THAMILI FILM SYNOPSIS
This film is based on real life incidents of a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suicide bomber. The names of persons and places have been changed for obvious reasons. Hailing from the township of Dharmapuram, north of Kilinochchi in the Northern region of Sri Lanka Thamili is endowed with beauty. Her mother raises the three children in the family by engaging in cultivation and also by doing odd jobs for the sole purpose of providing education to her three daughters.
Thamili who had passed her G.C.E. Ordinary Level examination with flying colours is especially good in mathematics. Her only obsession is to somehow to help her sister and brother obtain higher education and lead a happy life with her mother. After school, she engages in home garden activities and also helps her mother.
(Her courage and commitment towards her family is portrayed through scenes of her assisting her 9 and 10 year old brother and sister in their studies under lamplight inside a dilapidated house, helping her mother in the garden etc.)
Unaware by Thamili, LTTE Intelligence cadres Yogi and Kumaran compile and submit a report on her to the area’s armed group leader Raju. Following this, Raju’s second in command Theepan and two LTTE cadres arrive while Thamili is on her way back after her A/L Exam and they block here path and abduct her.
Afterwards, she is detained in an LTTE camp and provided training. This is followed by her being used for armed confrontations against the Sri Lankan armed forces.
Every time she gets a chance to sleep, she thinks of her mother, brother and sister she left back at home. Though the incident of her shooting dead a soldier always haunts her subconscious, she always takes consolation by remembering the cover picture on one of her school books which depicts a soldier killing a child. This brings a ghost of a smile to her lips.
After engaging in several confrontations against the Sri Lankan security forces for a period of about 3 years, Thamili is made an area leader of the LTTE. She is by then 22 years of age.
When she, along with her comrades leave the dense forests they live in and arrive at a village, she sees a woman who is almost the same age as her mother, arrive at a boutique to buy her provisions. When this woman neares the boutique, Thamili notices the rest of the crowd making room for her and letting her do her purchases.
While the shopkeeper provides all her provisions free of charge, two others help her to carry the purchased items to her home.
Curious to know more about this woman, and the preferential treatment she gets Thamili asks from her leader for the reasons. Her leader explains that the woman is the mother of an LTTE suicide bomber who sacrificed her life for the creation of the state of Eelam and hence she is considered a heroine or a Maveerar Family member and provided all facilities. The LTTE has relayed to all villages and shopkeepers that this lady be provided the necessary needs in life.
Thamili begins to think about this while in her camp. She thinks that if she too could sacrifice her life, her brother and sister could lead a happier life without being conscripted by the LTTE.
Always deep in thought, she always tells her friends that she smells blood. Gradually her facial expressions change and become a face full of expectations.
One week later, she submits an application to become a LTTE suicide bomber.
LTTE leaders go through the applications in an area office. They consider Thamili’s past records against the security forces and from among some 150 applicants she is picked by them to be trained as a suicide bomber.
She is ordered by her leader to proceed to Vishvamadu in an LTTE cab. When she reaches Vishvamadu, the area leader hands her over to another leader. She does not show any expressions on her face, but heaves only a long sigh of hope. Her body turns tense and she clenches her fists.
Following this, Thamili is accommodated in a separate small house and not permitted communication with anyone, even the person who supplies her food.
(The film will show in detail a normal person being gradually transformed into as a suicide bomber in a ruthless way by the LTTE)
(Her actions and transformation into a hardcore suicide bomber is shown for about 20 minutes in the film.)
On completion of training, Thamili is taken to a different camp. She is issued a new identity under the name of Mohamed Fathima and instructed to await her departure to Colombo. She insists that she wants to go as soon as possible. This is due to her determination to go ahead.
However, the LTTE leader says that it is the organization that decides the date that she leaves to Colombo and not her. So she spends her time engaging in exercises and reading the life stories of suicide bombers.
One day she is ordered by the organization to proceed to Colombo. While on her way she is checked at the Omanthai checkpoint, where she innocently answers the questions posed to her by a soldier. A slight smile appears on her lips when she answers the questions.
All her answers were those forced into her brain during her training. She passes two checkpoints on her way to Colombo.
She reaches Colombo at around 6 pm. On arrival, a person who meets her hands over a mobile phone and departs. She is instructed to go to a luxury house in Colombo 7, where she settles down the next day.
She receives around 3 to 4 calls a day, all instructions regarding what she has to do.
Now Thamili poses as a high-class young woman. She wears denims and t-shirts, sometimes she wears dresses pretending to be a Muslim girl, moves about in a luxury vehicle, and has meals in places like the KFC etc. Before she leaves her residence she does not fail to place two cyanide capsules between her jaws inside her mouth as she has been trained to do.
However, after some time the Terrorist Investigation Division arrests the person, or her controller who brought her to Colombo. Examination of his phone reveals Thamili’s existence and a handsome officer is given in charge of tracking down and detaining her.
After sometime, another group of officers try to arrest her, and during this incident she bites her cyanide capsules. However, an officer who knows of the facts administers an antidote to counter the poison and her life is saved.
She is brought to the National Hospital in Colombo and the doctors say it is difficult to save her life. An onlooker says that she should be left to die as she had come to Colombo to kill many civilians.
Reacting to this statement, an officer who accompanies Thamili replies that although she is an enemy, brainwashed by the LTTE, the duty of any human is to save another life in distress because all are human beings irrespective of being friends or enemy.
While in her hospital bed Thamili tells the officers that she wants to see her beloved mother, brother and sister, only to be told that her brother and sister too had been taken forcibly by the LTTE and have been killed during the war.
The news shocks Thamili to the core and she bangs her head on the metal bars of her bed, which makes blood flow down her face.
(The dialogue of this film’s main character is only 8 minutes. The main emphasis of the rest of her behavior and transformation is shown through her body language and DTS sound implemented for story).
