Lasantha: Heroic Vigilante who Never Failed to Baffle us All

By Philip Fernando in Los Angeles for Sri Lanka Guardian

(January 13, Los Angeles, Sri Lanka Guardian) The enigma of Lasantha’s death brought a frightening insight into the volatility of Sri Lankan politics. It querried more than it resolved. The latest take is that he had talks with the President to come together after the war in order to work towards national unity. Did Prabhakaran know about that move? It would have ignited his wrath had he sensed it. Lasantha looked to revel being close to the edge. He's a creative type too and a great guy who would give the shirt off his back to you if you really needed it. But he did wrestle with some demons.

Vigilantes nurse grandiose aspirations often fatalistic. Lasantha was nurtured in the traditions of an inquisitive legal mind unyielding to the point of no return. We know that he was not suicidal, that much we did know but was he having a death wish? His posthumous editorial published in the Sunday Leader made the confusion worse compounded.

Lasantha had moved towards the SLFP in the eighties but was puzzled by the rivalry between Chandrika and Anura. Eventually Lasantha gravitated towards the UNP, to which his father had initially belonged. Strangely Anura and Chandrika felt the same at times opposing what they had seen in the SLFP. The nature of Sri Lankan politics lent itself towards such vacillations and shifts in allegiance for most politicians. Some got burnt by such back and forth moves. It is a deadly game of snakes and ladders.

Many even had self-destructive tendencies. Ordinarily, these tendencies cause us to smoke, drink, drive fast, bungee-jump, etc. It is been a while since I had the course on psychology. But I know that for some, nothing makes you feel more alive than being an inch away from death. Some like mountain Bike crashes, landing and taking off in a light aircraft for the first time, stacking on a water ski at 35mph, or be a crocodile Dundee etc. Any thing that scares the pants off you, or has the real possibility of causing serious harm is great fun. Millions have no qualms taking white-water rides down stream. The cross-currents and cliffs that surrounded them were immense.

Was journalism such a ride for Lasantha? It seems Lasantha knew it all along that the path he took would lead to self-destruction. He was the ultimate heroic vigilante that ignored all odds. Our former Lake House colleague put it right “he was a classic case of published and be damned.”

For some death is such a vague, ambiguous thing. No one knows what it is, or when it is coming for them. By risking one's life, you are in control of it. You know it could happen. It no longer becomes some random, abstract thing that could happen at any time without you knowing. You are in control of your death. Lasantha may have been one of them. He never wanted even basic security apparatus to bother him.

We are all puzzled and deeply shocked by Lasantha’s death. Cruelty affects us and overwhelms us immensely. Lasantha’s death is an irreparable loss to journalism. There may only be very few Sri Lankans living abroad who would not click into the Sunday Leader web site every Sunday. The editorials were a gem. Even his buddy Ranil got a good spanking now and then.

There are at least a dozen web sites that are routinely perused by many every morning. Some are putrid like yesterdays meal-badly edited and a disgrace to journalism. It is like going before the tribune in Rome. Lasantha’s was not one of them. He was a journalist worth knowing. He never failed to keep us apprized of the hectic lives Sri Lankans were having way across the seas. Good bye Lasantha! We will him dearly! - Sri Lanka Guardian