Sri Lankan Army

The Sri Lankan Army appears in the novel as one side in the conflict that devastated a village on the Jaffna Peninsula. It is not described through its command structure, policies, or individual soldiers; its significance here lies in the displacement and loss associated with the conflict.

Conflict and Civilian Consequences

The account places the Sri Lankan Army in conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. That fighting obliterated Krishna and Villu’s village, and almost all members of both young men’s families were killed. The passage identifies the devastation as the consequence of the conflict without assigning the destruction or deaths exclusively to either force.

Displacement and Narrative Significance

Krishna and Villu escaped with Villu’s sister, a cousin, Krishna’s grandparents, and his two young nieces. A fishing boat carried them from the Jaffna Peninsula to India along the people-smuggling route toward the Coromandel Coast. After reaching Bombay, the survivors lived beneath a sheet of plastic on a footpath. The army’s brief mention thus situates the men’s later lives in the shadow of war: their work as forgers and their precarious beginnings in Bombay follow the loss of home and the flight of surviving relatives.