The world's clumsiest charm offensive took place last week

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

Anton Balasingham's grovel can now safely qualify to be made a new event at the Olympic games. He does it almost every four years, and every time, he tries to better his previous best.

Balasingham told an Indian news channel that he deeply regrets the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, which was a historical tragedy, and as if to monumentally underscore the sincerity of his apology, he appealed to India to 'involve' (sic) in the Sri Lankan peace process, for which India had been detached "since the killing of Rajiv Gandhi." The Indians reacted as if they had been spat in the face by a ghoul. Never has so much egg been splattered on anybody's face for the sake of trying to grovel before so many millions, in such a few seconds.

Balasingham and his ilk are now screaming into the ear of every available reporter that the Indian news channel had edited him to take his remarks out of context, but this appears to be the laboratory case of future reference for an apology, which had worse consequences than the dreaded deed itself.

"Deep regret" is not itself an apology say some. But, to see the contours of a grovel, one necessarily needs to view it in the perspective of events, and when the dots are commented, viola, we have here not a mere grovel but a clear and simple sucking up with a gigantic sucking sound to match. Anton Balasingham sounds like a mans who needs to answer a call of nature but hasn't been able to find a bathroom.

He needs relief so urgently - that he forgets that there is no need to keep up a charade, for there is in this world, something called transparency. The man who has got to go, got to go, but he might stand on one heel, beat it like Michael Jackson, contort his face, bend-double, until the nearest loo becomes available. He then goes into it, and comes back as if he just got showered with manna from heaven. But then he may turn around nonchalantly to his friends who have been waiting outside the toilet door, and tell them that he would have certainly appreciated a few more public facilities around the place.

Hs friends who saw that war dance a couple of minutes ago would probably exchange glances at each other and end up with a collective smirk on their faces.

They know exactly what happened, and the exact nature of the embarrassment that makes it difficult for their mightily relieved friend to explain the exact nature of his embarrassment. Anton Balasingham may have said that he deeply regrets the monumental historical blunder of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, but anybody who knows the most elementary thing about ongoing events knows that this was as grovels go, one of the most snivelling in recently recorded history.

It's snivelling because it comes as an entreaty to help, and its an apology that's not more explicit precisely because the deed being apologised for was so dastardly that the apologist is very sure that his apology will not be entertained.

But, he thinks it is worth a try anyway, which is why it comes as a deep expression of regret, which means that the tendering of the apology comes in a way that can save some face for himself, when the reaction to the apology is of revulsion. That's why it's so snivelling. That's why it is so transparent.

But even by the standards of a snivel, this elicited a response than hit the apologist on the face like a jackhammer. India collectively recoiled, precisely because the apology was so snivelling, and so expedient. Here is the LTTE being bombed and banned, looking for some new source of succour, and Anton Balasigham had to say "we deeply regret the monumental blunder" while also saying that 'India should involve in the peace process.'' His hide was so thick in making that apology Anton Stanislaus Balasingham may be soon be taken for a protected species - the wild boar - which is in marked contrast to the dangerous predatory and banned species he in fact belongs to, the berserk Tiger.

Given all of this, what concerns me more is not the pathetic nature of the snivel, but the quantity of the brass that could have brought it on. Ten years from now, when the siblings of the dead children of Kebbilithigolewa are grown and married men, Anton Balasingham will probably say that the LTTE regrets the monumental historical tragedy of the Kebbilithigolewa killings.

When only the monuments remain to remind the nation of the late Appapillai Amirthalingam, the late Sam Thambimuttu and the late Gamini Dissanayake, Anton Balasingham will probably say twelve years from now that he regrets the monumental historical tragedy of all these killings. So with the Central bank dead.

When the mothers and fathers of child soldiers killed in the LTTE's combat operations are turning geriatric and unstable due to the passage of years, Anton Balasingham - or his successor, whoever that may be - may probably say that he regrets the monumental tragedy of all the lives of LTTE children that were lost in the LTTE's attacks against the state. The only thing that will be monumental about all of these statements is the monumental audacity of the LTTE, and its monumental ability to overestimate its standing among the nations and organisations of this world. Last week's apology to India is almost like saying, Prabhakaran is equivalent to god, that he has the right to take life and therefore all of god's children should accept, with time, all their tragedies as their kismet.

What the apology in fact does is to underline the LTTe's crassness and its madness. Now, the LTTE has not just injured but also insulted India. Its so boorish - this apology - that to re-use the analogy of the pisser, it is as if the man who wanted to urinate did it all over his host's table, and then claimed that it was a matter of urgency.

The host might have yet forgiven the urinator - had he not tried to insist that his act was in fact right, even though he seeks absurdly and regularly to be excused for it. No wonder India is pissed off.