A blindfolded woman, wearing a sari, places a conch shell on the ground. It might serve as a ritualistic trumpet or a reminder of a Sri Lankan beach towards the end of the country’s 26-year civil war – when tens of thousands of bodies lay scattered on its sand as though they had fallen from the sky.
She then dances slowly, sorrowfully, with precise mime and hand gestures to signal her pain. We soon learn this matriarch, Gowrie, had taken a vow many years earlier to wear the blindfold until her four children could be reunited, after her only son was swept away with the Tamil Tigers – a group the Sinhalese-controlled government branded terrorists.
