A night in war time …
Earlier today, a friend sent me an email saying he was reading Dr Rajan Hoole’s “Sri Lanka: The Arrogance of Power“. Michael gives a brief summary of the book, which I won’t go in to, and concludes the message with a poem, suggesting that “sometimes a poem in a few lines can express what a 1000 page treatise never can”.
The poem is by a Miss Sivaramani Sivanandan, which can be found reproduced in the book.
This is what Poole wrote about the poet in his forward to the book:
The Tamil people would become liberated only when there is freedom for the creative use of the energies of their men and women. The best have been pushed into a frustrating life of dissidence. Its effects on a sensitive mind can be seen in the despairing poems of Miss. Sivaramani Sivanandan who was finally driven to suicide.
I found the poem powerful and I’ve cut and pasted it here, from the email I received this morning:
A night in war time
by Sivaramani Sivanandan
A burst of gun fire
Shatters the stillness
Of a star filled sky
Destroying
The meaning
Of children’s stories
In the little
That is left
Of day
They forget to make chariots
Of palmyrah huts
And play kittithatu
They learn
to shut the cadjan fence
on time
and differtiate between
barking of dogs,
not to question
and be silent
when questions possess
no answers
they learned all this
like sheep
They tear off
The wings of insects
Make guns
From sticks and logs
And kill friends
Imagining them enemies
These are the games
Our children play
In the long night of war
Palsied by terror
Have our children grown
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Excerpt from the Martin Ennals Award (MEA) acceptance speech by Dr. Rajan Hoole. MEA website can be found at: http://www.martinennalsaward.org/
“We thus have the picture that while the LTTE continued immovable at its
habitual worst, the State too showed no serious intention of moving away
from the debilitating status quo that had kept this nation of promise a
stunted object of derision for five decades. Whenever we saw a humane and
enlightened approach by some military officers, we documented these so
that these exemplars would shine a few lights in unmitigated darkness and
a catalyst for reform and re-evaluation. Although we are aware of the
institutional nature of the State, during the two decades of war, when
people were many times left at the mercy of military officers by
deliberate actions by the LTTE inviting the Army to massacre for the
benefit of its propaganda, we saw these exceptions in the worst of times
as important.
After more than three decades of conflict, the country still continues to
bleed. Democratic institutions are fracturing beyond a point of repair,
while the leaders are blinded by the arrogance of power. Their short term
political interest helps the LTTE to thrust and hold the Tamil civilians
in a regime of war claiming with some logic that there is no alternative.
Ours is another tragic instance where identity politics has taken a
devastating toll on communities in a multi ethnic and multi religious
country through a combination of lack of visionary leadership and
political opportunism tied to an exclusivist majoritarian agenda. We have
also seen that in the name of liberation and right to self determination,
groups with a narrow nationalist agenda have opportunity to impose on them
a regime of unlimited destruction where the people stand to lose
everything.”
Sam, I wonder if you or anyone else who frequents this forum knows of an anthology of poetry inspired by and on the conflict in Sri Lanka? Poetry of protest is an important marker of our descent into and life in violence and though I am most familiar with Cheran’s work (http://www.cheran.net/poems.html) in this regard, I am sure there are many other local and diaspora voices, in English as well as the vernacular, worthy of a wider audience.
Perhaps it’s even an idea you or someone else can pursue?