Narmada Thiranagama @Narmadha Twitter profile

Pinned Tweet

Narmada Thiranagama

5 years

It's been 30 years since I saw my mother. In that time, there has been lots of commentary about her - - I rarely respond. It feels like the right time to remember the real her. I want to share some of my memories in the run up to the anniversary.

33

109

505

Last Seen Profiles

@hard_fxxk

@11kspl

@_drac2_

@wwwanpaus

@heiligenwho

@Rox_My_Socks

@Ali7Hassan249

@BunnyBunnyMei

@KFOX14

@d3ar_mee

@bokeplokalmalam

@dommorussi

@snupthedog

@laxvictim

@Tapeas137481

@Tech1Cat

@akedoyurik15834

@SATHISH45182066

@UrsusTyrant

@Tossma98

@cpa_nagi

@BinorRaja

@socialsrising

@IgleAnglicanaES

@Team_Rankin

@AbigailAmo81490

@Moskick

@chatk101

@shirino_ooo

@pooun190

@bokeplokalmalam

@dmxfx_

@dicksongreene81

@AditWerwolf

@calolo31313819

@DAQIANG08

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

I’m a trade union official in the UK, but like a lot of other people, Fabricant probably enters a room, looks right past me and searches for what they expect to see.

33

185

1K

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

I was born to a Tamil mother and a Sinhalese father during a moment of intense communal division and in an instant an exile and an outsider to both communities. My mother and father got married in a friends house in Colombo while riots were going on in the city.

25

93

925

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

We are protesting Tamil, Sinhalese & English in London too!

23

95

703

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

We are still saying Gotagohome in London, in solidarity with the people of Sri Lanka

21

70

606

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

My father as a young man. He must have already known a storm was headed his way. He was to spend five years in prison, tortured by the Sri Lankan state before standing trial and being acquitted. Years in the underground were to follow.

16

82

544

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

We are gathering now outside the Sri Lankan high commission in London

6

43

494

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

We’ve brought the aragaleya to Downing Street #GotaGoGamaLondon

17

48

448

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

I was never part of an abstract construct, only a human reality. The way my Sinhalese and Tamil grandmothers loved me showed an integrity and an ethics missing from our political life. To love real people over abstractions leads to a different kind of political culture.

11

28

412

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

If she had lived, my mother would have been 67 today. Denied over 30 years of life, I can only think what she would have done with them. Her death reshaped the purpose of my life, a vow to live, to live, to live for her. As I grew up I understood how time doesn’t heal but teaches

20

44

401

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

My mother Rajani lived her values when they were hardest. As the pressure increased, she became bolder. As we collectively shivered in fear, she compromised less. She spoke when she was told to be silent. She felt that love for others shapes our politics, not politics our love.

13

69

369

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

Shehan Karunatilaka has never met my mother and yet the version of her he has written is so fully realised and has caught such an elemental part of her, I am truly moved to encounter her. I don’t want the book to finish.

3

44

380

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

Very few people in my day to day life (school, then uni, now work) know much about my past or my parents. In Sri Lanka I grew up in a tight knit community where the moment I stepped foot outside my house I belonged to my family.

18

37

362

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

Men lining up to tell me protesting is a waste of time: I am a trade unionist. Every day I do things other people think are a waste of time because they identify success with power and rightness. It is only with patience and hope that anything worthwhile winning is ever achieved.

13

24

282

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

9 months

My mother left me and my sister behind when she went to do her PHD in England. This new govt proposals hits deeply. As a child, I couldn't remember what her face looked like. My emotional life was built around missing her, receiving cards and letters.

4

45

279

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

Tomorrow 3pm, in Parliament sq, London!

15

73

248

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

A photo of 2 refugees (my dad and me). We didn’t know then that we would survive in this country. The sheer courage it took, the tender & dignified world we created. My father worked a 7 day week and was a UNISON member. His job took everything he had. It was also our lifeline.

9

14

227

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

She wrote this dedication to me on my 10th birthday, enjoining me to be of “strong heart, strong head and strong emotion”. We both knew this was a recipe for public disapproval- but the only freedom available to us in our stifled, silenced world.

1

29

231

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

To be an exile from both communities at birth feels like a privilege. The only belonging that was ever available to me was therefore infused with the kind of love, compassion and recognition of a common humanity outside of nationalistic values.

