Ummath: A Novel of Community and Conflict

By Gita Subramanian

Spanning the three decades of the deadly Sri Lankan civil war, Ummath highlights the plight of women across communal and ethnic divides. Through the lives of three women, Thawakkul, Yoga and Theivanai - one a social activist, the other a Tamil Tiger forced into joining the movement as a child, and the third a disillusioned fighter for the Eelam - the novel lays bare the complex equations that ruled life in Sri Lankan society during and in the aftermath of the civil war. In Ummath, Sharmila Seyyid - once forced to live in exile for her outspoken, liberal views - interrogates Islamist fundamentalism, Tamil nationalism and Sri Lankan majoritarian chauvinism with her characteristic courage, honesty and sensitivity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper Perennial India
• Release date: Jul 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9789352779024

Gita Subramanian

Sharmila Seyyid is a writer, a social activist and a fearless critic of the injustices in society. She has two books of poems and this novel to her credit. Gita Subramanian, who took up translation after a long teaching career in Hong Kong, has published four translations of Tamil novels. In 2010, she won the Nalli Thisai Ettum award for the best Tamil to English translation.

Book preview

ONE

(I worship) only Him

Who created me, and He

Will certainly guide me

Al Qur’an Surat Az-Zukhruf (The Ornaments of Gold)

43 Verse 27

1

‘All your troubles are over, Akka! You have come to us!’

Kala was overwhelmed with pity for her elder sister who stood with the aid of a crutch on her one leg. Kala firmly believed that it was fate that determined everyone’s actions and that everything in the world moved in accordance with predestined patterns. It was fate’s inexorable march that had changed the course of her Akka Yoga’s life. Her heart refused to find any fault with Yoga and refused to consider even for moment that some wrongdoing on Yoga’s part could have caused her present pitiable state.

She kissed her sister on the cheek. Yoga smiled, her parched lips parting very slowly. Her face was dry and lacked animation. Her tired eyes, bereft of any radiance and brimming with tears, seemed to be struggling with the fear of uncertain times to come. Their noses red, the two sisters gazed at each other, struggling to reconcile each other’s present visage with the impression each had of the other imprinted on their minds a very long time ago when both had been very young…

The camphor that was lit in the aarthi plate flickered with an unsteady flame. Kala circled the plate around, vertically, thrice in front of Yoga’s face. A strange trepidation filled her as thoughts of the likely consequences of her Akka’s arrival flitted through her mind.

Meanwhile Pathma slowly carried in the bags that had been unloaded from the autorickshaw, barely noticing the loving welcome and the aarthi performed. Her hardened face betrayed no signs of emotion. Her prematurely aged body had lost its grace; the slightly bent back, emaciated body and wrinkled skin bore testimony to a life of hard work and poverty.

Kala’s dusky, sharp-featured face exuded an unaccustomed luminescence. Her Akka’s arrival had brought her such inexpressible joy that she was in a state of frenzy like a chick let out of its coop. There was only a gap of four years between Yoga and Kala. All through the years of their separation, whenever Kala thought of her Akka, she would grieve for her absence and pray. She had never imagined such an unlikely event taking place; that she would actually get to see the sister who had been lost to her as a young girl.

She helped Yoga as she struggled with her crutch to climb the steep step that led into the house. ‘Careful, Akka. You go in. I’ll be right back,’ and she dashed off.

She ran past the well and went to the fence beyond it. Craning her neck to look over this barrier, she shouted, ‘Hey, Senbagam! Yoga Akka is here!’

Despite her reservations about having her arrival announced to all and sundry, the dulcet sound of the name ‘Senbagam’ brought sweetness to Yoga’s heart.

She sat on the cot and looked around the room. The breeze seemed to be gently probing every nook and corner of the room. Her gaze went past the room through the window. The front yard had a patch of ankle-deep fine sand in which rows of little plants had been planted and tended to very carefully. The saplings in the courtyard, each within a protective circle of fibrous coconut husks with their smooth side on the outside, and the few flowering plants in mud pots scattered tastefully along the fencing, served to enhance the beauty of nature in an artless and simple manner. Even more beautiful was the area around the well, with its banana trees, some of them so laden with fruit that they leaned precariously. Strong, makeshift trestles had been placed beneath these trees to prop them up.

