Heaven's Edge

Memories of a journey across Sri Lanka in the summer of 1988 when the island nation was wracked by violence

- Seema Guha

THE sun was beating down on us from a clear blue sky. Driving out of Colombo through the lush green countryside to the south of the island was always a pleasure. As a journalist based in Sri Lanka, I was stepping out to get a sense of what was happening in the Sinhala-Buddhist heartland.

It was the summer of 1988, a time when the island was wracked by violence. The Tamil separatist war in the north and the eastern province was widely reported, but the insurrection in the Sinhala heartland that did not interest the rest of the world, did not get as much media attention.

Colombo was rife with rumours about the Janatha Vimukthi Perumuna (JVP), a radical Marxist-Leninist group gaining ground in the rural countryside as it moved to overthrow President J.R. Jayawardene's government. I wanted to go and check out what was happening and see whether things were as serious as rumours claimed. The Indian High Commission had informally warned five or so Indian reporters stationed in Colombo at that time to remain in Colombo as anti-India sentiments were running high in the south, and the JVP believed that J.R. (as he was commonly called) had sold Sri Lanka to the Indians when he signed the India-Sri Lanka agreement of 1987.

I had driven out of Colombo for about an hour-and-a-quarter when I noticed that down by the river to the right, a group of villagers had gathered in a circle, looking down at something on the ground. I asked the driver to stop and got out of the hired car. I did not speak Sinhala, so the driver who spoke reasonable English followed to translate what the locals said. He was a few steps ahead of me as we approached the group and he told them that I was a reporter who wanted to talk to them. The men made way for me to take a look at what was on the ground.