Video: Broken Pottu ~ Poem by Mahesh Munasinghe
Inspired by the plight of children held inside Sri Lanka camps for the displaced:
Bright red pottu
Every morning
Never missed.
The point of your finger
Right here between our eyebrows
For both of us.
Amma puts hers first
Then she puts mine.
Remember me insisting
Me first, me first!
That day Dad give me a biggest hug, squeezed so tight,
Lifted me so high, laughing so loud.
At midnight he went out of the bunker.
Amma must have known he wasnt coming back
But still she smiled at me.
The day she went out of the bunker
Her pottu was still shining between her eyebrows.
Then her pottu went right into her head
And red blood came all down her calm, loving face.
Before then I only knew how to cry.
Then I knew how to shriek, to scream
Holding on to your body, Amma,
Scream!
Scream!
Scream!
Here too our school is under the trees
But they dont take the register.
I dont mind, Im used to it.
The only thing different is
There are no bunkers here.
Sometimes my heart beats so hard
Its louder than the gunshots
And tears just shoot out when I think about you.
Please dont ask me about pottu
If Amma cant put it on me I dont want it.
And please dont teach us about parents,
I dont want to hear about them.
Its not only me; none of us want to hear it.
Poem by Mahesh Munasinghe
Translated by Prasanna Ratnayake
2 Comments
Some smelled the smoke,
some just herd the news,
Were they Germans?Were they Nazis?
Were they human?Who killed the Jews?
The stars will remember the gold,
the Sun will remember the shoes,
the moon will remember the skin,
But who killed the Jews?
William Heyen(Holocaust Poetry)
Inhumanity, whether committed by the majority or minority is just that - inhumanity. It requires much moral strength to recognise the wrong no matter who
commits it - whether under the name of "protecting" a race or religion or even
on grounds of misguided patriotism. A Sinhalese feeling for the Tamils fated to live in bunkers while bombs rain is a sublime form of humanism. There are thousands among us who have hurdled over bigotry and prejudice. That is compassion - the essence of true religion and the heights of patriotism. All evil must come to an end someday and people from diverse cultures will begin anew. The good will inherit the earth.
ISS