Why we fight

Dream

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
~ Rabindranath Tagore ~

Our yesterdays are stained with the blood of many loved ones, friends and fellow Sri Lankans. We would have been friends and relatives if we had not been forced to be trapped on two sides of a fabricated division. This moment belongs to those who faced unimaginable violence and were consumed by it during past three decades. This is a moment to solemnly remember the many tens of thousands of victims of meaningless violence. This is a moment to understand that the images of this violence will continue to haunt the worriors and victims for the rest of their lives. For every physical casualty of war, there are two (unreported) physiological casualties. Post Traumatic Stress will plague them and us for at least a couple of generations. That is part of the costs of this war that we will have to bear for many decades.

So if anything, this is the time to say "NEVER AGAIN!!"
Never again will the sons and daughters of Sri Lanka be divided or deprived... Never again will we fight with each other, but we will always fight for each other... never again will the blood of our countrymen be shed in vain. Never again will we let ourselves be conscripted by inequality, injustice, racism or moral poverty.
NEVER AGAIN. EVER!!!

Peace

Shadow 360, originally uploaded by halwis.

Listen, the final bugle calls. Come sing with it, when the final shot is fired towards the waking stars... Look! The final worrier falls into a bloody pit; and our search for peace, though mired, under the magnificent starlight pass. History, for a brief moment has been summoned with sacrificial offerings. All our countrymen and women who have been victims of violence or denied human dignity - on the battle field and in our neighbourhood streets - have paid with their lives, for the freedom we can now hope to enjoy.

Today, they lie on a different plain, a different time. This moment belongs to them; to their silent memory. Let us not rob this moment from them. We owe it to them at least now, in solemn reflection, to cherish the hope and promise of this moment. Our yesterdays are stained with their blood. It is left for us to remember their plight so that our ‘tomorrow’ would be a monument befitting their memory.