Last weekend I was able to visit the northern city Vavuniya. As the visit was a quick official work, I could not experience the atmosphere much. I was much excited on the visit as I have not been to this part of the country before. The furthermost I have been on this A9 road was Medawachchiya. That was during the conflict period on my way to Mannar.
During the past the journey to the North and back was a very tiresome one as there were multiple inspections happened along the A9 road. Some one had to wait four five even more at some places to get the clearance to pass.
Medawachchiya was one of main check points in the past and always very crowded with long queues. Today the old inspection buildings and the vehicle yards stands still silently looking at the vehicles passing by.
The A9 road is under construction and, with the construction disturbance we were able to reach Vavuniya within 6 hours. Of course we started from Colombo at 3am.
The road development is carried out in a quality as we can see the finished parts are constructed in standards. All the read signs are set up appropriately. And the city names are stated in all three languages. It was really nice to see the country being developed.
But along with the physical development the spiritual development of the people should happen. If not all the resources spent on the development will be a total waste. I have witnessed a really sad example for this during the visit itself.
As I said there were name boards were set up along the road before entering every city/main area. These board ware made of special sticker where the light is reflected back making the wordings illuminated in the night. We have noticed some one has applied a black paint over the Tamil name on these name boards along a section of the road near Anuradhapura.
This is really a idiotic thing. This will not only disturbs the harmony among the cultures but also adding a massive expenditure for the government in replacing them. Probably for the person who applied the ink on these boards might not have gain any benefit on this work, but might have lost some money on buying these paint items.
It is very important to behave in respectable manner specially in a period like this where everybody is having hurting memories in their minds. The government and the military forces have done their duty to the 100% in bringing down the conflict situation to this level and not its the peoples duty to carry forward the country without any unwanted incidents.
Sri Lanka is a beautiful country and its our duty to keep the beauty Physically, Naturally and Culturally.
