Padma Rao Sundarji, being Chapter 7 in her book Sri Lanka. The New Country, bearing the title “Jaffna: A Former Tiger is a TV Producer” …. while I have taken a few liberties with the formatting and also inserted my emphases for reader attention: Michael Roberts
The morning after meeting Ravi Kumar, I sat on the balcony over coffee. As puttering motorbikes announced the arrival of couples for breakfast at the Green Grass’s outdoor restaurant, I mulled over a decision I had to make. During my two-years of ‘sick leave’ from the Sri Lanka story, foreign reporters based in Delhi, who had been in Sri Lanka (some of whom had been admonished and deported) but also some social workers and NGOs in Colombo, had told me that I should be careful and utterly fastidious in my choice of whom I speak to in the north and north east on my first trips to post-war Sri Lanka.
The army, they said, was everywhere. Jaffna was crawling with military intelligence. They tapped phones, they shadowed reporters, they were even capable of knocking on your door late at night to confiscate your tapes and laptop.
