JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — At , the sun slowly appears like a golden globe through the mist-shrouded landscape in Jaffna, Sri Lanka’s northernmost peninsula, just across the Palk Strait from India. Home to a large Tamil community, Jaffna city, which gives the peninsula its name, throbs with life amid sarong-wearing sherbet salesmen hawking drinks and wholesale fish markets auctioning the day’s catch.
Outside the town lie swaths of golden rice fields dotted with swaying fan palms, long stretches of marsh and occasional wind farms twirling in the early morning breeze.