Time was snatched from her and replaced by a gun in her hands. A gun could stop time, she was told. And it had. She knows it has been years since she’d pulled a trigger for the first time, but she can’t tell how many. She can’t measure time by days or weeks or months anymore. None of that makes sense. She can’t measure them by bullets either – there have been too many fired at her and fired by her.

Only her body hints at her that time has passed. She was short and stout when they took her away but now she has grown taller, slimmer. The puppy fat of her teenage years has given way to smooth, hard muscle from constant training, constant moving. Her hair, which she wore cropped short in her younger days, now snakes over her shoulder in a long plait that tickles her bare hip. Her then non-existent breasts have bloomed out over the years despite the tight, limiting uniform. She remembers blushing this morning as she put on her sari jacket, noticing almost for the first time how much her body had changed. In the past, it had been almost easy to forget she was a woman. The sudden reconnection with that essence of herself as she wore her crimson wedding sari that morning made her feel self-conscious and almost uncomfortable.

Beside her, the other brides jostle in the heat with ready smiles for the celebrity now coming their way. Dutifully, she smiles too, feeling the cheap lipstick chap and break on her lips. She resists the urge to bite it off. She doesn’t like the make up. The thick powder on her face makes her sweat and the kajol on her eyes is a jarring reminder of the paint they would smear on their faces for nighttime camouflage.

The only part of her costume that she really loves is the jewelry. The tinkle of the assorted gold bangles whenever she moves her hands delights her. The thick gold thali around her neck glints in the daylight, starkly bright against her sunburnt skin, an announcement to the world that she is married. Anklets jangle around her feet, making her feel irresponsibly like dancing the way they do in those films she’s heard about.

The star has reached her orbit. He grasps her hands and smiles at her, saying something to her that she doesn’t understand. He has said that something to every single one of the brides – she doubts any of them have understood him. She smiles a large pretend smile, and is startled by a barrage of photographers who descend on the scene to take pictures of the celebrity participating in his grand act of charity and her, one of the fifty-three laughing brides, happy to have her marriage witnessed by such a star. She has never heard of him before. Still, she smiles.

The actual ritual, though, she took seriously. She listened earnestly to the priest’s words and whispered prayers of thanks to the gods for this day. It was the only time she felt anything was really real. When her new husband was standing beside her, tall and silent and proud like he always is.

They haven’t talked much today – there simply hasn’t been much time – but she longs for nighttime, when they will finally be together and alone. Husband and wife. He has been her husband in her heart for a long time, but now is it no longer a reason for shame; no longer something to be hidden away. They will no longer have to pray for those secret pockets of time to come along more often so that they could be together. They will finally have each other to come home to. Even if that home is one they cannot leave. At least, they will be bound there together.

She watches him as he talks to a reporter, telling them their story. She knows he is uncomfortable, but they have all been asked to speak if spoken to. When the reporter leaves she can see him scanning the crowd, searching for her. For some sense in the madness. She almost runs to him and takes his hand. His eyes smile relief at her, but he says nothing. In one hand, he is holding their wedding present: two silver cups and plates off of which they will eat their first meal later that day, as a newly wedded couple.

Together they survey the festive mess of brides, grooms and officials. Without a word being spoken between them they start walking as one towards the fence that cordons them off from the outside world. Beyond the fence stands a motley crowd, peering between the rows of barbed wire, to get a better look at the proceedings inside. She can see her mother in that crowd, her best dress now stained with red dust from the long day, holding her struggling baby niece in her arms. The baby is uncomfortable in the heat and dribbles unhappy tears, but clutches onto the arms holding her for comfort. Her sister gives the baby – her daughter – a preoccupied kiss before moving closer to the knotted strips of wire, searching for her newly married sibling.

Her husband raises his hand to get their attention and in minutes they are reunited. For a few moments, she wishes she could tear down the fence so that she can feel her mother’s arms around her again. So that she can tell her sister stories they haven’t been able to share in years. So that she can cradle her baby niece and wonder if there will ever be a time when she will be free. Free to have her own child; to have her own life. She has been imprisoned for so long. First, by an idea. Now, by the ones who captured her and then planned her wedding day. Her head spins with the strange irony of it all.

It is time to go. She doesn’t want to turn her back on her family and begs them to leave first instead. The baby giggles just as they turn to leave and the sound rings out as they disappear into the dusk. She tries not to cry. Her husband steers her gently to join the 52 other newlyweds and they are all escorted to their quarters – 53 individual houses for two. A Peace Village, she was told. She wonders at the name. A house one cannot leave, a village one cannot leave, a place one cannot leave is still a prison.