1

12

219

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

It’s my ammamma’s love that makes my Tamil heritage real. My Aathamma, my father’s mother came to love my mother deeply. She was an incredible woman - living to be a 104 and a language barrier between us, the only Sinhalese words I could say to her was “I love you”.

3

6

187

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

Anyway, though I’d end this thread with a photo of him now. He spends his time reading books, taking walks and posting his political analysis on Facebook!

16

2

181

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

My parents didn’t believe in marriage but I was already on the way and my Ammamma insisted! There was no celebration, it was a dangerous act in a dangerous time and the friend’s father sat outside keeping guard.

3

5

169

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

But I never could doubt how much she loved me, her Tamil granddaughter. She held her memories of my mother tightly in her heart and would tell me about them - the care and love my mother had shown her.

1

5

165

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

1 year

I turn 45 today! Unthinkable to me! That is ten years more of life than my mother had. It hurts to think how important the last decade has been for me, my growth, my self assurance, the wonderful things life has given me, the beauty I've seen and experienced.

21

5

152

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

Thank you for all the beautiful messages to my sister and me yesterday. You can’t know how much it means. For many decades the fear that shrouded our lives meant that we only heard cynical, painful comments about our mother - speaking to a nihilism and

6

11

152

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

Reading my sister's essay reminded me of a formative experience as six year old. I stared into the blank eyes of a Sri Lankan soldier as he stared back at me. He had his gun pointed at me as he asked me where my aunt Nirmala was.

4

47

146

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

People regard my name as cumbersome, unpronounceable. I don’t shorten it or anglicise it. I hold my name close like a precious inheritance, all the more beautiful to me because its value is not known. They named me and I heard them say it, fluently, with love, with ease.

2

4

126

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

In the UK, I feel the emptiness of not being part of the social context where I had these shared meanings. But there’s also a freedom, a growing, a humbling that comes with being dislocated. No one says, that’s Rajasingham’s granddaughter, come in, come in.

1

3

120

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

Both from the sun that shone over Nallur and the quiet joys of our daily lives, but also that warmth which radiated from my grandmother’s eyes. I thrived in it. I flourished. I try to recreate it in their absence, let it suffuse my life.

10

0

115

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

Last night as I fell asleep I felt her hand press my back, so lightly, so fleetingly, so heavy. In that moment I glimpsed the world full of her love that had disappeared in an instant, and I gasped at the enormity of that loss.

3

4

120

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

My mother: “Maybe it’s my sharp tongue that will save me” We know she was still speaking as the assassin killed her. She died with the truth on her lips. She believed that truth and justice are such irrepressible forces that no one can control, suppress or deny it forever.

2

27

116

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

1 year

Thank you to @refugeecouncil for making and sharing this video of me talking about the politics of hate, scapegoating and refugees.

Refugee Council 🧡

@refugeecouncil

1 year

"We already know what the politics of hate does, that's why we become refugees." Narmada talks about what happens when a country rejects those who seek refuge - and shares a book she brought with her to the UK. Part of the wonderful #PeopleMove project by @dailymirror and

1

53

106

7

36

114

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

when i read through the new borders bill, it's the hate that resonates. This is me, my sister and father as asylum seekers. This bill would now make helping us a criminal offence. I was lucky to escape and to live. Watching the legal loopholes close around our necks is chilling.

0

18

108

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

But she lived the life she was given with an unforgettable intensity, joy and courage. I’ll love her forever and will always be waiting to turn a corner of my life and see her or hear her again, even if it is a ripple from a past event or the distant light of a long dead star.

6

4

110

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

My mother actually had 2 doctrates. As a medical doctor, she would go and treat anyone who needed her, whether they were her enemies or not. To have the power to heal and the duty to use it was something she felt profoundly.

1

8

106

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

For those who never wanted to leave their homelands, who fled because there was no home to see at the backward glance, when my motherland became my mother’s grave - we share an experience of creating a home out of contingent human kindness, of provisional compassion. A full life.

3

14

105

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

I had the privilege of growing, changing, learning and experiencing this world. I met her again and again as I matured. I grieved after I turned 35 as I realised my happiest, wisest and best years were still ahead of me. Years of life she wasn’t given.

4

6

104

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

She worried that she wasn’t a good mother, but told a friend, “I know my daughters will grow up to be strong women, stronger than me - and when they do, they will know what a good mother I was.”

1

4

105

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

I was part of a web of meaning radiating from my house down the streets of our neighbourhood, where shared histories connected us. Marriages and inheritances, land, houses - concrete things. And the invisible tugs of love and friendship too. I was never just myself.

