The War - and it's conspiracy theories

So the war is almost done isn’t it? By the time we hit 61 years of independence 'every inch of our homeland will be liberated from the scourge of the tigers'. They wanted a homeland for the Tamils, only thing the Tamils and Sinhalese in this country wanted was to live together in peace. Lots of innocents have been slaughtered regardless of race, religion, caste, creed etc. over the course of the bloody history of this war.

Peace was fleeting somewhere in 2001 when the UNP was in power. My first and only experience with peace since the day i was born. But now we have a chance at real peace. Now we have a chance at living in a country without war. I'll tell you straight, i find that extremely hard to believe.

A lot has been spoken about the 'war generation'. Which basically includes everyone in this country born after 1983. All we have known is war, all we have been familiar with is a country that is at war. Even in the secluded suburbs of Colombo, where i grew up most of my life there was always the background of fear. Earlier in my life, when i was in Nawalapitiya (off Kandy) i remember the troubles with the JVP. I was at my mom's family home, my dad was around only on weekends because he was working in Colombo. I had several uncles, aunts and cousins, and was living in my grandmas sprawling home. I recall not going to pre- school for a few days once, and i remember the distant cracks of gunshots from the train station.

I remember the times at school when the bombs used to go off. When i was in grade six the classroom we were in had one broken window, which was covered by a polythene sheet. I remember the polythene suddenly bursting in from the shockwave of the Central Bank bombings. I remember a huge column of smoke in the sky one day in 1998, I don't recall which bomb it was. Pretty soon, bombs became just another way of getting a holiday from school. I guess i sort of normalized to the magnitude of it all.

Then the train bombs happened, somewhere in 1997, if im not mistaken, a train carrying people during the busy evening office hours was bombed. It was a devastating blast, killing scores. and that was one of the times that the fear and reality of the war came closest to me. Our neighborhood was in a panic. because several people where i live travel in trains to work and back, one of them my father. He hadn't turned up at the usual time, and then we heard about the bombs. Cell phones weren't so common those days, so there was no way of knowing if he was ok, everyone on our street was on the road, comforting each other, asking for news from people who made it back, but i didn’t hear anything about my father.

I recall feeling scared, almost tearful but strangely numbed to the reality of it. A part of me couldn't really conceive him gone. A part of me was just waiting, excited even, because the action was so much closer to home. A part of me was enjoying the thrill of not knowing, the thrill of being so up-close to the emotion of disaster. But that was only a part of me.

My dad came home alright though Alhamdulillah. It was one of those strange coincidences of which you hear all the time. He was about to get into the train that exploded, then he'd met his best friend at the station and the two of them had gone off for a drink. So he comes home at about 9.30 or so, grinning slightly, I was grinning too though my mom wasn’t too happy as you can imagine.

He'd gone with his friend to check out the carnage at the Dehiwala station, apparently one of his colleagues had got into the train, he was telling us about all the debris and confusion at the station, and how they'd not been able to find out anything. His colleague was OK in the end though.

I had a neighbor, Stefan his name was. He lost his dad in that explosion. His mom, who was in the same train, escaped. But she lost the use of both her eyes. They later migrated to Australia. I don't blame them.

I recall the red skies and acid rains when the Kolonnawa oil refineries were bombed. I recall the last Cricket World Cup when me and my best friend were awakened from a semi-intoxicated stupor when the anti aircraft guns were firing. We thought they were lighting crackers ‘cos Sanga and Mahela had just started to build an innings.

I saw the wall near flower road splattered with shrapnel after the defence secretary was targeted. I lived through the recent spate of paranoia in public transport. I may have not been directly touched by the war, as in i may not have lost a limb or a close member of my family to it, yet it has been an integral part of my life so far.

And now they're saying it’s over. Call it a psychological phenomenon but I'm sorry i find that hard to believe. This war will never be over.