Chencholai in image and words: A personal account

http://www.jdslanka.org/index.php/2012-01-30-09-31-17/reflections/169-chencholai-in-image-and-words-a-personal-account

14 AUGUST 2012

BY R.M.KARTHICK

On August 14, 2006, the Sri Lankan Air Force bombers attacked an orphanage in the northern part of the island, killing dozens of children. 'It's a rebel training facility' said the government spokesman, a claim which was contradicted by the UNICEF as well as the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. A total of 61 children died in the attack, all of them girls. Six years later, R.M.Karthick revisit and reflect upon his own memories.

I never thought writing would become a passion before that fateful night. In fact, I was averse to writing like most of my classmates in my undergrad course. Surrealist writers have contested that words contain magical powers, that they can provide the reader who listens to the heartbeat of the script a plethora of sounds, images and sensations. I didn't attach much meaning to words then.

And like many who can talk but cannot speak, I was immune to the magic of the word, deaf to the music that it contains, blind to the colours it shows. Yet, it was through words that I heard of sufferings of Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka. Through stories, I had heard of past and present horrors committed on an ethnic group - one to which I belonged to but rarely identified with till then. Words spoken by those who fled the island country in the past projected to me a picture of what life under totalitarianism is.

But no words prepared me for the shock of the image that came along with a mail in my inbox the 14th night of August 2006.