Déjà vu déjà vu - friend, haven't we been here before?
About to board a flight to Colombo, and talking to a friend in Jaffna after a noonday repast, I receive a call. It is a message from Colombo, and the messenger is terse. The President has removed three Ministers, and taken over the powers of Defence, Interior and Media.

The Sinhala Maha Vidyalaya where document checks are being carried out for the Jaffna-Colombo flight is a cross between a refugee camp and a bus station. Beggars make a frenetic display of their penury, before the passengers are through with their formalities.

Most passengers carry something of Jaffna with them - a bag full of Murunga, perhaps, or a verti. A lot of them, however, carry foreign passports even though there is only one white man in the crowd. These people's bubble still hasn't burst. Chandrika Kumaratunga has exercised her Presidential prerogative and they don't even know it.

Later in Colombo, there is the rumour. "The A9 road has been closed.'' Visions immediately of a rush at the Sinhala Maha Vidyalaya to board those quick propeller flights to Colombo.

So, is it time to say goodbye again to Jaffna? Chandrika Kumaratunga didn't do a tour of the peninsula -- neither was she taken to Kilinochchi, whose people still walk around looking a little dazed, as if they have just woken up from a bad dream. We don't know what it was founded on -- ask Kumaratunga -- but for the man who "imports" merchandise from Colombo, and his little two-year-old daughter who wears a shiny dress, there is hope in Kilinochchi.

Chandrika Kumaratunga is skewering that hope everybody here in Colombo tells me now, almost before I set foot on terra firma in Ratmalana, at the airport. Then, back in Colombo, it is a slightly different story. Chandrika Kumaratunga is skewering all their hopes, they also say.

Five-year assessment plans have been abandoned, says a company executive. A hotel manager says he is already beginning to have less to do in anticipation of the season, thanks to Kumaratunga.

They look as dazed as that two-year-old girl in Kilinochchi. In terms of insecurity, who is more insecure? It's a thought really - is it the two-year-old tyke in Kilinochchi or the company executive in Colombo?

Perhaps the company executive in Colombo. He saw Colombo being splattered all over the screens by CNN, BBC and all the international channels he watches along with all those advertisements for bringing down weight and growing new hair on a bald patch. Sure, Kumaratunga has a way with doing some of the most news-hogging things, but did this deserve all the international attention it was getting?

hen, it dawned. It has nothing to do with the insecurity of the little tyke in Kilinochchi. Or even the slightly lamenting company executive in Colombo. The fact is that Ranil Wickremesinghe was with George W. Bush. Anybody with George W. Bush to whom anything like a coup happens gets a bonus. The TV channels have to treat George's pal of the moment almost as if he was George himself.
But after the news acrobats with their cameras depart, Sri Lanka will have to fend for itself.

The people I stayed with in Jaffna, have many visitors from across Omanthai these days -- that's across the border, so to speak, folks from Colombo. They say 'myeeee can't imagine you'll stayed without electricity in this place for 12 years.'' What they don't know is that my host's handsome looking period house was almost brought down; its roof was completely blown away when IPKF shells rained on the house after missing their target of an LTTE camp on the opposite side of the road. An old lady, a neighbour who was seeking refuge from more shells, caught a piece of shrapnel near her chest. She died in my host's living room. It was curfew time, and my friend buried the body in his compound.

The angst and sadness of that Jaffna, is it somehow connected with the angst and sadness of the Colombo executive who laments that his five-year plan is going down the drain? Somehow, the repeated shellshocks visited upon this land seems to bind its citizens North and South, East and West together in some kind of invisible tug of brotherhood.

So what? This time Chandrika Kumaratunga does it, next time Prabhakaran does it, sometimes the JVP does it and sometimes the UNP does it -- everytime somebody does something to them, they are not supposed to forget that they are people united by a common bond. That of being hard done by somebody somewhere -- just when they are getting the pieces of their life back together. Just when the sounds of strafing have receded from their minds, and the bombs going off in Colombo are now a distant echo embedded in their memory?

As usual, Colombo experts have a difficulty being able to grapple with the unfolding reality. One says that if Sri Lanka's leaders had differences of opinion about the Interim Administration proposals of the Tigers, they should have consulted each other before taking unilateral action. Who says this had anything to do with the Interim Administration proposals?

Don't trust me -- ask Lakshman Kadirgamar, the President's own man for all seasons who says, "there is no connection between the release of the LTTE's ISGA proposals and the President's taking over of three Cabinet portfolios". The takeover had to do with 'old categories of thinking'' such as sovereignty, etc etc? (Quote not mine, it is of the Colombo expert.)

Has the takeover got to do with old categories of thinking such as sovereignty etc? I don't know. Maybe it has got to do with even older categories of thinking such as "it's been a while since we have been in power'' and "I have almost forgotten how it was to be introduced as the Honourable Minister.'' Does it? I don't know, don't ask me -- I can hardly profess to be the expert.

Of course there were problems with the LTTE chaps. When isn't there, for us brethren in angst? But surely, wasn't there a better way to beat them than sneaking on each other in the stealth of the night - staging palace coups when the Prince was abroad? Hmm, I wonder.

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