1

5

95

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

Civilians, soldiers, militants - she was their doctor. She was also a research scientist who was fearless in her pursuit of truth and who followed where the evidence led. There was no one too powerful not to criticize. Truth was an act of love and loyalty.

1

8

97

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

It was only when I heard this, that I truly knew she has been killed and not simply disappeared from my life that day, riding back to the university, wearing the elegant sari which was my favourite: a white gauze sari with a print of green and yellow leaves.

7

2

96

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

The next morning she would be bright, brave, determined and hopeful. She taught me courage coexisted with vulnerability, kindness & sensitivity. She had empathy & generosity to nearly everyone she met, except powerful people who turned their face away.

1

9

93

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

Thanks to Rajan Hoole’s detailed investigation a few years ago we have detailed info about how it was planned and carried out. Now I know she remonstrated with her killer even after the first shot. My fierce mother.

6

4

89

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

1 year

The story about a Tamil baker winning guest baguette in France hits a particular way because I sit in so many rooms where migration policy is discussed and I have the rare privilege of having lived within the migrant community. Never has there been a bigger public policy gap…

1

13

87

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

So I embrace the closed doors, the humbling experiences of this particular kind of dislocation. But I must say, there are some days in this country when I wish it wasn’t always so. I close my eyes and conjure the warmth of the sun

1

85

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

you just need to stop talking about her". I was 16 then. Now I'm 44 and I'm *still* talking about her and in some existential way, I hope he can sense it. Here's to you Mr X - I hope I continue to irritate men like you for decades to come.

7

1

84

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

My mother wanted life - for everyone. She was utterly uninterested in the politics of death and martyrdom. She helped me find joy in a cup of tea after a bombing raid, the freedom of a day or an hour of silence or peace. We found reasons to laugh and smile. Then they killed her.

1

7

86

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

I’m thinking this evening about the film “No More Tears Sister”, directed by the wonderful @heleneklodawsky which was the first time we broke a decades-long silence about my mother. You can see the film here:

No More Tears Sister: Anatomy of Hope and Betrayal

A story of love, revolution, and betrayal, No More Tears Sister explores the price of truth …

www.nfb.ca

7

41

85

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

Rajani did not become accustomed to grief or fear. She was heartbroken when students went missing, came home and cried at the stories she heard. She cried from fear as well. I fell asleep so many nights, listening to her tears.

1

7

83

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

I don’t believe in the afterlife at all but I do believe in the powerful magic of creativity and narratives and for me this is the gift I’ve been given. I feel my mother’s impatient, fierce spirit reaching through the page, the place where she always knew I partially lived.

2

3

83

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

What an extraordinary gift to have been given, what a kindness. Last night I read the part where my mother shows Maali how to enter the dreams of his loved ones, something she regularly does, she says to her daughters and husband.

3

4

81

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

My parents named me and I am the only person in the world with my name and the things they did with their lives made it an honour to carry it. But it’s not something I’ve earned, it’s just their gift of love to me.

1

0

81

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

A young Sinhalese man from the depths of the rural south, a life marked by poverty and deprivation, he broke early with many other Sinhalese political activists over the treatment of Tamil people. He was resolutely and instinctively anti-racist.

3

2

78

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

She was very sweet in other ways. She once stayed up late at night doing a term’s worth of sewing homework for me. I didn’t realise she knew I hadn’t done it. She tried to make life as fun as possible and protect me from the war.

2

83

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

I've had to brave some wobbly moments, struggled with my fears, but have never felt alone or unprotected. Her great love for her people did not save her, but it did save me. My moral compass, my shining light of love guiding me home. My Rajani. My Daji.

6

2

76

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

She could be very fierce! And not just to army generals or her bosses....she would challenge me to think of others, be more considerate, kinder, thoughtful. But she would listen to me as well and apologise or change her mind.

1

3

82

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

Someone really came to my Facebook to tell me that Shehan Ks book was the worst insult to my mother by a Sri Lankan. And I was like, what, worse than shooting her in the head?!

1

5

78

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

Some of us didn’t just read about what the IPKF did. Our local IPKF camp was next door. I could no longer play in the garden. My grandmother had to spell out what armed men could do to little children, aside from killing them. Death and violence arrived at the garden’s edge.

