable.

And in this emergence the people of Sri Lanka can free the country and themselves as much as possible, in an ongoing way, from the impairments caused by this conflict, and the individual and collective suffering that resulted from it.