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| Sunday, 14 July 2002 |
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Concluding the "Jaffna Diary" which appeared in this newspaper in March 1995 during another ceasefire. by Ajith Samaranayake Friday, Jaffna is starved of entertainment. No bread or circuses. A recent football match had drawn huge crowds. So did a dramatical and musical presentation on Thursday night. Siva who watched it was full of it at breakfast.
The LTTE romanticises fighting but eschews sex. Its cadres are prohibited from smoking, drinking and having love affairs. Hence a scene in the play evokes a mixed reaction. It is a love scene. Some in the audience are embarrassed by it. Others would love to see it. They are trapped between two worlds. The Old Park is a sprawling, spacious ground made cool by its trees. This is where the Police Headquarters in Jaffna are situated. The Police Chief Nadesan had served in the Sri Lanka Police, his last station being Maharagama. He is a big made smiling man full of reminiscences of Colombo. His wife Vineetha, a WPC, is a Sinhalese from Kamburupitiya. They came to Jaffna after the communal holocaust of 1983 and Vineetha had not been able to keep in touch with her parents since. Nadesan says that only petty crimes are committed in Jaffna. Even there the Police try to minimise such incidents by having a rapport with voluntary organisations and such like. They follow the form adopted by Mao's China, says Nadesan, who curiously enough is a friend of most radical politicians in Colombo. The Police force is recruited entirely from civilians. The policemen are given political classes so that they know what they are doing, he says. Nadesan married in 1980. His wife was at Mirihana before being transferred to Police Headquarters. He has two children. It was touching to hear him inquire about left politicians in Colombo whom he had known intimately. The Big Policeman's face softens as he recalls his courting days. He used to travel with her to Matara and after she went home to her people used to stay the night with friends and return the next day, he says. Courting days Kittu Park is an original LTTE creation. A park for children which also houses a mini zoo, it is situated in the old Jaffna kingdom over which King Sankili presided. Political symbolism obviously is hard at work here. In the South Indian style the whole edifice is somewhat gaudy and flamboyant but there is also a kind of pride in creating something on such a huge scale out of nothing. The park is dominated by a huge rock which one reaches by way of bridge and the many statues and paintings of Kittu are very lifelike, spectacles and all. In a corner of the park is a proud LTTE souvenir, a Sri Lanka Army tank captured by the LTTE, now rusting. In the evening we meet some old friends. A.J. Canagaratne, Prof. Sivathamby and Fr. Chandrakanth all of the Jaffna University. Prof. Sivathamby is solidly reassuring, leaning his bulk on a walking stick, a savant in white cloth and shirt A.J. who had worked on the Features Desk of the 'Daily News' in the fifties and now teaches English at the University is pugnacious as usual. Nostalgic Fr. Chandrakanth is clam and collected. To them we can speak on the same wavelength and exchange liberal democratic sentiments but even as we conduct our strange rendezvous by lamplight (the generator has packed up) we are aware that we are the last of a fast dying tribe caught up in a sharply polarised society. The talk turns to A.J's escapades in Colombo when he was in flight from the IPKF and the writer Alagu Subramaniam, a Barrister who felt alienated in London and returned to jaffna in the 1940-1950s only to find himself quite lost there as well. All of us feel quite nostalgic and some of us unawkishly drunk. Saturday After the release of the policemen (described last week) Thamil Chelvam gives a long interview translated expertly into sinhala by Nadesan. In the evening we meet Anton Blasingham, the LTTE's well-known ideologue, a meeting with whom is a fixture for any journalist visiting Jaffna. A past master at the media game, Balasingham exudes an air of jaded sophistication. He has been stricken by chickenpox but is his normal exuberant self. "I am a prisoner here," he says with mock seriousness looking at his wife Adele. He is referring to the fact that he is not allowed to drink. But there are consolations. He is the only one in the movement allowed to smoke. Sunday Sabbath Day. We have lunch with the Vicar General of Jaffna Fr. Immanuel at the St. Xavier's Seminary in Jaffna, the biggest seminary in the peninsula. Lunch is reminiscent of the High Table at any English University with the Faculty gathered at the main table and the seminarians grouped round the room. Most of the Faculty had been trained at the Theological College at Ampitiya. The Seminarians are all form Jaffna and the rest of the Northern Province and the problem, we are told, is to get persons educated in English since this is the medium of instruction. After lunch the students perform a short play for us. It is an encapsulation of the ethnic conflict from 1983 onwards. The music is haunting. The last scene A personage appears carrying a placard saying "I am a democratic government. He says "I shall give you food, petrol and diesel". In unison the assembled multitude shout, "No. We want dignity". Interlude In the foyer of Gnanams Hotel is a pathetically paradoxical poster. A tourist poster titled "Sri Lanka - Paradise Isle", it features a kind of snakes and ladders game. Right at the top it says "Stop to talk to stilt fishermen in Jaffna - miss one turn". "For Jaffna it has been a game of misses. Another interlude Our LTTE guide Thirumaram is a 22-year-old curly-haired boy. He had been a Tiger for the last five years and had taken part in the Pooneryn attack, among others. Now, he is studying English, Sinhala (there is a Sinhala 'guruvaraya', he says, at the Sinhala Maha Vidayalaya in Jaffna which has only 15 students) and computer studies. He says he likes journalism as well. He is candid to the point of honesty. "I like to come to Colombo, he says, "but I will never achieve it". Then in a playful mood he would tell us, "I will come as a Black Tiger". Thirumaram is accustomed to the war so much so that he invites us to come to Jaffna when there is a war on. "You must come here during fighting time," he says adding "Nice time." "But if war breaks out again he is bound to be among the first casualties. Monday We cross the Jaffna lagoon on the passage back. This time the engine does not stop and the journey is smooth. Suddenly the sunrises gloriously in the East and the pink sky becomes red with the dawn. In the same vast sky the full moon, though pale, is still evident. |
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News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
The LTTE's plays are moralistic as perhaps are the presentations of
every such movement which seeks to drive home a message rather than engage
in art. In fact they are a throwback to the missionary tracts of the 1930s
in Colombo which sought to show how the family which had embraced
Christianity flourished while the traditional Buddhist family went into
decay. In the LTTE's plays the Jaffna family which sacrifices its sons for
the war is juxtaposed with the affluent and effect family which would
rather migrate to Canada.