To Yoga, it felt like a whole other world. The stone house and the fencing around it were all new to her. All that she could remember was a clay-floored hut with a thatched roof. She noticed a chest-high fence of aesthetically woven palm-fronds encircling the house and the land around it. Green palm fronds had been unfurled with great care to ensure there were no rips and spread out to dry in the sun before being woven together. They looked like huge fans exquisitely arranged.

She was, however, not surprised that there was a stone house in what had once been an open space. With the maturity gained over the years she had learnt to understand and gracefully accept the inevitable changes wrought by the passage of time. There were no straight paths anywhere in the world; all through one’s life, one has to walk through twisted, tortuous trails.

She could neither accept nor deny the fact that she had returned to her birth place. Having imagined so many different outcomes and travelled through so many different places, she had arrived at the very spot that she had started from. Childhood memories tormented her. She recalled how she, Vathsala Akka, Kala and the three younger brothers would huddle together on the same thin mat and fall asleep.

Wavy, dry hair bereft of any oil, dirty clothes, round face, hollow cheeks with no flesh in them, straight nose, round eyes that seemed to lack interest in anything but still smiled, a small forehead.

Yoga weeds the fields with Amma; she gathers the sheaves of rice. Despite draining her congee to the dregs, scooping out the residue in the bowl with her fingers and sucking on them, and finally licking the bowl clean, she is still not sated. Amma raps her head with her knuckles; Yoga emerges from the bowl with a little congee sticking to the tip of her nose. Vathsala jeers at her, ‘Hey you! Look at your nose.’ Kala and the brothers laugh mockingly. Unwilling to relinquish any of her congee, Yoga rescues the drop on her nose with her finger and laps it up like it was ambrosia. When the torrential monsoons made food a scarcity, the luxury of such delicious congee was a rarity to be relished. Congee, essentially the salted broth of a fistful of soaked rice, was accompanied by a green chilli and a slice of onion, both raw. These added to tide of flavour upon one’s palate and the lip-smacking meal was ingested with great gusto and many appreciative sounds. Memories spread across her mind like water on glass.

She had returned home exhausted, and up there on the wall was a picture of her late father with a flower garland strung over it. Despite herself, her lips trembled.

‘Appa, your daughter who couldn’t even come for your funeral, is here … Look at my plight, Appa. I’m a cripple, standing here with a crutch. Do you see me, Appa?’

The last moments that she had spent with her Appa came back to her mind. With his face unshaven since a few months, his rough untrimmed beard covered his face. With an involuntary tic, his tired eyes, his sunken cheeks and his emaciated stick-like body, he had come to see her at the training camp. As soon as he saw his daughter with her thick luxuriant hair cropped and wearing a shirt and trousers, he beat his forehead with his palm. As it was a place that belonged to the rebel movement, he was unable to give full vent to his feelings; he sobbed quietly as if his hardened heart was about to burst with its suppressed feelings.

‘What have you done, child? It was for your protection that your mother left you in the house in town. How could you disappoint us all like this? Your Amma is wailing back at home, refusing food or water!’

That was the day when she realized that her father could cry. But as soon as the word ‘Amma’ had been uttered, her whole being filled with rage. ‘Amma! Don’t talk to me about her … It’s because of her that I’m in this state today. Appa, tell her that I will go to the battle-front and hopefully die soon. Even if I die, I don’t ever want to go back home. A mother is someone who protects her child come what may. Isn’t that how it should be? And as for you, in what way are you a good man…Is what you did to me fair?’

He felt as if heavy rain-bearing clouds were battering at his heart. He had always thought of her as a little girl. He was puzzled to see that she had learnt to talk like this. Every word of hers pricked him like a needle. Does she not realize that it was the family’s circumstances, reeling under insurmountable problems – when we could not manage anything – that Pathma took the decision and I went along with her? I never even imagined that it would lead to such disastrous consequences!

As Yoga had voluntarily joined the freedom fighters, the unit had permitted Subramaniyam, her father, to visit her. Youngsters who had been conscripted were translocated swiftly and often. They would be trained in places that were far away from their home towns.

Yoga came back to the present with a start and quickly wiped the tears from her eyes when Amma suddenly pushed open the door and entered. Though Amma had made an effort to wash off the grime and fatigue of the journey from her face, her face, still wet, looked sad and care-worn.

