Friday, February 5, 2016

Sri Lankan National anthem sung in Tamil


PS
As a student at Hartley College, Point Pedro, in the early 1950s we sang the National anthem, in Tamil. Those were the days, long before the love for the nation, was hijacked by the politicians for their own despicable ends.
Philip G V


"I did not on this day forget,
The bitter years of oppression and of 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 the grave at your call;
We will all rise, and not I alone.
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"  

Poem written by Olga Berggolts, Russian Poetess imprisoned by Stalin earlier, and released to help fight the Nazi invaders in the 1940s. From '900 days - The siege of Leningrad' by Harrison Salisbury

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