Try flipping direction, road and memory

About a week ago I wondered if people see the trees that stood on the roads that tke them from here to there, to somewhere and nowhere.  Renton de Alwis had a thought-provoking response.

‘Have you walked the same road in the opposite direction? You will be surprised how different it feels and looks. I mean what is around and how we perceive it. It is a pity that in life, most of us do not get that opportunity.’

 

Take ‘road’ as metaphor and it offers us all kinds of maps to pour over.  Take it literally and it still makes for fascinating journeys.  It made me think of a little trick we used to do now and then as children.  Bend down with legs slightly apart and look at the world from other side, i.e. from between the legs.  It is an upside down world we get, but it is not exactly like what you get when you turn a photograph 180 degrees.  I tried this after a long time and was, as always, amazed.  I took a lesson: change point of viewing, lens or frame and the same place yields a different universe. 

 

Human beings like predictability. They do like to play the odds now and then, being creatures of hope, but by and large they operate best in known circumstances even if the known-picture is not to their liking.  Fracture the picture a little and it jars the senses but we all do our best to adapt to changed circumstances. 

 

Practically speaking this is not such a bad thing, i.e. this inherently conservative strain in the human genetic make-up. On the other hand, it is because some people chose to fracture frame and continue to play with edge and line that we moved from one technological age to another, one philosophical era to another.  Someone, somewhere, must have at some time seen a circular form and been inspired to invent the wheel, for example.  It doesn’t harm to flip things around now and then. 

 

Leonardo DiCaprio, about ten years ago, did a number on the paparazzi that made me laugh my guts out when I read about it. He turned around and gave chase.  I am not sure if he was carrying a camera himself, but if he did it would have been really funny.  He observed that the paparazzi were taken aback and were totally confused: ‘I flipped the script on them!’ 

 

‘The grape is made of wine,’ Eduardo Galeano tells us.  Years after reading that line, in an apartment in New York City, I was questioning the mother of an old friend, Ayca Cubukcu about the ‘Turkish breakfast’ she had fixed for us.  ‘What are these leaves?’ I asked, pointing to some delicacy whose name I cannot remember.  She thought for a while.  She was not fluent in English. She said after a moment, ‘wine leaves’.  Meaning, ‘grape’.  The grape is made of wine, she was essentially reiterating.  And orange made of Fanta, I should add, for one day I saw an orange seller in Kandy doing the rounds on the buses parked in the main stand, ‘fanta wage, fanta wage’ (like Fanta).  Disturbing, yes, but still so very true.

 

I walked back, as Renton suggested.  On real roads, i.e. roads that are marked on one-inch maps.  On other avenues. Those of recollection for example.  Books and continents that reside within me, some happily and some against their better judgment.  People too. Those who walked through me, those I walked through and those who were travel mates for a few kilometers, a few dreams and songs.  I walked with and without them, back to a different time, a time no less innocent, no less vile but which the dictates of nostalgia require us to describe as being somehow more quaint. 

 

1973.  Grade 3.  The morning trek from gate to class took me on a particular route, for an entire year.  The route took me past the Milk Bar and then to building beyond which was the tennis court.  I had two options.  Skirt the building on the left or the right. I always took the left because it felt shorter.  Then there was the post 1.30 pm walk/run back to the gate.  I had to get past the aforementioned building. I always took the other route, from that end again the left. Felt ‘shorter’.  I never could figure out why things happened this way. 

 

Walking back gives us trees in new shape and colour, even if the time of return is the same as time of departure. It is like standing on one’s head under a tree and looking at the leaves of a tree, I like to think. Or simply rolling out a mat, stretching out on it and looking at the sky.  It gives a 360 degree span that standing or sitting will not deliver.  I walked to Horton Plains, December 1987.  Tents by a stream.  Good friends.  Determined not to sight-see, we just lazed around.  Lying on the grass, the sky seemed huge.  Bigger than before.  At dawn, mid afternoon and night.   Poya day. Well, Poya ‘night’.  Clear sky.  Shooting star and constellation, dirty jokes and contentment.  Perspective is what I got.  How small we are. How insignificant.

