APPLAUSE
Prologue
Thaayirch chirantha Thayaavana thathuvane,
Maasattra sothi, malarntha malarchudare, thesane thenar amuthe, sivapurane”
Sothi’s naked body trudged aimlessly on the eerily quiet Borella Road. Skin was peeling off his shins, the nerves swelling with heat and his own urine trickling down his legs, cooling then burning as it dripped to the ground. His clothes and bag were scattered a few metres away snatched by the mob who garlanded him with the burning tyre. Sothi was aloof to the reality of the spiralling events of the day. His July salary was being looted from his wallet, rubber was melting around his neck and his soul was slowly departing his body.
Each pain had disoriented him from reality, but the moment of the impeding end took him back to the memories of his mother.
A strong Shiva devotee, she would sing the Thiruvasagam in the shrine room in their Jaffna home, while Sothi sat and gulped Puttu and sambal in the next room. Prayers and Puttu in a Tamil home were mundane. You trust in God Supreme to create, protect and destroy your existence in the plainest form never envisaging cruelty to escort the destruction of your own frame. Sothi wasn’t a religous man, but Sivapuranam was etched in his life through the art of listening and he believed Shivaperuman would comfort him in times of trouble. Tears rolled down his scalding face as the vile laughter of those unknown sloshed Sinhalese men, who had dragged him out of his single room in the lodge at Narahenpita, few minutes ago turned faint. He remembered his mother and thought of God. Sothi was engulfed in a ball of fire. He was dead.
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