She briefly rests her head on her new husband’s shoulder. He is silent but allows his body to give into hers a little – a tiny gesture of acknowledgement and reassurance, unseen and unfelt by anyone but her. For a brief moment, she feels protected, surrounded as she is by a ring of weapons. At least they are together, she thinks, taking the silver cup from her husband and tracing its edge with her finger. Her hand leaves the cup, to touch her thali and with that touch, she sends out another prayer to the gods. At least, she thinks. At least, in this prison, she has been allowed love.

[Editors note: Read Mass wedding at Vavuniya, published on The Hindu, for context. Read Mass Marriage, Vavuniya by Indran Amirthanayagam, published earlier on Groundviews, for a poetic take on the same event.]

• Prices Improve In Jaffna
• Unshed Tears
• The Fear of Peace
• Christmas 2008 in Sri Lanka
• Aiyo!

My housemate, Vanessa is a Tamil, married to a Sinhalese and I have been living with her and her husband for almost a year and working with her for over two. She is also one of my closest friends.

She is Tamil; I am Sinhalese. But even as I write, it’s hard to think of the two of us along those lines, because I can’t figure out what defines our identities. Even if I can define what makes her Tamil, I still can’t define what makes her different from me.

Is it colour? She is darker than I am, but we are both brown skinned.

Is it accent? She sounds no different than me, except for a tiny, pleasant lilt in her voice.

Is language? We both speak English. She speaks better Sinhala than I do, and fluent Tamil, or which I do not know a word.

Is it culture and customs? She married a Sinhalese, much to the horror of some of her relatives. But she is happy with her choice.

Is it dress? She dresses just like me and we are endlessly in each other’s wardrobes.

Is it in name? She kept hers. “I like my own name”, she told me simply, by way of explanation.

Is it in political affiliation? Her political views are as vague as mine. We are not for the leadership, nor are we for those who wish to topple it. If she doesn’t find today’s politics suited to her, I could say the same for myself. We both hope instead for something in between – something more palatable, more honest. Something we cannot see today.

Is it in parentage? Her parents voted for Mahinda. Mine for Sarath.

She and I went to school together too. We were the same age and in the same grade, but we didn’t know each other at all. She was in the Tamil medium and I in the Sinhala medium. Even then I remember her being tiny and thinking she must be a quiet little thing. I couldn’t have been more wrong!

Once, while travelling in a trishaw to her parent’s home, she was stopped by a policeman who searched the vehicle and would not stop harassing them, especially when he looked at her identity card and saw she was Tamil. A barrage of questions followed, all of which she patiently answered, in Sinhala. He refused to believe she was married to a Sinhalese, even when she showed him a wedding photograph she kept in her wallet. After trying to reason with him, she lost her temper, managed to call him a ‘racist bastard’ in her faltering Sinhala, and proceeded to give him a good verbal walloping which resulted in her promptly being hauled off to the station until her husband collected her.

It was only when she regaled me with this story the day after that I thought to myself, “Gosh. She’s Tamil”. And when I say ‘Tamil’, I don’t exactly mean her ethnicity. I mean that it is only during these odd instances that I realize that she lives as a minority in this country and is sometimes denied the same freedoms as I am allowed simply because I have a Sinhalese name.

“It’s funny”, she mused to me that day. “That policeman was surprised when he saw that I was Tamil – he only knew it when he saw my identity card. If I had taken my husband’s name, none of that wouldn’t have happened”. I sat back, stunned and more than a little ashamed, realizing that she had hit the nail on the head.

To Van, the incident was a one-off, a little mis-adventure and a good story to tell her friends. To me, it indicated something a little more sinister. Sure, the policeman in question could have just been one bad egg, but we all know this sort of harassment happens on a daily basis. Apparently there are a lot of bad eggs around. I was talking this over with a friend of mine during the last few months before the war ended and he said he had a Tamil friend who literally tried to fold into herself when they passed any checkpoint. “She just wanted to hide. I feel really bad for her, especially since I know that I don’t have to worry about it”, he said.

We never have a reason to worry, do we?

We get stopped at checkpoints too. We get asked similar questions. It’s no big deal, right? It can’t be that bad for them, what are they complaining about? All they do is complain. This is a time of war – these things must be done.

I’ve heard the above from so many people that I know – and in a range of different contexts: from checkpoints to the civilians trapped in Mullaitivu during the final stage of the war. No matter how many times I hear these things, I never cease to be rendered speechless by them. With one casual sentence over a drink they can talk away lives. With a shrug of their shoulders they can excuse and even justify murder. Some spit out the words ‘Tamil cause’ as if it is a bad word or worse, a synonym for terrorism. Despite being intelligent, thinking people, I am not sure they even understand the poison behind what they say, and continue to be struck by the ease with which they deliver the lines.

