Tambourine Men – please calm your tune

Posted by Elmo Jayawardena on Jul 7th, 2009 | 1 comment home title

Hey, Mister Tambourine man, play a song for me…..

So goes the words, the musical version and as I punch my key board there are many men with fancy tambourines carelessly drumming rhythms and jingle jangling around the international stage asking Sri Lanka to plead “mia culpa” according to their hymn sheet in the handling of refugees.

War victims are certainly tragic and no one denies the definition. The root causes for the displacement of people and the reasons for such a catastrophe are multifarious and too complex for anyone to understand easily. The need of the hour is to care for the homeless and that merits support and not pompous accusations played on turgid tambourines for the world to hear. The task is big enough for whoever is handling 250,000 displaced people and mistakes are bound to be made in the administration. Who can hit the “bull’s eye” with the first arrow in such demanding conditions? Some would miss the mark and some would reach the target forming the foundation of a plan to take care of the displaced. In this confused melee there certainly will be a few Judas Iscariots too in disciple’s garb collecting thirty pieces of silver and that too would be difficult to avoid. Need I say more, the tsunami saw the first class travellers, the five star dwellers and the four wheel vehicles of certain Samaritanic organisations; sad, but such did happen in neon brightness. Where were the tambourines then?

Amidst the unavoidable voices of negativity about refugee camps, work goes on by those dedicated to find reasonable and acceptable solutions to resettle the homeless in the fastest possible manner. Whilst this multi-dimensional crisis is being addressed, careless whistle blowing should cease and Sri Lanka should be given adequate latitude and support when it is making sincere attempts to find difficult answers.

Vauniya is no “time share” holiday resort and in Menik Farm the bath towels do not come in pink and indigo and smell of fancy detergent. They are not having a “Miss Cheettikulum” pageant here or laying buffet meals for the occupants as they do in Kandalama. The truth stares naked in the camps and if it is dressed in rags, so be it; that is the best available possibility at the moment. Things change and things will always change and it takes time to find healing measures that would bring solace to souls shrouded in ethnic divisions and lost in a labyrinth of fears not knowing who or what to believe.

The war is over and that is one giant leap for all Sri Lankans. The mopping up operations will continue for a lengthy period of time and paramount among the daunting tasks would be to make the North safe for people to go back to a known habitat and resume their almost forgotten ways of life. Till such time the homeless needs to be looked after and cared for and made to understand that they too are part of this land and not second to anything or anyone.

Yesterday and yesteryears were a debacle and that we all know. Three decades of political and military errors are history today. It is the tomorrow that we need to address and address we must. The international tambourines must be careful of what they play. Stuffing their mouths with high sounding phrases and repeating grand glutinous words that got stuck to their teeth in careless criticism will only fester animosity among people who are making attempts to reconcile.

Please Mr Tambourine Man, play no song for me, I’ve heard them all before in the crescendo of hypocrisy. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s immortal words referring to colonial times “there were two thousand million inhabitants occupying this planet, five hundred million men and one thousand five hundred million natives.” It is time we the so-called natives awoke and used what blunt tools we have to put our houses in order. That’s what we are doing, with or without the route maps of the first world which we are expected to follow diligently without question.

It is not only the international Tambourine Men who will taint our lot at this crucial juncture, but our own “raban” players too. They’ve come out of the woodwork having contributed to the battle effort only with sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry while soldier mothers wailed and wept for lost sons and daughters. Some with shamelessly repeated contradictions sway with the wind to stay aloft. The “raban” players are guiltier than the tambourine men; they are the sons and daughters of the soil and should feel more for the situation and the suffering of the people. At a time when the country needs a unified effort to come out of the war ravaged doldrums it is shameful to see some puritans squabble on cheap platforms for cheaper laurels to deprive us a brighter tomorrow. “No minorities” was a beautiful statement and “two kinds of people, the ones who love the country and the ones who don’t” said it all in undiluted clarity. That is why it is so very important today to eradicate the raban rhythms and collectively rise as one nation to fight the Tambourine Men.

Those unheralded lying in soldier graves paid an enormous price for our freedom. The sightless and the maimed and the ones who limp on Jaipur legs may be forgotten with time and will struggle for a place in a future society they helped to liberate. As sad as it may be such could happen. But today, it is their hour and it is their sacrifice that gifted us the day and the days to come to lay the foundations together for a better homeland for everyone to call their own.

“Homeland”, that is the magical word for all races, for all faiths and all ages. Ponder for a moment, where would we be without it? Then it is time to act; we need to move as a nation collectively, consciously, each doing what little he or she can to silence the tambourines and the raban rhythms.

All of us must plead for that to happen.

Hey, Mister Tambourine man, play a song for me…..