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Can anyone tell them why?
Asitha, whose pitiful face at his mother’s funeral wrenched the hearts of millions worldwide in the aftermath of the tsunami, now faces yet another tragedy, the death of his father

By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
The tsunami took away his mother. Just a year after, his father is dead. How do you explain to a boy of 10 what has gone wrong with his life in rational terms?

He is an orphan. No mother and no father. The victim of this double tragedy is Asitha Rukshan Fernando of Koralawella, Moratuwa, whose tear-streaked face at his mother’s funeral when splashed across the front pages of more than 100 newspapers worldwide epitomized the heartbreak and anguish of the terrible tsunami that engulfed the region on December 26, 2004.

His father, Ivan Fernando, struggling to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, Ranjani, and attempting to feed and care for his two younger children, Asitha and mentally-handicapped Ruwangika, fell off a train on Tuesday, January 3 and died at the National Hospital, Colombo, the next day. The Inquirer into Deaths has put off the hearing into Ivan’s death for February 9.

When The Sunday Times visited Asitha at Ivan’s maha gedera (parents’ home) in Angulana, a stone’s throw from the railway station, the funeral was over. The area had a few notices pasted on lamp posts and walls about Ivan’s demise. It is a week after his death and all his brothers and sisters are busy preparing the seven-day dane (alms-giving) with a delicious del (bread fruit) curry and kelewalla miris curry. There is also a chicken curry and Ivan’s younger sister Inoka Fernando sighs that though Ivan was a fisherman he relished meat.

Asitha, Ruwangika and their grandparents have gone to the temple, for Ivan was a Buddhist. The children have been baptized because Ranjani was a Catholic, a relative says. We are welcomed, along with Sr. Jacintha who has been the bedrock of the family even before the tsunami struck, helping Ruwangika to cope with day-to-day activity.

Thereafter, when the others return from the temple do we hear the tragic tale. “Ivan left as usual even before the crack of dawn to buy fish from St. John’s market,” says his 60-year-old mother, Merlyn Peiris, giving the time at 2 a.m. “I asked him why he was going in the dark and he said he had a lot of work to attend to.”

They waited for him to come back at 10.30 a.m. and then around 2.30 p.m, she panicked and frantically called her other children to look for Ivan, the fourth among nine siblings.

The brothers made a round of calls and traced Ivan’s movements on that fateful day – he had borrowed Rs. 3,500 on interest, bought fish and prawns from the market and gone early morning to a few households in Kollupitiya to whom he regularly sold fish. “A lady in one house, whom we contacted by phone, told us that she bought fish worth over Rs. 4,000 and also gave my brother some more money to buy Asitha’s books for the new school year and a few more gifts,” says Inoka. Their fears were allayed and Ivan’s children were reassured that everything was okay. Another sister, M. Violet Fernando, checked out the 2-odd train that passed her Angulana home but did not spot Ivan. She did see him on the 5.20 and alerted her relatives that he would reach Koralawella soon.

But even by 8.30 p.m., he was not home and the search began in earnest. They heard someone had fallen off the train and been taken to Lunawa Hospital and rushed there only to be told that the injured man was taken to the National Hospital. It was Dixon Fernando, Ivan’s brother who with a few others headed for Colombo. When they reached the Accident Service around midnight, the victim was undergoing a major operation.

The hospital staff showed them a booklist for Grade 6. With a sinking feeling Dixon realized the victim could be his brother and the booklist was Asitha’s. “Later we were shown the injured person with the head all bandaged through the glass in the Intensive Care Unit,” sighs Dixon.

It was Ivan and he was unconscious. Dixon took the bad news home and next morning the sisters came in tears to the hospital. “Machines were breathing for him,” says Inoka adding that it was then that they found out from a nurse in Ward 72 that Ivan had been admitted to hospital the previous morning too. “We do not know who admitted him or what had happened. What we were told is that he had got a kalanthe (dizziness). He had, however, insisted that he needed to go home, as otherwise his children would starve. The nurses said he had Rs. 9,000, some books and a few wrapped parcels with him,” says Inoka.
When he died after being readmitted after apparently falling off the train and hitting his head on the road, there was only a sarong, his long-shorts and Asitha’s booklist, she adds.

At a family conference at the alms-giving, they decide that Ivan’s mother and father would look after Asitha and Ruwangika, running a house that a benefactor has promised to buy for them following an earlier article in The Sunday Times about these two children whose lives have been wracked by sorrow and pain. Asitha’s elder sister Ashani, married with a toddler, has undertaken to visit them regularly and keep a check on them while his aunt Inoka will look after his school needs like meeting teachers.

Another benefactor who has been helping them with dry rations, clothes, books, medicines and gifts has assured them of his support. This benefactor was the one to whom Asitha turned in his grief and pain when his father died. He had responded immediately and handed over Rs. 10,000 to Ivan’s mother for expenses before the funeral and also taken care of the undertaker’s bill.

As we say good-bye to Asitha and Ruwangika we have no words of solace and comfort. How do you explain the death of both parents in one year to two traumatized children? Nature’s fury took their mother away from them. What of their father… karma, destiny? No answers are forthcoming.

You could help them too
Ivan would seek advice on how to cook vegetables for his children. “He would ask, ‘do you fry chillies and add to a bean curry?’ He was not a bad man,” says Sr. Jacintha Silva of the Sisters of Charity Jesus and Mary who has been by this beleagured family throughout, expressing fears about Asitha continuing his education. “It may be good for him to be boarded in a school and come home for the holidays. We must ensure a sound education,” she says reinforcing our doubts after a visit in December that the boy was playing truant, even when Ivan was alive.

Sr. Jacintha has plans for Ruwangika. “She can start a small nursery and sell plants once they move into their new home,” she says. This nun from the Caritas Special Education Centre in Koralawella has also opened savings books for the two children and deposited some funds given by another benefactor. “It’s for their future,” says Sr. Jacintha.

Muthuthanthrige Asitha Rukshan has Account No. 1-0020-50-3206-7 and Muthuthanthrige Ayesha Ruwangika Account No. 1-0020-50-3205-9 at the National Savings Bank, Moratuwa.

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