Whose killing who: After dinner assassination theory

I shouldn’t pay too much attention to dinner table chit chat. Better to have had a coke diluted with rum and stagger home without remembering anything intelligible (I wasn’t driving). All I heard are after all theories. Most likely suppositions. Papancha (loosely translated as “idle/non productive speculation” in Pali). Stuff that gets the mind hyperactive and kicks sleep away at 5am on a weekend.

Yet it is hard to ignore the fact the voice at the table is informed about the ruling family’s dynamics. Infuriatingly, it is the kind of stuff that’s impossibly to verify, hard to believe unless you want to sit through the dangerous details, and ultimately sounds like libel or slander. Easily the kind of stuff that will make anyone want to kill you.

There’s something Shakespearian about the whole thing. The delusions of power, impending family betrayals, the secret rivalries which many not be secret for long, and the storm clouds of an approaching pogrom. Wheels within wheels. Anyone who has read about the politics of kings in this island as it fought the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English might find the stories all too familiar. As expected there are no absolute demons or angels. Just the human madness. Sometimes its best not to know and think about something humorously irrelevant. Too late now. Just 10 days into 2009, and I’ve pumped out more political posts than the the last 2 years.

The recent murder of the Sunday Leader editor and attack on Sirasa TV is taking up too much attention from the brave achievements of driving back the LTTE. That war isn’t over yet. There is a hard fight ahead. Then comes the harder part of making the peace happen, one second at a time so that our grand kids (should we have any) won’t have to deal with this shit. Aren’t we a lucky lot ?

(Compared to places like Gaza, the Congo, and Columbia we most certainly are.)