THE HUMAN TOUCH
Sumit Chakravarthy, Editor, Mainstream.
I had returned home quite late that night when the telephone rang. Ketheswaran was at the other end. He spoke in his deep sorrow voice trying to conceal his emotions to the best of his ability. “Have you heard the terrible news? Comrade Pathmanabha and several of our comrades have been gunned down and killed in Madras around 7PM this evening.” And then he narrated the incident as he had come to learn from his colleagues in the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) in Madras.
One could hardly believe him. It was incredable that ‘Nabha’ as K.Pathmanabha - the EPRLF Secretary - General- was known to his close friends, and several of his party men had been butchered in the city of Madras, on Indian soil. Only the other day he was at my place in New Delhi with Khetes and Premachandran, the EPRLF MP who has now succeeded Nabha in the Party. I had offered him Bengali sweets and he ate with relish. The same evening I had taken them out for dinner and we exchanged views on so many developments - from the upsurge of democracy in Eastern Europe, Nepal and Burma to the far-reaching changes in USSR, from the dismal scenario in Sri Lanka to the unfolding events in this country, and of course the frightening prospects of yet another Indo-Pak war.
Nabha spoke little. But he was an intent observer and listener. He had charming face and used to sport a beard that he had shaved off the last time I met him. What was most striking was his magnetic personality.
He has always inspired confidence. And above all, his sincerity of purpose was beyond question.
A mass leader par excellence his live-wire contacts with his people, especially in the eastern part of Sri Lanka (in Trincomalee in particular), endowed him with an extraordinary popularity that stemmed not from the barrel of the gun but dedicated service to the public.
Whenever he was in New Delhi he would make it a point to meet all his friends and acquaintances, young and old. I was privileged to be among them. A man of few words Nabha expressed himself through the warmth of his embrace. It came as a deep shock to all of us that, Nabha, who was married only a year ago, should have his promising life cut short so tragically in the city of Madras from where his wife hailed. Nabha was much more than a Sri Lankan Tamil militant leader. It has the breath of his vision that endeared him to different persons who came in touch with him here. He was always advocated close ties with progressive Sinhales while fighting for the legitimate rights of the Sri Lankan Tamils. At the same time he desired intimate relations with democratic forces in India. He was the finest embodiment of nationalism imbued with the spirit of internationalism in the highest humanist tradition.
We shall forever Miss. Nabha and always cherish his memory. His tragic end should spur us all to exert our maximum and call a halt to the bitter fratricidal bloodshed in Sri Lanka.
