Tale of Two Cities- A Tamil girl’s journey from Colombo to Toronto

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Tale of Two Cities- A Tamil girl’s journey from Colombo to Toronto

May 09, 2018

By - Arasi Vickneaswaran

My 6-month contract with a big finance company in Toronto ended a few weeks ago. I was sitting at my desk on my last day, trying to clean out my space. As much as I hated having to sit and stare at the computer mercilessly for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week while feeling like a number on the line, I still felt strange. I am not going to sit on this desk, make coffee on those machines and go through the horrible routine I am used to. I knew as I joined that I will not remain here. Yet, I became attached to something intangible. We are passionate travelers, we leave thing behind and move on all the time. However, we also always get emotionally attached to things, places and people even when we don’t want to. 

Apparently when you live somewhere for more than 6 months, the place starts to feel like home. Same as how you must do something exactly seven times to make it a habit.  This idea struck me in a very personal way. 6 months is all it takes to make a new home, and to get over a home we are leaving behind. What then, is a home? Is it static or is it changing as we move? Is it the place, the people, or the feeling attached to one or both of those? Is it in the past, present, future or in all of those?

'Do not refer to Sri Lanka as "home" when talking to people here.' My mother says to me.  This was probably after making small talk with a stranger on an elevator. I must have mentioned home to refer to Sri Lanka thereby iterating the fact that this, right here is not my home. " why?" I asked my mother, as I always do. The question "why" used to annoy her almost all the time it was asked, especially when it follows a perceived executive order which she thinks should be self-explanatory. I don’t really remember exactly what answer she gave me for that “why” question. However, I became conscious of my casual references to “home” in conversations.

The elevator incident happened before I have been in Toronto for 6 whole months. It was our duty to pretend to be the model minority that is grateful for what the new home has given us and show no hesitation claiming it as home. This meant we stop referring to our countries of origin as "home". It is considered even better if we can denounce those countries and acknowledge that Canada has given us a better life that wouldn’t have been possible elsewhere. Canada is like our adopted mother who loved us and cared for us but who never understood why we always went back to our biological mother in search of identity even when that mother (land) had disregarded us, chased or given us away. There was this need for newcomers to make patronizing “Canadians” feel proud and generous. Thus, we needed to stop referring to our countries of origin as “home”. When a year or so later, the Syrian refugee crisis happened, I couldn’t stop noticing the same patronizing smugness in most of the narratives about the refugees in the media.

After coming to Toronto, I have given some thought about the idea of home or homes. I have come to realize that “home” means different things to different people and is constructed through how we experience our surroundings. Different generations see the idea of home differently. I have seen and heard a lot of my family and relatives speak about a home that is yearned back in Jaffna.  “Home” that is left behind stays static in memory and haunts people with nostalgia. For some, it is deeply connected to the landscape and nature. I understood with a shocking realization I am somehow lacking that sense of rootedness to a land. I do remember places I have lived through fondly and sometimes with a little nostalgia, but never with the same intensity of yearning. I had the feeling that I was always meant to be leaving, always on transit.

Colombo

Colombo, for a lot of Jaffna Tamils, was (and still is) a transit city. It was a transit point between their original homes in Jaffna and their newfound homes in various countries of the world. When we lived in Colombo, we found ourselves hosting many such people (relatives, friends, distant relatives and friends of friends) who were either on their way abroad or are visiting Jaffna after settling down abroad. It was by no means a short transit. Some waited months, or even years before they could finally fly abroad with complicated visa issues. However, the stay in Colombo was always temporary. Filled with urgency. Full of expectations for a different place.

In some ways, Colombo was a transit city for me as well. I knew I would not be spending the rest of my life in Colombo, that I will move out of it sooner or later. It was a matter of waiting for the right time. I had never imagined myself living in my parents’ home for the rest of my life and raising my kids and grandkids there. I think if one was made to imagine those things, one would feel more attached to the land they call home. I grew up in an era of social, economic and cultural mobility and I didn’t feel attached to the land in the same way some others were.

