Home for the holidays as a Christian who sits by the front door till the neighbours bring in the plates full of Avurudu goodies, I found myself bored with the fare on cable. It was nice that this time I could sleep in till late and wake up just in time for the neighbourhood fare. Even my mom who fixed kiribath more as ‘it’s not nice to not cook kiribath on avurudu no’ and not to any auspices time was secretly peeping through the curtains, absent-mindedly mumbling to herself if the price of goods these days makes it possible for people to make a hundred and one things like they used to. Bummer! So this means more kiribath and less of the other treats like athirasa my favourite, and mun-kevum and those useless kokis! That is one food item which I firmly believe is quite overrated. So much so I wish we could pass hints at the neighbours at how little we appreciate Kokis!

And so while I was seated there, waiting for the plates to arrive, and when I had wished all and sundry via text and chuckled over a few funny messages I received in return, I half heartedly reached out to the remnants of the Sunday news paper that was lying beside me on the couch. The section I happened to pull out was the one entitled ‘Plus’ and the main article was something I wouldn’t have read on any other day. It was all about how this New Year the soldiers are home to celebrate the new years. But the sheer boredom I was feeling made me read on until it dawned on me. Bloody hell! This is in fact the first time in over 30 years that a soldier or a member of the armed forces can actually celebrate Avurudu without worrying if he will ever see his children or family and friends again.

The results of the recently concluded general elections were an eye opener to even the die-hard non believer. Regardless of who didn’t vote and who voted and whose vote counted and whose didn’t and whether the whole process was free and fair, there was one glaring fact that came to the fore every time an electoral result was declared with the most sickening of victory margins. That fact is that despite what we chose to believe and kid ourselves with, despite the antics of Mervyn or the verbal diarrhoea of Wimal, despite the lack of qualification of Pabha and most importantly the fact that an equal party to the war victory is dining on prison fare, the people are just simply and sincerely thankful to the regime that brought the war to an end.

And today, all over the countryside are servicemen who have come home for the holidays. Spending these days at avurudu uthsava and visiting relatives. Their children are probably looking up at them and asking them to recite stories from the battle front. Their wives and mothers might be making a cup of tea with an extra spoon of milk. Their fathers might be stealing glances, full of pride, at their offspring who fought valiantly for this country. This is pure happiness. A festival of new beginnings after all these years of fear, pain and despair. This is probably what some amongst us just don’t understand. Whatever said and done, the opposition ridiculed these battles, belittled their sacrifices, begrudged the victories and were jealous of the heights the present regime was scaling in the mindset of the masses. This is why today that opposition is reduced to a paltry 40 odd number of seats and the possibility that there might never be a UNP government.

The family of a service personnel is not and never limited to that particular family. For a serviceman is loved and cherished by his or her girlfriend and their families as well, by their group of friends and their families and in most cases by entire villages. By survivors of the heroes that laid their lives through all these 30 years and by those that guide an injured soldier through the battles of their now, civil lives. And we haven’t even discussed those not belonging to the services but were affected by the war in one way or another.

Suddenly those results that perplexed my lifelong UNP mom and dad suddenly makes sense to their equally lifelong UNP son who for the first time went against the family tradition of voting green and instead voted for some other colour that accompanied the Trophy. While the son still does not fully understand how the populace deserted the most obvious hero, he does understand the need for the masses to pick a side and stick to it. Sadly for the general it wasn’t his side.

Many are the lessons to be learned from this nations’ recent past. Many are the messages that lie between the coloured bars of election results. The need of the moment is not to stick to this party or that but to look to the future with a new sense of positivity. The people who voted for the UPFA are by no way my enemies, the kind of thinking I would have subscribed to in the past. But a majority who saw something more than I did. Whether what they saw was right or wrong or misguided will be judged by the sands of time. And most of all, as a person who was at the forefront of the protests in support of the General, I have faith that the populace of Sri Lanka will never just sit and watch. We have two bloody uprisings to prove that when push comes to shove, we will shove till our hands our bloody. Likewise the present government or its exalted president should not for a moment be complacent. The onus is now on them to chart the future of this splendid little island nation, I so fondly call home.

‘Gedara Kauda?’ Ah! Here comes the first plate. And thank fully, no Kokis!

Dinesh Perera