Madras Cafe - It has history to it.

We went for a vacation to Switzerland in the summer of 2002. We flew Air Lanka. On the way back from Zurich our flight landed at Male. From Male it was a short flight to Colombo. I was sitting at a window seat admiring what the nature had to offer as you could see crystal clear waters, atolls and rolling hills. Soon we were touching down at Colombo airport and I was stunned to see Airbuses, helicopters and army aircrafts littered around just a few hundred yards from the runway. Each aircraft seemed to have been broken into several pieces with fuselage, tail and cockpit lying in different places. There was so much scrap that it was difficult to believe that the most protected area of the country had been so audaciously breached by the LTTE and the huge aircrafts had been reduced to scrap. This stunning attack at the Airport had happened a year back in the summer of 2001. A year later, the country was still in shock. It had not even been able to dispose of the debris. It seemed that the island country had received a blow from which it would never recover.

The airport is near the town of Negombo. It is just 326 km from Negombo to Jaffna. Jaffna is at the northern part of island. It is supposed to be most beautiful part of Sri Lanka but was totally captured by LTTE who ran a parallel government there. Prabhakaran was the undisputed leader of Tigers and LTTE was the most disciplined terrorist organisation in the world. Our taxi driver offered to take us there. He said roads were good and it would take 6 hours. We declined the offer. He chuckled.

I have been to Sri Lanka 4 times between 1993 to 2007. I have travelled to Negombo, Colombo, Nuwara Ilya, Kandy, Galle, Benetota and Kalutara. It is an island blessed with natural beauty. Though I did not see too many Sri Lankan beauties on the beach, the hotels and hospitality were top class. You could get exotic sea food at a very low price. The shopping of clothes was good. But you had to be content with security. The fear of LTTE was visible everywhere. Young boys in army fatigues had hardened faces as they expected bombs to explode anytime and take their lives. On each of our trips, our car was stopped many times and searched thoroughly at several points. The President Chandrika Kumaratunga had lost an eye in a bomb attack. Prime Minister Premdasa was killed in such an attack in 1993. LTTE had introduced the world to plastic explosives and human bombs. No place was safe. Bomb blasts in Colombo had become routine.

In his election promise Rajapaksa promised to remove LTTE from the Northern part of the country. He promised to eliminate each and every Tamil tiger. Considering that Buddhism is the main religion in this country, it was a very sad state of affairs.

Prabhakaran

Talented director Shoojit Sircar has made an espionage political drama called ‘Madras café.’ The film deals with Sri Lanka, LTTE, and assassination of our very own Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. It is a fast moving and brilliantly directed thriller. I would rate it very high as a thriller as you cannot get up for even 2 minutes as you would miss out on important happenings on the screen. John Abraham plays as a covert operator of R&AW called Vikram Singh and does a good job. Only R&AW or army would know whether such officers exist, but his performance is creditable. Watching the undercover agents , terrorists and refugees crossing over from Sri Lanka to southern part of India on ordinary boats makes you realise how close these countries are to each other and how porous the borders are.

The accord of 1987

The movie starts with signing of peace accord between Colombo and New Delhi and this is followed by sending IPKF to Sri Lanka by Rajiv Gandhi. The LTTE had become a feared organisation in the North and East of island and under the leadership of Prabhakaran. All Sinhalese were either eliminated or pushed out from regions North of Elephant pass. IPKF had the mandate to neutralise LTTE and this they could do by capturing or eliminating Prabhakaran who did not want any provincial elections to happen. LTTE at that time was loved as well as feared by Tamilians. LTTE had formed a parallel government and Prabhakaran was the supreme leader.