Almost four years ago, we were preparing to leave for Canada as immigrants. We were leaving behind a house with a front yard, some furniture and people who made Colombo our home. (Actually, not many of them, as they most our family and friends have been leaving the country for a while). My mother was selling away the furniture.  We knew this was coming, but it still hurt. The one loss that I felt deep was the sofa that sat in our living room. Wonderfully soft and cozy, it was not the type that makes you sit straight, but the type that slowly eases you into a leaning and then a lying position without your knowledge every time you hit it. There have been moments I cursed it for being too warm on a hot day but I spent most of my daydreaming, lazy hours on it. We called it a “settee”, in our own Sri Lankan-British-English. Now, after being in Toronto for four years, the word “settee” feels so alien that I now think of it as the name we gave to our sofa rather than a generic English word. As we were getting ready to move, I was being very indifferent. The loss of home only hit me when my beloved “settee” was carried away one day.

Didn't I know that I would be leaving at some point, belonging to the generation in transit? Never reaching a destination, always going somewhere, making several of those 6 month homes on the way? 

That was how a girl who was born in Jaffna and brought up in Colombo became a Torontonian four summers ago. Colombo and Toronto are the two cities that shaped me. I love them both. Today, as a Tamil Torontonian, it is interesting to look back and reflect on how I expressed my Tamil-ness in these two cities.

It is not possible to think about my experience of being Tamil in Toronto without adequately talking about being Tamil in Colombo. This is because I have experienced, and to some extent still experience, Toronto in comparison with Colombo.

 Tamil has always been an integral part of my identity. Growing up in a country burdened with ethnic conflict and discrimination, I was taught to be proud of my language by my parents. I lived my earliest years in a predominantly Sinhalese neighborhood and I learned to speak Sinhalese and English along with Tamil well before I was six. I was always complimented for my aptitude in languages and I was proud of myself for being able to speak in three languages. On my first year at school I took to bragging about my skills to the principal. She was a (Sinhalese) Catholic nun accustomed to discipline and obedience from students. I told her that I speak three languages whereas she only spoke two. My memory is vague on what provoked me to say that to her but it had lasting consequences and happened to be the incident that introduced me to the ethnic conflict and discrimination in Sri Lanka. She complained about my bad attitude and stubbornness to my mother and I started internalizing the idea that being Tamil is not always something to be proud of.

Still in my primary school, I used to wear a black “pottu” to school as per our tradition. My mother always wore a red one as was the custom for married women and I wore a black one. My father said it made my face look beautiful and bright. I wore it with a pride because it marked me immediately as a Tamil in Sri Lanka. I studied in a school which had both Tamil and Sinhala students and we all wore a school uniform which was a box pleated, collared white dress with white socks and shoes. We were all supposed to wear our hair in two plaits with black ribbons tied at the ends. We were not allowed any jewelry except for small earrings. One day my principal encountered me on a corridor- I must have been nine or ten- and told me that I should not be wearing the pottu as it does not go well with my uniform. I was still a very outspoken child and I immediately told her that since I am wearing a black and white outfit, a black pottu will definitely go well with it.

I continued to wear my pottu as a form of rebellion afterwards. I wanted to respect my ethnicity and culture and be proud of it. When I was 16, after I have completed my Ordinary Level Exams, I became a School Prefect. This is also when I started developing an identity crisis as a teenager. I spoke in a Tamil that was different to what my parents spoke. I hung out more with Sinhala girls and wanted to mingle with the most popular girls in school. Once, a friend of mine told me that I should get rid of the pottu, especially when I am representing my school on public events. I argued with her that I am proud of who I am and I have no problem marking myself as a Tamil. While I managed to convince her, I lost my own conviction. I realized that my very visible identity might be stopping me from getting more popularity and attention. I gradually stopped wearing my pottu and realized it made a huge difference. People approached me differently. I spoke very good Sinhala and I could pass for a Sinhalese during short encounters with strangers. I started enjoying my newfound identity and the perks that came with it.

University of Colombo

I entered University of Colombo and I made a lot of Friends, mostly from middle class Sinhalese families. I Identified with them more than the Tamil students because I had lived in Colombo all my life. I also maintained a good relationship with Tamil students and because I was very outgoing and social, I became a bridge for a lot of the Sinhala-Tamil interactions. I became a different person, saw a different Colombo and expanded my horizons by mingling with Sinhalese friends. I found that for the most part, university students were ethnically compartmentalized. That was true even within Tamil and Muslim students who spoke the same language. This was encouraged and preserved by the ragging system by which the seniors grouped the freshman students based on their ethnicity rather than allowing natural interactions and friendships to form.

