A Day in the Life - Part 3

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It got louder then.

I live in Kotahena and my room faces the west where the harbor is. As I walked into the room, I noticed orange flares above. Everything after that was a blur. Frantic calls and text messages were made. My sis called then. In the background, I could hear absolute panic. Maybe it was her group of friends only, but I gauged enough to know that there were all sorts of rumours being sent back and forth. I could even hear two guys arguing on what was actually going on.  Another friend, who lives in near the Parliament, had no idea what was going on. Her area was still blissfully unaware.

My mum was in a state of panic. My dad looked resigned. Uncle and aunt in the background were arguing what the possible targets were. My uncle thinks he knows everything when in fact he knows very little. For a brief period yesterday, he, from the relative comfort of his room, and without the aid of any information channel, was sure that the parliament was hit or about to be hit and that Sri Lanka were losing the world cup. I resisted the urge to ask him to shut the fuck up for my dad’s sake.

Then the orange flares stopped but there was sound of gun fire in the distance for a while afterwards. I’ve grown up hearing my relatives in Jaffna relate tales of how some nights they’d wake up to the sounds of gunfire. Here I was experiencing the same sense of helplessness.

Lights came on suddenly and we all ran to our TVs. Not to watch the news, but to see how our boys were doing in the finals. My friends ask me often why I am so devoted to cricket. As I ran to the TV, it occurred to me that the media forgets some of the traits that make this game so damned love by Sri Lankans. And its not because we have Sinhalease Catholics, A Tamil Hindu, A Tamil Catholic and A Muslim in our team, thus giving us a model of Sri Lankan society the way it ought to look. That is just circumstance.

For a brief few hours, cricket insulates us. It protects us from all that is wrong in this country. It helps us disregard the bloodthirsty bastards who are apparently fighting for freedom and equality yet kill the very people who they are supposed to be fighting for, all because they have a different opinion and dare question them. It helps us forget the fact that some of the most irresponsible, morally corrupt, incompetent people in Sri Lanka are now running the country. In those six hours, cricket consoles us from the knowledge that there is literally no political opposition of substance to challenge the ruling, and those that appear to challenge are just as corrupt and incompetent.

It helps us forget that we are stuck between the bloody thirsty bastards in the north and the incompetent idiots in the south, and how the destiny of this nation is being shaped by the very groups that ought to be the puppets and not the puppet masters.

Just then Shaun Tait bowled a bouncer to Mahela which he tried to hook, missed and looked at the umpire, asking for a wide. It wasn’t given, but it mattered little because our Duckworth Lewis par score was supposed to be at 175. SL’s total score was around 140. I wondered if the news of the attack on Colombo had filtered through to Barbados just a s the lights went off again. Outside the night sky was once again illuminated by the orange flares.

That one moment, when my country was in the midst of two very different battles thousands of miles apart, I realized that for once in my life cricket couldn’t console me. Regardless of the result, I knew that I’d wake up to a crazier world. And that, regardless of the result, Mahela Jayewardene and his boys are heroes to this nation and they should be welcomed back as such.

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