At the edge of no man’s land Story by Gamini Akmeemana

HD had his work cut out in the studio on Friday morning and would have no time to go visiting places with us. He now uses a digital camera to do passport photos and the like. His is the only computer along the entire main street of Padaviya town.
Instead of HD, Admun Piyadasa, the post master of the adjacent Parakramapura, agreed to accompany us. I was glad to see him again as I’d known him almost from my first visit to Padaviya. He had changed very little outwardly since I last saw him.I was disappointed to learn that most of the people I wanted to meet were either away for the duration or were gone for good; Baptist the fisherman is a character whose conversation I have always enjoyed very much. Though he hails from a fishing village near Halawatha, where his family still lives, he prefers to earn a living by freshwater fishing in the Padaviya tank. But he was away from Padaviya that weekend on some business.
The grama sevaka, HD’s neighbour, had also moved away. So had the Gunasenas from the nearby village of Kolongolla. I remember spending an unforgettable night with them in an open field near a tank in Kolongolla. This was at the height of the LTTE threat and all villagers left their homes to safer ground at night.
But ‘safety’ was an euphemism. We were in an open, windswept field where people were cooking dinner and talking late into the night before sleeping inside tiny thatch ‘tents.’ If any Tigers had been able to penetrate the defence perimetre, most of the people sleeping here would have been massacred. The wind blew like a gale and I remember how the casual conversation comforted me against a sleep-robbing admixture of cooking smells, tension and fear of the probable.
The Gunasenas gave up their tiny ‘tent’ for me and slept outside on floor mats. It’s one of the best sleeps I’ve ever had.
Now they were gone from Kolongolla, and HD had no idea where they were. Then there was Wijepala the homeguard, who lived in the forefront of the Tiger threat in the village of Parana Medawachchiya. He worked unofficially as a homeguard, but his real life was as a paddy farmer. He lived with his wife and two small children in a small wattle-and-daub house in Parana Medawachchiya.
I particularly wanted to meet him and find out how he and his family have fared in three years of peace. But HD was not certain if Wijepala still lived in Parana Medawachchiya and, as it turned out, I just didn’t have the time to go looking for him.
First things first. There’s a competent mechanic along Parakramapura Road, and he diagnosed the problem – the platignum housing had become loose and was causing an electrical problem. That’s why the engine was cutting out whenever the engine slowed.
With this problem attended to, we began our tour of the area. My bike’s weakened rear suspension wasn’t simply up to the task on the bad roads and Admun rode pillion on Wanni’s motorcycle. The roads have not improved any during three years of peace. Nor has the living standard of the area’s people.
The paradox here is that Padaviya is not a region of abject poverty.
Many people are very poor, but they are farmers and at least those whose fields are fed by the giant Padaviya tank or several smaller reservoirs in the region can find their basic sustenance. A strong breeze was bringing grey clouds from the West, signaling approaching rains and the end of a long drought.
The problem is rather that there is no incentive for commercial development. Investment doesn’t have to come 100% from outside. Even in Padaviya and Parakramapura, there are people with enough wealth to start new business ventures. But they won’t, because peace is uncertain and any resumption of war will result in their investments going bad.
“All the wealthy merchants in the area are outsiders,” postmaster Admun told me at Parakramapura. “They run groceries and other prosperous businesses here but the money they earn doesn’t stay here; it goes out.”
The only improvement I could think of from the 1990s was the absence of armed homeguards riding bicycles on the roads, at that time an ubiquitous sight. But unarmed soldiers were increasingly visible, on motorcycles, tractors or simply walking about .

(http://www.dailymirror.lk/2005/10/01/life/3.asp)