RAGHU

Wednesday 31st January 1996 was struggling to be born Raghu, lying sleepless on a hard, narrow bunk in a safe house in Colombo watched it being born through the bars on his single window.

The sky changing from darkness to soft light. In the north, where his home lay, the day came more swiftly than here in the south where it ended late with the sunset. He heard birds call each other awake, the clanking of a tin bucket against a water tap, a clearing of a throat in the dawn air. The sounds of a city waking up. The first roar of a bus past his window. He was in the city of his enemy, the very fortress of his enemy. But this enemy was faceless. He knew nothing of the men, women and children living in Colombo. Yet in his mind he had painted on each unknown face something ugly so that whenever he looked he saw an enemy, not a person.

He had worshipped his leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran before he left the north bound for the south. He was proud to have been chosen as a black tiger, one of the elite in the movement. Only the elite were trusted on suicide missions. The leader had called him and sympathised with him, again on the death of his six year old son killed last year by the arm of the government. He had run out of the house before he could be stopped, to see a silver plane in the sky.

His revenge was personalized. He was ready to kill for his son.

After he had been appointed by his leader for this special task, this secret mission to Colombo, he had withdrawn into silence. He shared his secret with no one, not his friends among the tigers, not even his wife. If he fell into the hands of the enemy during the mission he could carry on his silence through his escape route, the cyanide capsule hanging on a black cord underneath his vest. He had even gone to bed with it. Here in the fortress of the enemy in the city of Colombo, he was not sure who was friend and who was enemy. Except for the little boy, the same age as his son, who had opened the door of the'safe house' to him yesterday. 'Maa-ma' he had greeted him with a grin. For a second he felt a pang. How many such trusting small faces would be killed today on the streets of Colombo? Boys like his son? Quickly he pushed that moment of feeling, moment of weakness out of himself. For a black tiger there was no turning back;

Day light fell in a pattern of prison bars across his bunk. He broke through them, got up and washed his face. A knock on his door and an outstretched arm holding a steaming hot mug of tea. They were afraid to face him today. He took the mug. A cockroach scuttled from between his feet into the dark safe recess of the bunk. He sipped his hot tea slowly, aware of explosives assembled and ready in a lorry parked in a rented parking lot nearby. He must go there soon. Nothing must go wrong. He kept the face of his leader firmly fixed in his mind. HE was their God, more powerful than all the Gods in the old devales;

The operation had begun a week ago when a blue and brown ISUZU lorry had been purchased by the tigers as the chosen vehicle to deliver the goods to Colombo. It had left the north bound for its target, bearing number plate 42-6453 and carrying the legitimate name of 'Ratnapala' a Sinhala name as cover up, as a Trojan horse. The lorry carried legitimate bags of onions, loaded at Vavuniya. It had got past the security check points.

Raghu whistled as he finished dressing. First he carefully strapped next to his flesh the ammunition assigned him. A belt of bullets, hand grenades and small bombs nestling within the wombs of short S-lon pipe lengths. His gun would be waiting him, along with the bomb, within the lorry. He covered himself with a mud coloured T-shirt and khaki shorts. Over the shorts he wore a mud coloured sarong which he tucked way up above his knees, wearing it like a loin cloth of the farmers when they worked standing in mud in the fields. It was a cover up of the khaki shorts but gave freedom of movement at the same time.

He was offering his life in pooja to his GOD. But to please him he had to succeed in his mission before he died. Then only would he become immortal in the eyes of his GOD, then only would he appease the bitterness about his son within him. The cyanide clinging to him reminded him of the arms of his son about his neck. For a second time his eyes suffused Then he wiped away the tears angrily. That memory he could only carry into the next life.

A terrorist could not afford feeling. He reminded himself that a heavy baby of Ukrainian RDX was in the womb of the lorry, ready for delivery. Three of them would perform the delivery. Like doctors they must wear expressionless faces that masked feeling to deliver it with calm, quiet strength. Three black tigers - Raghu, Kutti and Raj. Raj would drive the lorry, explode himself along with the lorry. He and Kutti would distract the street, letting Raj go about his work without hindrance.

Tiger Nilan who lived in Colombo had made it possible for the three to meet, just once, in his hideout. The lairs of tigers in Colombo, the safe-houses were scattered wide and far, from the suburbs to Wellawatte, Bambalapitiya and Pettah They were places offered by Tamils whose home had been Colombo from birth but who now hated their mother city and wanted to prove their sympathy with the movement Some of them acted in fear of the tigers.

He put on his wrist-watch, a gift from his leader, his GOD. Time was important, time was vital, time was short Every second, every minute worked towards that final moment set at 10.50 am that Wednesday morning.

There were security check points all over the city. Still they were not on full alert He knew this because during two or three days they had been practicing driving past the Central Bank, noting the various loop-holes in security No one had asked them to unload heavy bags of onions nor had they questioned as to why heavy vehicles took this long route through Central Fort to reach Pettah market when there were shorter, quicker routes They had gone past security on forged Identification cards.

