Notes Inspired.

On the burning of the Public Library, he wrote:

What took place?

My city was set on fire

My people became faceless.

On my land, my breeze

on all the estampage of the Alien.

With your arms inter-locked behind

your back

for whom were you waiting?

Fire has writ large its message

indelibly on the clouds.

this poem, based on the true burning of the Tamil Jaffna Public Library in 1981, was a part of an interesting article about Sri Lankan Tamil Literature.


Art, in which ever form it may be, has and continues to have such extensive impact on how we understand and view life and its tribulations. Ya ya, i know you've heard this before... but every now and then i do some reading or research on litterature (blame it on the french litterature classes : even though they were nauseatingly relentless in their claim as ambassadors of boredom) and i am taken aback.


blogging is a new form of art that has picked up enormous momentum and is becoming increasingly popular as a form of expression and sharing. For me, a person who's diagnosed herself with an obsession with words and the use of these packaged letters, poems become an invaluable treasure. it is humbling when i think that these poems are birthed in a particular time, in a particular place by a particular person living not so particular situations. we are so involved in our own lives and our own bubbles of happenings that we forget that everyone of us has a story. i sit in the bus or the metro and i glare at the passengers. i think to myself that they have a story and that they've lived through hardships and happy times just as i have, but that their stories and their paths are different in such a common way.


i want to know their stories...


we're to busy being afraid of strangers in this world we live in and i know that i won't get to know their stories... so i smile.


if you'd like to read the article, i encourage you : http://tamilelibrary.org/teli/srilitt.html