1

19

76

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

In the last few years, she became a more distilled and powerful version of herself, as if all inessentials were being discarded. But whenever the power came on, she would play music and make me dance with her. She was smiles and playfulness in peacetime.

1

3

76

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

I have these clear, treasured memories - not just of events, but of her - the space she took up, her gaze, her emotions - because life felt very very short in Jaffna. But I never thought it would be her who would die.

1

3

77

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

She was also a workaholic: up at dawn to prepare for classes. Kept an immaculate house. Ran her uni department. She then did all the advocacy, investigation and human rights work in the evening. All this while dealing with the war and its challenges.

1

3

75

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

9 months

But its so weird to hear these announcements which are built around the idea that migrant people don't have real feelings or families - and knowing that my own experience hews so closely to the bone of human connection, loss and love.

1

4

73

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

A year ago today. A sigh of a beautiful dream

3

0

74

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

Very inspired by the continuing protests in Sri Lanka. I see hope and possibility because one of the most effective ways to change hearts & minds is experiencing something. It is hard to persuade with words. Experience shakes the soul. It’s also why…

3

12

70

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

When I was young, happiness boiled down to a few essentials: tea and coffee, access to books, the people I love near at hand and a night without bombing or shelling. I still remember how much I loved life, the intensity of each day.

2

75

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

something I was thinking about this week was the teacher who saw me in the pub on a weekend, came up to me and realised I was telling a friend how I'd become a refugee. He sat down, joined us and said "Narmi, everyone is sick and tired of hearing about your dead mother.

17

1

72

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

The debate on what to call ourselves is endless. I have so many identities...Tamil, Sri Lankan, traitor, British Asian Other, Brown, BME, etc etc. But perhaps, today on world refugee day, my true identity is Refugee.

3

10

71

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

But men with guns are deeply weak people and I’ve never seen greater courage than those who face them down. When we try and fail we are transformed because learning how to deal with setbacks is the essence of the fight for justice. Power concedes nothing without a demand etc!

3

13

70

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

The biggest culture shock I have in the UK is when fellow activists tell me they feel hopeless/powerless. It’s nearly always people with resources to deploy. I wake each day with boundless hope and try and make a difference with all that I can lay my hands on.

5

9

71

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

My father’s political ideas and actions changed over time but at its core was a deep message of love, compassion and justice. He learned this from his mother, a wonderful and loving woman, and he shared it with his daughters. At its heart also, is my mother, his compass & guide.

1

67

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

Over time he challenged himself further about the treatment of women in society. He says my mother taught him how to exist in the world in a new way, to be a different kind of revolutionary. He thought he’d never be able to live with us, but in his 40s he became a single parent.

1

62

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

What do we want? Democracy! Hands off activists! End the executive presidency! Hands off workers! Gota, mahinda, basil - go home!! Racist parties - go home!

2

8

62

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

A polite, embarrassed silence is the response I reserve for ignorant comments about South Asian food, particularly from Americans. There is no point trying to convert people and they definitely don’t get invites to home cooked Sri Lankan food.

4

5

62

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

I’ve never before heard the accusation that me and my family somehow were paid money to speak out about who killed my mother. Wow! In case you were in any doubt, any financial affluence I had was while my mother was alive. We plunged into poverty when she died and we stayed there

6

2

63

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

In England, he worked 7 days a week, did all the housework and cooked dinner every night. He did not want his two daughters to miss out on more of their childhood. He never pressured us about school work, just wanted us to be happy.

2

0

62

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

I rarely hear my name being pronounced correctly, but I’m still so glad my parents didn’t name me to make me easier. They made me for a world where I mattered and then worked to make it happen. My name was a present and a promise for the future.

4

60

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

7 months

I got discharged last night. Grateful to be home again, grateful for the care I got. For 4 days I was surrounded by people working their hearts out to look after me and all the other patients. For 4 days I lived in a world where I mattered and my health mattered.

11

2

60

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

He learned to read English in prison, with a dictionary and works by Marx and Engels. He never broke down under torture. They called him “the silent one”

1

57

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

but it is striking how our existence was formed by the gaze of these men, how they gave or withdrew permission to exist. Within their gaze, I set out my limits of humanness. I affirmed it in defiance of the world. I stole my life, moment by moment.

2

5

57

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

On New Year’s Eve my father got diagnosed with an aggressive, high grade cancer, the peak of a very scary roller coaster. Having to say hello to him when he came round after a risky surgery over FaceTime really brought home the little cruelties of immigrant life.

