Udan Fernando

In the immediate aftermath of the Sri Lankan insurrection of 1971, while the leadership of the JVP, the insurgent political party, was incarcerated, some JVP activists made attempts to revive their movement. A young Catholic nun in a convent in Colombo, exposed to these activists, develops an empathy with the JVP cause, fired by her sense of injustice. Her engagement with these revolutionaries, soon joined by their leaders who were released from prison in late 1977, takes her on a tumultuous spiritual and political roller-coaster where she finds her loyalties leaning more towards party activism than her religious obligations. Finally, she reaches a crisis point and is compelled to make a choice between the two, but she continues to question her own decisions in the context of a rapidly changing political landscape in the 1980s and a resultant dramatic shift in the JVPs outlook and strategy.

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A 53-year-old man arrives at the voting booth for the first time in his life, to vote for an election of the country that he holds dear to him. He crosses the ballot card with a fervent hope and resolve that his country deserves an overall transformation, including a new constitution, new leadership that drives the country towards progress and a fresh political culture that unites the people towards progress. Upon casting his maiden vote, he goes for a stroll to discover an area he had not hitherto seen in his own neighborhood and of himself. He wonders if the vote he just casted is by chance or choice. Perplexed by this question and lost in a labyrinth of newly discovered neighborhood and his own thoughts on democracy, motherland and patriotism, he fumbles to find his way back home. A story of one man's self-discovery and his quest to find his political self in a climate of uncertainty amidst forces of misfortune and misery created by the recent pandemic.

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