By Janaranjana Mithrasena
This was a line, penned by a largely unknown but much loved poet in Thimbirigasyaya, which recently came to mind. You see, (do you, really?), the British High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, David Tatham, has seen the light and we are happy that he has found a way out of the darkness.

The enlightened Tatham recently dusted the shady layers that colour his understanding of our country and our problems by declaring that he could see light at the end of the tunnel for Sri Lanka's "ethnic crisis" . I get the feeling that this presumptuous luminary from that far off island (whose leaders had their heads so loosely floating within the clouds when they believed not all that long ago that the sun would never set on its 'empire') believed we were waiting for him to make his discerning pronouncements before taking a peep into the tunnel.

Tunnel vision
Sorry, Mr. Tatham, but you are typical of the experts who advice us on how to run our country. They all suffer from tunnel vision and not just in the matter of conflict resolution, but with regard to a wide range of matters including development, the worth of free trade, the expansion of markets, the patenting of knowledge (local and otherwise), mono-crop culture, the advent of modernity, the renaissance, the coming millennium, the global village and a host of other new and innovative subterfuges that have, as never before, stepped outside the domain of reality and root themselves in the land of mythology.

I might advice you to go to an optometrist and get your vision checked. You see, in addition to thinking that the world and its processes move in an arrow-like manner, you have been looking in the wrong tunnel: Northern Ireland is not Sri Lanka, Belfast is not Jaffna, London is not Colombo and the IRA is not the LTTE.

Sorry again, Mr. Tatham, but you are not the one who has been forced to take this ride along this metaphoric tunnel. It is the much maligned but immensely tenacious people of this country who have been packed into this midnight express. If you do board this train (and this requires that you become a permanent resident of this country; naturally you'll have to quit your job and all the privileges it entails, walk like an ordinary citizen in and out of possible bomb targets, travel in trains and buses which the LTTE just might choose to explode etc.), you just might encounter this light you talk about. I doubt you'd survive the surprise when you see that this approaching light is accompanied by the rhythmic chug-chugging that brings to mind the ticking of a time bomb or the stuttering rifle's rapid fire.

Let me explain a bit further. Tatham seems to think that there is some possibility that the LTTE, like the IRA might decide that the essence of their aims could be achieved politically. Now what, pray, is this 'political' ? The word encompasses a range of processes and behaviour. Silence is political, for example. Looking the other way is political. So is pointing a finger. Casting a ballot, spoiling a vote, threatening a voter, stealing ballot boxes, suspending elections, imposing and extending a state of 'emergency', reneging on electoral promises, misinterpreting mandates, - all these things are 'political'.

Let's not be naive. The LTTE is 'political', supposedly as opposed to being terrorist, when it calls for negotiations or for third party intervention. It is political when it violates a cease-fire. When Amirthalingam, Padmanabha, Sabaratnam et al were gunned down, it was political. It was political when it assassinated two mayors in the heart of their so-called traditional homelands (the shattered remains of the first had to be brought down to Colombo to be

buried, so much for the sanctity of the good earth of the nija bima ). They were violently political in Aranthalawa. And infinitely more violent were they when they executed the countless bomb blasts in Colombo and Kandy.

Political. The Tamil people should know what the word means. After all, they have been held to ransom too. Even the escapees living in Toronto, Oslo, Paris, London, New York, Boston, Melbourne and various other safe havens, know the meaning of the word kappam and how it is inextricably linked to the political! Well these political thugs haven't yet achieved their aims in any of these ways, but not thanks to such as Tatham.

Ignorant
Mr. Tatham knows nothing of or pretends to know nothing of this other train crashing through the tunnel in the opposite direction. Peace is not something that figures in their calculations, unless it is necessary to buy respite from military setbacks. And each time they entered this peace process, they left it when they had sufficiently recuperated. And each time they went out with a bang! They had to be heard loud and clear and this meant that hundreds of people had to be killed in cold blood to mark the violation of cease-fire agreements. Sad to say, the echoes die pretty soon in the ears of the Peace Merchants of our country. And naturally so, since, after all, they are in one way or another share-holders of Eelam Incorporated!

Imagined homeland
And whereas the Catholics in Northern Ireland had legitimate grievances, the whining boys of Tamil Eelam have recourse only to a truly imagined homeland courtesy of creative historiography on the part of fame-and-fund-seeking academics, opportunistic politicians and self-defined radicals who think that touting federalism, a la self-determination (you know, as Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu once said, "now I am not touting federalism, but....." ), is considered sufficient to garner for themselves the 'leftist' badge.

This wide-eyed British Boy, Tatham, admits that it is not possible to claim that the security forces of his Her Majesty defeated the IRA. He claims however that they did convince them that they were losing ground rather than winning and that it was time to 'settle'. He would have lost hisv bearings while contemplating the matter of entering this tunnel of his. And he should know. After all the British Empire has had to 'settle' before.

Several times. They settled so much that they ended up becoming littlebetter than another state of the United States. And even the US had to 'settle'. In Indochina. In Somalia. In Iraq. So who convinced whom is perhaps something he should reflect on. We, on the other hand, are not prepared to fall on our knees and lap up the fake pearls that this man spits out, as do the Industrial Security Foundation, certain sections of the media and even Dr. Vernon Mendis.

Tatham claims that the recent bombings in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Oman shows that terrorism is a truly global problem and one which calls, not just for universal condemnation, but also for a global response. How provincial must this man with global dreams be for him to ignore completely the US attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan! Obviously he can't see straight, this man who would be torch-bearer, for he had even made a veiled reference to the missile tests in the subcontinent, calling on the international community to come together in solidarity to control the menace. Fantastic! Tell that to the USA! Tell that to your Ministry of Defense! And your friends in France, Germany, Russia and China!

So, Mr. Tatham, and also those pundits who suffer from a pernicious form of double-vision, who are wont to see parallels where none exist, should do a hard think about the musing of the Bard of Thimbirigasyaya. In Sri Lanka all the tunnels (except for four or five in and around Kandy, if memory serves me right) have railway lines running through them and maybe this is why the whole 'parallel' thing jumps metaphorically in front of their eyes. But life is not a tunnel and people do not spend all their lives on a train. So you do your Northern Ireland peace thing and we'll deal with the thugs that threaten us (and the LTTE is certainly not the only specimens of that violent tribe!). In our own way. We are sick of your similes, analogies and metaphors. Take your free verse elsewhere. And let Shakespeare have his blank verse. We are creative enough on our own. Thank you very much!