 

Walking back to a different time, different decades, different loves, different pregnancies of dream and conviction, ideological non-negotiable that is now remembered with smile and indulgence when encountered in others, I am not sure if I have come far, stayed where I always was or if I’ve only gone back (which is not necessarily ‘bad’ by the way).  The pebbles I am seeing now were of different colour and shape from what they were when I passed them going in the opposite direction years ago. 

 

I met several people called Malinda Seneviratne. Some I remembered and even liked, some I just can’t stand and they, in fact, appeared disgusted seeing me, and some were quite unrecognizable and looked at me as though I was a complete stranger.

 

It is good to walk. And roads are good too, regardless of what direction we go.  The piece on roads and trees prompted other responses too. This, apart from Renton’s, also made me pause.  A poem, authored by my father Gamini Seneviratne , appearing in the Navasilu years and years ago. 

Roads

People down the road

go to and fro

carrying things. Roads take them

places, that they do.

The way they fetch

their grain, carry their sick,

make the roads.  Highways grow,

and rivers bend, to all the land they work.

In the old days the roads went

only to places where

people must go or perish

Now travel is

an industry, they must keep

moving or it will sicken, people cease

to come cease to go and on the rocks

the tar will loose its hold, once more the grass

will thicken of its own

free will and fill up the cavities so

that roads can grow,

Yes, the grass was slow,

travel takes us now much faster

than we need to go from here

to the hereafter

missing signposts all the way.

Where the buck stops ends

the road.

Not easy, this matter of getting to a point when one realizes that the buck, the road and the stopping are all resident within; that anywhere is nowhere and vice versa.   Walking is good exercise, though. For legs. For eyes. For heart.  Happy journeys!

*first published in the Daily News in July 2010

A note on a ‘labyrinthed’ man*

In February 2010, not too long after Mahinda Rajapaksa was re-elected President, I pointed out in an article titled ‘Observations on the “labyrinthing” of Sarath Fonseka’ that men and women who have the potential to be great leaders suffer great falls because they lack omniscient eye, are humanly frail, are often blinded by ambition and sometimes too complacent on account of inflated sense of self-importance. Humpty, I noted, cannot be put together again regardless of the best efforts of all the king’s horses and men. 

Today we have Fonseka literally in a labyrinth.  Quite apart from the fact that the relevant horses and man cannot pull him out, it is doubly tragic that they are not even interested in getting him out. Oh yes, they make the noises, put up posters, organizer poorly attended picketing campaigns and pass around a petition for signatures, but two things stand out: a clear lack of enthusiasm and political skill. 

From Day 1, i.e. when Fonseka declared that he would contest it was clear he would lose. Only the politically naïve and mathematically challenged of the pundits attempting prediction could conclude otherwise. It is one thing to be confident of victory and quite another to believe one’s own frilled propaganda.  Of his key allies, the JVP stood to gain by being part of a visible campaign.  Had they put forward a candidate the true strength of the party would have been revealed.  Tagging on to Fonseka in the Parliamentary Elections saved some blushes but only just.  Ranil had to pull out of an election he knew he would lose.  Fonseka’s ambition proved to be a convenience. 

That was then. What now?  The JVP has a slogan. The UNP too.  Consider a different scenario. Imagine a Fonseka sans litigation headaches.  Who would need tons of panadol?  Some might think ‘Mahinda Rajapaksa’ and I have no doubt that the President would feel a few degrees more insecure than he does right now.  Fonseka, though, would be a bigger headache to the JVP and to Ranil Wickremesinghe.  A free Fonseka would dwarf the likes of Tilvin Silva and Anura Kumara Dissanayake into specks of dust. A free Fonseka might even cause disgruntled elements in the UNP to salivate if they were to envision him as party leader.  Fonseka, if he played his cards correct, might have even taken over that party, not because he is a better democrat than Ranil but precisely because he is not and this fact is appreciated by the party’s rank and file (regardless of rhetoric to the contrary). 

Today, the JVP and Ranil have some tidbits to munch on while Fonseka has to put up with rice and pol sambola.  Rajapaksa has the cake so to speak.  And of course the icing. 