Inevitably, right after the release of the Channel 4 documentary film on the horrible close to the armed conflict, I got into political arguments with my Sinhala colleagues both in person and on Social media. Some of the fellow students were aggressive and some turned to an attack mode. Many others were silent and chose to avoid the topic. Very few acknowledged and agreed with what I had to say as a Tamil and the arguments made me increasingly uncomfortable in my skin among the University student community. However, I should say, almost all of them remained friends with me on a personal level after every argument.

I also found myself becoming the “Tamil” representative in almost all the events organized by the Sinhala students. They considered the events to be inclusive just because I was there and I was the “Tamil” person they wanted to see. Able to converse in Sinhala, happy to be surrounded by the Sinhalese and (apparently) getting all the equal opportunities as another Sinhala student. They were willing to help me and I knew that it made them feel good. I knew that an average Tamil student could not be where I was. I was a middle-class Sinhala speaking Tamil student who could pass for a Sinhalese when time required. I also had a great network of Sinhala students which allowed me better access to many places.

I enjoyed my position and sometimes took advantage of it. A friend of mine took me to a store to bargain with the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper was Tamil and my friend did not speak Tamil. As we went in, my friend started talking to the shopkeeper and he assumed we were both Sinhalese. I found myself falling into a comfort zone and I did not utter a single word in Tamil. For my own horror, I did not want to be identified as a Tamil and I didn’t want to talk in Tamil. When we headed out, my friend expressed surprise that I didn’t speak in Tamil with the shopkeeper (She was hoping that I will bargain for the price in Tamil and get a better deal, which I should say, is not one of my skills regardless of language) and I am sure she will never understand why.

I had a lot of community in Colombo but I felt like I was never completely myself. I was always trying to fit in. I was popular but I did not have very close friends. I was happy but I was always on the edge of two different identities, never feeling completely comfortable. This is when my family decided to move to Toronto and I remember the reluctance I felt leaving behind everything I had and everything I cherished.

and everything I cherished.

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I was a little surprised to find out that my family had more relatives in Toronto than in Colombo. Everyone seemed to know me even when I haven’t met them. It was almost suffocating. I was not ready for the life full of formalities such as weddings and birthday parties that I had to attend when I barely knew anyone in the crowd. We used to joke about the fact that Toronto (more specifically, Scarborough) looked like a small version of Jaffna. (Actually, not even “small” –apparently some of the “ur” clubs in Scarborough now have bigger memberships than the populations of the actual villages in Jaffna.) You could get anything ranging from the rarest herbs from Jaffna to tropical Sri Lankan fish varieties in Toronto’s Tamil stores.

After spending our first summer as immigrants in downtown Toronto with my uncle, my parents settled down in Scarborough, a suburb known for its very visible Tamil community. I think Scarborough can be called the Tamil capital of Canada. It has Tamil stores that sell curry leaves, Tamil restaurants, Hindu temples, saree shops and (almost) everything you need to go about living the way you used to live in Jaffna. (the only inevitable and obvious exception being the Canadian winter). As new immigrants, Scarborough was a convenient, or even a necessary choice for us. My parents turned to        the Tamil community whenever they were disoriented as new immigrants. They found everything ranging from curry powder to their first jobs in Scarborough, within the Tamil community.

My family was struggling (as was usual for new immigrants) and it took a toll on me. I found Toronto to be overly friendly on the outside but very alienating on the inside. I felt hollowed out. I met way too many people in the University and lost track of every one of them. I struggled to make friends in a huge University with lot of commuting students in the middle of the City. I later learned that I was not the only one but I felt stranded. My parents were hit harder by the stress of immigration and we were sometimes unable to emotionally support and care for each other. I was facing cultural shock and immigration stress along with the burden of coping up with the demanding workload of University of Toronto.

