is the appointment
of a presidential committee
to decide upon which
recommendations to adopt
regarding the erstwhile
ethnic question, which
has been subsumed
into the unitary enterprise
of the war-fighting, now
North and East-occupying,
government dedicated
to paying appropriate attention
to the international human
rights lobby and European
and American states.
Nothing like a committee
to push the football away,
like the many formed
and dissolved
in the past without
achieving laws,
but which gained time
for the family
to work and play.
their names and photographs,
inciting fears of death
squads preparing to drive
white vans to their residences.
The warning by the UN Human
Rights Commissioner to protect
witnesses is welcome, quixotic.
How will her office stop disappearances
when government has rejected
the resolution, said it will push back
reconciliation, which I presume to mean
more islanders vanished, bloodshed,
people living in fear and loathing,
keeping quiet or moving out,
accompanied to the airport
by diplomats from a friendly mission,
leaving their homes to caretakers,
a new life abroad for champions
of human rights at home? And
for those who stay, negotiating
protections, waiting for
a post- midnight call
by an elite team of assassins,
like the ones who shot
prisoners at Nandikadal,
stopping motorbikes
in the intersection
to beat Lasantha to death,
dressed in black with black
glasses, or as drivers
of white vans, in assorted
civilian garb, ordinary
people working
a second job at night,
disappearing themselves
into the morning rush.
when chasing the ball on Duplication Road, or the girl back
in the village, shyly accept the glance of her neighbor’s son,
by the well, over a garden wall, the victims, the left behind
after the tsunami or the shelling without end, abroad,
processed, rebuilding their lives in the company of
Australians or Canadians, new people, while the distant war
on its nightly visit to parents, single or a pair, does not curse
the kid born away, who loves the latest fad on satellite radio
and the girl in his class who sports an infectious laugh.
its growth rate
in ministries and
delegations the envy
of Asia, and now
defeat of
the resolution
the charge of
52 valiant diplomats
whose arrack flows
in hospitality suites
at night, while
mornings are spent
chatting about contracts,
coal-fired plants,
fish meal, everything
as long as the other
party speaking
does the needful,
as we say
in our language,
to save the gentleman’s
agreement, the brilliant
and home-grown war
on terror strategy
and abstains, or much
better for later tabling
and closing of reports,
votes against.
gathering at a beach hotel, want to dance
with foreign women, see a bloke from town
trotting high with a blonde, but when
they ask for a spin, are spurned, although
they are hot shots in the area, their chief
an elected representative; they have guns
and knives in their pockets, or placed
discreetly on their reserved table, and
they tear a woman from her boyfriend,
cutting her up and him, then shooting.
Government in a tither, keeping press
at bay, we cannot have these stories
displayed in the West where similar
incidents take place in the most respected
capitals, says another representative,
and the perpetrators have been booked,
are under investigation, although the head
of the local governing council has been known
to kill in the past but nobody is sure who can,
or will, introduce historical evidence.
on his back, that sloshed
set of poetry he cannot avoid
carrying, an appendix,
reptilian brain, fascination
with naming elements
of the crime, breadth
of carpet strafing
of civilians in tents
on banks of the lagoon,
while tails for the ball
are rented
and we sit down
to quail and goose,
although elements
of the meal have
no political meaning.
They are foods for festive
or special occasions: here
fundraising, so ordinary
citizens can travel
to see the miscreant
dictatorship, dressed
in civvies, mixed in
with the crowd,
not in a killing field,
drawn up in advance,
but the larger and
harder-to-manage
masses of the post-war
streets, and report
what they find
before the police visit.
while Navy sailors beat
me with sticks, and cut
my nets, and round me up
as the country’s diplomats
meet my Indian representatives
with elaborate denials
of mistreatment
on the high and most
domestic seas.
I want to feed
my wife and children,
return to Tamil Nadu
with my catch. I have
not been re-schooled
as a farmer
or an errand boy.
Will the United Nations
take up my case?
The International
Criminal Court?
My Chief Minister
protests and protests
but the Center is deaf
and keeps speaking
with the devil.
How can we calm
his temperature,
cool the beast,
teach the tyrant
that he cannot stifle
Tamils beyond
the nautical limits
of the Sri Lankan island?
as a lizard searching for its tail, insidious in the way
each institution begins to lose its independence,
the machinery of the ruling family greasing every
Tom, Dick and Banda—forgive my allusion to white
rulers of a more genteel if not innocent nursery school—
this forsaken Ceylonese child has turned monstrous now
in the eyes of Whitehall and Ottawa’s Parliament Hill,
betters going wild about pressures in Canberra to present
a bold brief on behalf of human rights and investigation
of war crimes as Commonwealth heads prepare to meet,
while on the island rival thugs, from within the all-powerful
ruling group, battle over drug routes and a parliamentary seat.
