The Malayalam movie, for which Adoor won the National Award for best direction in 2007, chronicles the apparently disparate lives of four women – the prostitute, the virgin, the housewife and the spinster. The lives of the four protagonists are not connected physically but through their different experiences we see how women could breakout of stereotypes of their existence.

What would have also struck the audience was the similarity in culture in Kerala and Sri Lanka.

Few of us chatted over coffee with Adoor as he waited for the movie to finish for him to address the small gathering.

Painter Maqbool Fida Husain had passed away in London two days ago and I asked him about how we, Indians, treated him during his lifetime. “Shameful,” Adoor said softly with anger and outrage, adding: “We should be ashamed.”

The topic veered on to how we tend to treat artists dealing with controversial subjects. For example, Deepa Mehta had to abandon shooting for ‘Water’ in India and move to Sri Lanka with cast and crew to complete the movie. And her recent movie ‘Wings of Change’, based on Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnights’ Children’, was shot entirely in Sri Lanka, including Colombo.

Anyone can shoot anything in India, the film director said. But the wise thing to do is to avoid publicity. Keep it quiet and finish the movie, was Adoor’s advice.

The film director has little time for censorship. He was part of an expert committee in the late 1970s formed to look into the issue of censorship which recommended that it should be done away with.

There’s nothing called art movies and commercial cinema, he said. The problem arises when the director begins to compromise. Many of his movies, and they would hardly fit the definition of commercial movies that the industries in Mumbai or Chennai churn out, have done well commercially, he said.

I asked him the customary question: which was the last movie he saw and enjoyed? The answer came in promptly: “(acclaimed Kannada film director) Girish Kasaravalli’s Kanasembo Kudureyaneri (Riding the Dreams)”.

He was also asked about making a movie in and about Sri Lanka. The Indian film director said he didn’t known enough about the country to do a movie.

Adoor had visited Sri Lanka many times before but was in Colombo this time for a specific purpose. He was invited as the chief guest at the launch of the Lester James Peries — easily Sri Lanka’s most famous film director — and Sumitra Peries Foundation. The foundation is working towards building a national film archives for Lankan cinema.

Several worrying aspects of the programme was pointed out this week by Friday Forum, an informal group of individuals that talks about democracy and pluralism.

“The curriculum of the training programme obtained by the Friday Forum after some effort reveals extremely problematic aspects. No mention is made of the authority responsible for the curriculum but a prominent photograph of the Defence Secretary on the cover of the study guide suggests authorship by the Defence establishment. The predominant focus is on instilling discipline and self-confidence through military regimentation including a five-kilometre walk to be completed in 45 minutes irrespective of individual physical fitness or the widely disparate facilities for sports and physical training in the schools from which the students come,” the Forum said in a statement.

The defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s younger brother and is easily among the two most powerful men in the country.

While technically, the President controls of the defence portfolio, it’s Gotabhaya who has unfettered authority over security-related issues – and in this, it seems, a decisive say in what young students should study.

According to the Friday Forum, another problematic aspect of the course is the module on history and national heritage and its exclusive focus on the majority community.

“National heritage focuses exclusively on prominent cultural symbols of the majority Sinhala community such as Sigiriya, the Temple of the Tooth and the Aukana Buddha statue with none from other communities. Subjecting new university entrants who may well become future leaders of this country to a course which focuses exclusively on the majority community, undermines all the official statements on national reconciliation after three decades of civil strife. If this is an officially sanctioned method of national reconciliation what hopes do we have for a peaceful conflict free future in this country?” the Forum’s statement asked.

I’ve only mentioned two problematic points from the several that the Forum raised. But these two points are disturbing enough. The first one focuses on what has become a norm in the Sri Lankan polity – put the spotlight on the ruling family. Be it Mahinda Chintanaya, or what the government’s policy doctrine is know as, or name stadiums after the President or print currency notes with his photo, there is worrying trend to blitzkrieg the Lankan population with images and words about the ruling family. If his brother is having some fun, why should Gotabhaya miss out?

Secondly, to focus only on one community in history is manipulating it. Though I haven’t seen the history module, it’s clear from Friday Forum’s statement that the module will far from help in reconciling the country emerging from years of civil war.

