Laksiri Warnakula

Since that Easter Sunday, I have been wanting to pen a few words expressing my feelings towards all, who suffered. Lives of nearly three hundred worshipers, their children and scores of foreign tourists were snuffed out amidst waves of flying shrapnel and fumes of sulphur.

And each time I tried, my thoughts always lost its way, blinded by the fiery spectacle of agony, carnage and death that must have reigned at those locations, following the blasts.

Then something snapped in me as I kept reading and listening to what some of our Diyawanna oya nincompoops and their supposedly duty-bound appointees had to say about the mayhem.

I do not want to elaborate on what some of them said, for they have been on all forms of media, for almost two weeks now. 

What actually infuriated me is the fact that how inconsiderate and insensitive have become the mindsets of our politicians towards people, who have put them wherever they are now.

In spite of three warnings from our big neighbour, no one seemed to have given two hoots about a possible impending disaster with people caught right in the middle of it. Some were forewarned even a week before, some were stopped from going to church by way of paternal advise, some thought that it was going to be not big enough to make a noise about and so on and so forth. Sadly, all that however, did not reach the public, the relevant religious personalities and others concerned, for which the hapless and the innocent ended up paying the ultimate price.

Aren’t all these acts of covering up and subterfuge acts of sacrilege on what one promised and his unbound duty to people, when one was elected or duly appointed by those people’s representatives?

And did we have any security-council meetings? Yes we apparently did, though without an IGP and a PM. And their excuse is that they were not invited. Isn’t it inconceivable that none of them bothered to find out why? Or that it didn’t occur to them that the safety and the security of the country and its people matter first, sits at the top, even if it means to force your way into the sessions and demand why? No. Sadly some spines are made of bone, just bare, brittle bone and nothing else.

And to see some of them chuckle, while calmly sitting on those comfy chairs holding media briefings is mind-boggling and downright ugly, few even seemingly savouring the fact that they somehow survived, so that they can continue to tell people their fairy tales, actually made me almost throw up in disgust. Or is this apparent nonchalance and pretentious (obviously) stand of showing up nerve, a facade to hide their fear and failure?

Dante in his ‘La Commedia (Divine Comedy)’ writes about hell, purgatory and heaven. The bombers were probably dreaming about the last as they blew themselves up.

And as for our own, who knew about it in advance and still did nothing about it, I am not sure how Dante would have judged them.

Laksiri Warnakula