These moments make me painfully aware of how deeply entrenched this sense of the ‘other’ is in our society. My inability to see much of a difference between Van and myself seems quite an alien concept when I’m confronted by these situations. To me she is not part of a ‘they’. She is simply herself, and those things about her that I do not understand only intrigue me. She knows so much about my culture and tradition. I barely know anything about hers. She was telling me about the rituals she had to perform for her wedding and the strange and wonderful things she told me had me enthralled.

It has been a year since the war ended but how far have we come? Instead of translating the lack of fighting into real and meaningful peace, the year has been filled with competitions for supremacy. Maybe now that the contests have been won and our eyes no longer have propaganda posters to distract us, we can start looking at each other instead. Looking, communicating and really understanding. As much as it’s easy to blame history, politicians and authorities for leading us down the wrong road, it was still our choice to take it. If a change is to come, it should come from us – because we want it; not because somebody told us to want it.

By ‘us’, I don’t mean just the Sinhalese. Even our lingo has to change: from ‘us’ and ‘they’ to simply – ‘us’. It is a case of building relationships – but it has become so politicized, so complicated and so ugly that it seems to have transformed into something else altogether. Power. Possession. Jealousy. Fear. All fused into our systems and mixed with our blood. It is this that we all have to rid ourselves of.

Knowing Van has quite literally changed my life. She is the first close friend I have had who is Tamil and has made me recognized insensitivity in both myself and others that would never have registered had I not known and cared for her. And I guess that’s where we need to get eventually: we need to care.

If I have one hope as we celebrate a year since the end of war, it is that we pitch ourselves headfirst into a new one. One that will be bloodless, but still harder to fight for many, because it will rage against long-held beliefs and expose secret prejudices. One that will prove all the more challenging because it cannot have bribes thrown at it to make it go away or be defeated by brawn. A body is more easily killed than a mind changed.

If we win that war, our celebrations will not be tainted by guilt for being at the expense of others’ pain and loss.

In that victory, we will all be heroes.

• “Oya Sinhalade? Demalade?” – Questioning a question in post-war Sri Lanka
• Even post-war, discrimination runs deep in Sri Lanka
• My life and my choices in a country at war: A personal reflection
• Is it a crime to be a Tamil in Sri Lanka?
• Speak for yourself

He is breathing hard, as if he’s run to his desk from sleep, taken by wild inspiration. He has forgotten to switch on the fan, and the heat of that December night hangs in the air, thickening like spoiling milk. Small explosions of sweat begin to burst from the pores of his forehead, drip darkly onto his fast-moving hand, and trickle onto the paper, blotting the ink. This frustrates him but he doesn’t stop to soak up the liquid, just writes on, faster.

His wife lies in bed in the next room. She is awake, some inexplicable worry vaulting the sleep away from her eyes whenever it threatens to close them. She watches the empty space next to her, willing her husband to come back to bed but knows he won’t. She wonders what he felt the need to write about in the middle of the night, leaping out of bed as if possessed. She was afraid he’d knock something over in the dark and wake the children, but that walk from bedroom to desk is so familiar that he doesn’t.

It is only when he feels that familiar cramping in his fingers that he pauses. He looks around the room, fighting to make out familiar shapes in the blackness outside his little circle of light. His house is modest and unadorned for the most part – the only exceptions are the sketches of his children that he has been drawing since they were born. Some have been framed; others lie strewn around the house – on bits of furniture, stuffed carelessly into vases by the children, folded within the pockets of well-worn wallets, dog-eared between the pages of story books.

He wiggles his fingers to give them a stretch and picks up one of the drawings on his desk. His little boy is growing up quickly and sometimes he feels like he’s missing it, so caught up is he in his work. Sometimes he sees print in his sleep. Sometimes he finds himself talking to his little ones about his work and has to stop mid-sentence, realizing they don’t understand most of what he’s saying. He shoots a guilty glance in the direction of his bedroom, knowing he woke his wife in his mad midnight rush to get to his desk. She worries for him, he knows. He doesn’t take enough time to relieve her of those worries, to comfort her. He resolves to, as soon as he finishes this article.

After this brief pause, he goes back to his article, crossing and re-crossing the lines, scribbling out careless mistakes, cursing his own pen which writes far slower than the thoughts run in his head. He longs for the computer at his office but knows it is too late to go there now and besides, to leave now would be to disrupt the flow of his writing. The flow in tonight’s case is a torrential storm of words, figures and damning evidence.

His wife gives up a losing battle and comes to the doorway of the bedroom, which is always open – just in case. She leans against the frame, appreciating the cool wood against her hot skin, and watches her husband as he works. She knows every telltale movement of his obsessive inspiration so well. Watching him from behind, he looks the same as he did when they first married. He would stop every now and then to shuffle through printed sheets of information and look up to stare unseeingly at some point on the wall, piecing parts of it together in his head. His back would periodically straighten and then fall into that characteristic hunch every time he was struck by something new that he simply had to write down. Even through the dull ache of worry in her stomach, she can’t help but smile.