Yes, by now Raj would have finished preparing the lorry for delivery. Once again it must be 'dressed' and ready with gunny bags of rice or onions hiding its real purpose.

The deadly trio met at last. They looked at each other in silence. They were no longer men who could greet each other as men. They were machines set in motion to set off like a time bomb. They set their watches so that time moved the same for all. All three bowed their heads for two seconds remembering their cult leader - Vellupillai Prabhakaran hiding and waiting in the jungle for their moment of triumph.

Raghu looked at the lorry he had travelled down in from the North. What Raj had done with it he did not know but it looked different. Although its body work remained blue and brown it had a 'red' face. A red, angry face. Kutti and he had received final instructions from a tiger named 'Suresh.' Kutti and he tightened the sarongs that were tucked way above the knees and climbed in at the back and rested their backs against the gunny bags. Raj got into the front driving seat. They did not look at nor speak with each other. It was as if they wore masks of steel over their faces.

For a man facing sure death Raj proved very steady at the wheel. Raghu saw, however, that he gripped it as if he could wrench it off the steering rod. And he kept his eyes steadfast on the road ahead.

The lorry moved slowly and heavily like a pregnant woman who feared she might deliver before they reached their destination. Passing through early morning traffic Raghu felt his heart ticking like the bomb inside the lorry. He felt this time the gunny bags were filled with large onions prodding his back muscles, and under which the baby weighing many hundred kilograms of explosives tightly packed together moved restlessly.

Moment by moment they passed the now familiar route to their final destination. Colombo was a fortress of buildings among which thousands of city workers moved, like bees buzzing about a beehive. Raghu did not allow himself to feel for those unknown, unarmed civilians moving along on his route towards their unknown destination. They were faceless.

He looked at the buildings as they entered Sir Baron Jayatilleke Mawatha from the YMBA side and turned into York Street. Colonial structures painted in brick red still standing proudly across which towered new glass covered, open buildings. A left turn again into Lower Chatham Street. Again old buildings mingled with new ones. These buildings were faceless to him as were the people riding buses and other vehicles or walking the roads, crossing dutifully at pedestrian crossings aware of uniformed police on duty.

They turned next into Lotus Road. They passed the Government controlled press, the Lake House Group of Newspapers, crouching behind barricades formed of barrels, sandbags and barbed wire. A smile twisted his mouth for a second to think that they, the tigers, had caused such caution in Colombo. After today there would come up more barricades, more fear. The army may have conquered Jaffna but Colombo was cowering in fear. A tooth for a tooth.

He looked at his wrist watch. The time was 10.35 a m.

When they reached the white stupa, a buddhist temple in the heart of the fort, he knew that they were going to make it. Not even the stupa, a symbol of the buddhist faith, could save the economy today. It would die like those flowers placed on the altar, symbolising impermanence.

They passed tourist hotels with their banners flying alongside the lion flag. Today the lion would be compelled to retreat backwards, perhaps into the jungles, like the tigers had done.

They passed the old parliament building with statues of past leaders gazing into the distant horizon of the sea. Were they visualizing the future that was now, in the present moment and quivering on their pedestals? He, Raghu, a man of humble, downtrodden origin was going to hit all this, this lofty, splendour of a hostile world.

Raj, driving with care now, took the blue-brown ISUZU past the check-point, round the round-about following a white van. Raj saw the sea out of the corner of his eye rolling gently under a benign sky. He passed Hotel Inter-Continental where liveried attendants were helping people down from cars. At exactly ten forty six Raj brought his lorry to a complete halt, just before Central Bank entrance. He paid no heed to the horning of vehicles held up in a traffic block behind him.

Raghu and Kutti jumped out of the back. Their task was to distract the attention of the bank security so that Raj could drive straight into the bank, unhindered. It did not quite happen that way. In their previous tour they had overlooked the cement island separating the in-coming traffic from the out-going traffic of Janadhipathi Mawatha.
Raghu, unaware of Raj's dilemma, acted as planned. He ran across this cement boundary and placed a small bomb smuggled inside an S-lon pipe about one and half feet long near the boundary wall of Ceylinco House which stood across the street in-between Hotel Inter-Continental and the Central Bank. Then he crossed back again onto the bank side while the bomb exploded like a large cracker.
When the small bomb exploded shaking Ceylinco House and causing damage through its open metal fence-Iike wall, Raghu and Kutti began firing at the people on the road, running towards their target-the Central Bank.

The traffic behind the lorry ceased to horn. Instead its occupants sprang out of the vehicles and ran for life. * * *

At the first sound of gun-fire the naval sentry posted at the Naval Headquarters further up the road at Upper Chatham Street, sounded'Action-Station!'

But the Headquarters, believing they were under sudden attack, withdrew into a defensive position.

The security of the President's Secretariat did likewise. They never thought that the Bank and civilians were under attack. This gave Raj, hindered as he was, the opportunity to do what he had come to do.
