Interesting story from a Tamil Canadian family:

From: Ananthashankar Kandiah, Canada, 9 February 2009
In Tamil Nation:

I got this from a friend of mine. I thought it's very interesting. Please spend some time to read it and pass it on to your friends. I think everyone should hear this story.

Monday after hearing what was going on in Sri Lanka, I was so depressed and felt helpless. I didn't know what to do to help the suffering people there. I was so angry with the International Community for allowing the SL government to commit such atrocities. Despite all the protests and campaigning was done by Tamils in Canada, the Canadian Government kept a tight lip about the whole thing and did not want to intervene. All this really bothered me. I felt that I had to do something to make this country act, but didn't know how.

When I arrived home from work that evening, I saw my daughters in front of the TV enjoying one of their favorite sitcoms. Then it hit me hard, here I was blaming and complaining about Canada and the world not helping save the lives of millions of Tamils in Sri Lanka, while my own daughters didn't have a clue about the situation in Sri Lanka. So I turned off the TV and tried to tell them how our family and friends back home were suffering in a 30 years old bloody civil war. Their reaction at first was somewhat caught me by surprise. My daughters got upset at me for not letting them watch their show and sprinted off to their room upstairs rudely without listening to what I had to say.

This made my day ever more sad and depressing but little later I realized my mistake. I realized that no matter how hard I try, my daughters would never listen unless they wanted to. So I put a lot of thought into how I would make my daughters know about the genocide against Tamils back home. It's not that they are not compassionate girls; it was only a month ago when both of them cried while watching Hotel Rwanda and called the Christian children foundation and adopted a child in their mother's name.

What is happening in Sri Lanka is in no way shorter than what happened in Rwanda. But when ever I tried to tell them this, it didn't really grasp them as the movie did. How could I do this then, I couldn't make a movie as I can barely afford to have cable at our home. After a while, it came to me, I got an idea.

Yesterday, I stayed home and didn't go to work. After my daughters had gone to school, I went into the kitchen and started clearing out all the food items in the fridge and cabinets. I went through the whole house and made sure that there were no food items in the house. I put them all in a big box and took the box out and put it in my car. I knew with the cold temperature outside, none of the food would go bad. I came back and waited for my daughters to come from school.

My daughters are fourteen and twelve years old, they lost their mother 5 years ago to breast cancer. Since then, I become their mother and father by doing everything for them. My daughters come home very hungry after school everyday and eat what I have left for them in the fridge. Yesterday both of them came home from school around 3:45. As I expected, they went directly to the fridge. To their shock, there wasn't any food. In fact, they had never seen the fridge so empty, not even milk. Soon they were looking around in the kitchen and it didn't take them long before they realize that there was something very wrong.

My younger daughter came up to me and asked where her meal was. Her sister also joined her expecting a perfectly valid answer from me. Calmly I replied, "We won't be eating anything tonight". I gave one whole minute for their protest to settle down so I can make my point. Calmly I continued, I told them that we would not be eating because we wanted to feel the pain our relatives feel in Sri Lanka. My younger daughter continued with her usual nagging cry by demanding her food right away not wanted to listen to anything I had to say. I promised them that if they were willing to listen to me for 15 minutes, then they could have their meals. So they obeyed.

I started telling them about how thousands of kids younger than them were starving for many days now. First they were kind of reluctant to hear what I had to say, but after spotting tears in my eyes they were with me. I don't usually get emotional that easily, but as I started explaining the situation in Sri Lanka to them my voice was tumbling and I couldn't control the tears in my eyes. Every word that came out of my mouth was heartfelt. After good 10 minutes in to the speech, I think both of my girls saw what I wanted them to see. They came closer and hugged me as I continued with the story. As I finished telling them what had happened to the 300 innocent children and women and men in Sri Lanka I realized I wasn't the only one crying.

My youngest who wanted to listen to me for 15 minutes earlier so she could have her dinner, broke the pin drop silence of 5 minutes after I finished what I had to say and said she is skipping her meal that night. My eldest followed her and all three of us skipped our meals for that evening. Rest of the night we drank water and talked about lot of things, not just about the issues back home, but also about our family. We felt, or at least I did, that somehow we got even closer to each other. It seemed that by some magical spell or something they got matured all of a sudden. They showed a new kind of love and respect for me. It wasn't easy for me to watch them go to sleep in empty stomachs, specially the young one, but it helped us a lot as a family. Some invisible void that was there which I could never point to before was gone after that night.

The next day they woke up early and came right to the kitchen where I already had their breakfast ready. We all had our breakfast and as usual they left to school and I went to work. This even when I got home, I got a call from my older daughter's school teacher. She said that how my daughter explained to the class about what had happened in Sri Lanka and how she gave up her dinner the night before and how the entire class decided to skip lunch tomorrow for the Tamil people suffering in Sri Lanka. My eyes were watery and I was ready to break down into tears. Is this the beginning of a sign of hope for the lives of the Sri Lankan Tamils? Time will tell.