One day, while eating my lunch at University, I realized I had never had lunch all by myself in my entire life. There were groups of friends and colleagues everywhere, all the time. Suddenly, I felt all alone. In this buzzing, ever alive city, nobody cared that a sad lonely girl was having lunch by herself. I would never have imagined that I will be missing the nosy onlookers you inevitably find in Colombo, wherever you go, whatever you do. For the first few months in Toronto I kept seeing random strangers and thinking that they resembled my friends from Colombo.

Having learnt my English mostly through reading, I struggled to understand the American-Canadian accent and the casual use of phrases not usually found in written language. I found the unnecessarily long sentences confusing. I remember getting totally confused the first time a Starbucks Barista asked me “Hi, How are you today?” In Colombo, you would just walk into a shop and say “a coffee” and the shopkeeper will just give it to you. Most of the time, no other words will be exchanged. Here is Toronto I found that “politeness” required winding length of un-heartfelt phrases. There were so many tiny details of daily living that required cultural adaptation. To this day, small talk baffles me.

In Canada, I was categorized as a “visible-minority”. I did not immediately feel like a minority in Toronto as more than half of the city’s population consisted of people who were born outside of Canada. In other words, as confused as I was, I was not an exception in this city full of immigrants. I saw people of various colours and heard too many different languages around me. I realized that it is possible for you to feel alienated even as you are being accepted in this crazy mix of cultures. In Colombo, I would almost never encounter a language that I don’t understand and I could eavesdrop on any conversation in public places. (In fact, it was one of my hobbies to do so) I realized that it was a privilege. Now I was very confused and agitated and felt as if I was not in control of my environment. I have always considered myself to be a person who can see people beyond differences in race, religion and culture. Toronto made me realize that growing up in Colombo, I have simply not been exposed to enough cultural differences. In fact, I am thankful for Toronto for expanding my horizons and bringing my own narrow- mindedness to my attention. 

Despite the struggles, I started enjoying the novelty of the new lifestyle. I grew into Toronto as it grew into me. I loved how Toronto allowed me to be totally comfortable in my own skin. It did take some time to find like-minded people and friends but Toronto always gave me respect for who I am and a support system to get back on track whenever I was about to fail or give up. I didn’t have a bunch of friends to remind me that an essay is due in school but I had a very good academic advisor who helped me succeed in my coursework. I felt more free and independent than I have ever been. I became confident that I could carve out a life of my own in this beautiful city.

If I were to describe the most exhilarating moments of my life in Toronto, I imagine the reader would be bored. That is because I will be describing random everyday moments of being by myself such as walking down the street on an autumn day and noticing how the trees have changed colour or riding a bus and loving it. (I thoroughly enjoyed the TTC aka Toronto Transit Commission trains and buses) I loved the outdoors of Toronto and the changing seasons. The soft crunch of the snow under my boots, the cool breeze that makes me want to sing out loud regardless of the people around, the ever-busy streets with slow streetcars and a hot soup from Tim Hortens on a winter day. I had never enjoyed being outside by myself to this extent in Colombo. I was always in a rush and was concerned for my safety, and it was not just because of war-related tension. As a young girl who tends to be a bit carless at times, I found Toronto to be much safer and that allowed me to spend more time outside the confines of the house and enjoy the surroundings. Toronto taught me that I can be my own companion and that it doesn’t always have to feel sad. Toronto taught me to be happy and to entertain myself. It was Toronto that gave me a newfound appreciation for the people around me, those that I had always taken for granted.

Not having made many friends in University, most of my initial relationships were formed via family and the Tamil community in Toronto. My parents were surprisingly well connected and I made friends with a lot of my parents’ friends and colleagues. This is how I encountered Tamil theater groups and I came to be deeply involved with them. I was always involved in performing arts in School and in University of Colombo but Toronto’s Tamil Theater groups identified me as an artist and I rediscovered myself through the process of acting and being involved in the community. The theater events I participated played a huge role in making me want to stay in Toronto. I found a community around these groups and that helped me feel included in an alien city. The progressive Tamil literary, academic and performing arts groups in Toronto have given me the community and strength I needed when I moved.

