Garble

 

The flag, hoisted in almost every house.

Nangi doesn’t understand what the hullaballoo is all about. She’s far too young to remember any attacks or the god awful waiting period just after a blast, where you frantically pace up and down because the phone lines are jammed wondering ‘what if..’.

I started typing this post, was called to watch the news and came back with my thoughts a little more tangled than before. I will probably be extremely incoherent and will end up not saying what I want to say, but dammit.. I need to get this out of my system.

For most of the day, I was closeted with a few friends and oblivious to everything happening – and so, I missed the crackers, I missed the news reports, I missed the video clips on TV and it wasn’t until I received a news alert during lunch saying that Prabakaran was killed that things finally began to sink in.

Picture by F, sitting on S’s lap leaning out of a moving three wheeler.

Coming back home we ran into a parade.. or a victory dance I really don’t know what to call it. People spilling out of trishaws, determinedly vocal in their celebrations. Crackers lit on the road. Boys draping flags around their waists singing Hela Jaathika Abhimaanaya – baila style. Flags pinned onto barricades, the bonnets of cars, trees and every possible bare surface.

Around this time last year, I posted this, wondering if it’ll ever end.

Well, so it has. But the much sought after relief is yet to come. I can’t help but remain curiously desensitized to all the frenzied celebrations around. The sore feeling, tinged with guilt that while people flock to dansal’s to devour kiribath and while I stare bemusedly at my computer screen, someone somewhere has laid down his life for this exact moment is numbing, to say the least.

Our soil is drenched in blood. The scars of 30 years will not fade easily and memories will remain etched on people’s minds. We have such a long way to go and so much to heal before we start the victory marches. I just pray and hope that we can do it.