News that my friend has suffered a mild heart attack
does not surprise me. His muscle has been strained
for more than thirty years. From the Saturday Review
where he reported the first days of rebellion in Jaffna
to more recent sociological study and dramatic writing,
the man, as scientist and poet, has let emotions hang
on strings strummed to a tabla’s beat. Wordsmiths
for Tamilians are as good as our instruments
and words are always enhanced by music. I recall
when we met in 1987 at the International Centre
for Ethnic Studies on Kynsey Terrace in Colombo,
where I moved as a kid when the house was home
and not yet a center dedicated to resolving differences,
the wounds of the1983 “Riots” were still very fresh,
and enthusiasm for resolution of long-standing
grievances strong, and nobody thought
we would allow democracy to fall into tyranny.
Neelan had not yet crossed the hairs of a Tiger,
nor even Premadasa, but the Indian Army were
landing in Jaffna, and resistance came soon after
that brief spring during which Cheran and I smoked
a cheroot and spoke poetry tinged with sadness
still for the murders of Black July and later,
on another visit, the suicide of Sivaramani,
whom we translated before the light
of an oil lamp in a thosai kaddai and thought
that, now we live abroad, let us recognize
at least that our spirits will not present passports
and our children, whom we could not imagine
then, would wander about our new homes and one day
think that to be Tamil is to be well-prepared to write
the essay on expulsion from the garden, and to feed, dream
and compose that other promise too, called the right of return.
passion fruit, the island’s culinary
pleasures I think of first, batting
then for a day, stopping for lunch
and tea, but this strain of poetry
has been sidelined, a war
won and lost, rewriting of history,
yet the latter may not be
necessary, building of
monuments to the bullet
near the sea, or the various
stupas popping up by kovils,
or replacing them quietly.
The waters of the Bay
of Bengal are rising steadily.
He may be asked to step into
a back room, to answer why
he carries the Economist
in hand luggage, or stickers
from the World Wildlife campaign
to save the tiger, given that
such animals have not been spotted
on the island in thousands of years,
if indeed they ever sauntered through
the wild grass or paddy fields.
He may be grilled about
family members in Wellawatte,
and what career he pursues
in the Scarborough, Ontario refuge
where wild and liberal creatures found
a home before conservatives took
over in Ottawa; he may be whisked
through secondary, and into a waiting
vehicle for a fast ride to the upstairs room
at CID headquarters where he will meet
his guide, his helper, who will say,
come friend, the campaign is lost,
give me a few names of laggards,
dreamers still in the foreign networks.
We must root out the germ.
Human beings have almost
eradicated polio, why not this
virulent, regional strain called
Eelam? Unfortunate, the cricketer
who failed a dope test,
and the others charged
with fixing matches, and
the Tamil policemen, who trained
in the hot sun for weeks to march
in the Victory parade for Eelam War IV,
told they cannot, on orders
of the President’s security detail.
What the hell, machan,
in paradise only Man is vile, said
the preacher who visited the island
in ancient times. Now we are renewed,
climate savvy, the A-9 Highway
is open to tourists beyond
Elephant Pass, but not yet, without
permission, to returning Tamils,
Hambantota boasts a deep water
port, and all our teenagers will
receive mandatory training
in military arts, which should help
them run animal farms in the far North.
at the end of the road without
a telephone, or internet,
without a satellite dish,
without rubbish—the residents
burned what they consumed—
certainly smoke can be traced,
and the courier’s story leaked
out of somebody else’s mouth
held incommunicado
in an East-European dungeon,
on leased land in the island
of Cuba, but that is another story,
the war found its target, today,
in helicopter to hand combat,
four aircraft once again, this time
choppers, and special forces—
not from Afghan camps
into Florida flight schools–but
Navy Seals, and the target
legitimate, not three thousand
ordinary civilians living
their American lives
until robbed by death,
rules for the rest of us
alive modified, and now
another death, tying
of the circle, a full spin
around the planet, what
Peru’s president said
was John Paul’s first miracle,
coincidence, his beatification
and death in combat
of Osama Bin Laden,
a bullet in the temple
of Evil, no longer
a Mastermind.