It was ironic that in Sri Lanka where there was much tension between ethnic communities, my life was filed with diverse peoples while in Toronto, in this city known to the world for its diversity and inclusive nature, I became more “Tamil” and remained inside the comfort zones of the Tamil groups. I sometimes still feel a deep cultural divide when I am with people from different communities and find it hard to bridge the gap and overcome barriers. I was and in some ways still am in search of belonging and differences make me feel uneasy. For this reason, I find it hard to emotionally connect with people of different communities while being perfectly comfortable in forming and maintaining professional relationships. I tended to make friends mostly within the Sri Lankan and sometimes South Asian communities.

In University of Toronto, I started volunteering my time into many events and spending time with a lot of Tamil groups. I volunteered with Tamil Studies Conference and I met a few people who became very good friends later-on. I also attended TSA (Tamil Students Association) of University of Toronto and I found that I could not completely identify with the second-generation Tamils born and brought up in Canada, as my experiences were vastly different. I attended SLSA (Sri Lankan Students Association) and made a few friends who had similar experience of moving from Colombo to Toronto. It surprised me that the divide between the Tamil and the Sinhalese communities was stronger in Toronto than it was in Colombo. I would have thought that the differences would matter less in Toronto, but it was the complete opposite. Sinhalese Tamil interactions were far lesser than I had ever seen in Colombo.

Theater

Among the Tamil community in Toronto I was not exactly a stereotypical “recent immigrant” who struggles with their English and works on odd jobs. I was not exactly the “second generation” although I could sometimes pass for one. I still have a Sri Lankan accent to my English which comes as a surprise even to me when I try to speak in front of a crowd. I did not fit into categories but I still felt comfortable being myself because Toronto is a city full of people who do not fit into categories and we are all respected. The Starbucks barista will listen to you carefully so that she can understand you accent and the professor in your class will take an extra minute just to get your name right when handing out papers (I appreciate that, given my Sri Lankan-Tamil lengthy last name) These small curtsy will make a world of difference in shaping an immigrant’s experience of the city. It did not take too long for me to start identifying as a Torontonian.

As I graduated and started working, I saw that the North American capitalism has shaped the lifestyle of Toronto in many ways where one is never able to relax as the system keeps you running towards no real destination (Sometimes life reminds me of the game Temple Run, except that you don’t really get a fresh start every time you fall). I was grateful for the student loan I received when I started my studies but not so much the trap I found myself in as I graduated. I loved Toronto more as a student and less as a young professional. I had never felt the urgent need to earn money, never appraised my education based on the job opportunities it could potentially provide me, until after I started working.  I found the professional world to be competitive and progressively racist as a new immigrant aspires to move ahead.

I think our own unique experiences shape how we perceive our surroundings and my personal and emotional struggles have shaped my love-hate relationship with Colombo as well as Toronto. In Colombo, we were already a well- to-do middle class family. In Toronto I was from a family of recent immigrants (with foreign qualifications and experiences that are readily disregarded in the labour market) It took my family all the four years we have been here to even think about “joining the middle class”, as our beloved Trudeau would put it.  

A couple of year ago, while at the after-party of one of the theater events I was part of, it struck me that I did not ever want to leave Toronto. I was not ready for another tiring experience trying to orient myself in a new environment. I was in my comfort zone and I was too happy to move. Today, it surprises me that I am ready to move again, just like that. I still love Toronto but I am ready to take myself out of the comfort zone and explore the world. Toronto is my home, and whether I move away or not, it will remain one of my homes. Yes, I think I am part of the generation in Transit.   

A friend of mine, who immigrated from Bangladesh and studied in Vancouver and Toronto (where we met), moved to Ottawa to find a job. As soon as she moved, I saw on her Facebook a status saying, " home is where WiFi is". Fair enough, technology brings us together. It is our greatest and yet the most anonymous of friends and we, the generation in transit feel that we carry our homes in our backs inside our laptops.  We can hold onto the remains of everything we call a home via technology. I remembered the time when Google Maps launched street views of Jaffna for the first time. It stirred interesting responses within our community. We carry our left- behind-homes in our consciousness while making newer homes, using technology to stay closer to many homes at once.

So, if, one day I leave Toronto, it will still be a home I was fond of. For now, I am a Tamil Torontonian and a unique one at that

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