Voyages through Kilali lagoon

AIRPORT: It was with the laying of foundation stone for the second International Airport in Sri Lanka at Weerawila that President Mahinda Rajapaksa made the directive to re-open the A-9 highway to transport food items to the Jaffna Peninsula.

The A-9 highway which remains a lifeline to the people in the North, had witnessed several battles in the past two decades and the worst of them was the battle which took place along the A-9 route at Elephant Pass in 1999.

The areas North of Killinochchi towards the Jaffna Peninsula and the areas along Hambantota towards Kataragama are similar.

The region of Hambantota has the similarities in abundance with the areas north of Killinochchi towards the Jaffna Peninsula with palmyra trees, lagoons and salterns.

In the good old days Jaffna cigars were very popular with the people in the South with lorries from the peninsula along A-9 highway and goods trains from various Jaffna stations transported Jaffna cigars to Southern areas such as Kalutara, Galle, Matara and Hambantota. Jaffna traders even set up their shops in a big way in those areas.

However the railway tracks were being removed to build bunkers and the A-9 highway turned into a route of untold misery beginning from the early nineties.

When the A-9 route remained a pathway known for continuous battles between the Security Forces and the LTTE, the Kilali lagoon located west of Elephant pass became the waterway for civilians in the Peninsula to reach the Wanni mainland and continue their journey to Colombo.

The voyages through the Kilali lagoon were perilous. Several boats capsized killing innocent men, women and children. When Kilali remained a waterway for the civilians in the North, my senior colleague and mentor Ajith Samaranayake even crossed the Kilali lagoon to reach Jaffna when the Peninsula was not motorable in the early nineties.

Ajith was accompanied by the late Tharmaratnam Sivaram and the BBC-Tamil service journalist Ananthi Sooriyaprakasan. As I was writing this column, the news of the passing away of Ajith Samaranayake came as a rude shock to me.

Embarking into journalism as a Sunday Observer journalist in the early seventies Ajith played a remarkable role in highlighting the realities of the political and humanitarian spheres and the armed struggles of the North and East with his wrist work.

Being a lobby correspondent Ajith did a marvellous job in highlighting the speeches made by veterans such as Amirthalingam, Sivasithamparam and other big wigs of Tamil politics and also key legislators from the South who occupied the seats of the new Parliament in Kotte in its early days.

Ajith even did an interview with the then TULF General Secretary Appapillai Amirthalingam in his Vaddukoddai electorate in Jaffna when he was the Leader of the Opposition during President J. R. Jayewardene's regime.

"Ajith was an ornament to journalism" was the comment made by K. Sivanayagam, the founder editor of the Saturday Review of Jaffna when he heard about Ajith's demise.

It was at the funeral of A.J. Kanakaratne, an English scholar and a former journalist of Daily News and Saturday Review, Jaffna, a month ago that Ajith made some in-depth comments on the era of A. J. Kanakaratne and said that A.J. was a bridge between the intellectuals, journalists, and the common men of North and South who respected each other.

Though Ajith remained an English journalist he had a very good command of Sinhala and mingled with journalists from all communities without leaving room for any petty differences.

It was just one week back that Ajith had to bear a personal tragedy with the brutal murder of his sister in Nugegoda. Now Ajith's demise has created a vacuum in the country's media circles.

As an enlightened journalist he remained an `encyclopedia' with a marvellous knowledge of men, matters and events in the country.

The struggle for peace in the country remains a herculean task. Ajith's writings would help the peacemakers to enhance North-South relations.