The Hindu Business Line : A question of identity

EXCITEMENT ran high and there was a bit of tension, too, when we, a group of journalists, checked into immigration at Chennai's Anna International Airport en route to Colombo. All was well till the immigration official asked, "Which places are you visiting in Sri Lanka? Are you going to Jaffna too?" But one brushed it aside as one of those routine questions; one was certainly not in the mood to dilute the excitement. But that was not to end there, as we found out much later. It turned out that there were a lot of Sri Lankans who wanted to know if we were "Jaffna Tamils."

During our brief stay at Colombo and Kandy, we found that anybody with a dusky complexion, curly hair and Tamilian looks went through the same ordeal. We encountered the question at least half-a-dozen times. Out of curiosity, a friend and I set out for a nearby pub in Kandy to get a first-hand feel of the place. We did manage to talk to a travel guide Kelum Chamara Warnakulasuriya. The conversation took off quite well much to our surprise and continued so for a while, till he suddenly stopped mid-way, looked at us for a brief moment and asked, "Are you from Jaffna?" and added as an afterthought, "Yeah, you gave me your card, but I wanted to be sure."

Having had enough of this unrelenting query and determined to find out what made him — and all the rest — think that we were from Jaffna, we quizzed him. "From your eyes, the way you talk and walk... and your knapsack!"

Fortunately for us, he continued his conversation and went on to reason his suspicion: "We have heard that Tamil women come to the South pretending to be tourists just like you and find out details about various cities and towns. Please don't mistake me. But it's very difficult to trust anybody here."

His explanation only served to heighten our sense of anxiety, and the conversation with the travel guide kept playing on our minds well into the night. But a couple of journalists in Colombo were quick to discard Warnakulasuriya's comments as "rubbish." They put it down to the locals' fear and assured us that there was no need to feel disturbed. But there was a time when people would be afraid to drive behind a bus or a truck, they added.

Throughout the trip we had this feeling of being enveloped in an eerie silence as darkness set in. In fact, there were many streets and junctions in Colombo and Kandy that were blocked and closed to traffic during the night. There weren't very many people either walking on the road after dark. They stayed indoors or preferred driving.

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