‘What are you doing here, child? This is Vathsala’s bedroom. Come away at once!’Pathma commanded bitterly, and hurried out.

Yoga had realized in Vavuniya that Amma’s anger had in no way abated. She had written several letters home, earlier, during her stint in the Pampaimadu camp. When four letters went unanswered, she told herself that her folks must have moved to a new home because of the war. Why, there was also the strong possibility that they had all been killed!

The answers to the question of what the next step in her life’s journey should be seemed to be totally obscured. The past had ebbed away swiftly and the present was baring its fangs in an ugly smile. Just when she had begun to think that the dark phase of her life was finally over and hope flickered for a better tomorrow, all possible doors leading to that utopia had slammed shut. No astrologer, political pundit or diviner could have foreseen such political upheavals that had changed the course of her life forever.

When her series of letters home had elicited no reply, she became the object of everybody’s pity at the Pampaimadu Rehabilitation Centre. Therefore, when she asked the authorities at the Centre if she could stay on there, they agreed immediately.

And then her fifth letter was answered.

Akka, we had all imagined that you had died in the war. When we got your letter, we were overjoyed. We are very eager to come and see you, but we need money to travel to Vavuniya. If you could tell us exactly when they will release you, we’ll come to pick you up.Please don’t feel sad that we haven’t come to see you. Amma does not have money. But she will somehow make arrangements to come and get you. Have courage…

Kala’s letter sowed new hope in her heart. She understood from the letter that the family was still as cursed by the scourge of poverty as it had been fifteen to twenty years ago. The thought wrung her heart. Although she had asked about her brothers and about Vathsala, her older sister, disappointingly, Kala had not mentioned them in her reply. Nevertheless, the thought of her mother coming to get her bolstered and boosted her morale immensely.

The letter or two that she had written after that went answered. At long last, when she had written providing the date of her release from the camp, Kala had written to assure her that her mother would be there.

Pathma arrived exactly on the date of her release from the Pampaimadu camp along with the parents and siblings of the other inmates. The families of the others who had been released embraced their loved ones and wept. They seemed to take pride in the evidence of the physical mutilation of their wards, perceiving them as symbols of the bravery and courage of these battle-scarred warriors in their attempt to protect their land.

Warriors. Brave warriors who had fought for the Eelam; who had been prepared to give their all, including their lives, for a free society. Warriors who had renounced their youth and all their natural desires in the process.

In the three-decade-long war, some had died the glorious death of the brave; some had died as suicide bombers who, having been taught not to worry about the consequences which led to the death of hundreds of ordinary people, had extinguished themselves with a bomb tied to their middle in order to kill one Sinhalese officer travelling in a bus or in some public place; some had turned to the other side as informers in the last stages of the war; some had been spirited away by the Sri Lankan Army and not heard of again; some had surrendered – to be tortured and let off; only the remaining few were given this opportunity for a new life.

Yoga thought her mother would also display some emotion to see her child, now crippled and battle-scarred. She thought wrong. Perhaps, she told herself, her letters had prepared Pathma for the worst. But every one of Pathma’s actions – signing the papers and getting her out – seemed mechanical and dispassionate.

Amma had lost the youth and beauty that she had possessed eighteen years ago and was completely transformed. In her youth she had been capable of lifting huge sacks of paddy. She had tirelessly planted the seedlings and weeded the fields. She would pound to flour huge amounts of rice at one go. She would thatch the roof herself. She shared the work in the fields and the garden with Subramaniyam. This was not the same Amma. She had shrunk; her face had darkened, tightened and hardened. She wanted to hug her mother and cry, but something stopped her.

If her mother could hold on to her anger after all those years, she too could not let go of her sense of injustice to herself and forget her mother’s role in her present predicament.

During the long trip from Vavuniya to Batticaloa, Pathma did not utter a single word, although she helped load and unload Yoga’s luggage. Yoga decided not to break her mother’s sullen silence and turned her attention elsewhere.

Her mother’s anger seemed justified, she thought. ‘After all, what I did affects me alone. But now I am going back to the very place I had totally rejected. Amma could well say You didn’t want us; why do you want to come back? But she didn’t reject me like that. She signed the discharge papers and is taking me back; I should console myself with that.’

All through the journey, Yoga had comforted herself with such thoughts.

Kala seated Senbagam in the veranda and came running in.

