MARXIST WHO SHATTERED LANKA'S ELITE POLITICS

YOUNG Anura Dissanayake grew up amid lush paddy fields, ancient irrigation tanks and vegetable plots.

- DILRUKSHI HANDUNNETTI

Though a typical, happy-go-lucky village boy, besides the childhood pranks, there was a seriousness that made him keenly aware of his surroundings and the disparities.

As a kid, some weekends were spent selling candy on a train that rolled between his hometown Thambuttegama and Galgamuwa. If the passengers occasionally included teachers from his school, Dissanayake and his friends would quickly push the goodies under the seats. At other times, he joined his family to cultivate their paddy lands and chilli plots.

A bright student, Dissanayake, 56, harboured no big dreams. His simple family was even less ambitious than he. "It would have been the jewel in their crown if I became a teacher," says Dissanayake. As much as he was a good student, Dissanayake was equally good at transferring knowledge. He would occasionally offer private tuition in maths to a handful of students. This ability came in handy when he joined the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in 1987 and experienced as an insider, the full impact of the second JVP insurgency (1987-89).

The student activist spent over two years in hiding, and his parents' modest home in Thambuttegama was torched by mobs, driving his parents and sister to find temporary shelter at an aunt's kitchen.