{"id":111025,"date":"2013-10-21T19:29:04","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T13:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=111025"},"modified":"2013-10-27T04:05:57","modified_gmt":"2013-10-26T22:35:57","slug":"mangala-samaraweera-dwells-on-his-revolutionary-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/mangala-samaraweera-dwells-on-his-revolutionary-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Mangala Samaraweera Dwells On His \u2018Revolutionary Moment\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><strong>By\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Malinda+Seneviratne+&amp;x=14&amp;y=5\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/a><\/span>\u00a0&#8211;<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_105560\" style=\"width: 140px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sunila-abeysekera-and-the-prerogatives-of-the-displaced\/malinda-seneviratne-150x150\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-105560\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-105560\" class=\"size-full wp-image-105560\" title=\"Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"130\" height=\"135\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-105560\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Meanwhile in a parallel universe called Humility\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When the General Secretary of the UNP Tissa Attanayake said that the Government is going to make me a political prisoner a lump materialized in my throat.\u00a0 For a brief moment I was worried for I have always valued my freedom and I abhor all manner of limitations, be it gates, iron bars or propriety.\u00a0 But then I dwelled on the matter of making something out of nothing.\u00a0 It was a long dream.<\/p>\n<p>I thought of Antonio Gramsci and the long years that the Italian Communist spent in jail.\u00a0 I thought I could write my own \u2018Prison Notebooks\u2019.\u00a0 I thought of Nazim Hikmet of Turkey, his incarcerations and exiles, and dreamed of writing poetry that would put Hikmet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Pablo Neruda to shame.<\/p>\n<p>I thought of Nelson Mandela.\u00a0 I remembered how that exceptional human being inspired revolutionary change even as he was constrained by walls, jailors and jibes.\u00a0 It did occur to me that spending almost 30 years in jail as a political prisoner would take me into my eighties at the time of release, if I survived that long.\u00a0 Still worth it, I told myself.<\/p>\n<p>I wondered if I would be given paper and pencil or if I could get the prison authorities to agree to a laptop or iPad or iPhone. That way I could soar out of the prison in ways that Gramsci and Mandela could never have dreamed possible.<\/p>\n<p>I thought of fellow-inmates in the event that I was not put in solitary confinement.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard horror stories about prisons and how even political prisoners are subjected to harassment.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard about prison deaths too and remembering all that made me shiver.\u00a0 I told myself that I was a known-name and the Government will not risk me dying while being held.\u00a0 For a brief moment I even considered suicide. I could, I know, get my media friends to say it as I want for it is not for nothing that I am known for \u2018spin\u2019.\u00a0 But then again I love life too much. I want to savor the wrecking of stumps when those <em>doosras<\/em> beat bat and pad of my detractors.<\/p>\n<p>I thought of Mahatma Gandhi.\u00a0 \u2018Mahatma Mangala,\u2019 I murmured the name, rolled it over lip and around tongue several time. Didn\u2019t sound right.\u00a0 Still, a Mahatma wannabe is better than a Mangala, I told myself and smiles.<\/p>\n<p>I looked back.\u00a0 There was a time when I was a name.\u00a0 Then I chose to be an opposition name, in retrospect at the worst possible moment.\u00a0 Then other names in the UNP became better known and now I am just another political discard, an internally displaced politician if you will.\u00a0 That\u2019s the truth that I don\u2019t acknowledge to myself very often.<\/p>\n<p>Then it hit me.\u00a0 If I was in prison, I will be forced to have a long and solemn conversation with myself and I will have to do it every day, every hour and every minute.<\/p>\n<p>I am no Gramsci.\u00a0 I am not a Mandela. I am Mangala.<\/p>\n<p>I applied for bail.<\/p>\n<p><em>*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/malindawords.blogspot.co.uk\/\">www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":105560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mangala Samaraweera Dwells On His \u2018Revolutionary Moment\u2019 - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/mangala-samaraweera-dwells-on-his-revolutionary-moment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mangala Samaraweera Dwells On His \u2018Revolutionary Moment\u2019 - 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