She knows the value of what he does, but it isn’t the easiest thing to live with. The warnings, the childrens’ questions, her own engulfing fear. When they came with ropes and iron rods to take him away she expected that fear to kill her on the spot. It stuck in her throat and seemed to expand outwards, threatening to burst vocal chords already strained with soundless screams. There was an awful moment before he was dragged away, when she looked from her husband’s eyes, smoldering with helpless anger, to the terrified ones of her children. Seconds later, she caught sight of her own in a mirror and saw only naked panic. 4 pairs of eyes, a thousand different emotions. Darting urgently from one to the other, trying to comprehend, trying to rebel, trying to say goodbye. Moments later, he was gone and they were alone.

When he came back, she couldn’t believe it. She wildly kissed each purpling eye, each ugly bruise and held him tightly against her, not caring even as he cried out in pain when her arms circled sensitive, injured skin. She tried to make him swear never to put himself in danger again. For her. For their children. He refused. The truth is more important, he kept insisting, and his eyes suddenly became distant and withdrawn and she knew he was already thinking of something to write. At that moment she felt a mixture of searing frustration and aching love so strong, she almost choked.

Today, as she watches him write, she feels a similar emotion. She looks down the hall to her children’s shared room, listening in the stillness for any indication that they’re awake. Her little girl has been having nightmares of late. She never says what they’re about, but insists on crawling into bed with them for the rest of the night. She only falls asleep when her head is nestled safely against her father’s chest.

He’s been writing so hard and so long, he doesn’t notice she is standing behind him. Suddenly though, in a rare lapse of concentration, he feels the pressure of her stare on his back and the weight of her worry cloaking his skin – another layer of heat on an already hot night. He turns around and looks for her in the darkness, finding her barely visible in the shadows of their bedroom doorway.

“Come to bed” she says quietly and her eyes linger on him for a moment or two before she turns to go back inside.

He looks at his unfinished article for a moment, hesitating. Then he wonders how many times he will get to hold her after this article comes out. He lives under no illusions – they came before. They will come again.

He puts down his pen as if putting down a heavy weight. The truth can wait for a few hours, he thinks. The truth can wait until morning.

He gets up, switches off the lamp, and as the room dissolves into darkness around him, walks that familiar path back to bed.

Authors note: Journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda went missing on the 24th of January, days after writing several critical articles regarding election malpractices by the Government. He remains missing to this day. Like him, hordes of journalists have been arrested, abducted, jailed, tortured and murdered for reporting the truth and expressing dissenting views. Some have been returned to their families. Others, like Ekaneligoda, have simply vanished without a trace, leaving their families with the horror of not knowing whether to hope or grieve.

These attacks are not simply hits against the media. They are a direct violation of our rights: the right to know the truth of what is out there, the right to ask questions of those who should answer to us, and the right to simply have a different point of view.

For every voice that is silenced, more must shoulder their burden, wear their courage and take their place to end this cycle of insidious violence. This is my tribute, for The Missing.

• Media watch: To write or not to write the truth
• Students Missing In Jaffna
• The Government’s farcical international relations
• Some Reflections arising from Ethnic Riots
• Barbed Wire

Yet, despite all this, we cared – albeit, rather reluctantly and in spite of ourselves. We still wanted to be in the know; we still tried to separate fact from the politicians’ fiction. We still agonized over whom to support, fought with our friends and colleagues about that choice, and later felt guilty that we might be making the wrong one.

As a first-time voter I felt totally out of depth in the process. On the night of the 26^th, as the results started coming in, I sat glued to my television set, snowy with bad reception, and wrote them feverishly down in my journal, as if my pen might help me make sense of the outcome. It didn’t – and at about 3.30am my writing had become so unintelligible that I had to give up and get a few hours rest.

It was at least a small comfort that I wasn’t alone in my peculiar fixation with the elections. Being a heavy Facebook and Twitter user, I realized that many people I knew – no matter their age – felt similarly repelled and attracted towards this pivotal election. Some posted the entire election results on their blogs, others constantly updated their statuses with election-related news; some spent their time reading and sharing relevant material and others – like me – couldn’t stop writing about it in any and all fora.

This article, I guess, is proof that this process is continuing.

* * *

I’ve heard it said by a prominent artist that there is no such thing as a citizen of Sri Lanka. That, we are a country without citizens.

The statement stuck with me, purely because I had no idea what he meant. But watching the unravelling chaos the election brought with it in the past weeks, I’ve been able to form my own interpretation (although I can’t be sure that this is how he intended his statement to be read).

