Heather

“It did not convince them that their government was guilty of war crimes, so that they unreservedly condemn it, or that no war crimes were committed, so that they might bask in the relief of a fair victory. Instead, they were trapped in the misery of not knowing what to believe - about their government, about their own indirect complicity in their government’s actions, or about the moral cost of their hard-won peace.”
― Samanth Subramanian, This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War

“Perhaps, like real currency, rumour even keeps things liquid, because it does not always require you to commit to an opinion or to modify your views.”
― Samanth Subramanian, This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War

“When the news of Prabhakaran’s death had broken, Raghavan had gotten drunk at home and wept complicated tears - for this comrades, for his estranged and cruel friend, for the vast toll of a campaign begun with mere black flags and Solignum graffiti, for the devastation of cause he still believed in, and for a fight that had somewhere gone very horribly wrong.”
― Samanth Subramanian, This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War