5th Column

My dear Narendra Modi,
I thought I should write to you because you are visiting us again, even though you may have left our shores by the time this reaches you. On this occasion, they say it is to mark the Vesak celebrations. This is your second visit to Paradise in two years, so I suppose we must be doing something right!

I’m not sure whether you were aware, Modi, but there was a lot of resentment against India and you in the weeks and months before your visit. People were saying that our government was selling off our assets to India and were worried about our jobs in Paradise being taken away by hordes of Indians.

Why, there was that Wimal fellow, shouting himself hoarse on May Day, accusing our chaps of selling our country’s assets to you. Not stopping at that, he was asking us to hoist black flags during your visit. You are lucky that he didn’t lie on the tarmac at Katunayake and begin a fast unto death!

Mahinda maama’s outfit, which calls itself the ‘Joint Opposition’, also backed this call and said that you were here not to celebrate the Vesak festival but to try and grab as many of our assets as you can. Now, we have to take what these fellows say with a pinch of salt, but was there a grain of truth in it?

Your counterpart over here, the Green Man, was labelled a traitor because he was trying to enter into a free trade agreement with you and ETCA became a dirty word, just as much as VAT is. Of course, the Green Man just ignores these protests because, by now, he is quite used to being called a traitor!

Our doctors were also worried that your doctors would flood our country and take away their jobs and were protesting against this ‘ETCA’- not that you should take much notice of our doctors because they protest about everything: medical schools, health ministers and even schools for their children!

Nevertheless, Modi, do you really want us to believe that you arrived here just for Vesak? It is quite a distance to travel and get us to lay the red carpet for you, to say hello to Maithri and the Green Man and visit the Gangaramaya and the Maligawa. You could have just given a phone call and said ‘hello’.

Surely, while you were here and you had all those meetings with Maithri and the Green Man, can you assure us that not a word was uttered about the oil tanks in Trincomalee? Could you also promise us that nothing ever was said about ETCA? And, didn’t the word Sampur cross your lips at any time?

Anyway, Modi, while you were here I hope you were able to give some advice to Maithri about how he should run his government. You are a leader of more than a billion people who are scattered in different states and speak different languages. So, you must know a thing or two about governing.

Maithri is running into difficulties, trying to control his own party. Two of our provincial councils – in the Central and North Central provinces – are up in arms about his decisions and he might soon lose control of them. Even in Parliament, most of the Blues are with Mahinda maama and not with him.

Therefore, I think Maithri could do with some advice from you about keeping different parts of the country happy. He is finding it difficult because he was elected with votes from the Greens but now he is trying to keep the Blues happy. The longer he tries to do this, the more unpopular he will be.

Modi, during your short stay here, you did achieve something which people here couldn’t, for a long time. Why, we saw Satellite and Mahinda maama seated literally at arms’ length-with only good old Di Moo between them – at a function attended by you. That must have been too close for comfort!

I’m glad your visit went well. There may have been the odd hiccup but at least, no one assaulted you during your guard of honour. Such is our democracy that the chap who did that to Rajiv is now an astrologer and recently forecast Maithri’s ‘death’- but that obviously didn’t turn out to be true.

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS:Now, we hear that although Mahinda maama’s outfit was against you visiting us and shouting from every rooftop asking us to hoist black flags, Mahinda maama visited you under the cover of darkness along with Gota and Professor Gas Labu.  Did they bring their black flags with them, Modi? Now, if your visit was purely for religious reasons, I wonder what you did? Surely, you didn’t observe ata sil together, did you?