‘Senbagam is here, Akka. Come and talk to her!’

Yoga could not refuse Kala’s bright shining eyes and entreating hands that pulled her up. She came out of the room.

Senbagam had been waiting more eagerly to see her childhood friend than anyone in the family. She was both delighted and moved to see her.

When Yoga had run away, it was Senbagam who was the main target for everyone’s inquisitions.

It was not as if Yoga joined the Eelam Liberation Movement because she was swayed by their propaganda. Having neither the experience nor the maturity to comprehend such ideas, she had never considered it crucial for Tamils to have their own free state. The only thought in her mind at the time was that she wanted to die and felt that joining the Movement was suitably suicidal.

When she had met Senbagam in the town of Batticaloa, it was a most unexpected meeting at a most unexpected place and at the most unexpected time. Senbagam had told her that she had come to her uncle’s place in the town because the Movement was mobilizing a conscription drive and forcibly recruiting young people. Although Yoga had asked her several questions, she had no thought of joining up at that time.

‘Hey, Senbagam, I hear that the Movement is picking up little kids … are they made to fight in the battlefield?’

‘Come on, you idiot … take us for example. If we go to war we will not even last one battle! We’ll just die!’

The use of the words ‘we will just die’ was what eventually drew her to the Movement.

Mavadivempu was one of Batticaloa’s greenest villages with great natural beauty, and inhabited by simple, good people. Thick-trunked trees surrounded by a profusion of shrubs grew in the fertile soil. Luxuriantly blossoming trees murmured as their branches swayed in the breeze. Birds and squirrels chirruped from the undergrowth. The trees themselves were little townships for the little birds and beasts.

Yoga had been named Yogalakshmi, after the goddess of good fortune and wealth, for a reason. If the third-born is a girl-child, it was believed in these regions that the child would make every corner of their land yield gold. Pathma’s first child had been a son who had died when he was only seven weeks old. The second was a girl, Vathsala, and the third was Yogalakshmi.

However, fortune and wealth existed only in her name. In school, hunger had gnawed her insides to the extent that she was unable to concentrate on her studies and she even fainted from time to time. Whenever she passed out, Senbagam would rush home and fetch Pathma, to carry Yoga home.

None of her siblings attended school, and their parents never persuaded them to get an education. Amma and Appa would leave early in the morning to manually labour in the fields, struggling and perspiring in the heat through the day to return home only after dark. Their toil managed to generate only one meal a day for the family because they had six children. They had no time to worry about events in the world around them? Vathsala, as the eldest daughter, had taken over the responsibility for household chores. After the midday meal, Amma would go to the fields to work taking Appa his share of the food.

Their penury precluded the family from paying attention to Yoga’s grooming for school. She went to school barefooted, in a dirty uniform with her tangled hair left uncombed and unbraided. The school, however, accepted her with open arms. Yoga wanted to walk gracefully like Selvanayagam Teacher, books and umbrella in hand, her long braid undulating elegantly behind her; however, unlike Selvanayagam Teacher, she wanted to teach the children with gentle methods and affection.

Yoga Amma was invariably in a hissing rage whenever she was asked to carry Yoga home from school after another swoon brought on by starvation.

‘Who asked her to go to school? She is nothing but trouble and only makes extra work for me.’

However, Yoga was Subramaniyam’s favourite child. She was patient, guileless and kept to herself. She would put up with hunger without making a fuss, unlike his other offspring who tended to truculence. He also had the fond hope that she would eventually bring in the good fortune that had been foretold at her birth. He was aware that although Yoga was not fractious or competitive, she was strong-willed.

‘You are always scolding my little one for no reason at all. She goes to school because she likes to study. I don’t see anything wrong with that.’

‘Ah … Do you imagine our lives will improve if she wastes all her time at school? From now on, if she faints in school, I will not go and get her. You do that yourself.’

‘Agreed. I’ll take care of that. You take care of your own chores.’

After that incident, Yoga’s love for her father increased. He had understood her and in her mind, this created a profound respect for him. She thought he was like the great poet, Mahakavi Subramania Bharathy, who had sung, Run and play, little baby, you should never sit and idle away your time! Selvanayaga Teacher had taught them that Subramania Bharathy had been very liberal and emancipated, exactly like her father. If poverty had not had a stranglehold on their lives, she felt that he would have done more to support her literacy drive. Not long after that, her father gave her two twenty-paged single-ruled notebooks and a pencil. Until then she had been using notebooks that had been charitably donated to her by her teachers, and half-used pencils given to her by her classmates. Text books, uniforms and schooling were provided free of cost, which Yoga considered a personal boon to her.