8

1

58

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

My mother's belief in other human beings also meant she beleived that if she lived her life with integrity, (a dangerous way to live), that her children would be protected. That she was an ordinary woman and that the world was full of people like her. They would protect us always

1

3

53

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

I've been reading 'The 7 moons of Maali Almeida' in short bursts as I need the breaks to process the emotional intensity of it all. This is the language of my emotional and political life conjured up in Karunatilaka's captivating, lively and inventive narrative.

5

6

53

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

Respectful of those who disrespected her. Outspoken even at the point they came for her, she kept remonstrating with her assasin - as she had remonstrated with soldiers, brigadiers, militants for others lives, for the disappeared. For life itself.

1

2

53

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

1 year

My heart has grieved at all the reminders, reminiscences and thoughts about Black July. I was in Jaffna when it happened. By then I had already seen my aunt arrested and taken away. At 4 years old I had already tasted the fear that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

3

14

54

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

I saw him respond to aggression and threats with great humility- he never lost his temper or his nerve. He always had a very shrewd assessment of how to get out of scrapes. In English workplaces this was misread as weakness - a mistake many made to their cost!

1

53

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

The hours after her killing were terrifying and the fear marks me still. It felt like living in one long extended moment of horror and to know we were to live without her fierece protection - how? - how long? - scarier still.

1

2

52

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

1 year

Ghosts 1 - “Mummy & Daddy”. My great-grandparents. Nesamma, my great-grandmother, always “mummy” was the first mourned mother I knew. She died giving birth to my ammammma.

4

3

51

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

At the same time, he would always take advice from me from a very early age, especially if it was about my life. He once asked me whether he should be more like other Sri Lankan parents and I expressed my opinion very forcefully!

1

0

52

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

It took me a long time to discover all the gifts of truth and courage she left behind for me but with each passing year without her I find my experience of the world is embodied by her most courageous hopes.

2

51

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

5 years

On 21 September 1989, Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, academic & human rights activist was brutally gunned down. 30 years later, we remember her and her legacy with a memorial lecture by Dr Farzana Haniffa: "Being Muslim in Sri Lanka Today".

2

18

52

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

My mother felt that my great privileges (how much I was loved, how much I was given, all the things I could expect) needed to be carried thoughtfully - to be humble, to be considerate, to defer to others, to give generously, to observe unexpressed needs and wants.

3

5

51

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

I used to truant school a lot - he suggested I go if I felt able to. He did however teach me how to write essays to a very high standard. He would talk me through my weekly 2am essay crisis and say “call me again if you want to”.

1

0

51

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

I had a test to sit the next morning and I alternated between her death and fear at not having revised and failing the next day. From that day on, exams and deadlines would always throw me back to this feeling: my world is ending and I am unprepared.

1

50

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

During his years in the underground he held his nerve to get out of life and death situations by staring down soldiers confidently, persuading civilians to hide him, running very fast and disguising himself as an army soldier on one occasion.

1

0

50

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

Garland for Rajani You refused to eat the exile’s bread, bounteous and bitter; returned to live with the hot breath of death pursuing you yet held your head high. They shot you like a dog in the street, but that death will be remembered as their shame, your pride

5

12

47

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

Once upon a time I could walk to a Tamil shop in my part of London but gentrification and covid has meant I’ve had to order through the post: Seeni Sambol, Red Coconut Sambol, Jaffna Hot Mix, Paruthurai Vadai and Kithul. Let my tongue burn with joy!

4

1

47

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

2 years

I used to hear similar comments when I was younger: that simply by being murdered my mother was a failure. They identified killers as powerful and those who perished as weak.

2

5

46

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

9 months

It wasn't a tragic time. We were wonderfully cared for and loved by my grandparents - those years also gave me my bedrock of emotional happiness and stability. My mother knew she was giving us the happiest childhood possible, the one that had nourished her.

1

0

48

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

3 years

I found an old note from my grandfather. “You do not write to me, and I do not write to you, but I think about you every day”. It fell on me like a lightning bolt, a sweet shock at his honesty. Many say they are ‘saying it as it is’ when they say unkind things.

2

1

46

Narmada Thiranagama

@Narmadha

4 years

What it is to be utterly dependent on a job that hollows you out emotionally and physically, in a country which dehumanises you and yet, which you value and perform with pride and perfectionism - I witnessed this first hand.

1

45