Back in February I wrote that Fonseka was a victim of the labyrinth that he willingly and naively got people like Mangala Samaraweera to build for him.  He’ll note that the cheer-leaders are not sharing the hard cement of prison with him.  He’ll note that the option-less JVP got a slogan and that they got an extra seat courtesy their hero’s incarceration. No qualms about that, Fonseka will note. 

Fonseka, given ambition, inflated self-worth, political naiveté, political developments beyond his control, the play of political interest by other stakeholders etc., finds himself in a labyrinth today.  He cuts a sorry figure, not because of his plight, but the fact that he’s as much to blame as is the vindictiveness perhaps of his detractors.  It is time that he realizes that he has no friends, and certainly not in the JPV and UNP. 

It is easy to blame Fonseka and brush it all off as ‘serves him right’.  Indeed, a strong case can be made for such a position.  While granting that a hands-tied Fonseka cannot make Mahinda Rajapaksa too unhappy, it is important to understand that the regime has to factor in Fonseka’s mean-spirited, utterly treacherous and patently irresponsible ways.  He has been flipflopping so much about the white-flags story that no government tasked with safeguarding a nation’s sovereignty could do anything less than ensuring he be kept quiet. No, not because they want the truth suppressed, but because they cannot trust him to be honest.  He can lie in order to exact revenge for perceived wrongs and has proved he is not above putting vengeance above nation.  And he’s not Private Fonseka, he’s the former Army Commander.  Even a lie from a mouth that big can have disastrous consequence for nation and citizen. 

All this is irrelevant though when placed in the context of the overall framework of the law.  Laws should not be broken or twisted and principles should not be selectively applied even in the best interest of the country because it creates bad precedent.  Regardless of the ‘necessity’ element, there is clear ill-will in the execution of proceedings against Fonseka and it does not matter whether the man intended to slaughter the Rajapaksas and their friends within 24 hours of being elected President (if that had happened of course). 

Fonseka, in his labyrinth, doesn’t have many friends or options.  Assuming the hard-to-believe ‘innocence’ of the man, Fonseka does have one friend. Himself. He has one option: trusting no one and transforming himself into a prisoner of conscience and wisdom.  It will be hard.  There might be little or no return, certainly not in a politically meaningful sense.  As of now he has some sympathy but given his ways this is not the kind of pity that translates into votes. The identities and track records of his comrades-at-arms (former) do not help either.  He has to recover self.  Somehow.  He has to meditate on his errors.  Courage and tenacity he has and this is good.  Wisdom, penitence and humility; these he will have to acquire. 

*This was first published in October, 2010 in the Daily Mirror. Re-posting, to mark Sarath Fonseka completing two years behind bars.

Have you seen the trees that stood on the road that takes you to bliss?

There are moments when we have eyes and moments when we are blind.   There are things we pass everyday on our way to school or work but we don’t notice. There are books that stare us in the face from bookshelf and yesterday but we don’t notice their names.  There are people who walk in and out of our lives whose names we do not know, and people through whose lives, hearts, minds and blood streams we travel without ever asking where they live, who they are or even if they mind. 

It is random. All so very random.  There is someone who saw me 19 years ago and remembered my face. I didn’t see her.  I didn’t know that she had seen me so many years ago or that she had remembered face and moment when I saw her about 4 years ago.  On that occasion, she did not see me.  And then a year ago, a flash, a moment, a click and an intersection. All random, All so very random. We say, though, ‘inevitable’.  I am not sure it is, although it is romantic to think that way, but that doesn’t matter at all. 

Flip it a bit and the reverse of the embroidery is as fascinating.  We pass loveliness all the time and we don’t see flaw, partly because we like to indulge the notion of perfection or are terrified to think acknowledge blemish.  But like how auspicious intersections of time, space, thought and human social intercourse reveals to us magic that we passed by day in and day out through moment and century without noticing, so too these flaws break out and raise their hands, announcing presence: ‘I am here, now what?’ 

Life can never be the same again once this happens.  Until the next flaw rises to the occasion, the next perfection, the magical something that we missed everyday until that one day when we got one minute late or arrived one minute early or was at the wrong place and the wrong time.  It is not just about human relationships, encounters, intersections, convergences, fractures etc., it can be about anything. A neglected garden.  A tree that you didn’t see until it shed all its leaves or when the first leaves pop out in the most tender green after the long drought ends.  A school wall that got a new coat of paint.

