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| Sri Lanka |
| I am dying, Eelam, dying |
| 2009-04-11 |
| Velupillai Prabhakaran is in an unpredictable mood these days. Sometimes when his gimlet eyes fix on those around him, he looks murderous. Sometimes he looks like a broken man muttering under his breath, I am dying, Eelam, dying, as though he were in some Shakespearean melodrama. Those around him are wary of talking to him when Prabhakaran is having a conversation with himself. When they see a rage building up inside him, they keep out of the line of his sight. The only time they go to tell him something is to give the news from the battlefront. Sometimes the battlefront is four kilometres away. At other times it is less than a kilometre away. All the time the battlefield is shrinking. Sometimes they don't have to tell Prabhakaran some of the news because he can hear it coming too. That is when the Sri Lankan shells come with a high whine and explode and body parts lie everywhere. It is not what the explosion does that is terrible. It is the sound of screaming that follows that is unbearable. The screaming goes on for hours without stop. All the news from the battlefront is bad news. All the news that comes via the satellite phone is bad news. They couldn't get the UN to intervene. This MP will try to do this but it is difficult. They couldn't do this. They couldn't do that. They had to shoot a few who were trying to break the cordon here. They had to fire into the crowd to restrain a rebellion there. All the stack of medicine was over and amputations had to be done without the help of medicines. Water was running low. A thousand were dying of bullet wounds and other injuries. Many were already dead from the pain. There were no more ablebodied youngsters left to defend the last positions, should they look for older persons? More shells had fallen in such and such place and so many had been wounded and so many dead. Should they ask people to start burying those who had been dead for a day? Whenever he gets the latest bad news, those around Prabhakaran keep their fingers crossed. They have no idea whether he is going to burst into tears or start shooting at everything and everyone in sight. Often these days Prabhakaran feels he has been stabbed in the back with a knife that has Tamil lettering on its handle. He had had the same feeling many years ago, when Rajiv Gandhi had corralled him into Hotel Ashok in New Delhi and coerced him into accepting the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. Then he had complained to V Gopalasamy that he had been stabbed in the back. "I feel like committing suicide," he had confessed to V Gopalasamy on the phone twenty-two years ago. The lettering on the knife handle then had been English. Anton Balasingham had translated it for him, clause by clause. Often these days Prabhakaran thinks of committing suicide. He wants to ask Gopalasamy, "What have I done to deserve this fate? Have I sacrificed my whole life for this? Should I have settled for much less than Eelam?" Eelam was slipping away from his grasp like a fistful of Puthukudiyiruppu beach sand. All that answers him is the warm evening wind moving among the coconut trees near his bunker. But now he cannot get on the phone and tell Gopalasamy that he wants to end it all. The only person who gets on the satellite phone nowadays is Nadesan. He is on the phone to Malaysia, to Thailand, to UK, Canada. They are all advising Nadesan to tell Thalaivar to save himself and escape while he still can. With him around there will be hope for the movement. Soosai had the boats ready. All that had to be done is to give the signal and they could make a break for it past the cordon of vessels four nautical miles away where they are safe from LTTE range and head towards a mid-sea rendezvous under the cover of darkness. Prabhakaran curses himself often for asking the Tamil people to boycott the November 2005 presidential polls that brought Rajapaksa to power. Sometimes when those around him think that Prabhakaran is talking to himself he is not. Prabhakaran sometimes talks to Rajapaksa whom nobody can see except Prabhakaran. These are not good conversations. They make Prabhakaran angry. During every conversation with Rajapaksa, Prabhakaran walks with exaggerated slow steps away from Rajapaksa and suddenly whirls around, whips the revolver from his waist holster and fires at the imaginary Rajapaksa screaming, "Go ahead. Make my day." The first time that it happened they told Pottu Amman of the chief's disturbing behaviour. Pottu, looking for clues, had asked a technical question: "Does he whirl to the left or does he whirl to the right before shooting, and how is his aim?" They had been too surprised to notice. They became worried again when Prabhakaran had pointed a gun at those who were refusing to dig trenches to defend the last positions and declared, "In this world there's two kinds of people, my friends. Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig." Then Pottu, the intelligence chief, understood clearly what was going on. " I think he is beginning to think he is Clinton Eastwood." They asked Pottu, "Is that good or bad?" Pottu had given them no answer and lapsed into silence. Then he said: "It all depends. It could be good. It could be bad. Or it could be ugly." Over the radio that Prabhakaran was now in the habit of listening came a song Undhan desathin kural, tholu doorathil ado, seviyil vizhatha...sonda veetuntrai va vendru azhaikuthuda thamizha.... (Do you not hear your country calling you from afar? It is calling you to come home Thamizha...) It was a poignant song with a funereal rhythm and the nadaswaram made it sound even sadder. Prabhakaran was silent as he heard the song. His gimlet eyes softened with a faraway look. Then came the commercial breaks and after that the headlines. The announcer was saying in Chennai the political parties had called for a ceasefire.... Prabhakaran heard the headline and flew into an immense rage. He began muttering to himself and started to walk with exaggerated slowness away from the radio. Suddenly he whirled around whipped out the revolver and shot the radio. In one smooth movement. He had whirled to the left and the radio was shattered. In his hand the gun was smoking. Politicians, he spat out the word. "These are politicians, Pottu, politicians. They will bury us all here. I should have been a politician. There's no future in this business." It was suddenly dark. Over the wild wind came the sound of shells hurtling down. There came a series of deafening explosions nearby. Somewhere a child began to cry in a whimper. The screams grew steadily louder as more voices joined in |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #5 How many gimlits does ya gotta drink before that eye sets in? |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2009-04-11 10:59 |
| #4 ahhh the gimlet eyes..... cataracts, perhaps? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-04-11 09:29 |
| #3 I have to put in my favorite of the 20th century: "There are two kinds of ships; submarines and targets." -- Some bubblehead |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2009-04-11 08:43 |
| #2 One of my favorite quotes! "There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend. Those with loaded guns, and those who dig [holes]. You dig." -- Clint Eastwood, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" which is almost as favorite as this: "Owing to the neglect of our defences and the mishandling of the German problem in the last five years, we seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later, on even more adverse terms than at present." -- Winston Churchill in a letter to Lord Moyne, 1938 |
| Posted by: gromky 2009-04-11 06:32 |
| #1 "I should have been a politician." Indeed. but instead you and your followers chose the route of murder and terrorism to achieve your aims. You got the fate you deserve. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2009-04-11 06:19 |