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| Friday, 14 May 2004 |
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Over the storm, the doom song of the drums A Lasting Storm: Sri Lanka 1948 - 2001
At first, she tells us, "we missed out completely on the banked fires... grievances centuries old... being stoked into flames... If any political storms were gathering, well, we did not see the clouds..." Yes, happy Sri Lanka. Maureen begins with the times we shared. The August 1948 holiday she tells of was in my father's home in Anuradhapura. Years of taking measured strides to make dreams come true - to rebel if needs be, to be a journalist. But slowly, stealthily, the drums began their tattoo; so faint at first, then rising to a madcap rhythm demanding that they be heard. After 1955 - "Signs of distress and dissatisfaction were very clearly defined now... The one thing that engaged most people's attention and created a climate of doubt and suspicion was the whipping-up by the SLFP of an anti-English language lobby and the wild promises Bandaranaike was making to the people that once he was brought into power he would ensure Sinhala Only within 24 hours." The drums were beating quickly now. April 1956 - The SLFP landslide victory. And Bandaranaike? "A political leader like any other, with his full measure of sycophants, hangers-on, and parasites. I think he knew very well he was setting open a Pandora's Box in this torpid country, but perhaps he did not realize that once he had opened it, he would lose the key." 1958 - "... in the distance low rumbles could be heard by those who had ears to hear ... our country was deeply splintered, frighteningly polarized (but) People.... were as usual wrapped up in their own concerns and far too many did not see the writing on the wall. If they saw, the did not read. They certainly did not read." Death drums Maureen cannot dismiss the death drums. To her, May 1958 brought that "unforgettable day of terror and unimaginable horror... men and women, helpless, were being assaulted... smoke was spiralling in the sky from houses set ablaze." Who is prepared, even now, to answer her questions, give answer in a voice loud enough to rise over the drums of doom? This book has been written with love, despair, hope and again, love. How many minds have taken it all in, felt the red iron of ruin, the tattering of joy and the desolation of a once-peaceful, well-knit society? Monsters of divisiveness were created by politicians who built themselves up on the gullibility of the people. The terrors of May 1958, she says, proved that the road taken by those in power and some of their particular policies that were put in place, had failed miserably. "... we made our first post-political-Independence descent into savagery and we proved that it had only needed the political backing to send a great many of us berserk." And the question: If people were to resort to murdering other people whose language and ethnicity were different from their own, what price our so-called culture and civilization? Answer that please. But no, the answer if made, cannot be heard. Those damn drums are now booming, booming. Maureen writes with remarkable effect, her memories of the good, the decent, the honourable countering her livid horror of a country rolling down a Garderene slope. Naturally, she castigates without mercy. It is this quality of outrage that makes the book so compelling. "We were young, we were merry, and even pain and death did not deter us. Others' pain and death. Sadly, we left politics to the politicians, not realizing that in the main, by the very nature of their being and by their choice of politics, they were bunglers and blunderers, selfish and power-hungry, always have been and always will be." And again: "I have been constrained to admit that the miasma rises from the bottom. The people are corrupt themselves. All of society is tainted. We get the politics and politicians we deserve." Then, unbelievably, the manic drums drop to a low-key sob. They rose when Bandaranaike was assassinated, but there followed the era of Sirimavo and with a record of take-overs, nationalization, laws and actions that created further socio-cultural tensions, rifts and divisions among the communities. Maureen is no side-taker never has been, and I must say that her years of journalism under the truly greats of this country helped enormously. True, as we know, she did a fine piece of work on her book on Mrs. Bandaranaike, but there was also that need to say of what she saw and what impinged in those dicey days of the schools take-over: "It seemed to me... that the Government and its staunch supporters did not accept the FACT that this island was a fine example of the multi-ethnic, multi-religio-cultural-a pluralistic society. It was not giving sufficient encouragement for the "mosaic" to take life and fire and power. It was narrowing things down to US - and others. And, as a result, the WE and you mentality was growing apace, This compartmentalization, begun in the schools from the early to mid-Fifties, had taken root and was spawning ugly, grotesque branches... the fabric was being strained and tattered!" Ah, do you hear it? There are those damned drums again! "The Lasting Storm" is a narration, starkly told, no frills, very matter-of-fact actually, and yet, it moves in a way that grips - from happy times past to 1948 onwards when, as Maureen says, "ever since... the First Parliament, kissing began to go by favour" to political stooges and politicians' goons. "Those who formed the backbone of society but did not go after those in political power, were left to rot! Power corrupts. there is no doubt about it... It is impossible for an ordinary citizen to believe, to even try to comprehend to what extent a politician will go today to hold on to power; what lies they are capable of mouthing; deluding even themselves that what they are stating is true!" Past glimpses The pace of the narrative is smooth and presented in a manner where past glimpses are juxtaposed with the worst of the present to make the contrasts sometimes too horrible to think of. This is where the book actually trembles with power. Where was the JVP insurgency of 1971 most insistent - and pat comes a police officer's answer: "Where the jaggery trees grow." Even the exodus to the Middle East does not go uncommented on. "Now, thousands of our women and our men have gone out to the Middle East as servants. Is that a reflection of our Education System, or their inability to aspire to higher posts?" She tells of the monstrous and shameful torture and killing of a young Buddhist monk and a beauty queen, Miss Manamperi, who was also raped by the armed forces in a southern rehabilitation camp. And, most telling of all, was what the incumbent monk of Rhamba Vihara in Mahanagahula said: What we forget to our cost is that the great Parakramabahu's father was a Tamil prince. That Vijaya Bahu I rid this country of Chola-Thamil occupation, but his own palace guard was composed of Tamil warriors and that he gave his daughter, Ratnavali, to a Tamil prince. The island people must have been much of an ethnic mixture in those times also, but no civil wars were fought on that issue." Maureen spares nothing. She tells of the "Great Divide" of 1977: The bell of division, the bell of doom had already been struck for Sri Lanka." Even the teachers of the Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya, occupied the Staff Room - Tamils on one side, Sinhalese on the other. The people were sitting on an inferno, waiting for the spark that would unleash its fury. It burst into scorching rivers of flame in July 1983 and the registers of death were cramped with entries. The drums beat maddeningly and other drums made of it a pounding ensemble of cruel death - the Pettah bus stand; the Department of Telecommunications; the Hotel Lanka Oberoi; Air Lanka aircraft, the Maradana railway station, the Central Bank, the Dalada Maligawa, fears of Indian invasion, parippu drops, the coming of the IPKF, the second JVP revolt, terror and counter-terror, the assassination of Premadasa, Richard de Zoysa, Gamini Dissanayake.... This is a grandmother's tale and grandma Maureen brings it to a fitting end: "My darling grandchildren, your own future is as in secure as anyone else's in lanka... (where) its trees are being destroyed, its soil, its beaches are being polluted, its lakes and rivers are running dry; the stinking mounds of garbage remain uncleared. We live in times when the future cannot be even reasonably predicted... I have seen many facets of the wild, dark, sinister Play... the incalculable loss in terms of progress and development to the large numbers of our people, tied to the politicians' gross greed, ambition, hunger for the best of the wine... There is no reward for hard work and honesty and dedication in Sri Lanka today... (It is) a country more fissured, more splintered than ever..." Do you hear the drums? They beat insistently on. Shall we dance? - Carl Muller |
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The nights may wear their crust of stars; and the days their golden
haloes, but for Maureen Seneviratne, after the days of young love, years
of happy togetherness, her classmate days ("... it had never ever
dawned on me to identify my dear friends' ethnic backgrounds...") -
days passed so thoughtlessly, blissfully, she heard the drums.