It can take the form of absence too.  The tree you didn’t notice until it was cut so that space could be obtained to put up a hoarding (outside the Dutch Burgher Union, for example).  The smile of a person who is not longer here to smile. The tear that didn’t move you in the eye that is forever closed.  The child whose request you ignored but you cannot attend to now because she is no longer child.  Such things appear from nowhere.  At the strangest places and at the most unexpected of times. 

Last night, that’s the night of July 7, 2010, I was on the land-side of Galle Road, between the Savoy and the Wellawatte Junction, waiting for my friend Jayanath Bodahandi, who had run across to the bank to withdraw some money.  Two things happened. First, I remembered being sent to banks to cash cheques written by my mother and sometimes by my father. Tokens. Waiting. Two hour chores that take just a few minutes now. We forget the inconveniences that conveniences replace.  Like the long queues of the ration-days of the 70s. Like the every-moment anxieties before the LTTE was defeated.

We forget, I realized, waiting for Bodhi, the trees we cut so that we can build a road that gets us from here to there and to nowhere and everywhere faster so that we can do something or everything, anything or nothing.  We don’t see the trees that stood on the roads we walk.  We don’t see the teachers who gave us words and thoughts and skills and ways of engaging.  We don’t see our parents when we look at ourselves in the mirror and we don’t see ourselves in our children or vice versa. We have seeing moments that are myopic and ‘blindnesses’ that illuminate.

I was waiting for Bodhi for a long time. I noticed a man seated on the pavement, his back against a wall.  ‘Mendicant’ I read.  I saw immediately all the beggars who’ve been mysteriously murdered over the past few months. I saw this middle-aged, emaciated man, scratching his matted hair, one leg raised and shaking uncontrollably.  I remembered amputees and how they are said to suffer terribly from the itch from the limb-part that’ gone forever.  I remembered that I have two feet. 

I remembered a line from Simon Navagaththegama’s ‘Sansaara aaranyaye dadayakkaraya (The Hunter in the Wilderness of Sansara).  Simon was describing place. The Mullegama Gal Kanda and the jungle that surrounded it.  It was jungle, he wrote. Then the jungle was ‘covered’ he said by civilization.  Then, yet again, civilization was re-covered by the forest. Time passes. Things immortal get obliterated. We all pass on although we are all convinced that passing-on moment is not going to arrive today. 

What is the name of the book that helped shape notions of good and bad and distinguishing lines?  No, not religious books.  Story book. I remembered Lassana Vasilissa (Vasilissa the Beautiful).  I remembered the chess game that I was winning but lost and all the lessons I’ve learnt from things that didn’t arrive, couldn’t arrive and were pushed aside in my ignorance and arrogance. 

I asked if I should look more carefully at what’s around me.  I realized this is silly.  Things have a logic of their own and sometimes will not visit just because we send invitation.  We have ‘eyes’ at particular times, not a moment before and not a moment after.  We could, theoretically obtain something on account of striving, but there will always be something else that we will forego as a result.

Right now I am drinking a cup of tea.  I am seeing tea leaf and bead of sweat. I am seeing a forest that existed and is not gone and the forest that will someday recover its traditional homeland or else the desert that will arrive to punish us for our greed and arrogance. 

Moments. Interesting things. They make us see things. Even when our eyes are closed.

A note on smart-ass devolutionists

When they called it ‘separatism’ is sounded like a cuss-word.  Separatists took time to get smart.  Perhaps it would be more correct to say it took them a long time to recover smartness.  S.J.V. Chelvanayakam hit the correct idea when he said it was possible to extract anything from the Sinhalese as long as it is done slowly, an idea he captured in the pithy ‘A little now, more later’. 

