{"id":88296,"date":"2019-05-06T23:46:02","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T05:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=88296"},"modified":"2019-05-06T16:42:53","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T23:42:53","slug":"i-am-grieving-for-sri-lanka-but-it-feels-like-no-one-is-grieving-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/05\/06\/i-am-grieving-for-sri-lanka-but-it-feels-like-no-one-is-grieving-with-me\/","title":{"rendered":"I am grieving for Sri Lanka, but it feels like no one is grieving with me"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Shynee Jananjalie\u00a0 Hewavidana<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Easter\nSunday. 8am. Out of the blue, my dad received a text from one of his friends asking\nif our family were safe. Safe from what?\u201d <\/em>A\npause. Switch on the news\u201d,<\/em> the\nnext text grimly informed us. We all bundled into a room and switched on Sky\nNews. Emblazoned on the screen was the breaking news that Sri Lanka had been\nbombed by terrorists. Colombo, the capital, had been attacked four times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Panic is a\nstrange thing. I\u2019d always assumed I felt it before \u2013 during exams I hadn\u2019t\nfully revised for; before giving presentations in class; that moment in a job\ninterview where you forget everything about yourself, including your name. But\nI was wrong. Panic is more than feeling a bit sweaty and nervous \u2013 it grapples\nyour insides, stops you breathing. It makes you vomit. It is every fear, every\nchoking terror you\u2019ve ever had, revealing itself in vivid colour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My entire family\nlives in Colombo. My parents migrated to the UK in the 80s, but my\ngrandparents, aunts, uncles, and scores of cousins are dotted around Colombo.\nEveryone I love and hold dear lives there. The news reporter chimed on adding\nthat three churches in Colombo had been bombed and we all lurched, no one\nhaving the words to express the horror we were feeling. My aunt and uncle are\ndevout Christians and we knew they were attending communion that day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are no words to express the horror\nand the dread of having to pick up the phone to see if your family are still\nalive\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a tragedy,\nthere are some things which are hard to talk about. And some things which are\njust impossible. There are no words to express the horror and the dread of\nhaving to pick up the phone to see if your family are still alive. Of hearing\nthe dialing tone endlessly beep on. The feeling of being so disconnected and\nfar away, useless. Knowing that if something had happened, you would be the\nlast to find out, because who would tell you? You\u2019re nearly 6,000 miles away\nand oceans apart. You\u2019re not really part of it, you\u2019re not a main character\nhere: sit back down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being part of a\ndiaspora is complex. On the one hand, we\u2019re as English as they come. I was born\nand bred in Kent and went to university in Cambridge \u2013 a clich\u00e9 picture of an\nEnglish upbringing. Yet, there\u2019s still a deep, unshakeable connection to my\nhomeland. It\u2019s the place of love, where we all come together and connect \u2013 last\nsummer, my family threw a graduation party for me in the Shangri La Hotel. The\nsame Shangri La was one of the buildings bombed on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, while Sri Lankans are grieving, across the world it seems\nthat our pain is only felt by a few. On the day Notre Dame burned, my entire\nFacebook feed was filled with statuses. Instagram was teeming with people\nposting pictures of their trips to Paris, mourning the cathedral. It trended on\nTwitter for days on end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where is that energy for Sri Lanka? Within\na few days of the fire, a cool 1 billion dollars was raised for Notre Dame.\nAlthough there isn\u2019t a definitive figure, we know that the Sri Lanka Red Cross\nSociety has garnered less than \u00a3100,000, whilst just over \u00a370,000 has been\nraised on the main GoFundMe initiative for Sri Lankan victims. The contrast is\nastounding \u2013 Malcolm Turnbull called for an Australian fund<\/a> for the restoration\nof Notre Dame. But Sri Lanka? Oh, just love and sympathy\u201d<\/a>. Al Jazeera also stated that Google\nsearches for the cathedral outnumbered Sri Lanka attacks 7:1. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malcolm Turnbull called for an Australian\nfund for the restoration of Notre Dame. But Sri Lanka? Oh, just \u2018love and\nsympathy’\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, 250\npeople have been confirmed dead and over 500 injured. That\u2019s 250 people who had\nlives, ambitions, quirks, dreams, hopes, goals. Hotel workers frying eggs and\nbacon. Little kids impatient to break their fast and finally eat some\nchocolate. People impatiently lining up for the buffet at the Cinnamon Grand\nHotel hoping that they don\u2019t run out of hoppers. Families, who were just\npraying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people who\ndied could have been my family \u2013 in fact, I feel as though they were. Sri Lanka\nis the home of my family, my friends and people who look like me. For every\npicture of the dead I see, I feel a jolt. They have those same familiar\nfeatures that you only see in a Sri Lankan, features I see when I look in the mirror.\nEvery girl who died feels like my sister, every boy feels like my brother. I\ngrieve for them. I grieve for my home that I cannot really call home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shynie\nJananjalie Hewavidana<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ruvini@hotmail.co.uk<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Shynee Jananjalie\u00a0 Hewavidana Easter Sunday. 8am. Out of the blue, my dad received a text from one of his friends asking if our family were safe. Safe from what?\u201d A pause. Switch on the news\u201d, the next text grimly informed us. We all bundled into a room and switched on Sky News. Emblazoned on the screen was the breaking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}