Take the party where it's not been before.

Watching all the pomp and revelry on display in Colombo recently, I am taken aback by how one can get cought up in all the euphoria while a large part of the country lies in ruin with hundreds of thousands of people in genuine agony. I have always admired the resilience of the Sri Lankan people and that indomitable spirit, that good humour always on display through all the bombs and checkpoints and incessant barrage of bad news. But I wonder if the pageantry in Colombo is food for our battered souls or just a gimmick of politicians to keep us distracted. Something to mask the challenges ahead. Does Colombo really need a military parade? Do our soldiers want to be prancing around the streets of Colombo or are they just putting up a good show because the powers that be ordered them to? I think what Colombo, and those who call the shots in Sri Lanka from the safety of it, really needs now is some perspective.

When I read this article about a 16 year old Tamil girl who was abducted on the 14th of March to be canon fodder in the last stand of the LTTE, I was struck by how very different our lives were though we are both Sri Lankans living just a few hundred miles apart. As I tried to imagine her being dragged from her home screaming for help, I wondered where I might have been that day. I don't recall for sure, but it's probably a safe bet that on March 14th, being a Saturday, my friends and I were enjoying ourselves somewhere idyllic in Colombo. "Life must go on.." we say and get on with it when carnage and mayhem disrupts our daily lives once in a while in Colombo, but I think some perspective is in order when the north is in ruins and we in the south celebrate in the way we were always capable of celebrating.

Colombo is a happening place. Maybe it is not the regional hub it might have been had there been no war. It certainly is not as developed as it should have been had Sri Lanka not set itself back decades by that short sighted 'Sinhala Only' move and it's ill effects. But regardless of all this, Colombo is a party town. People have fun here. The residents go out at night without worrying about what will happen to them (unless they are journalists).

Children go to school in their thousands each day here. You would probably never see as high a concentration of school uniforms as at 7 am or so on the streets of Colombo. At the end of the school day these children spill out on to the streets again and go home. Children skip school for all sorts of reasons here, but no one stays home in fear of forced conscription. No parent in Colombo worries that a child who is late to return home might have been abducted by a terrorist organization.

When my husband woke me up the day Prabhakaran died and said "Wake up. You are no longer terrorized", perhaps it was my subconscious that replied "I was never terrorized".

But having read that article and the many others slowly filtering out from previously inaccessible places and filled with accounts from those who endured the real horrors of this war, I know what I mumbled that morning is true. It also explains why I cannot bring myself to celebrate and why I am embarrassed by the parades taking place in Colombo. Don't get me wrong. I am a child of '83. It is true I have only known a Sri Lanka at war and now I look forward to what Sri Lanka can be in peace. I too feel the pride of having crushed this ruthless terrorist organization. In some fleeting moments, I too feel like roaming the streets draped in the beautiful Lion Flag. But I also look back and have to admit that this ‘victory’ will not change much in my life.

The war never hampered the great education I got in Colombo. I have lost no brother, no father and no friends either to terrorist bombs or bullets on the battlefields. It is true I have been lucky - the terror threat was very real- but my story is also the story of many many people in Colombo. I have not had to watch my husband go away to war not knowing if he'll return while also knowing that is the 'best' way he could support a family. Mine is not the town with almost every other street named after a fallen soldier. I have seen those towns too, they are far from Colombo and we 'Colombo people' only travel through them on en route to our preferred holiday spots.

I am embarrassed by the celebrations in Colombo because I wonder how this party is different to all the other celebrations that take place here. What are we celebrating? Are we celebrating because those far off places that feed the army will stop receiving flag draped coffins (the coffins that are collected and sent in 'village groups' to save costs)? Are we celebrating because our countrymen in the north no longer have to endure horrors we in The South would find hard to even imagine? Are we celebrating because we thought of the war and those dying in it every single day and now we can stop? Or are we yet again playing into the schemes of the politicians: isn’t this euphoria just a mask to hide the real problems we are faced with? What happens now to the displaced people? Will we ever really know how many people paid for this peace with their lives? I don’t just mean the civilians. Will we finally be told how many were lost from our armed forces? And what about rehabilitation? What about compensation for disabled war veterans and the families of those that fell? When will the IDP’s go ‘home’? The challenges are as real as the horrors that preceded them and more than enough to exhaust the resources of a powerful and prosperous nation supported by an economy more robust than ours. So how will Sri Lanka surmount them? Is there a politician who can tell us how it will be done? I would much rather hear about a rehabilitation plan than see so many resources expended on dragging out our surely exhausted troops for a pageant.

While being relieved that the war is over, I cannot bring myself to celebrate because the people who have real cause to celebrate cannot. They have problems that are not solved yet. The people who were oppressed and traumatized by the LTTE are still not free to live their lives as they wish. They have lost everything they ever had in this world. Many have never received an education. Their families are in tatters. They have no homes to return to. They have real physical and psychological traumas that may never heal. Not just the trauma of wondering if the bus one just boarded will end it's journey in smithereens (a threat that is now, alas, almost universal). That fear was, no doubt, a real enough trauma but I can't help but feel the celebrations in Colombo demonstrate a lack of perspective. The people who lost family members in the armed forces or in terrorist attacks are probably not celebrating but wondering why this day could not have come soon enough to have spared their loved ones. Why were there parades but no day of national mourning for all those who lost so much?

Perhaps I cannot celebrate this victory because all I have personally lost in this war, my right to free speech, still remains lost. Silently watching while my nation's democratic ideals were trampled in the war effort is the only tragedy I observed and endured. The biggest shock I have suffered lately was hearing of Lasantha Wickrematunge's murder. No, not just that a journalist of his stature could be killed in broad daylight (and no one brought to book) but also later hearing ordinary people talk about it as if it was an expected occurrence and nothing to be shocked about. I wept for my country that day. So maybe I'll celebrate when the day comes that I don't feel the need to use a pseudonym. But in the meantime, if there must be a celebration, take it north. At least there, it might be a spectacle they haven’t seen before.