Painting by the late Tissa Kappagoda

 

 

 

Hello Tissa,
I really liked your picture. You seem to have a lot of talent in painting.
Heather Knower wrote saying, that she will try and paint the picture we
chose as book cover, long before I even dreamt of publishing it. I wonder
how far she got.
Fifty years is a very short timescale in the history of a nation. Ambition
greed and power do not last, humanity does.
We who lived through the 'Bathala days' of NM Perera, know what it was, to
struggle to survive.
I quote a poem I got from 'The 1000 days - Story of the siege of Leningrad"
by Harrison Salsbury:

It was written by a Russian poetess, who was in a
concentration camp, in Siberia, but was released to help fight the Nazis, when Hitler
invaded Russia.

‘I did not on this day forget

The bitter years of oppression and evil.

But in a blinding flash I understood :

It was not I but you who suffered and waited.

No, I have forgotten nothing,

But even the dead and the victims

Will rise from their grave at your call ;

We will all rise, and not I alone.

I love you with a new love

Bitter, all-forgiving, bright –

My motherland with the wreath of thorns

And the dark rainbow over your head …

I love you – I cannot otherwise –

And you and I are one again as before.

(From the Book ‘ The 900 days - The Siege of Leningrad' by Harrison Salisbury)

Everything is 'Anicca'. We who live, have to preserve our humanity, and
carry on.

Philip