Sri Lanka: S. Bose(1975 – 2007), Poet, Editor & Writer · Global Voices
Mathy Kandasamy

The following poem was written by S. Bose, a writer-poet (Tamil) from Vavuniya, Sri Lanka and was translated by a friend of mine for Global Voices Online readers. Chandrabose Sudhakar or S.Bose was shot dead by armed men in his own home on April 16th, 2007. The killers who spoke Sinhala warned S.Bose's seven year old son to go back to sleep quietly and left the scene. Fortunately S.Bose's wife and daughter had been travelling and were not present.
Let me talk
your loud voices have
cut my wound deeper.
my voice is lost and dissolved in
the light of your foot prints.
Stop,
i want to be my self
always.
the stars in the sky
shatters and breaks,
you are screaming
seeds are spurting out of land,
again and again you are being possessed.
i lowered my head in shame for you.
at least in some moments
give permission to some one,
to ask some questions that
raise from within the depth
of their heart and talk them out
2.
in my broken voice
i also want to sing,
love-filled songs of sorrow
S. Bose (1975 – 2007)
S.Bose was known as a poet, journalist and littérateur. He has been published in Eelanatham, Veliccham, Eelanadu, Nilam, Kalachuvadu, Veerakesari, Sari-nihar, Mundravathu manithan, Thamizh ulagam, Innoru kaladi. He has also worked for Veliccham, Eelanatham, Eelanadu, Veerakesari. He edited and published ‘Nilam’ an exclusive magazine for poetry. He also published from Sri Lanka, ‘Thamizh ulagam’ a magazine published in London, U.K.
S.Bose was captured, prisoned and tortured by the Sri Lankan Government in 2001. His mistake? He wrote about the Tamils’ exodus from Jaffna in a magazine published in Tamil Nadu, India. Due to the said magazine's mishandling, S.Bose's personal information were published and this was used by the Sri Lankan Government.
While friends and acquaintances mourn his death, they are quite scared to make any overtures to help his bereaved family. The loss is all the more painful because S. Bose's widow lost her first husband in a similar manner.
DJ Tamilan, Toronto, Canada writes, “In a land where the losses are being calculated by the numbers, it's becoming increasingly difficult to mourn for each and every person being killed”.
Peddai from Toronto, Canada who met S.Bose a few years ago in Sri Lanka writes in detail about the killings in Vavuniya. In the two weeks preceding S.Bose's murder, 24 people had been killed in Vavuniya alone. One of the 24 people killed was her own grandmother. This old lady had been going about her ways in an alleyway with trees on either side. A stray bullet came out of nowhere and killed her. And she breathed her last on the lap of her daughter. And her suffering did not stop there. Since the morgue in the Vavuniya hospital was full, the innocent old lady's body had to wait for the relatives to get traveling passes. And had lost all the charm and had become darkened.
Peddai continues, “Only the people living with the lost ones would feel the impact. S.Bose was killed in his own home with his son by his side. The loss and the emptiness would only resonate within his family. The others would be writing notes – such as this – and will forget the loss as time goes by. It's the people living there, who have to ‘live life’ amidst all the chaos and added by the burden of loss.”
Muranveli from Sri Lanka while writing about S.Bose talks about social responsibility. They request people to help. At the same time, they also wonder if they would be  making the same request for every human being killed. Was S.Bose any different from the other people being killed on a daily basis. S.Bose was a littérateur. So is preference being given to intellectuals? What about the marginalized people? Muranveli says that these questions are very disturbing and unanswerable.