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by Aditha Dissanayake

Close your eyes and say the word Jaffna. What comes to mind. The LTTE. Bombs, landmines, charred buildings, refugee camps?

Have you ever been to Jaffna? No, never. Say most of my contemporaries. Having grown-up with the war, never having known of a time when "ethnic strife" had been non-existent, Jaffna has always been a place out of bounds to those born in the '70s and the 80s'. Going to Jaffna has always seemed as unthinkable a journey as going to the moon.

Now, however, things are changing. There would soon be private buses plying to Jaffna, say newspaper reports. Once the A4 highway is open it would simply be a matter of jumping into your car and driving there, on roads which are said to be as flat as pieces of nan, through monotonous stretches of land once past Elephant pass, with the "sara, sara" sound of palmyra leaves in your ears.

But once you get there, what should you expect? "I don't know" says the General Manager of a pharmaceutical company at Grandpass. "I worked at the Kankesenturai Cement factory in 1968, I haven't been to Jaffna since then. In the '60s the town was like any other town in the country. I remember best the reference section of the library and the Jaffna Regal. I was living in Galle those days" continues the GM. "I used to get up at two in the morning, travel to Colombo by bus to board the Yal Devi at 5.45. By 1.30 in the afternoon I would be in Jaffna."

"We went to Jaffna on a pilgrimage in 1977 and stayed at the Sinhala Maha Vidyalaya" says a neighbour, a lady of undeterminable age working in a BOI approved company in Biyagama. To my disappointment she too says there was nothing special to remember in the Jaffna town. Then she remembers the famous Khovil, (not its name though), where the men had to remove their shirts to enter the precincts. "The soil was red. The land was dry" says the BOI lady.

"I remember seeing girls riding push bicycles when I was in Jaffna in 1974" says an ex-musician. "I am from Kandy. A dozen of us had formed a music group and we staged a show in Jaffna. It was called an "Evening in Hawai". Apart from the girls he says he cannot remember anything else.

"I was there when I was this size and this size" says one of my colleagues - placing his hand once on his hip, and once on his forehead. (when he was thirteen and when he was doing his O/Ls). He is the only one in my age group who has been to this, hitherto out of bounds, Northern city. "I remember the last visit better than the first. We went by car. We left Colombo at about 6.45 in the morning, stopped at Anuradhapura for lunch, and was in Jaffna by 4.30 in the evening."

Looking into the face of my nineteen year old cousin with the first signs of stubble on his cheeks, I realize it is useless to ask if he has ever been to Jaffna? Instead, I rephrase my question. "Would you like to go to Jaffna, if you ever get a chance?" "Yeap! Yeap! Yeap" he says brimming with enthusiasm.

So would I. What would Jaffna look like when I get there? Adam and Eve's Paradise? Dante's Inferno? Wouldn't I like to find out.

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