Image courtesy of Daily News
Remembering Richard De Zoysa (03/18/1958 – 02/18/1990)
Animals continue to crack in Sri Lanka, Richard.
Lions don’t exist in the natural state, nor tigers
roam through the brush. Elephants, yes, are still
around, mostly straggly survivors in an orphanage
where the world’s visitors get to see a baby fed
with a bottle. As for jackals, well, they are
thriving, and Sri Lanka needs the acid pen
you invoked from an earlier essential scribe,
Tarzie Vittachi. Writing to and about you
Richard is writing Sri Lankan history,
of brilliance cut down in its prime, you
at thirty two, Vijaya Kumaratunga actor also,
activist, dreamer murdered at 43,
and Neelan Thiruchelvam at 55. What
indeed is prime, majority? Why do we
kill our children who fight for crossing
the dividing lines? Richard I read
that you had links to the JVP. I love
the not only Sir Lanka penchant
for slander. What load does links
carry? Why not offer a fuller
explanation, review why the rebellion
began in the South and raged along
with the one in the North? Why not
strip the carcass of the dead animal
and identify every body part, then bore
into bones to get DNA squeezed
into vials. Perhaps truth telling will lead
to creation of sturdy democratic
structures, respect for the rights of all?
You would smile with some irony
at the commissions formed
to investigate disappearances
in 2009 when civilians surrendered
to the invading army never to be
spotted again, leaving grieving
mothers and other family members
visiting katcheries, and protesting
in the streets over the last 12 years.
Richard had been removed from
the theater of war much earlier
but is remembered in every bone
of our culture, from his interpretations
of Shakespeare on the Thomian stage
to Malin Kabalana in Lester James Peries’s
Yuganthaya, to an afternoon in the IPS office
in Colombo when we met for the first time,
introduced by Kunda, my journalist friend,
who was thrilled when I landed in the city
saying I had to meet his brilliant new
colleague, Richard de Zoysa, who drove
to the office on a motorbike, who loved
his mother but was forced from
her arms that night when the thugs
came to execute another
champion of the free mind.
A celebrated actor, dramatist, poet and journalist, Richard de Zoysa was well known and much loved in Sri Lanka. He was a young man, maturing into his prime, when he was murdered in February, 1990. His murder caused widespread outrage inside the country and is widely believed to have been carried out by a death squad linked to elements within the government.
