War of Gab

Since I moved into the new place, conversations and debates on the ethnic conflict in the island-nation spring up at the slightest provocation.

Once, it started with something as trivial as Raj asking me how I liked 300, which I had happened to watch the previous day. When I replied, "Yeah, a good enough movie... nice time pass", he was dumbfounded. He went on to explain that I feel so indifferent about a terrific war movie like that one because I have not known war from a close proximity. Then followed strategic and ideological comparisons between the Battle of Thermopylae and the struggle led by the Eelam Tigers(basking in the success of the new found Air Wing)!

Then came the usual awkward moment- Rajiv Gandhi... who invariably comes up in the discussions especially when I am around ("Hey! I'm not the Indian Ambassador to Canada!"). Vimal described how his father's shop in Jaffna was burnt by the Indian Army and how they later suffered at the hands of the Tigers as well. And at the end, he made a peculiar comment:
"As long as I was in Jaffna, I could see the war in its naked reality but not the politics involved. Now after I came to Canada, I see and hear the politics of Eelam but not the war therein"

I remember reading in some website not so long ago that
"War is a necessary evil. But politics needn't be".

Sometimes I feel, in reality its just the other way round.