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BOOKS
Dateline Death Zone
An intrepid reporter's thriller in the Jaffna jungle
By Sunil Sethi
Every journalist
carries one story to mark them for life and Sri Lanka, which Anita Pratap
covered with courage and dogged zeal for more than a decade, was hers.
It won her prize assignments and awards, propelling her from the status
of a regional correspondent in the mid-1980s to plumb in the midst of
Delhi's charmed media circle. At the core of her Sri Lankan adventure
was her access to V. Pirabhakaran, the mysterious and much-dreaded LTTE
leader. Her interviews with him and accounts of his guerrilla operations
were more than media scoops-they were crucial information for successive
Indian governments in the run up to India's ill-fated engagement in a
neighbour's torturous civil war. Pratap does not tell her story chronologically;
which is just as well, because a journalist's material, however well rehashed,
threatens a stale aftertaste of hurriedly regurgitated history.
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ISLAND
OF BLOOD: Frontline reports from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan
and other south Asian flashpoints
By Anita Pratap
Viking Penguin
Price: Rs 295
Pages: 276
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She starts with an account of a trip with LTTE
guerrillas from Vavuniya to Jaffna in November 1987-at the height of the
Indian peace-keeping operation-to reach Pirabhakaran's lair. A journey
no longer than a few hours in normal times becomes an intrepid jungle
trek of six days. Dodging Indian patrols and bullets, bitten by mosquitoes
at night, jumping barricades rigged up in a Tamil peasant's nylon sari,
she fails to confront her quarry. But the hair-raising escapades combine
a reporter's perseverance and observation-by turns dangerous, tragic and
hilarious.
Pratap then moves on to earlier times, her halcyon
days as a young Madras-based reporter whose coverage of the 1983 anti-Tamil
riots in Colombo led her to plunge into Sri Lankan affairs. Among the
many Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups based in Madras, she is looking
for Pirabhakaran. "Just as I singled out Pirabhakaran for attention,
he singled me out among the press corps for his attention." A bond
of trust develops; she watches Pirabhakaran's dramatic transformation
from a nondescript "mild-looking, self-effacing civilian" to
a monster guerrilla, "a mastermind of conventional battles ... (who)
... forced the world's third largest army to retreat" but who could
produce Chinese meals and ice cream for his guests in his jungle hideouts.
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THE LAIR: Pratap (below)
covered the Lankan crisis with dogged zeal
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Her insights into Pirabhakaran's mind, his strategy
and supporters-those terror-waging suicide bombers with vials of cyanide
around their necks who blew up Ranasinghe Premadasa and Rajiv Gandhi-are
fascinating. With Tamil guerrillas at war in the north and Sinhala Marxists
wrecking havoc in the south, Pratap's account of the killing fields of
Sri Lanka, the Isle of Serendip metamorphosed into the Island of Blood,
is a creditable journalist's chronicle, barring some gloating references
to herself ("Crisis always transforms me into Ms Professional")
and some misplaced hand wringing directed heavenwards ("Sometimes
I wonder about God, this Being who manipulates our fates").
But halfway through, once her Sri Lanka story
has wound down and Pratap's life begins to move in other directions, her
book begins to peter out. She indulges in the expedient exercise of cut-and-paste
journalism, sifting old files and tapes into an odd assortment of stories,
interwoven with episodes from her personal life. It is unexciting as journalism
and unfailingly dull as memoir.
Part of the problem is her technique of using
flashbacks, cutting from private moments with her family-a jungle holiday
with her son, vacations in Kerala or Europe with her husband-to her more
harrowing professional assignments. A holiday in the fjords of Norway
links up with the 1996 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, wandering around
Cordoba leads to the demolition of Babri Masjid, sailing down the placid
backwaters of Kerala, bizarrely, takes her to the Bangladesh cyclone.
In the Sri Lanka chapters, the technique passes off as novelty. But very
soon it deteriorates into tired cliches and, after promiscuous use, into
pure farce.
The crack reporter has run out of steam and
the publisher is too lazy to supply editorial backup or advice. Island
of Blood deals with some of the most important events of our time but
it comes with no index, bibliography or source notes. Could this be an
example of leading readers back to the Dark Ages? What could have been
an enduring study of Sri Lanka's crisis ends up as a reporter's take on
herself. Unfortunately, Anita Pratap on Anita Pratap is a limited subject
of study.
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