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| Pic Courtesy Sunday Times |
The LTTE was militarily
vanquished more than a year ago. We are a war-less nation now at least in the
sense that clash of arms, blood soaked bandages and soils, wondering if Podi
Putha will come home in a box, treating every parcel, box, bag etc with suspicion
are things of the past.
One notices that check
points are being removed one by one, ‘slowly, slowly’ as our English Our Way
pundits would want our children to say even though they would not. Keppetipola
Mawatha, closed for years due to security reasons, was reopened recently, for
example and for those living or working or having to get about quickly among
locations in the area it is as though a magic doorway has opened. Time saved.
Frustrations alleviated. Smiles on faces. These are the intangibles of the
peace dividend.
I took a walk the other day
down Keppetipola Mawatha. As I turned the corner towards Jawatta Road, I almost
bumped into an elderly gentleman walking in the opposite direction.
I would put his age
somewhere close to 55. He was carrying a briefcase; not the James Bond type,
but one of those old leather bags common in the 70s and early 80s. Neatly
dressed. We both smiled. Moved on.
Two seconds later, I looked
back to find that he too had half-turned. There was a quizzical look in his
face which I believe mirrored the question mark that I felt had materialized on
mine. We both stopped.
I went up to him and said
that he looks familiar.
‘I work at the Identity
Office,’ he said, referring of course to the Registration of Persons
Department.
I laughed and said that I
hadn’t been in that office in over 15 years. I reiterated that I am sure we had
met somewhere.
‘Do you live in
Pitakotuwa?’ I heard him ask. Thinking back, I am sure I heard him wrong. Not
many ‘live’ in Pitakotuwa even if they spend most of their lives there. He must
have said ‘Pitakotte’.
He smiled. I did too. Went
out separate ways.
As I walked towards Jawatte
Road, I remembered something that a senior officer in the Army had told me
years before.
‘
Malinda, do you know that
some countries have special modules to train their soldiers to smile?’
He told me that one of the
biggest challenges for military personnel operating in foreign soils it to
build rapport with native communities. ‘We are a nation that doesn’t have to be
taught to smile,’ he observed. True.
I remember a story related
frequently by Jayatillaka Bandara of Sadhu Jana Raava fame. He was a member of
a group who advocated a full stop to military operations, probably in the naive
belief that the LTTE understood the word ‘negotiation’. The intent, however,
was pure. The group was clearly a pawn of LTTE-loving NGO operators, but that’s
a different matter.
Jayatillaka Bandara related
a story of the Army clearing up after some operation. A lot of LTTE cadres had
died. Their bodies were being tossed into a tractor. Among them was that of a
very young girl. A soldier had commented, aney pau (untranslatable but roughly
an expression of sympathy with undertones indicating ‘should not have been this
way’).
I haven’t heard any such
stories from the other side of the war-line, but from what I know of the Tamil
community I am sure that there would have been instances when commonalities
pertaining to the human condition were recognized in the lives, bodies and
corpses of ‘sworn enemies’.
We can smile. We can cry.
Effortlessly. This is perhaps why our poverties don’t keep us down. We laugh
through tragedy and don’t go overboard with joy over those rare moments of
triumph.
The other day as I was
driving, I almost hit a three-wheeler. I was taking a left turn. He was turning
into the road I was on. I was slow. He was fast. I was hugging my left, he was
hugging his right. Braked. He swerved. Eye met eye. I must have been thinking
happy thoughts, for I smiled. Had I screamed or even glared, he would have had
to stomach it and go his way. I smiled and was greeted by the widest grin ever.
Reminded me of another
smile-story. This happened more than a decade ago. Four young men in a car.
Swung into Galle Road without looking. Almost crashed into a three-wheeler.
They had not waited for comments but had sped away. A red light had stopped
them. The rear-view mirror showed the three-wheeler racing towards them.
Expecting an earful, they had determined to scream back, counting on superior
numbers to secure silence. The three-wheeler had pulled up and stopped parallel
to their car. The driver had looked at them, given a thumbs-up sign and said
(in English): ‘Nice driving!’ They got their silence. And perspective.
These things happen all the
time. To all of us. The day is 24 hours long. I am sure there are many
smile-moments that present themselves to all of us, every day. I am sure we all
smile enough and perhaps more than people in those nations that need to teach
smiling. There’s always one more reason to smile. Even through the most
transparent of tears.
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