I'm angry and I'm tired. I'm angry because clearly even thousands of miles away on a whole different planet you can still have fruitless discussions about Sri Lanka with educated intelligentsia and because the nature of conflict, development, human rights are still so misunderstood by those with the best of intentioned. Brings to mind something that a dear friend said recently: It's the white liberals that I hate the most. I can deal with white conservatives, because I know where they're coming from, but when the white liberals talk the talk and turn around and stab you in the back; that betrayal hurts the most.
I guess that's what I feel here. I feel so vilified by everyone. Abroad, outside, amongst Tamil friends and family, I'm always the one pushing for a moderate point of view, pushing always for the inclusion of alternative political voices into defining Tamil aspirations. Here, of all places, the debate is so limited that I end up inevitably foghorning for the LTTE because otherwise Tamil people would have no voice. Elegant variations of idealism are never realistic.
We are having peace talks every Tuesday as I am on a group project with another Sri Lankan and the title of our project is "solve the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka". He has the patience of an elephant and a frustratingly dialectical-materialist view of time, and I have all the urgency and narrow blinkeredness of a hummingbird and we are getting nowhere fast, which has sadly mirrored the history of peace talks in Sri Lanka.
Oh and I thought I would be able to escape it by coming here, but instead, it is more of the same and since I sought it out, I can't complain and yet, I do.
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