Testimonies of Silent Pain

The Social Architects of Colombo had organised a book launch yesterday.  “Testimonies of Pain” is a collection of stories in Sinhala and Tamil by people who lived the pain and agony of a protracted conflict. The war is over, but the conflict still lingers.

This collection is a ‘marriage between feelings and facts’ as one of the speakers said.

Listening to all the speakers, I could only guess the unfathomable pain that made ordinary people write extraordinary stories so deeply. Some of them never wrote either before or after. But they just wrote the stories they chose to tell; because they had to. Life's experiences do make people think and do things they never thought they were capable of.

The pain of a minority dominated by a majoritarian state and the perceived discrimination and marginalization meted out to the minority. The colossal destruction of war and the lives lost. Opportunities missed. Smiles stolen. Festering wounds. Haunting memories. All these, I gathered were in this collection, for which I will need a translation in English to grasp. But, I saw and felt the passion with which people spoke.  I heard Dharmasiri Bandaranayake – a leading playwright and film maker – speak with regret and remorse of how a community lost its collective conscience, battered by war.  How policies got shaped by parochialism, how art lost its due place to connect hearts and minds.  Because, it was all politics and war that had dominated many decades in Sri Lanka.

The cultural interludes in the ceremony by young artists were refreshing.  A Eastern Sri Lanka dance form that looked like an all-male version of Dandiya was interesting for its lack of perfection and background rendition by a very old man. His broken voice and forced breathing gave a raw authenticity to the art form. His rendition reminded me of the singing and chanting of Dervish dancers I saw in Sudan, who drive thousands to a Suphi ecstasy, every Friday in a mosque, until the sun went down. Clad in colorful gowns, the whirling performers would drown themselves in what would look like a union of spiritual ecstasy and unbridled emotions.

 

A short play directed by Dharmasiri Bandaranayake reflected a ghastly incident that took place in the heart of Colombo a few years back, where a mentally challenged young Tamil boy was beaten to death in sea, until as the footage showed, his blood mixed with the greyish-blue waters of the ocean.  A stark reminder of how things were as bad, and a much stronger reminder that time has come to heal and move forward.

The young bhajan singers from Mylapur, Chennai, just gave a slice of Chennai Carnatic bhajans. Energetic. Voice controlled. Even a beat was not missed.