view from back of a moving trishaw
It’s nice to get out of the air-conditioning now and then. Actually, it sucks. Take a trishaw home at 1 in the AM, feeling strangely lucid. I’d like to put my headphones on and just drift but it’s just too uncomfortable two feet from another human being. My Sinhala puts rudiment to shame, though I’ve got my life story down. The conversation is always the same. I’m 23. No, I’m not married. Yes, I was at a girls house. No, she’s actually a friend. Yes, I like Sri Lankan girls. No no, I don’t want a girl right now, thank you. And of course – yes, the country is fucked. Sometimes you can shuttle from the pub to the resto to home and forget what’s going on. Read the New York Times, watch Star World, whatever. Sometimes you can’t.
Trishaw drivers are a rather random way to get your news. I don’t watch TV cause the advertisements make me naush. I don’t really read the papers cause the layout and english make me twitch. I still read the New York Times every day. I still watch the same shit TV. I tend to notice where I’m living mainly when it smacks me in the head. Hereabouts that’s far too often. It’s hard to have to have breakfast on top of some suicide bombers severed head or people crying over their dead family. This country is a paradox, civilization spread paper thin over raw muscle and bone. Like putting the skin back on a dead cow. Step out of the origami hotel and you can see the blood underneath.
The drivers at night never own the trishaw. There’s no way you’d be driving your own vehicle around at 2h15. They just rent it and keep what’s left over after gas. This one says Mahinda looks pretty and does nothing. Yeah, I know. LTTE this, LTTE that. I know. Kid’s finished A-Levels but hard to find work. Yes, I lived in America. Yeah, there’s good money there. What can you do. Same shit. Everybody’s got kids. Everyone wants just a little bit more money. Not even a lot. Just a little bit.
I had another driver, during the day. Said he was Tamil. Usually you can tell, people post religious markers in the cab. I wasn’t looking. I asked if he saw the Vesak lanterns and he said he was scared to go out cause he might get his ass kicked. That struck me. More than anything on TamilNet really. Just that this guy was scared to walk the streets of his city. It’s a stupid example, but it’s the closest I’ve come to understand that very normal people just don’t feel secure in their own country. But I don’t get any catharsis there. Mainly I just hang my head through the bars and wonder what the fuck. Then I go home and read Metafilter until the bombs ruin my breakfast.
What Janapathi has said above looks very racist, extremist when you separate it from the whole context.
It’s like eating sugar separate compared to diluting sugar with water. We mix the same quantity, but does it taste the same?
Ok.. forget about what janapathi said..
In the ‘perfect world’ that most of the bloggers here live and dream of, what you are saying is correct. I do not think anyone is stupid not to understand that tamils live in Sri Lanka and we all have same roots. If you read Janapathi’s blog itself you will see in one post explaining the similarities between Sinhalese and Tamils and how they all related to each other.
Now this is my question for you. I expect an honest answer.
Will you rent your house or your car to a Sri Lankan born tamil who came to colombo from North of Sri Lanka?
If you still say Yes, then tell us, whether you are going to ask him to take a police report of some additional document that you would not ask if that person was a Sinhalese.
If you answer this question honestly you will understand the problem.
If you do treat them differently (Which we obviously do but do not want to accept it), that means you treated them differently. Which means, whether you like to accept it or not, in your definition you will becomes an Elamist.
The problems Sri Lankan tamils facing today is, people like you, do not want to honestly understand the Problems they face. We always like to see.. oh! they all are Sri Lankan Tamils and we all are same. Until the day people like you do not put some effort to understand the problem, and simply label people who talk the problem as extremist, we will have a war.
We will also have enough bombs, people dying in Sri Lanka. Reason is, according to your definition, no one should suspect anyone as a Terrorist if we all are Sri Lankans. So if the guy next door is a tamil and u see something unusual is going on, you will keep your mouth shut. Why, because the tamils living next door is one of us? Now my friend, that is why innocent people died in Sri Lanka.