Leaving aside the notion that whoever did the ‘taking’ would be taking from all Sri Lankans and not just the Sinhalese, the slogan only pushed separatism to embrace terrorism while it rubbed the Sinhalese majority quite the wrong way.  Had Chelva thought but not said, separatism may have benefitted, but chauvinists and land-thieves often trip over themselves. G.G. Ponnambalam’s ‘Fifty-fifty’ for a little lover 10% of the population may have been the product of greed gone crazy but it also framed the dimensions of aspirations for more than half a century.  By 1976, Chelva himself lost his way, the Vadukoddai Resolution being nothing less than a go-for-broke adventure that wanted it all; not power-sharing but land and coast grabbing.  Blood-letting was the unscripted inevitable.  Close to a hundred thousand lives were lost. 

When the LTTE was in fully cry Tamil moderates (so-called) either out of fear or awe or outright salutation went gear-down on devolution.  The statements of the ‘moderates’, both individuals and parties (in coalition and isolation) make for a symptomatic reading on this aspect.  The TNA’s election manifestoes of 2001, 2004 and 2010 would do in fact.  Post-LTTE, devolution has been resurrected out of consolation-need more than anything else, one might argue, if not for Chelva’s Action Plan of incremental construction of Eelam. 

The 13^th Amendment’s most important contribution to the Eelam cause has been its utility as reference point. India fostered terrorism in Sri Lanka. India gave refuge, armed, trained and funded terrorism.  India took some sparks poured gallons and gallons of fuel, whipped up a roaring fire and then brought fire-size down (for a while) and now insists that where the fire is now is foundation-point for resolution. No mention now of what it is that is sought to be resolved.  No talk either of the fact that foundation-point is still a fire that anyone including India, Tamil Nadu, Tamil and Sinhala chauvinism included can add fuel to. 

Today’s Prescriber is undoubtedly India.  Today’s prescription-approvers are the Chelva-Tamils and wooly-headed Marxist-Leninists who are in a permanent state of denial about all that being passé.  Other approvers include anti-Buddhist heirs of the Colonial encounter who are smarter than their 16^th-20^th Century ideological and political forefathers.  Their logic seems to be based on the notion that if you rob from the Sinhalese it is the Buddhists who lose the most due to the sheer numbers.  They are smart, because they are not running around burning temples in the way the Portuguese did or extracting conversion through the carrot of privilege and the skewing of institution and process against Buddhists.  If you have any doubts about this, just check who the most vociferous approvers are, their ethnic identities, their ideological preferences and their faiths. 

The smartest of course are those who say without saying.  There are, for example, those who take ethnic identity and religious faith out of the equation and talk ‘development’.  They know that the Indian Thesis crumbles in the fact of history, geography and demography.  The history that is relevant to the discourse has always been that associated with the claims pertaining to traditional-homelands.  Those who are devolution-smart talk therefore about a history of relative self-sufficiency and administrative decentralization which they conveniently argue indicate that power-devolution was always with us and indeed made us. 

Anyone who has studied the extensive and intricate hydraulic system of this land as well as laws about resource exploitation and allocation would understand that while there were times of division, invasion and even anarchy, for the most part there was centralized control and decision-making.  Had it been otherwise, there wouldn’t have been an anicut built in Minipe.  We wouldn’t have the Yoda Ela or the Jaya Ganga.  Kings would not have employed large quantities of resources to build large irrigation structures, temples or places of learning in places far away from the capital.  Rivers would not have been diverted through a series of anicuts. Such schemes were not built subsequent isolated communities conferring with neighbours about how best to use the water flowing down a river. 

True, there is a vast mismatch of resource-allocation today. Certain things don’t get done.  The devolution-smart say triumphantly that in a devolved polity things would get done.  A decentralized administrative structure would suffice in most instances, but they don’t want to admit this.  Neither do they acknowledge the fact that devolution would not have given resource-poor areas the kind of access to education that centralized decision-making has.  There is also remarkable silence about the bridges, reservoirs, hospitals and other infrastructural facilities and services that would have remained distant dreams had it not been for centralized decision-making if not for anything the sheer lack of resources and other necessary capacities.  Nothing is said either of the fact that populations are not static, that they move, that we’ve moved a fair distance from (relatively) self-sufficient village-units, or that aspirations have spilled out of the idyllic ‘village’ and perhaps will never be containable in those territorial dimensions again. 