I’ve realised through this election that Sri Lanka is a country of many publics – too fragmented or just too different to form one cohesive whole. During the campaign period, thousands gathered at rallies to support their chosen candidate. Smaller numbers gathered to talk about the more unpleasant things: human rights violations, abuse of public resources, corruption and so on. On the Internet, bloggers, writers and activists engaged each other with their opinions. Many prominent media institutions made no attempt to disguise their partisan politics. Politicians made their rounds, spouting their promises of Utopia at appreciating crowds. In some parts of the country, communities drank in the promises, blinded by faith. In other parts of the country, communities passively disengaged with politics, closing up shop and refusing to vote – either out of intimidation or plain disinterest. And then there were those like me, struggling to make sense of it all.

These groups – and there are many more – rarely come together for any common cause. Sometimes it seems to me that we are a people that need little or no excuse to divide ourselves further – whether it is on grounds of religion, ethnicity, politics, ideology, gender or even lifestyle. We appear deeply suspicious of what we don’t understand or agree with and this breeds a vicious cycle: we avoid communication and are therefore unwilling to drop our differences band together for a greater good. Every society has its sub-cultures, its inner-posses and cliques, but if there is no overall sense of belonging or identity, how can there be a viable citizenry?

The presidential election in Iran caused hoards to come out in protest for days on end, risking their lives to make sure their vote counted. There will be immediate rebuttals to this statement, I know, telling me “Sri Lanka is no Iran” – but I’m not sure that’s something to be so triumphant about. If Iran was divided by politics, at least one side had the strength and conviction to protest against unfairness and injustice – and they weren’t a small community of activists; they were everyday people who came together and captured not only their government’s attention, but also the world’s. During election time in Sri Lanka, we were largely split into two political camps – but there are so many contradictory, opposing groups within those camps that we appear doomed to be estranged forever.

Even in the aftermath of this turbulent election, where accusations and allegations continue to be hurled every which way, where there is a call for a re-count or an annulment – we the public sit in the crossfire, bullets flying overhead, wondering what on earth is going on. Many believe the election was won unfairly but remain staunchly reluctant to do anything about it.

I too can feel this strange detachment in myself. The election which had me hooked like a bad drug, took a lot out of me: when I cast my vote, I felt oddly powerful, like I was playing a vital part in the making of this hugely important decision. I also briefly felt like I was a part of something much larger than myself or my politics – a small but important cog in a massive national machine. As the election result came in and the barrage of allegations with it, that feeling was stripped away. And now that it is over, I feel tired, oversaturated and repulsed. I want to switch off the TV, throw out the newspapers, shut down my computer and just not bother about it for a while.

There is no national machine – or if there is, it’s broken. How can it work when its people won’t drive it forward? So this is what it feels like to be in a country where there are no citizens: one feels powerless, alienated, and restricted.

***

It’s easy to blame politicians for everything. “This country is going to the dogs” I’ve heard many a person mutter over the morning newspapers. But politicians have always played a dirty game. This is not news. The problem lies with us and our inability to listen and discuss opposing view-points rationally, to stretch our understanding, to tolerate and accommodate difference. There will be those who will bluster to the contrary, unable to see beyond their political beliefs or beyond this election – which, however important, is still just one of many to come. They will simply prove my point.

I was reminded recently that in a democracy, the citizen reigns supreme, a fact easily forgotten. Still, it helps to be reminded sometimes, and once we remind ourselves, we can work on reminding those in power, who seem not to know it at all.

• Has journalist J.S. Tissanaiyagam really received a Presidential pardon?
• A message from a first-time voter
• THE DEEPEST DIVISION IN SRI LANKA
• Blinkered vision of Tamil nationalists and socialists is self-defeating
• The Tamil Population and the Politics of Boycotts and Non Participation

After my university career, I moved back home and joined a media institution – just in time to get a front row seat to some of the most significant events in Sri Lanka’s history. 2 years and the end of a war later, I find both myself and my country in turmoil. Strange, considering we are supposed to be at peace now. But then again, we are supposed to be many things. We are supposed to be a democracy. We are supposed to be opposed to violence because violence is the way of terrorists – and we are supposed to have defeated terrorism. We are supposed to be a liberated people, with freedom of movement, expression and choice.

But it is election time now and what, of all those things, do we have?

There have been 3 election related killings already and hundreds of violent incidents. When people are intimidated into voting for someone other than their preference; when people are afraid to vote at all; when people are killed for simply supporting one side and not the other; when people are murdered for putting up an election poster – where does that leave us? Guerrilla warfare is not the only face of terrorism. And, as we are all well aware, terrorism negates democracy.

There are reportedly a million eligible voters without identity cards. There are displaced people living in areas other than where they were originally registered, without the ability to return and thus without the ability to vote. There probably thousands of people who have not been educated on how to use their vote or on just how important their vote is, especially now.

