bomb scare in the neighbourhood

A black parcel turned up in the neighbourhood the other day. Nobody dared go near it. The warnings in the media, on the road, in the head, seemed to have worked well in building the paranoia towards anything that seemed not to fit. The little voices inside screamed so loud that everyone could hear each other’s souls cry: “Oh my God what if it’s a bomb!” even as an odd silence took over the tangible realities of their lives.

“Yes, it could be a garbage bag…but, the garbage men came just this morning, how could someone have dumped something in the evening…it can’t be a garbage bag….”

People gathered, eyeing the bag, eying their neighbours, eying everything suspiciously.

A neighbourhood patriarch raised his voice as others whispered amongst them wondering what to do. The man was a Sinhalese.

“Let the Sinhala people handle this. We should not get involved, what if they accuse us?” My mother and another friendly neigbourhood Tamil lady mumbled as they discussed their options under their breath.

“What do we do; should we call the police? I think we should call the police; who is going to do the calling?” the man’s voice boomed, growing louder with each syllable.

“Yes we should call the Police… maybe you should do it… do it now… what if it is a bomb?”

The voice was that of a Sinhala woman; also from the neighbourhood. She had said it. She had voiced everyone’s fears. The moment the word bomb was said out loud, things seemed to ease up, people started to talk.

The Tamils remained silent.

The Muslims spoke, but remained noncommittal. They threw questioning glances across at the Tamils. Or so the Tamils thought so. They nodded, and the Tamils looked away.

It was left to the Sinhalese to do something about the parcel. In what was normally a close knit neighbourhood, where everybody knew one another, the possibility of a “terrorist” presence was too much to handle.

And so they called the police.

One by one the Tamils left the scene and went into their respective homes. My mother had turned pale, she was worried about something. “No,” she said, it was not the fact that we could potentially have a bomb go off in the neighbourhood. She was worried about something worse than a bomb, she was worried that I was home and the police were coming.

Her logic seemed reasonable given the context. I had retuned from India a couple of weeks earlier. I was the odd one out. If the police came, I would be in trouble. The fear Other Tamil mothers, equally afraid of the same fate, cautioned their young sons and daughters.

“They will come and search our houses; they will arrest us if they suspect it is a bomb. Better to stay indoors and not draw attention, we will say we were indoors all day.” The thought seemed to have popped into every Tamil mind.

The patriach continued to shout, “Do not worry people, we have called the Police, they are on the way. We are safe now.”

The Tamils shuddered; they hoped that it would not be the STF. They went indoors and shut their doors. They prayed the STF would not come to arrest them.

The STF did not come.

A group of local constables were sent to detonate the potential bomb. One of the constables was forced to poke the package with a large stick. He did so positioning himself in a comical fashion reaching out with one arm and its extension; the stick. If it had, in fact, been a bomb, his positioning would not have done him any good, but he preferred to do it that way.

The Sinhala man watched. Maybe the bomb warning messages in the media were not consistent enough, because he did not seem to want to protect himself from it, and instead preferred to watch. He raised his voice once again and told the neighbourhood that everything was ok now that the police were here. He then turned around and shouted at the police for taking so long to respond to his call. All this he did while he watched the cop prod the parcel with his stick.

Luckily the bag was just a late edition garbage drop. Someone at the scene must have been aware of this fact, but was too afraid to own up.

The police left and the Tamils heaved a sigh of relief. “At least they did not come in to check us….” The sigh was for the absence of checking not the detonated hoax bomb

Everything returned to normal within minutes of the police leaving. Everyone was back to being friendly. The ethnic divide disappeared…. “Thank God it was not a bomb no?”

Thank God!