What is needed is an overhauling of the entire governance structure and a streamlining of institutional mechanisms and processes to encourage enlightened decision-making.  That this is an uphill task is used as logic for devolution.  That’s being lazy and indeed irresponsible for there are no short cuts to peace and wholesome citizenship.  In this case, any kind of devolution that takes current provincial boundaries as given (never mind their artificiality and pernicious association with homeland-claim – a convenient exaggeration of existing demographic patterns) will etch in such hard lines the Eelamist positions on the Sri Lankan political landscape that it would in effect transform into irreversible fact. 

We can do better.  We must.

[first published in the Daily Mirror, July 5, 2011]

Here’s some loooooooong copy Krishna

In April 2004, having quit my job at the Sunday Island, I began working as a part time copywriter at Phoenix Advertising.  That’s how I met Krishna Iyer. 

Krishna, a Creative Director, was from India, knowing that I used to work in newspapers, gave me an assignment one day.  He said ‘You like to write so here’s something you can do.  I want you to write long copy’.  I didn’t know what ‘long copy’ was, at least not in advertising terms.  It was for Singer sewing machines.  I remember writing ‘long copy’ and Krishna telling me ‘what is this?’ in a half-annoyed tone.  My copy was flowery and contained very little information.  Krishna taught me how to write long copy. 

Krishna left Phoenix a few months later and returned a few months ago as the Executive Creative Director.  He explained, ‘I love Phoenix man, so when boss called me I jumped at the opportunity’.  ‘Why did you leave?’ I asked and he said ‘IDD calls were too expensive man!’ 

Then I remembered.  Krishna got married not long before he left Phoenix.  I distinctly remember him designing the wedding invitation card.  It was a simple and elegant.  Two names:  Krishna and Radha. The reference was of course to the God and his consort.  The twist was what made it memorable.  ‘Radha’ was crossed off and above it was inscribed the name of ‘The Beloved’, Gayathri. 

Krishna gave me a lift a few months ago. That was when I told him that I got a regular job, i.e. as Editor of ‘The Nation’.  ‘Lovely man!  Let me know if you need any help with photography; I studied photography in London’.  I told him that I would be reserving an entire page for photography and invited him to contribute a photo essay. He was thrilled. I also told him that I planned to redesign the paper. ‘Please…please let me do it.  It’s a dream.  I studied design and always wanted to design a newspaper.’  And here we are today with a redesigned newspaper (along with a photo essay by Krishna)!

Krishna worked long hours with typefaces and spaces, colours and colour combinations, shapes and lines, without once neglecting his work at Phoenix.  It was not difficult to understand the strain, but what amazed me throughout the process was the dedication of the man, the meticulous attention to detail and the passion that drove him to ‘get it right’.  Trying to get it perfect even as we did our best to meet deadlines was tough and at times frustrating.  It was all new in many ways.  Krishna not only broke the design mould but broke the moulds of familiarity, custom and comfort.  We are still learning. ‘Teething’, if you will.  We are not exactly bawling, but there were certainly many wtf moments for some of us.  And for Krishna too, I am sure, although he’s patient and understanding and does a decent job of hiding his frustrations. 

Anyway, it is all out now; a work in progress, perhaps, but certainly showing both ‘work’ and ‘progress’.  And at this moment when we are almost ‘all done’, I remembered something from a long time ago. 

I would come early to Phoenix, often before anyone else.  Krishna walked in, went to his desk and sat down.  Then he brought his hands together and worshipped the computer.  I doubt he considered an Apple machine to be some kind of deity, but the act was no different to a farmer showing veneration to his implements, especially the mammoty.  There is humility in the act. There is acknowledgment of dependency.  I believe it comes from a decision to interact with the world in its biotic and abiotic entirety in a particular way and moreover helps shape the ways in which one communicates with one’s fellow creatures. 

There’s a thing called work ethic and then there is passion. Together they are potent.  Add humility and skill and we get something special.  Today, that ‘something special’ is actually a ‘special someone’.  Krishna Iyer.   Deserving better ‘long copy’ than this certainly but a victim of his own guidelines regarding length.   On the other hand, maybe if I made this longer, it would take away value.  Maybe it is ‘just right’ and if that is the case, then Krishna himself is the man who should be thanked. 