Despite grandiose announcements of there now being no minorities in the country, there certainly are, and those who are feeling it the most are the minorities themselves – simply because they have never been made to feel any other way. It is no coincidence that parties representing minority communities have banded together on one side, knowing full well the gamble they are making in order to see some sort of viable change.

As for choice… Two men are readying themselves to take on the country, each confident of their chances at winning. Two men who were once on the same side, and who are now angry, bitter enemies. Two men who are promising their country utopia: peace, prosperity, the end of corruption, the end of discrimination and the end of violence – despite the fact that they are two men whose roles in the past and whose popularity at present is built on winning a violent war by violent means. Two men who say they are committed to a free and fair election. But given their ubiquitous propaganda and incessant, nasty mud-slinging, are they two men we can believe?

Politics aside, from the viewpoint of a first-time voter, I have found myself with a choice between two angry, violent men – and I can’t help but wonder if this is any choice at all. This may seem like an emotional response to a highly complex, political situation – but fact of the matter is, the average individual is not a political animal. The average individual responds to the price of rice when it goes up making it too expensive to feed a family, to the loss of a loved one to the war regardless of which side they are on, to the thugs warning them to vote for so-and-so or else.

In the past weeks, I have surprised even myself by the level of my anxiety about elections. It is that clichéd tightening in my chest – that knowledge that I have an impossible decision to make, coupled with the knowledge that that decision could very well change my life and everybody else’s. What if I make the wrong one? This potential guilt is what, perhaps selfishly, scares me more than anything else.

Others who feel similarly have simply said they will vote for someone other than the two main candidates or that they will just not vote at all. After battling with these options myself, I have rejected them and I encourage others to do the same. Voting is a gamble, yes, but to waste that vote would be to forfeit your right to determine what happens to this country. Our individual contribution may be small – 1 in some 14 million – but collectively, for the first time in a long time, there is the merest hope of change. Change that could be our salvation or our undoing, no matter who wins this election. We are not predictors of the future, but we should not forget that have a hand in it.

In 2005, I didn’t vote.

In 2010, things are very different. I am very different. We all are. But on the 26^th of January, we will all have to make a choice. To anyone sharing in my dilemma, I say this: do not vote for a person, a party or a political ideal. This year, the best any of us can do is to vote for change: change that is accommodating, fair and right. I wish all of us good luck.

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• The loud and clear message from the voter turnout and the voters in the North and East
• Surveys with conflicting outcomes
• The Tamil Population and the Politics of Boycotts and Non Participation
• Exploring the Myth that the Tamil vote will be the decider at the Presidential Elections

It’s made me feel rather stupid – this inability to wrap my head around 30 years of horror, why it all started and who is to blame. Everyone seems to talk about it with such ease – like it’s the simplest thing to understand. As if it’s effortless to take one particular view and stick to it. I listen to the sophisticated talk of politicians, of family, of friends and marvel at the sureness of their convictions with frustrated envy.

It could be my limited understanding of politics and history that’s to blame. I have tried to remedy this over the past year or so, and despite accusations to the contrary, I hope I am making some headway. The more I learn, though, the more that yawning chasm of untapped knowledge stretches. I wonder if I will ever conquer it. And if I do, I wonder what that will mean.

Because, when you think about it, is there any such thing as understanding the war? Is there any way to rationalize what happened? Every gun shot, every limb torn away, every life snuffed out, every radicalized mind, every spirit shattered – how can we justify those things? How can we say, “it had to happen”? How can we blame it on a few people, sit back and feel better about ourselves?

Politics has never been my strong suit because it simply doesn’t interest me very much. There. I said it. In my younger days, Sri Lankan politics meant a bunch of men drinking together and talking about how they would run the country if they were in charge. Whenever we had dinner parties, the men would invariably drift together and my mother would roll her eyes, look at me and whisper “there they go again, armchair governing” and I would giggle and understand. Today, politics to me hasn’t changed all that much – a bunch of important people (mostly men) talking about important things but never getting terribly far with it in the end.

I’ve heard hundreds of opinions about the war. Each one is like a thumbprint – somehow unique to the individual espousing that view, born of their personal experience and learning of the conflict and also their own conceptualization of right and wrong.

Right. Wrong. It sounds black and white but in reality its layer upon layer and shade upon shade of grey. A story doesn’t just have two sides; it is kaleidoscopic.

A soldier in the thick of battle affects, in some way, the entire course of the conflict – in life and in death. The same can be said for the child combatant, the suicide bomber, the politician, the average civilian. We have all shaped and destroyed our country in some way. A harsh word backed by racial hatred, a casual, stereotyping joke, could take a worse toll on the country in the long term than a murderous gunshot.

This leaves me with a dilemma I can’t seem to shake.