Each bomb, will create, have created more anti-tamil sentiments in our own backyards. No one can stop it.
It’s not extremists like Janapathi, JHU, JVP who put fuel to this war, it is people who call them moderate and stay in between the lines comfortably are the culprits.
Now I am sure, a troller here will say.. go and fuck off..
i’m curious Janapathi, since you see as all tamils as apotential threat, would you prefer if they left colombo?
if so how would you propose to get rid of them? through (violent) force? or through marginalising them in society and starving their economic welfare via boycotts (of their restaurants, taxis etc)?
where would they go? kilinochchi? tamil nadu?
do you think these actions would make sri lanka in general a safer place?
if not, what would you propose to do about the tamil ‘problem’ in the south?
about the original post, indi, i can understand where you’re coming from. the day i found out that a lot of my tamil co-workers never left their home/office because they didn’t feel safe in colombo, was the first time i started crying in a public place in sri lanka. i can’t even imagine what it would feel like being treated like an outsider, a 2nd class citizen, or a criminal, in my country, nor what it would feel like to be ‘stuck’ in sri lanka – to have my only options be being treated with suspicion in the south, stuck between the armed forces, paramilitary and the ltte in the east/north, or to live under dictatorial control under the ltte.
it also made me really appreciate everything my parents did to provide me with social and economic security, and a foreign passport.
Oh well done Shimmi. A foreign passport. My heart bleeds for your patriotism.
i do love sri lanka, but i think that part of that comes with knowing that i can leave when i want to. plus, the foreign passport certainly helped a lot at checkpoints. i’ve never been a big fan of patriotism for the sake of patriotism (i am proud of certain things about NZ such as being staunchly nuclear-free & standing up to america about it, having an independant political conscience, & being a leader in the world’s anti-whaling campaign). i can’t actually think of anything that makes me feel particularly patriotic about sri lanka (apart from maybe that the people in general are a very friendly, generous, and helpful bunch, but that’s not really specific to sri lanka). i may be a terrible sri lankan, but at least i’m honest.
Actually I don’t have a house to rent anybody so your question is off the mark.
Leaving me aside, the example you brought forward is ridiculous and you brought it up only to avoid having to face the music for your slip of tongue in which you implied that tamils are not lankan.
Any landlord who asks someone to register with the police would do so only for his own protection should something go wrong and that in itself doesn’t mean he doesn’t consider his tenant to be non sri lankan.
Various people have various criteria for determining who they will accept as tenants. Some will take only married couples, some will take only those who have respectable jobs etc. Doesn’t mean that they consider unmarried people or those who don’t have respectable jobs in big companies as being non sri lankan.
In fact, some land lords prefer foriegners as tenants !
So your example of whether somebody might hesitate to rent to a tamil person from jaffna is no way related to whether or not tamils are sri lankan.
You are utterly SHAMELESS.
Having uttered the indifensible, you now defend yourself by trying to muddle the issue and talking about tenants and landlords.
Tamil lankans are as Sri Lankan as anyone else and those like you who think otherwise are as Elamists as Prabhakaran the Terrorist.
Janapathi/Final Blast, since you are obviously intent on making lame excuses for yourself instead of facing reality, I’ll just declare you to be an idiot and not waste any time arguing with you any further.
Yes you are a terrible Sri Lankan. So stop crying in public places. For fuck’s sake.
Have you met the All Blacks? What is your Super 14 team?
Shameless.
Whose them?
Leave aside the notion that its attitudes like this that will prevent this country from ever attaining peace. What about the tamil speaking population that is not represented by the LTTE? The Estate Workers for example, they get the shittiest deals… They are poor, they are victimized for speaking and looking like Tamils, and they are marginalized out of the discourse. How about them?
Well, now that they have a hypnotized chicken speaking for them, I’m sure there lot will improve. :)
wonderfully written theena, both moving and very true. i wish you the best and hope that one day all sri lankans will think and feel like you do. jayawewa!!!