As former history professor at Jaffna University Santasilan Kadirgamar began speaking about the four dark days and nights of 1981, he and many in the small but packed auditorium of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) auditorium earlier this week relived the anger, shame and despondency that spread among the liberal and, why only the liberal, among most right thinking Sri Lankans after the Jaffna Public Library was burnt down.

Besides the library and the 97,000 books and priceless manuscripts, what was also put on fire between May 31 and June 4 in 1981 was Tamil-Sinhala amity.

“The events of May/June hardened the attitudes on both sides and propelled the drift towards extreme Tamil nationalism and the emergence of Tamil youth militancy and a ruthless response by the state and its security forces,” Kadirgamar said.

He later added: “Jaffna is the primary city of the Lankan Tamils and their cultural centre… Jaffna, known for its quiet ways of life and non-violent forms of dissent and struggle, was never the same again.”

Some would say Sri Lanka was never the same again. The arson and violence of 1981 was followed by the carnage of anti-Tamil riots of 1983; followed by the 26 years of civil war that only ended in May, 2009.

Perpetrators of the crime were never brought to book though successive governments later condemned it. A member in the audience said a commission was instituted to look into the act of wanton violence but, evident from the fact that very few seemed to be aware of it, the commission would have done nothing or little to heal the wounds.

Outwardly, the library looked just fine when I visited it a year ago. (I went there again in late 2010 but it was a cursory visit.)

I was surprised at the former head librarian’s first request. “You need to take your shoes off (before entering) as this is a temple of knowledge,” former head librarian S Thanabaalasinham had told me.

As we got chatting, the bespectacled man tried hard not to talk about those violent 1981 nights. “We can’t replace them,” Thanabaalasinham said about the thousands of rare books and Palmyrah leaf manuscripts destroyed when the library was burnt down. He had side-stepped many questions by saying that he wasn’t in Jaffna at that time.

Kadirgamar said in his lecture – subsequently published in the Economic and Political Weekly – said those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

Well, it almost happened in December last year when a group of tourists from south Sri Lanka went on a rampage inside the library after being denied entry as a national seminar was being held inside. The military and police personnel deployed all around the area did nothing much, it was said.

The events of 1981 were covered and followed by international journalists and rights activists. It, “…effectively internationalised the conflict in the country. Journalists, human rights activists and academics from various parts of the world began visiting Jaffna,” Kadirgamar said. Visitors included professors and journalists from India as well. Unfortunately, nobody could predict, and far from prevent, the deadly events the burning of the Jaffna library hastened, even unleashed.

Many Lankan students are likely to lose that choice. It’s not conscription but under a new scheme, beginning Sunday, all university entrants will now have to attend three weeks of training in military camps. They will be tutored by officials from the ministry of higher education under the guidance of senior military officers.

The decision sent waves of worry among those who feel that the Lankan society is far too militarised already. A few commentators I spoke to – they wanted me to protect their anonymity – said it was an attempt to brainwash students about discipline and how to be subservient to the state. It’s also an attempt to militarise universities, many of which had seen an upsurge of students’ unrest a few months ago.

“It is not only dangerous, it is possibly unconstitutional as well,’’ said a political commentator.

A students’ group filed a petition against the ministerial move in the Supreme Court. But the programme is set to take off Sunday after the Court simply asked the Attorney General’s office to “consider’’ postponing it by a week.

The camps will be held for both male and female students across 20 training facilities in the country.

According to an AFP report, the government said it was forced to introduce the “leadership training” in a bid to discourage rampant ragging — bullying of newcomers by older students — at Sri Lankan universities despite a 1998 law banning the phenomenon.

“Ragging has caused several deaths and many severe injuries among students.

Some 20,000 students a year qualify to enter Sri Lanka’s 19 universities and technical colleges run by the government,’’ the AFP report said.

Military spokesperson, Major General UAB Medawela was at pains to explain to me that the programme was more of a “finishing school’’ for university entrants. No physical training and no weapons-training will be done, he said.

“The students will be taught the importance of physical training, ethics and etiquettes in life and leadership skills,’’ he said. “They will be taught how to be pleasant…in everything they do – eating, drinking, walking, bathing.’’ If this wasn’t bizarre enough, what Medawela said next was ominous. “They will be taught how to follow instructions…discipline. They will be taught how to comply and respect,’’ he said.

Whether three weeks are enough to teach ethics to a late-teenager is anyone’s guess. But to force-feed students the virtues of “following instructions’’ could indeed be damaging.

