Towards Jaffna-  By Uditha Devapriya Source:Island At some point in our childhood, the world beyond Omanthai and Kilinochchi disappeared from view. Our teenage years were filled with memories of maps, flags, terrains, and roads. In the classroom, in the travel books, and across the media, they reinforced the indivisibility of the country. Yet belying that picture of unity was a fragmented polity, one whose contours stretched from the north of the country to the western and southern coasts, skirting Colombo on one side and bordering Hambantota on the other. We never saw this other map until later, but the realities of war forced us to accept its divisions when we did. My generation came of age when the war had begun to intensity; by its end we were sitting for our O Levels, hardly cognizant of the politics that went into it. Our knowledge, I daresay ignorance, of what lay ...

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