I cannot tell who is right and wrong when it comes to this war. I cannot call one side my own and label the other ‘enemy’. I cannot condemn violence by some but defensively justify violence perpetrated by others. My sorrow is as piercing whether I am looking at a soldier or a combatant or a civilian caught in between. My anger is just as strong and indignant towards those who placed them in those roles: out there on that battlefield, fighting to kill, fighting to survive.

But against whom can I direct this anger? Aren’t we all even a little to blame? What use is blame anyway, now that the war is over? And what use is the end of the war when we’re still indulging in the politics of blame and personal gain?

*

I have tried to understand this war, and largely failed. But here’s what I’ve got so far:

Death is horror.

Killing is horror.

A life ruined – no matter whose it is – is horror.

Maybe that is as a good a start as any.

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• Bridging comedy and conscience
• Living with the Other in post-war Sri Lanka
• …for The Missing
• Optics and politics of grief

Barbed, by Valimar

A little boy stares through barbed wire, wondering which direction his home is. He reaches out to rest his fingers between the rusted knots of wire but his watchful mother calls out to him to be careful. At the same time, a soldier patrolling nearby walks briskly up to him and pushes him back. “Listen to your mother” the soldier tells him not unkindly in shaky Tamil. The boy looks up along yards of camouflage material and searches the soldier’s face. “I want to go home” he says miserably. “I don’t like it here”

The soldier’s expression softens. He looks around awkwardly to see if anyone is watching and then quickly bends towards the boy. “I want to go home too” he says softly and pats the boy’s cheek. He straightens and clears his throat. “Go and play” he orders gruffly and strides away, the dark skin of his neck and hands glinting like his gun against the afternoon sunlight.

*

From a distance, the boy’s mother watches this exchange. She can’t hear what is being said, but tenses when the soldier bends towards her son. She is on her feet before she even knows it, her mouth open, ready to call out for help but chokes it off when she seems him pat her boy’s cheek and walk away. Relieved but still worried, she hurries towards the boy. This brief exposure to the appalling heat makes her curse softly and she takes up the long coils of her hair and expertly twists it into a knot against her head. She picks up the pace towards her little one.

There are so many stories going around, you don’t know what is true and what is false; what is exaggerated and what is made slight. In her opinion, the less you have to do with the soldiers the better – why take a risk? They stalk the boundaries of the camps, menacing, like prison guards, their guns firm in their hands, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. Sometimes she sneaks a look at their faces and is surprised to find that they are just children, not much older than her eldest girl. She pauses at the unbidden memory of her daughter; at the unexpected pain it brings, fresh and stinging.

She was 14 when she ran away from home to join the guerrillas. When they realized that they could not stop her, they forced themselves to be proud of her and her chosen cause. They visited sporadically at first but then got used to hearing next to nothing. Their daughter was gone. Vague news of her death wafted in and out of whispered conversation some years ago, and she ran, against the wishes of the family, to the massive graveyard reserved for guerrilla fighters. She could not find her daughter’s gravestone.

Now, she was no longer proud of the cause. The cause had become secondary to violence a long time ago. She was just tired of getting shot at from both sides. She was just tired of the monsters in their two different cloaks of camouflage. She was just. Tired. She didn’t know who to blame. She didn’t care. She just wanted to go home. But she was here instead, in a barbed prison guarded by boys with guns.

“Why are you sad?” her little boy asks, his own eyes dull with a silent sadness that makes him look older than his small years. She gathers him up in her arms and takes him back to their tent. She smoothes the hair away from his grubby little face and plants a kiss on his nose. His face wrinkles but he doesn’t move, enjoying the affection. “What did he say to you? Did he threaten you?” she asks anxiously. The boy shakes his head with difficulty reminding her to relax her hold on his face. “No Amma, he wants to go home too”.

Squinting against the sun, she searches for the soldier. He is standing some way away, watching the horizon, over the barbed wire, much like her son was doing a few minutes ago. She can only see his profile but she can tell he is young, like the others. Almost as if he can feel her stare, he looks at her and smiles shyly as their eyes meet.

She looks away.

*

He thinks about her a lot these days.

When he went back home after the war, he saw her and tried to speak to her but she backed away. His parents were a little way off, and even though he avoided their faces as they walked back into the house, he knew they were smiling.

There were fears he would marry this girl. He really believed he would. And in all her innocence, so did she. Even when he enlisted to join the army at his parent’s request, they skirted the issue, only looking at the war as an obstacle they would need to hurdle across, a period of time they would have to spend, achingly, away from each other.

They were children. They never talked about the things he would have to do. What she would feel about those things. Where their loyalties would ultimately lie. They had foolishly hoped to stay untouched from those things, as if it were all mutually exclusive.

And he had held on to that hope. Thinking about it with clearer eyes now, he can’t fathom why, but at the time, when he was flushed with victorious pride and anticipation on his way home, it didn’t seem odd to hope that even after everything that had happened in the last few months, she would be waiting for him. So, her reaction was, to say the least, unexpected.