With no word of appreciation of any sort from the rest of her family, Yoga managed to get through the seventh standard. One day the school teachers asked Yoga’s parents to come to the school.

‘Yoga is a good student, and with some encouragement, she will be an even better one, do you understand? She faints and falls very often in class only because she comes to school on an empty stomach. Her clothes are old and dirty. She is liable to develop an inferiority complex. We are concerned for her.’

Although Amma and Appa paid attention quietly and intently to this lecture from the school faculty, the advice was soon lost like a bit of fluff in the wind.

There were radical revolutions in the nation’s political and social structures and causing a sea-change of turbulence in the country. The path of ahimsa had yielded no results, they said, and the actions aimed at attaining desirable social outcomes began to take on increasingly violent forms which manifested in various parts of the country. Social emancipation and identity rights were claimed to be central to this atmosphere of struggle; the lives of ordinary citizens were thrown into turmoil and every stratum of society was plunged into chaos and misery. Deep fissures developed in the society.

For the first time, people had to experience the trauma of eviction. This was at its worst in the north-eastern parts of the country. The fierce war made people abandon their homes in fear, leaving behind their livestock and the land which they had tilled and ploughed. They were too weak and too innocent to oppose the war or the warmongers. They fled in panic carrying some of their meagre possessions on bullock carts or on foot, their children perched precariously on their shoulders. They crossed the wildernesses in a kind of mindless stampede with no clear thought in their heads; the dust in their wake creating a screen that obscured their retreat; they barely understood the political underpinnings of the anarchy. Along the way they traded some of their livestock or belongings for necessities. The war that devastated the country’s economy took its toll on Subramaniyam’s family too. Fleeing from their home meant that Yoga had to relinquish her schooling. They fled from Mavadivempu to Eralakkulam.

Displacement had become a part of their life. With no help at all, little Yoga’s greatest challenge in life was to somehow continue to study. Her one white school uniform grew grimier until it looked like a kitchen rag and then disintegrated. For a while, she went to school in the clothes she wore at home, which were several years old and worn threadbare as well.

Soon, the grip that poverty had on their lives began to tighten even further.

When she saw Senbagam on the veranda, the stiff upper lip that she had determinedly maintained when she met her Amma and her sisters dissolved into tears of self-pity. She sobbed on Senbagam’s shoulder. So Senbagam’s eyes misted over and her throat choked with emotion. Yoga’s lips whispered something. Their bond of friendship had remained as strong as ever.

‘How are you?’

Senbagam’s enquiry was a key that released the dam within her. A floodtide of stories that were enough to keep them occupied all through the night. She wasn’t sure where to begin and faltered as she started speaking with a smile.

‘I’m surprised I’m still alive. Although I yearned to come home, I now regret returning here. I feel strangely out of place.’

Senbagam empathized. She was aware of the furore Yoga’s imminent arrival had caused in the family. Although Senbagam didn’t mention it to Yoga, her each letter home caused havoc in the house and even though Pathma had been delighted at first to receive letters from a daughter she had believed to be dead, her euphoria had been short-lived.

Vathsala’s husband, Senthooran, and Subramaniyam had managed to support the entire extended family. He had achieved a certain position in the trading business. Two of Yoga’s brothers were working in Senthooran’s desktop publishing centre in Vantharumoolai Junction. The third brother looked after Senthooran’s grocery store in Siththandi. The brothers worked hard day and night for their brother-in-law.

As Senbagam spoke, a million questions arose in Yoga’s mind. Why had Kala written saying that Amma had no money to come and see her in Vavuniya when the brothers were working so hard and earning money? The picture that Senbagam drew seemed strangely at odds with Yoga’s own impression that the family had not managed to extricate itself from the claws of abject poverty.

‘Vathsala Akka is building a house in Vantharumoolai Junction. They say that this house is for Kala. Vathsala Akka goes there every day to oversee the building of the house, taking her children along with her. She comes back only after dark. Your brothers are now all grown-up and stay overnight in their shops. One sees them rarely.’

