Nagalingam Ethirveerasingam’s life intersects with both international sport and Sri Lanka’s political history. In 1958, on the day he won the country’s first Asian Games gold medal in Tokyo, communal violence was unfolding in Colombo. Representing Ceylon at the Olympic Games in Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956), he secured his place in the island’s athletic record while events at home marked a different trajectory.

Mohammed Yassin and his family were among the more than five thousand Muslim families expelled from the Jaffna peninsula by the Tamil Tigers in 1990. He recalls the day they were ordered to leave, the hurried journey south and the uncertainty that followed.

At 105 years old, Veerakathy was widely regarded as one of the oldest men in Jaffna. Born in 1906 in Velanai, he left as a child to work in Galle before returning in 1920 to farm tobacco and coconut. He married in 1930 and raised eight sons and four daughters. Six of his sons have since died. “I am still here,” he said, without emphasis.

Bala Tampoe led the Ceylon Mercantile Industrial and General Workers Union for more than fifty years. Born in Jaffna and trained as a lawyer, he moved through several professions before committing himself to the trade union movement. He spoke of strikes in terms of morale and discipline, drawing on military history as readily as on labour law.

Poet and writer Dominic Jeeva reflects on growing up under Jaffna’s caste system and explains why, despite its many injustices, he still proudly calls himself a Jaffna man.

Esan has driven passengers around Jaffna in his Morris Oxford for nearly twenty years. During the years of embargo and fuel scarcity, when many vehicles stood idle, his car remained on the road.After the mass displacement in 1995, he left Jaffna and returned in 2006. On his return, he found that few vehicles could run on the available fuel. The Morris could be adapted.

Sri Naguleswaram Kurrukkal, chief priest of the historic Naguleswaram temple at Keerimalai, reflects on the temple’s great festivals, the devastation of the surrounding area during the war, and the gradual return of pilgrims in recent years.

T. Arasanayagam, poet and English teacher, spoke about his childhood in Jaffna and his first encounter with what he later called “the other.” As a schoolboy he described crossing village boundaries — sometimes literally crawling under fences — before discovering that certain roads were not meant for him.He recalled a friendship with a boy named David that was quietly disrupted by the recognition of difference.

Dr Sivarajah is an expert in community medicine and a lecturer at the University of Jaffna. He reflects on the last thirty years of living in Jaffna and how the challenges keep him on the peninsula.

Sister Pushpam Gnanapragasam reflects on Jaffna identity, the arrival of French missionaries in the nineteenth century, and the role Catholic nuns played during the final months of the war.

Poet and teacher Somasundramoorthy Pathmanathan — known as “Sopa” — remembers a time when the baker in Jaffna was Sinhalese and the tailor was Muslim. He reflects on how war reshaped everyday life in the peninsula.

Jaffna’s Catholic bishop, Rt. Rev. Dr. Thomas Saundaranayagam, reflects on a time when the north and south of Sri Lanka were closely connected — through shared schools, travel and worship. He speaks about the ruptures that followed, and the role of the Church in advocating for truth and reconciliation.

At eighty-three, Mrs Subramanium continues to work as the personal assistant to the head of Uthayan, one of Jaffna’s most widely read newspapers. While her sisters emigrated to London and Canada as conflict intensified, she chose to remain. Despite constant invitations to join her family abroad, she refuses to leave Jaffna, her work, or the life she has shaped around what she calls simplicity.