I’m currently rereading Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje after about a two year hiatus. To be honest I was not very fond of the book the first time around, but it is sort of growing on me this time around. I’m still a bit rankled by the description of someone in a coat in Colombo, since in all my life I have never seen anybody foolish enough to do that in the heat and humidity. But that little glitch aside as I said I’m quite enjoying the read this time, though it is somewhat ‘uneven.’ There was one paragraph though that as I read it, it really affected me, which I found deeply insightful….

“When Gamini finished surgery in the middle of the night, he walked through the compound into the east buildings, where the sick children were. The mothers were always there. Sitting on stools, they rested their upper torso and head on their child’s bed and slept holding the small hands. There were not too many fathers around them. He watched the children, who were unaware of their parent’s arms. Fifty yards away in Emergency he had heard grown men scream for their mothers as they were dying. ‘Wait for me!’ ‘I know you are here!’ This was when he stopped believing in man’s rule on earth. He turned away from every person who stood up for a war. Or a principle of one’s land, or a pride of ownership, or even personal rights. All of those motives ended up somehow in the arms of careless power. One was no worse and no better than the enemy. He believed only in the mothers sleeping against their children, the great sexuality of spirit in them, the sexuality of care, so the children would be confident and safe during the night.” 

I actually felt ashamed reading this because I have in the past called for a ‘return to arms’ in response to events like the attempted assassination on Sarath Fonseka. I do however stand by my opinion that force is necessary sometimes, there are ‘good’, thoughtful ways to respond to provocations such as those that have been shown by the LTTE since the dawn of the ceasefire. Talking peace with people who do not understand at the language is in the end fruitless. I however do not and have never supported clarion calls for things like ‘utter destruction’ and ‘final solutions’ for the conflict. At the end of the day strategic necessities have to be balanced against the raw human suffering that is the above passage evokes. To people on the ground non-violence would be ideal but we unfortunately live in the real world, a world that is yet to learn that to kill is in the end utterly fruitless.

I am in the end not trying to provide a solution or pass judgment, I am merely noting that the big picture of what is going on in our island has to be balanced against the suffering of people on the ground, will they suffer for eternity if we give in the Tigers or suffer for a bit longer if we fight them, who makes that choice? Who has the right to make that choice? I wish I had some of the answers but all I have is an amorphous, gray mass of ideas and opinions that are constantly shifting, maybe there is no answer, maybe that’s Kuveni’s curse.