STONES IN THE RICE

Pearl Thevanayagam, 58, reflects on her humble beginnings in journalism before
she became an influential war reporter.

In her interview, she also talks about growing up in a political household…

‘I grew up in a political household where politics was the subject. Even my
mother, who was only educated up to grade 8, knew everything about politics.
In fact, my father took a picture of the ‘58 riots from the YMCA top floor…
I listened in on conversations with his friends so I knew all about the politicians
and who did what, satyagraha and Galle Face sittings. And he [father] was also
the right man. He was supporting Congress, Tamil Congress. He worked with
G.G. Ponnambalam, intensely.’

…her father’s experience with discrimination…

‘So I knew there was this discrimination and especially my father experienced it.
I mean he retired from a very good job all because they told him, ‘You want a
promotion? If you want to become Chief Inspector of Art, you must learn
Sinhala.’ My father said, ‘No, I can speak Latin, Tamil, English, and that’s
good enough for me.’’

…losing her house in the ‘83 riots…

‘So ‘82 I came home, ‘83 we moved, lost everything in six months’ time,
brand-new house, whatever we saved for generations, including paintings
and everything, were burnt right in front of our eyes…Mrs Perera who was
teaching us, Mrs Perera or somebody, she asked me am I a Tamil because I
didn’t wear this thing or long hair or anything. I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Go home quickly,’
she said. When I was going on the road, Ananda College and Nalanda College,
Royal College boys in white trousers, and some were in shorts, came with
sticks and I saw everywhere burning on Galle Road and High Level Road…
Another Kandyan Sinhalese came and said, ‘Look, we can’t keep you here.
There is an order that we can’t keep you here. You have to go.’ So we went
out on the road and came near my house. There was this man, he rode a
motorbike. He opened the petrol cap. Somebody was throwing paintings and
everything from there – and we had a lawn. He rode a motorbike, set it on fire
and jumped out, so everything burned quickly. So I’m pretending that I am
not living in this house, we are just watching because if you said you were
Tamil, end of story…’

…and her experience coming to England twice, first as a student in 1976, and then as an asylum seeker in 2001…

‘I came to England in ‘76, I was 21. I got the admission without telling my parents and then asked for the ticket. I didn’t sit the A-level exam. My father didn’t know [laughs]. Then, five and a half years later, I went home after my father died. I kind of didn’t like England, the weather, loneliness. And my father died and I thought, you know, ‘I’m not going to miss my mother either, what’s the point in staying here?’ England didn’t appeal to me because I lived in the north and it was very cold. There were hardly any Sri Lankans…So reluctantly I came here [laughs] in 2001 again and claimed political asylum. Within three days I got it because in the Google everything was there. So they didn’t doubt me.’