Draft2

Athula was going out to the tea plantation to work.
“Mum I heading out now to the fields to help.” Shouting excitedly
Athula was only 4 then; He had to go to schools in the morning and in the afternoon, helps his parents out at the field. Life was peaceful. Everyone one was happy the way it is.

In 2 years time, everything changes. Athula was still living life as per normal, Arjuna, his father who had been saving money for a long time wanted to give his family a better place to stay, so he went to applied for a new house, together with his good Sinhalese friend. Months later, his Sinhalese friends got the house but on the other hand Arjuna application for a new house was rejected because of the Ceylon Citizenship Act, this actually meant that citizenship was only passed to those who were born in Sri Lanka or those whose forefathers were born here. To make matter worse Arjuna’ family was declared stateless.

Athula comforted Arjuna. Athula said “no matter what house we live in, we were always be a happy family.”

“You are very understanding, let’s just continue our life as the way it was.” Arjuna said.

In 1956, things toke a turn for the worst, one day, posters was placed all over the place saying that their official language had been change to Sinhala; Athula was speechless when he saw the posters. He soon met a guy who was very depressed, he had no idea how to speak Sinhala, and just like that he was fired from the government service. Soon after that rioting took place, Athula and his family was caught in the middle of the riots and both his parents were killed in the midst of the chaos. Athula fell to his kneels and tears rolled down his cheeks uncontrollably. The riot ended but many had loss their lives. Athula later spotted a small kid sobbing all by his own; he went there and asks what had happened.

The boy said” My name is Asanka; both of my parent were killed in the riots.”

Athula later learned that Asanka was actually a Sinhalese. Both of them took care of each other as though they were brothers. Later on in years, both of the wanted to enter the best university in Sri Lanka, cause they wanted to have a better future. Both of them studied and worked hard to accomplish their dreams of entering the university. Days later, the results were out. Athula scored 4A1 and 3B4 while Asanka scored 2A1, 2A2, 3C5, and the most unimaginable happened, Asanka managed to get into the university while Athula even having a better result than Asanka was rejected as he did meet the criteria.

Athula was feeling very disturbed at this biasness for the university admission. He told Asanka that he wanted to be alone for a while and left Asanka to fend for himself. Asanka felt that he was all alone again so he went to interact with other Sinhalese and soon after forgot all about Athula.

Athula was wandering all over Sri Lanka by himself, He learnt about the wide scale resettlement which involves forcing out the Tamils for the poorer Sinhalese who could not afford the houses and leaves the Tamils homeless. But he also heard of the Tamil United Liberation Front, so he started to join this federation, and fight for the Tamil’s freedom. They went around wreaking havoc all over the place. Athula killed many Sinhalese for revenge because he thinks it was them who cause the riots that day, and it was them who killed his parents.

He continues on his rampage torturing any Sinhalese he spots, but one Sinhalese made him stop. Due to a twist of fate, He saw Asanka at the battlefield.