Sunday Punch 2

This Tuesday, while Wimal Weerawansa was walking from the court house to the black police jeep that awaited to take him back to his remand cell at the Welikada jail, no doubt, the rich glowing tribute paid to him last Sunday by no less a personage than the former president Rajapaksa who had hailed him as one of Lanka’s greatest patriots, would have been ringing loudly in his ears.

And as he climbed aboard the waiting vehicle, whilst the martial music played and a twenty one gun salute boomed and rent the noon air in his head, he would surely have remembered with gratitude the Rajapaksa trio and paid homage to his Triple Gem,

They had been the triumvirate of immortal gods in whom he had sought refuge. His talisman of protection. And they had blessed him in return. They had never forsaken him. Especially the Noble Mahinda, the founder of the faith. His blessings were of a permanent character even though his divine power to save his devotees from the hell gates of the Welikada prison, had, alas, somewhat lost the omnipotent touch.

But, hadn’t the first Gem, the Noble Mahinda, come to his aid when he had gone on a hunger strike outside the UN office over some issue or the other 7 years ago and revived him with a glass of king coconut water and brought him miraculously back to life? Those things, Wimal knew, he could not forget.

Who would have believed then that his Almighty God, the architect and creator of Wimal’s personal Garden of Eden, who had granted him and his wife Sashi, free rein to grow their apple orchard in peace, undisturbed; who had resurrected his life and raised him from the comatose dead, would be helpless at this trying hour to prevent his brief incarceration at the Welikada prison?

It was all due to that Yahapalana snake which had cunningly enticed the masses to eat of the forbidden fruit and, by that original sin of denying his Almighty God to rule by divine right in perpetuity, made his angels weep in purgatory.

Yet, despite his present