Govt: I understand
Tamil Net will jump to spread
the pernicious bleeding
heart report from those pesky
fellows at Channel 4,
so we must follow
our Leader and enact
his plan to send teams
to like-minded, non-aligned
countries to show how
governments can eliminate
terror, following our way
or the highway, of no return,
but we won’t use that crude
phrase. We believe we are
among friends here
in the poem without a need
to camouflage. Yet, we must
practice to win the diplomatic
battle now in the third and
fourth worlds where we
are very much at home.
breathe and the crack of bat
on ball sing like a memory
of toffee I recall, outside
the tuck shop, the day
Josephians played St. Peter’s
in the wet air off Beira Lake
and all the boys, let off early
from class, rang the ropes
with cheers: St Joseph’s
victory, St. Peter’s parippu;
now forty years later,
accused still of immaturity,
I have dressed in whites,
a sun hat, am padded
up and ready to go out
again into the middle
to knock four fours
and a couple of sixers
in half a dozen balls,
to save the side
from infamy.
a missing plank
in the slide, and
some will go flying,
others hungry,
while you add
ridiculous
to describe
the call
for a boycott
of your literary
party by so-called
rights activists,
which I presume
to mean men
and women
who agitate on
behalf of humans;
their call certainly
draws unwanted
attention to murder
of journalists
so let me propose
that we make fun
of it by such
ridiculous
excesses
as burning
an effigy of a doll
named censorship
without addressing
the argument
of the boycott
which did not say
don’t go, just
be aware of where
you speak in deed.
by minors, we can understand as a necessary
if unpleasant right of a neighbor who cannot
sleep or is bothered by willful disregard
for children. But to say, do not come to literary
feasting at Galle because journalists are killed,
or kidnapped, or forced to go abroad to save
their lives, this I read is an attack on the country,
which allows murder, rape and kidnapping
to bypass judicial review, and will not accept
responsibility for those who drive around
without license plates on its roads, or unfortunate
trapping of human beings on a killing spit of land
between lagoon and sea, which allows a minister
to chain a constituent to a tree, denies visas to left
and sundry, detaining a pesky lawyer from
Tamil Nadu at a checkpoint near former Tiger
dominions, meanwhile English elite, including me
on one occasion, have enjoyed, and will, liberty
at the party in Galle sponsored by Tourism Board
and interested businesses, hotels principally.
whispering, pump themselves
with arrack and go courting
on the Green, but in these
holidays at year’s end
dedicated to forgetting
the war and all those gadflies
buried in graves, some families
mourn their heroes away
from the headlights’ glare
of vans without license plates
that remain in service waiting
to be summoned when necessary.
I find myself a bit blasé contradicting the noted historical wisdom of the ministers who passed the recent decree. They said there are no countries which sing their anthems in more than one language. Of course, that is not true. Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, South Africa, even the United Kingdom which brings together different nations with their particular anthems, come to mind. But I wonder why a country that has celebrated its rich mixes– that have produced outstanding talent in literature (Ondaatje), cricket (Murali), and that sprinter, Susanthika Jayasinghe, who won a silver at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and Duncan White who started the trend at the White City Games in 1948– has changed its law.
I speak too much of sport. What about antropology, which has rewarded the world with Gnanath Obeysekere and Valentin Daniel, political analysis, with Jayadeva Uyangoda, diplomacy with Jayantha Dhanapala? We have many heroes in our country and we were all once, boys or girls, moved, choked-up, listening to our mother tongue on the loudspeakers.
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cellular walls and cancer spreads overcoming defences of heart, lungs,
kidneys, gut, brain, in no particular order, as aforementioned parts
succumb to constant hammering of shells, fits of barking orders to kill,
and distant turning away from disaster, beating breasts, while asking
focus groups, how can we intervene in a sovereign nation, does this
particular wilful disregard for human life meet your standard, fellow
citizens and friends? Pure fantasy. Nobody consulted the man in Peoria
or the soothsayer shuffling along to the bead shop on Main Street. There
was no attempt to interfere with ordinary irritations of Western peoples
living in their democracies, or Chinese factory workers assembling sound
cards. Father or politburo know best which is to donate or lend fighter jets
in return for port concession and road-building, forest-felling contracts and
much more promised also to the other great power of the Indian Ocean, but
how to determine the amount any government can sell in order to kill in peace,
to eliminate its cancer with a terrifying dose of radiation, to keep the ground hot and
de-mine it slowly over decades while population dies off or sympathizers abroad
tire of protest marches on anniversary days. Human societies are slow to heal and
nurse resentments over decades and centuries. Welcome to hurt passed down to
children and grandchildren, to unpaid crimes, suppressed anger, cold war.