Brotherless Night

K, whose full name is never revealed in the novel, is a young man who lives near Sashi’s house in their village in Jaffna. Though he is ostensibly her brothers’ friend, he harbors a connection to Sashi because of their similar sensibilities—they are both highly intelligent students who wish to become doctors and have a crush on each other. However, they are foils, as well: While Sashi values her family above all else, K commits himself to the movement; while Sashi deeply considers her actions, K acts without considering the long-term consequences; and while Sashi prefers to work in privacy, K is comfortable with showmanship. Sashi knows this well before K becomes entangled with the Tamil Tigers. She notes, “Standing with my brothers in the line of men waiting to be blessed, K did not seem unusual. You would have thought him just one of many dark men with white smiles. And, you know, you would have been wrong” (11). Even as a young man, K stands out from the crowd.

His uniqueness is what makes his choices all the more frustrating and tragic for Sashi. When K comes home after a long absence, which he spent training with the militants, Sashi can see that “K ha[s] changed. […] His body remind[s] [her] of nothing so much as a sharpened knife” (137). K becomes radicalized and joins the Tigers. He becomes their political spokesperson, which makes him an ideal candidate for the hunger strike that is designed to force the IPKF to leave the country. Sashi realizes that it is a publicity stunt, and she is angry to note that the Tigers murdered K by putting him in this role. The militants make the most of K’s suffering: “I remember looking up to the screen,” Sashi reports, “where the twin heads of K and Gandhi shone. As I watched, the two heads moved closer together, merged, and blended into one” (252). The militants attempt to fashion K as a kind of saint in the model of Gandhi, practicing nonviolent resistance in the name of justice; however, they indiscriminately kill their own recruits and civilians alike. K devolves from a round character—one whom Sashi loves and admires—into a flat character whose value is tainted by his associations.

After his death, Sashi insists that he was not the martyr that the Tigers claim he was. She wishes to remember him as he was in real life. She appeals to her readers to understand her intentions, saying, “I have been waiting for you to ask me K’s real name. But there is no point in telling you” (258). The K of her memory has been subsumed by the K of legend. While Sashi has embraced a future that always has her looking back, K denies himself a future at all.

Anjali is a charismatic, outspoken, and brilliant professor at Sashi’s medical school; Sashi finds her inspirational. While Anjali teaches at the medical school, she is already a doctor herself. She is also an idealist who encourages her students to speak their minds. She is thoughtful and tolerant of various ideologies—she discloses that she once worked with the militants before deciding that their movement was too violent and closed-minded. Anjali is also brave and risks her life for her ideals. She and her husband, Varathan, publish the many Reports that record the war’s atrocities; they do so at great personal risk, and this eventually leads to Anjali’s death.

Anjali impresses Sashi with her bravery from the very beginning. Sashi notes, “In those violent days people had fallen out of the habit of sustained eye contact. But if [Anjali] spoke to you, it was with a relentless concentration that was nearly blinding” (143). Anjali will not retreat from a conversation or a conflict. When confronting the situation regarding the violence committed by the militants, the government, or the occupying Indian forces, Anjali does not hesitate to call out each group in turn. She addresses the militants and the soldiers unapologetically; Sashi says, “They never knew what to say to her, this woman who spoke to them of the terror of the Tigers in the same breath that she spoke of the terror of the IPKF” (275). Anjali is guided by principles that are greater than loyalty to one faction or another.

When Anjali is taken hostage by the Tigers who suspect her involvement in the Reports, her husband understands that he must let her go rather than sacrifice her work. Her convictions are so strong that Varathan knows that he must follow her example: “He had thought he would have given anything to have her back, but in fact what he wanted then was to do what she thought was right, because she was the measure of rightness he had always used” (313). Thus, Anjali becomes the martyr that K could never aspire to be; this is because she sacrifices herself in the name of truth and in the hope of justice, rather than for propaganda’s sake.