Katuwapitiya: Alone in their grief, after the shock
Dinesh looks at the forms closely, while his little girl holds him tight . Pix by Sameera Weerasekera
We went back to Katuwapitiya on Wednesday.
Except the heavily barricaded St. Sebastian’s Church, where armed security forces personnel as well as priests are refusing to allow anyone to enter, the beleaguered village is sans much security…….and the people are upset about it, as also the way the monies promised by the government are being disbursed.
Unlike the previous time (that too on a Wednesday), just three days after the Easter Sunday bombings, the weather too has turned nasty. Where earlier, the full force of the sun was beating down on the hapless people, now heavy showers are drenching the village, leaving some areas under water.
Vociferous are those who are mourning the dead about the disbursement of funds for the funerals and as compensation and how politicians are walking around handing over cheques and also capturing all in photographs.
“The authorities said they would give Rs. 100,000 for the funeral rites of each victim and Rs. 1 million as compensation for each victim, but now they are deducting the Rs. 100,000 from that Rs 1 million and giving only Rs. 900,000 as compensation,” said some of the bereaved. They feel this is adding insult to injury as it was the authorities themselves who had not provided security to the people even though they had prior warning of such an attack.
Both my parents died, laments Roshica Wimanna, saying she told those who came with the money what she felt. First they gave us Rs. 200,000 and now they are telling us that three of us will get Rs. 1.8 million. Roshica’s father and mother, Rohan and Shanthi Wimanna, were killed instantaneously as the suicide-bomber had blown himself up after standing next to them in church.
As we walk around the village, there is also serious concern about security with the feeling uppermost being that they have been abandoned by the authorities. In each home, where family members have been buried the week before, a few kith and kin gather before a priest and sometimes a few nuns, in front of the photographs of the dead, to say mass and continue to shed tears.
There is a family where both parents, Dr. Sanath Fernando and Wales Indira, have left their three beloved children, while the grandmother had been found in a hospital Intensive Care Unit (ICU) the previous Thursday.
The Negombo Law Society team visiting homes to lend a helping hand
Explaining that the eldest girl is studying medicine in China, wishing to follow in her father’s footsteps and the two younger boys are still in school, with the middle one in the Ordinary Level class, a relative says that they have got a lot of support from the boys’ school. Teachers, parents and children have streamed into this house and been with us, she says, as the daughter is being helped by a relative to fill numerous forms and the pet dog lies at her feet silently as if realizing the trauma that the family is undergoing.
The daughter came back home only on Monday, the day after the blast, after hearing the tragic news, says the relative, adding that they had to break open the door to the family home as the grandmother had the key.
In another half-built home, it is husband, Dinesh Suranga, who has rushed back from his kamkaru rakshava in Italy to be there for his wife and two daughters. His mother and little son of eight months perished in the blast.
On this rainy May Day when the whole country is on holiday and even boutiques have put up their shutters, we meet a group clad in white from the Negombo Law Society headed by Attorney-at-Law Nishendra Ekanayake who too is going from door-to-door to help the families fill the detailed forms and offer legal advice all for free on how to obtain death certificates and go about testamentary cases.
We hear that even when tragedy strikes, there are the vulture-like humans who are ready to make a quick buck and have been moving around Katuwapitiya charging Rs. 1,000 for an affidavit.
When we step into Dinesh’s home, a Buddhist monk is talking to the family, consoling them.
Dinesh and his whole family, wife, two daughters and son had been in Italy but the latter had come back because they wanted to put the elder girl to school here. That fateful day, Easter Sunday, his wife Disna had taken the three children along with her mother-in-law to church. Eight-month-old Dinuj, like any little one, with face wrinkled up was showing in no uncertain terms that he was tired and unhappy. Giving him a feed, Disna handed over her podi putha to her mother-in-law and went for communion. When she came back, Dinuj was fast asleep and she did not want to disturb him.
The mass was over but a politician wanted to give a kathawa. Otherwise, the people would have left the church, says Dinesh.
He cannot deal with the aftermath, as he looks at us mutely and murmurs like so many others…….this is like a “mala gama” (dead village).
The shock is wearing off now that they have buried their dead. The reality is sinking in slowly as they face a bleak future without their loved ones.