Why I came home.
The other day I went to see some ppl about a job. We had a standard discussion, and they said that I should be given a medal for coming home. Medals are always good, but this mentality that is taking over Colombo is a bit odd. Being a child of ‘84 I was born into a country at war and have lived pretty much all my life in a country at war. Now this is not a patch on what the ppl living in the NE face, but we do go through our share of crap. Right through the 90’s we lived through bombs, curfews, school closures, threats, but we batted on. We celebrated when we won the world cup in ‘96, we cried when we lost friends and family to the war, we went to school, went to work, cussed the govt, cussed the LTTE, cheered when Jaffna was captured, fretted when Elephant pass fell, shuddered when there was a big boom and got on with life.
And then there was peace, for four years, an uneasy peace but it was nothing like I had ever experienced before. I could go to Arugam Bay and Trinco (though we didn’t, thankfully in retrospect, bc we were due to go December 24-27th 2004, instead we went to Galle, smart), and even went to Vavuniya and Killinochchi, something I thought I’d never do. The army check points were replaced with corrupt cops seeking bribes for invented crimes. Everybody relaxed. But it was always a shaky peace, and from 2004 it felt like a matter of time before things got messy.
Now things are proper messy, there are serious military offensives going on in the North, bombs left right and centre in Colombo and everyone has got agitated. As far as I’m concerned there has been a sense of inevitability about this. Strangely everyone else seems to think that this is the apocalypse, war is upon as, we’re all going to die. Sure, things aren’t very rosy here but this is pretty much what it was pre-2002, and the country survived then and I’m sure it will survive now. If ppl managed from ‘83 - 2002, there’s no real reason why they have to quit the country now, though that is what every other bugger seems bent on doing, smacks of knee jerk in my book.
Yesterday I was having lunch with a sudda who asked me why I came back, and I said that SL has everything I could possibly ask for, in terms of natural resources, friends and family. And I also want to try give something back. At the moment the best way to do that is to bat on and try to keep moving with normal life. Any country’s best natural resource is their ppl, and sadly we’ve lost so many of them through war and the brain drain, and right now we’re in danger of losing even more. I think the present leadership in the country has almost no hope of providing a real solution to the country’s problems, my real hope lies with the next generation of leaders, the next generation of society as a whole. A more educated, open minded group of ppl who can hopefully learn from the bitter lessons of the post independence era. It’s important to understand that with time attitudes change, ppl change, the fabric of society changes, and eventually leaders change. About 40-50 years ago the vast majority of ppl in developing countries favoured protectionist economic policies. And their leaders implemented these policies. Today things are different. Similarly, when our society becomes more educated, more exposed to the rest of the world, the fabric of society will change and so will our leaders. I’m not saying that the war will end overnight, that we’ll start putting out brilliant economic policies willy nilly, but I’m sure it’s more likely that future leaders will be more willing and will be smart enough to hammer out a proper political and economic compromise that will help SL achieve the potential that it hides so very well.
And for that we need to hang on and contribute to the economy, to thought, to society. When we have kids we need to pass on to the next generation the experience we’ve gained, how not to make the mistakes that previous generations have made. We’ll make our own mistakes, but the key is to learn and improve. And that will never happen if we abandon home. Some ppl believe that we need revolution, I don’t think that can work. You can’t change attitudes of an entire society over night, that happens with time and experience. I think we need to be part of it.