If you go back to history and read the account of top army officers, they put all blame for the failure of IPKF to the failure of R&AW in providing adequate and correct intelligence. In a memoir released on the 25^th anniversary of sending of IPKF to Sri Lanka, a top army commander wrote that General Sunderji had promised them that the mission would be accomplished in 2 weeks. The army stayed there for 2 years and mission is considered to be a failure today. However, IPKF was not totally a failure and they did eliminate the middle rung of LTTE and drove them back to the forests of North. Prabhakaran survived miraculously once in one of the attacks by IPKF. LTTE was driven into jungles and some army commanders feel that it was a matter of time before they could have forced Prabhakaran to join the political stream. However, the fact remains that IPKF was withdrawn and Sri Lanka went into a bigger crisis. Many reasons have been attributed to this failure of IPKF. It is said that Indian army was not prepared for the innovative guerrilla tactics of LTTE. They found it difficult to fight an army which they could not see but which had all information about them. Intelligence also failed to inform our army that LTTE had latest guns and armory along with state of the art equipment and radio system. LTTE cadres were so committed that they would replace each dead person with another one immediately.

Shoojit Sircar has taken some familiar names in important roles. These people are not known to be film actors but have done a good job. Siddharth Basu plays the R&AW top boss Robin Dutt; Piyush Pandey the ad man plays the role of Cabinet Secretary and TV anchor Dibang plays a role of informant. Dibang was in the film appreciation course, conducted by Alan Wilkins, a NYU professor last year which I attended as well. Nargis Fakhri plays an important role of a British war correspondent. She has a short role but looks convincing. There is no romantic angle between the hero and heroine in this film.Actor Prakash Belawadi plays the role of ‘Bala’ , the compromised R&AW head of Madras Desk. This character is based on the real life R&AW agent Unnikrishnan who had been honey trapped by CIA in 1987 and photographed in compromising position with an air hostess.

We do know that Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by LTTE. We don’t know whether what is shown in the movie is a correct portrayal of events leading to it. Was the conspiracy hatched by foreign governments for their own benefit ? Or is it because some foreign governments wanted India away from sri Lanka ? Was LTTE paid so much money for it ( the movie says 54 million euros)? Is it correct that R&AW had managed to zero on to the time and place of attack on our PM but were helpless to stop it ? Were there moles in Indian organisation which led to the failure of IPKF and several covert operations ? One day  these secrets will come out. Whether these things are correct or not, they are plausible and there might be some truth in them. While the movie portrays R&AW and its agents to be competent, the incidents of history show that the intelligence of LTTE was far superior to that of R&AW. The army commanders have written that messages about advancing Indian platoons were sent by LTTE cadres in coded signals through the bells of temples and also they used children extensively to run around innocently to gather each and every information about the enemy. The message would be conveyed through series of messengers on cycles.While indian intelligence could not infiltrate LTTE, the LTTE had all the knowledge of what IPKF was about to do.

The movie is an espionage thriller with Sri Lanka war as a back drop. It is an extremely competent effort as it does explain the Sri Lankan problem and keeps us glued to our seats with a great sense of storytelling. You keep hoping that PM would get saved though you do know the end result. The movie briefly touches the family life of agent Vikram Singh and his pretty wife who has no inkling what her husband does. 

Once Rajapaksa won the elections and became the President, he kept his promise and attacked LTTE with all his might. He asked his troops to go all the way and not show any mercy to anyone. When Rajpaksa’s army attacked Jaffna and annihilated LTTE, India remained silent even though many civilian Tamil’s were being killed. When certain Tamilian politicians protested, the Government told them that LTTE was India’s enemy as it had killed it’s PM. Had Prabhakaran not ordered the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, there is no way that India would have allowed Tamils to be killed so mercilessly. The documentary by channel 4 gave a graphic details of the human rights violations in Sri Lanka where even children were not spared by the army. The protagonist in the movie correctly says that this assassination robbed the chance of any peace settlement to happen and compromised the lives of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

I think full marks should be given to Shoojit Sircar for making a film on such difficult subject with such fineness. True potential of director is evident when you realise that last year he had made a movie which was far from any kind of espionage or war. He had made an award winning funny film on sperm donation called the ‘Vicky donor.’