Sunday Times 2
A scholarly work movingly presented
View(s):‘Oh! Sri Lanka- smile!
Your children will survive.
Heavy clouds will pass as
calm seas return;
The far horizon is tinged
with golden hues of hope
that breathes on
the bravery of men
Changing winds fan
the air and the breeze caresses
The sweating brow of
a land blessed in abundance,
Ours to nurture and
comfort with embraces,
Her love has no boundaries,
ebb tide or nuance.’
Thus renders the poetic intonation to Rashantha de Alwis Seneviratne’s new book, Getting Serendib Back, The Difficult Journey dedicated to ‘all those who lost their lives, were maimed or injured while fighting to free us from terrorism’. Rashantha, in the Author’s Note remarks that she had endeavoured to write objectively but her experiences are ‘too real for complete detachment’. The work chronicles the psyche of the Lankan communities spiced up by ethnic diversity, the storms this island nation had to counter- both natural and manmade and the labours of rising from the rubble.
The author dubs the defeat of the Tigers in May 2009 as the ‘end of the most damned times of our recent past and the most ferocious’, which she further identifies as the ‘closest we got, since the British conquest, to getting our sovereignty smashed to pieces.’ Navigating through phases of contemporary history which sowed the seeds of communal unrest and which culminated inthe worst bloodshed the ‘Serendib’ had ever witnessed, robbing it of its serendipity, the author in a happier note documents that the cornucopia is back in the bosom of this blessed island.
What Rashantha correctly calls ‘our story’ is chorused in the form of articles and ‘notes’ furnished by some leading scholars and journalists. As Neville Ladduwahetty encapsulates on the back cover, the publication is ‘of diligent scholarship so movingly presented that the reader is alongside the soldier throughout, experiencing the risks and the daring of the battlefront.’ The book is also a reminder that ‘it is for us the living to make sure that the sacrifices they made were not in vain,’ he notes further.
A Stamford Lake publication, Getting Serendib Back, The Difficult Journey is also a chronicle of sacrifice, loyalty and patriotism stamped by both military and political innovation. It’s a fitting personification of Mark Twain’s poignant words the author had chosen as the prologue: “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government, when it deserves it.”
The book will be launched on December 10 at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute at 5.30 p.m.