Senbagam updated her with all the latest developments in her family in detail.

‘I realize you don’t know Senthooran, your brother-in-law, personally and he is as yet a stranger to you. But the rest of the family consider him a part of the family and it’s because of him that the family is happy. You will have to understand that after your father died, he has become the head of the house. I’ll come and see you tomorrow and we can talk some more.’

Yoga sensed an underlying note of warning in Senbagam’s parting words and was reluctant to let her go.

‘Do you have to go now…’ like a little girl Yoga caught hold of Senbagam’s hands and pulled her back.

‘All you have to do is call my name, Yoga, and I will come running. There is so much more to talk about … but, do you know, I have two children. A boy and a girl. And my husband returns from work around this time. Tomorrow, I promise we will talk in detail and you can tell me all about your adventures,’ she said laughingly as she took her leave.

How come Senbagam stayed as vivacious as ever, Yoga wondered. She wondered if she had continued with her studies and regretted not having asked her anything about that. She promised herself that she would do so the next day.

The grip of poverty and the physical displacement that came with it had caused so many changes in her life that Yoga had lost contact with her friend Senbagam; Yoga feared that she had lost a precious friend. But Senbagam, after all these years, seemed just the same and gave her the same affection and love. Memories rose bitter-sweet from the depths of her mind: memories of their school’s banyan trees that grew wildly with drooping roots that competed with one another to reach the ground first, memories of running out of classrooms to swing from the hanging roots…

For Yoga, displacement meant not just moving from one place to another but dismemberment of every limb of the family tree, a negation of trust and belief that throws one into the dark abyss of loneliness where bitter resignation is the sole sustenance.

Displaced, she had been separated from her home, separated from her siblings, separated from all her relationships. It had pried her away from everything she knew, every source of comfort. It had taken her in an entirely different, and desolate direction.

2

The end of an armed conflict calls for a thorough study of its aftermath, a detailed review of its impact on various sections of the society and an assessment of their immediate needs.

A return to normalcy from such chaos is not easy to achieve. For a society ravaged by war to return to the path of prosperity and progress, first, a basic level of sustenance has to be provided to every individual. Only when measures of rehabilitation are responsive to what people want can any change be brought about in the condition of the people.

Working alone, an individual, a group of people, or even a government or non-government agency, cannot achieve much in a society after a war. That is something that should be undertaken by a cooperative effort for only then will it be possible to rehabilitate all those whose lives have been ruined by the war.

Thawakkul was a young woman who had the motivation and courage to seek to identify the problems and do what she could to help her war-ravaged country. She was engaged in establishing systems to help overcome the challenges faced by war widows, refugees, the physically challenged and other helpless people in order to restore their basic rights. Her focus now was Kokkadicholai of Batticaloa district, an underdeveloped area which had been devastated by the war.

The women there were all desperate, they kept repeating themselves, and some were only able to talk in gibberish. ‘I wonder why we escaped alive from that damned war. Now we have such insurmountable problems that will not let us hold our heads up with dignity.’

Malliha’s husband was a prisoner of war. She needed milk powder to feed her baby and food for her older children. She asked Thawakkul to help get her husband out of prison. ‘Surely, you must have good connections,’ she said.

‘The release of prisoners of war is a national issue … it will take time. This is not something that can be achieved by an individual or some organization,’ replied Thawakkul, shaking her head sadly. ‘I’ll not be able to make any promises on this issue. But I’ll look into your financial problems and see what can be done. I can help you start a business by which you can be self-employed.’ The question of the release of the prisoners of war preyed on her mind, however.

Thawakkul strongly believed that it is the common man who scripts the history of the world and has the strength to oppose the injustices perpetrated against him with courage along with the ability to rise up like a tsunami against even the strongest of powers. He can rebel and overthrow imperialists, corrupt officials and war-lords. Every human being is imbued with a deep revolutionary fervour and a country needs leaders who can awaken the desire to oppose injustice. A leadership that selflessly strives for change and wants to establish true unity and democracy can lead the country to victory.

The leadership needs to live amongst the people to appreciate the dimensions of their problems. It is only then that they can formulate theories and fashion methods that can be explained to the people and seek their participation in the implementation of the plans. A leadership that selflessly strives for change and leads them can solve people’s problems and unite them