The smooth dark skin that he used to caress in secret paled when she saw him. The eyes that used to speak soundless poetry to him now looked hunted as she searched desperately for an escape. The mouth that used to whisper love into his ears trembled, fearful. The feet that used to dance towards him now took her away from him.

He let her go. In that moment clarity slammed into him like shrapnel and stuck there. He understood. But still sometimes she creeps into his thoughts, a tortuously bittersweet reminder of what his life could have held for him.

He rubs the sweat off his eyelids and forces himself back to the present. He blinks, suddenly tired, feeling a hundred years old. He hardens his grip on his T56. He’s used to the fear it strikes into the people he guards and sometimes wishes he could patrol with his hands empty, but knows he will feel naked without it.

He turns away from the barbed wire and what lies beyond it and looks at the mother with her young son. There’s something about her that reminds him of the girl back home. His girl. His girl no more. As she takes her child’s face in her hands, her hair comes undone, tumbling in polished ebony waves down her back. He feels strangely grateful for the glimpse of beauty in the midst of the ugliness around them all.

The child says something to his mother making her looks towards him and their eyes meet. It is shocking to him that the fear in her eyes reminds him again of home. Dispelling the thought, he smiles at her, but she looks away, leaving him alone with his dubious pride.

[Editors note: From pathbreaking satire to poems from award winning poets, Groundviews has commissioned and featured acclaimed contributions from leading Sri Lankan literary figures. This is the site's first creative writing submission. It is tellingly framed by the real and growing tragedy in IDP internment camps right now. Art imitates life?]

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• HEY MAN!

I answered her truthfully and politely wondering where this would lead when she hit me with it: “Darling”, she said sweetly, patting my arm, “I counsel young children on their attire. Now, there are young boys and priests here and when they see you dressed like this, you give them temptation. And that is not good for you”. I was so appalled that, at the time, I couldn’t do anything but nod and take her card as she went on to offer me her counseling services.

I walked numbly out of the room, hardly believing what she had told me. I will not even mention what I was wearing because I think that is quite beside the point. As for the temptation part, well, if I’m a woman and attractive, I will not apologize for it.

I wanted to confront her as soon as I had my thoughts in order but she had left the place, and left me seething. I came back to office and wrote her the following letter.

###

Dear Ms.,

I am the journalist you met this morning, to whom you offered your card and services as a counselor based on my attire. I was not only highly insulted by what you said to me today but also, quite simply, appalled. Out of respect for the place we were in and the event about to begin, I only smiled and nodded but now I feel if I do not reply you, I would be letting down all the women that I interact with on a daily basis; all strong, independent women I am proud to know. Women who would not compromise their own identity for anything.

I am proud to count myself amongst these women and would not change for any reason, much less the ones you gave me today. Which, by the way, insulted not only me but also my parents, my upbringing and my place of work. My parents are well known and respected people and I have had the choicest upbringing and attended the best schools and universities – if my attire does not offend my parents or the professionals with whom I work (my superior is one of the strongest women I know and one of the most well respected female journalists in the country, then that is all I need. I certainly will not change what I wear so that “young boys and priests” will not get tempted when they see me.

I am a woman, proud of my body and the way I look. If these young boys and priests look and me and feel “tempted” then I think you should be giving your business card to them and not me. It is precisely your brand of judgement that, in its most extreme manifestation, renders the rapist innocent and instead blames the victim for bringing unwanted attention to herself. In my opinion this is not the way to address this problem. Men should be able to respect a woman and treat them accordingly no matter what their attire. I think your services would be of much better use if you counsel chauvinist men instead of encouraging impressionable young women to cover up for fear of men looking at them.

No woman should have to stifle herself and her identity to avoid tempting men. The idea is, quite frankly, ridiculously outdated and anti-feminist. And as a born and bred feminist, it stands against everything I believe in.

Incidentally, I met and interviewed priests and nuns at the event and got none of your patronizing judgement from them – merely, friendliness and a healthy respect for me in my professional capacity as a journalist.

I would not even have accepted your card if it had not been that I wanted to make sure I had a way of contacting you to tell you exactly how I feel. And it is this: that you are doing much more harm than good talking to young women the way you do – making women cover up does not solve the problem. Encouraging young men to treat women with respect and without judgement is a much more valuable service – one which I hope you will turn your efforts to in the near future.

I do not mean to be insulting – I merely wish to share my point of view as you so freely gave me yours without any thought to whether you might offend me or not. If I am being judgemental it is because you invited it upon yourself by being judgmental of me.

I am an adult and, above all, a woman. A proud and independent woman. I think you should endeavour to find some pride in your own femininity instead of trying to stifle it in others.

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