Got to stop now. Reaching word limit.  Thank you man.

[Published in 'The Nation', February 4, 2012] 

‘Get lost’ around the corner for the TNA

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is making demands from the Government.  Seeking betterment is legitimate in a democracy.  There’s nothing wrong in wanting the moon.  Proposal must match grievance, however, aspirations should be reasonable and practical realities cannot be wished away. 

First of all, there is the issue of territory and relevant boundaries.  Arbitrarily drawn, the provincial boundaries make for claims that are ill-supported by history and demography.  Tamil Chauvinism has always been thin on fact, thick on myth and fidgety when it comes to substantiation and in drawing a solid line between grievance and proposal.  More than half the Tamils live outside the North and East.  Vast swathes of land in the East happen to be traditional Sinhala villages and this is discounting ‘colonization’.  The TNA’s one time lord and master, Velupillai Prabhakaran ethnically cleansed the Jaffna Peninsula of Sinhalese and Muslims.  The archaeological evidence rebels against exclusive homeland claims while place names and their Tamil corruption further compromise the Tamil chauvinistic narrative. 

And yet the TNA insists that the Government must give into its demands before that party agrees to submit names to the Parliamentary Select Committee set up to hammer out a lasting solution to ‘the problem’.  The TNA first demanded the devolution of land and police powers and now wants fiscal powers to be added to the equation. 

The TNA is not negotiating with the Government but with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the major partner in the ruling UPFA coalition.  There’s nothing wrong in two political parties to come to agreement on any issue, but the SLFP cannot promise on behalf of the UPFA or the Government. 

The TNA polled 233,190 votes at the last General Election (2.9%).  The UPFA obtained 4,846,388 (60.33%).  With less than 3% representational power, the TNA is essentially asking for racist control of one third the land mass and more than half the coastline.  Indeed, even if one were to put aside the myth-mongering with respect to the North and East, what this less-than-three-percent bunch is determined to chart the political future of the entire country.  Nothing wrong in wanting, but there is thing called sense of proportion.   

What is most galling about the TNA’s chauvinistic posturing is the utter lack of logic in the demand.  The TNA proposes ‘solution’ as a non-negotiable precondition to sitting in the PSC.  Now let’s assume the SLFP agrees.  That’s a two-party agreement.  If they do agree, and since the SLFP is the major party in the coalition, then why bother wasting time with a PSC?  In effect the TNA, even as it says that it has not rejected the option of thrashing things out in the PSC, it has rejected the idea.  

Here are some more numbers that tell a story.  The UPFA secured 144 out of the 225 seats (64%) and has since won over enough MPs to have a two-thirds majority in Parliament.  The TNA has 14 seats (6.2%).  The composition of the PSC gives the UPFA only a little more than a 50% share of representational voice. 

This country doesn’t belong to the SLFP or the TNA.  If any changes in the institutional arrangement are required, such proposals have to be debated in and approved by the Parliament.  Proposals hammered out at a PSC made of all political parties has far greater chance of translating into a legislated reality than agreements  between two political parties. 

The TNA needs to understand where cart and horse should be, relative to one another.  Today, the TNA is using the same pernicious ruse adopted by pro-LTTE operators pretending to be peace-makers.  Having determined that federalism (if not secession) is the non-negotiable and only ‘solution’, they proposed dialogue to negotiate ‘settlement’.  Dialogue must include consideration of all claims pertaining to grievances and all aspirations (located within realistic frames).  Positing end-point as starting point smacks of political brinkmanship. 

There’s only one thing that the TNA needs to understand: what Prabhakaran could not secure in 30 years of terrorism, his yes-boys will not get on a silver platter.  The TNA’s insistence of walking the chauvinist path is likely to test the patience of Sinhalese who have had enough of myth-mongering and wails whose volume is not consistent with nature of wound. 

The TNA can walk the world and state their lie as loud as it wants.  Sooner or later it will meet a person called ‘The Vast Majorty’ and that will be on Sri Lankan soil.  I won’t be surprised if that individual will look the TNA in the eye and say ‘Enough!’   ‘Get lost’ is around the corner, the TNA should take note.

[Published in 'The Nation' of February 4, 2012]