10 year old Silibiris sat on the bench with his siblings sipping tea listening to adults chit chat.
He gathered from the conversations amongst the villagers and the mudalali that the original villagers in the area did not like the colony people who had arrived a few months ago.
The villagers seem to be unhappy about the mens’ behaviour.
Drinking, fighting, stealing from original villagers and worst of all these men who had come without their wives had started to come behind the villagers wives and daughters.
Silibiris wondered why this conversation was going on within his mother's hearing range.
He also gathered there were Tamil villages in the surrounding areas.
Apparently, they were even more unhappy about the new settlers, for reasons Silibiris did not quite grasp.
The family trudged along a track through the jungle carrying their belongings.
Silibiris could hear an unfamiliar loud animal sound.
He heard his father telling the mother that hoards of elephants roamed in this area.
Silibiris felt frightened.
He walked silently close to his mother and sisters. Suddenly they came across a bund which they climbed to walk along the bund road. He could not believe his eyes.
A vast lake full of shimmering water, birds diving in and out, clumps of trees sticking out, a lone boatman fishing using a net, a bunch of naked boys about his age shouting and jumping into the lake from a branch of a tree that created a natural diving platform. Silibiris forgot his unhappiness for a moment. He thought of joining the village boys...but the mother shouted at him telling him to hurry up.
They finally arrived at their new home, behind a make shift fence and a kadulla, with a huge Kohomba tree in the front providing shade.
A hut made of clay walls reinforced with bamboo, thatched low roof over a veranda and single room
was to be their home.
Silibiris could hear an unfamiliar loud animal sound.
He heard his father telling the mother that hoards of elephants roamed in this area.
Silibiris felt frightened.
He walked silently close to his mother and sisters. Suddenly they came across a bund which they climbed to walk along the bund road. He could not believe his eyes.
A vast lake full of shimmering water, birds diving in and out, clumps of trees sticking out, a lone boatman fishing using a net, a bunch of naked boys about his age shouting and jumping into the lake from a branch of a tree that created a natural diving platform. Silibiris forgot his unhappiness for a moment. He thought of joining the village boys...but the mother shouted at him telling him to hurry up.
They finally arrived at their new home, behind a make shift fence and a kadulla, with a huge Kohomba tree in the front providing shade.
A hut made of clay walls reinforced with bamboo, thatched low roof over a veranda and single room
was to be their home.
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