It is not uncommon for two people in the same family to have
widely divergent opinions. Brothers,
after all, have set upon one another from time immemorial. There’s nothing wrong then about two
individuals belonging to the same political party quarreling. Politicians quarrel over all kinds of
things. There’s the infamous
preferential-vote dadi-bidis, the ‘manaapa poraya’ that is. These days we see more intra-party rivalry
than inter-party clashes. So when C.V.
Wigneswaran contradicts R. Sampanthan or Mavai Senathirajah about this, that
and the other, it’s just normal. ‘News,’
yes, but still normal. Fun, though.
The two chit-chatted over a cup of tea outside a kiosk
called Reality along a street that ran parallel to that on which fellow TNA
members met to discuss policy, strategy, bitch about Douglas and Mahinda,
praise and blame India, whisper about what they called ‘Diaspora’, squirm and
keep straight faces [by the way on other streets, inside other houses and
offices, people belonging to other political parties and subscribing to other
ideologies do pretty much the same].
Anyway, there was conversation.
‘Wiggie Annai you really should watch your mouth!’ Mavai
started.
‘I do. Once in the
morning, once each time I have a meal and once at night,’ Wigneswaran was
surprised at Mavai’s concern and deep inside told himself, ‘I have judged him
too harshly!’ and added a post-script, ‘I forget that I am no longer a judge,
damn!’
‘Watch, not wash! Watch, watch, watch, like wrist-watch
watch!’ Mavia said sternly.
‘Oh really, are you saying I put my foot in my mouth or
something?’ Wiggy was not happy.
‘You did worse. You
are making me feel that Prabhakaran was right about you Colombo people. Docile.
Gullible. Ever ready to submit to the Sinhalese.’
‘Oh, yeah? And where
is he now, do you know?’
‘That’s not the point.
You don’t know anything about politics.
The moment you say you are willing to go with what is practically
possible, you get bulldozed!’
‘But is politics not about the art of the possible?’
‘We have to play brinkmanship to get to Possible!’
‘That brinkmanship adorned Tamil children with cyanide
capsules and saw 40,000 people being killed in the last days of the war!’
‘One hundred and seventy five thousand!’
‘Well, I thought we agreed to go with the 40,000 lie.’
‘It doesn’t matter.
We have to inflate the problem.’
‘So that the slightest scratch with a fingernail will burst
the bubble?’
‘You are playing word games now.’
‘But that’s what it has always been, hasn’t it? From Chelva and GG through Amirthaligam and
Sampantha to you and I, we’ve done the word-thing. The only one who didn’t was Prabharakaran. Where is he now by the way?’
‘You are starting to get on my nerves!’
‘You have any?’
‘What? Words?’
‘No, nerves.’
‘Come on, let’s be serious.
You know we had to stick to Eelam so that we could get away with
Federalism, right?’
‘Yes, now that we are not getting federalism, shouldn’t we
go for what is realistically possible?’
‘No! That’s the wrong
way. You don’t know the first thing
about politics. We really don’t have a
problem. From the beginning we only had
aspirations, not real grievances. We
crafted grievances to justify aspirations.
We’ve already got much more than any other minority in any other country
with equivalencies have. We’ve been
fighting for a bonus all these years.’
‘I know, I know. I am
aware of all that. I wasn’t born yesterday.
But you know, I am Old School. I subscribe to Old School Wisdom: A
little now, more later. You up the
stakes and fail and you don’t get to “Consolation”, you get to “Zilch”. Your buddy Prabhakaran took us Tamils down
the road to that destination. He went
with “All or nothing” and now we are struggling with “Something is better than
nothing”.’
‘Watch your mouth!’
‘I did. This morning.
And also, after lunch.’
‘#$%@&&+@#%$#!’
The invective was too much for the universe to suffer. The
parallels melted away. Words dried up.
Stares remained.
1 comments:
Malinda, I find your parallel universe pieces amusing more often than not. Do you write about arguments and brawls in the UPFA and its major component, the SLFP, as well?
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