The question also arises whether the government as usual has been insensitive to the feelings of Tamil students, especially those who are not from Colombo.

Award winning Lankan film director Vimuktthi Jayasundara’s Bengali influence lie elsewhere – Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray. ‘Chatrak’ or mushroom in Sanskrit is his paean to the two great directors.

Screening of a Bengali film at the Cannes film festival is nothing new. But ‘Chatrak’ is perhaps the first Bengali movie made by a Sinhalese director from Sri Lanka to be featured in the prestigious festival. It will be shown in the prestigious Directors’ Fortnight category of the festival.

Last week, we were sitting in the editing room of production house ‘24 Frames’, partly owned by Vimuktthi, in Colombo’s posh Barnes Place. Outside the Colombo afternoon was melting in heat and humidity; inside, the room was cool, dry and dark and lit up by glowing computer screens and a single, white fluorescent bulb.

It all began on a Facebook chat. “I was chatting with friend Bappa (Kolkata-based film director Bappaditya Gangopadhyay) and he came up with the idea of me shooting a film in Bengali in Kolkata. I laughed,’’ Vimuktthi, 33, told me.

Less than a year later, the 90-minute feature film was ready. “In all, I stayed in Kolkata for about four-five months (in hotels and apartments in Mudiali and Behala). The shooting was completed in 30 days. The entire shooting was done in real locations and sound was recorded at the spot,’’ Vimuktthi, who won the first Cannes award for Lanka for an earlier Sinhalese movie, Forsaken Land, said. Post-production work for the Bengali movie was done in Hanoi and Paris.

Vimuktthi, whose director of photography was also Sinhalese, wrote the script in English and got it translated in Bengali. “There are many similarities between Sinhala and Bengali; they have the same roots. But to be doubly sure, I got the dialogues in Bengali translated back in English so that I knew whether the original sense was maintained in the Bengali translation,’’ he said.

For the young director from Galle, his fascination with Bengali cinema began during his brief stint at Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India. He couldn’t have had a better introduction – Pather Panchahi and Meghe Dhaka Tara. “I felt close to Bengali movies and the directors’ sensitivities. I knew then that if I want to make cinema, it had be like that.’’

‘Chatrak’ centres around the conflict between the material world and the world of nature; the protagonist, a successful Dubai-based architect, returns to Kolkata after years to find a surge of construction all around but that his roots sadly had crumbled.

Chunks of the movie were shot around Rajarhat where under-construction matchbox apartment blocks are relentlessly rising and around the forests of Bolpur; a metaphor for any jungle where the protagonist’s eccentric brother finds solace.

For Vimuktthi, ‘Chatrak’ was the first foreign venture. It could well be just the trailer.

The inevitable happened after Osama Bin Laden’s death on May 2: plenty of discussions and write-ups followed comparing al-Qaeda and LTTE and Laden and V Prabhakaran. And how – a minister actually made this facile comparison – Sri Lanka was able to eradicate terrorism from the country after killing the portly LTTE chief while the death of Laden doesn’t mean the end of the organisation he launched in the late ’80s.

There was no official reaction from the government on Laden’s killing. Privately though foreign minister GL Peiris congratulated visiting US diplomat, Robert Blake. Probably, Colombo couldn’t openly and loudly cheer Laden’s death because ally Islamabad was involved.

There were expected murmurs about US’s double standards: while Washington could violate a country’s sovereignty to take out its most wanted, it still wants Colombo to be hauled up for war crimes; for targeting a ‘terrorist’ within its own country. Wasn’t Laden unarmed when he was shot dead was the rhetorical question during discussions about war crimes.

Someone wrote LTTE killed many more Sri Lankans than al-Qaeda killed Americans.

The 2009 FBI report that strangely foisted a much weakened LTTE as the number one terrorist organisation, above al-Qaeda, was quoted.

There were inevitable comparisons between Prabhakaran’s and Laden’s deaths. Even I got a little misty-eyed remembering the days when I was at my closest to being a war reporter in 2009 – barely 400 km away from the theatre of war — while covering the end of the Lankan civil war from the perils of my drawing room.

Lanka and the US might be going through diplomatically indifferent times, but I don’t think many here would have shed tears at Laden’s death. On the other hand, much is being written, and rather fondly at that, about the other tall, bearded and Bengali man.

I had written elsewhere in the newspaper about Rabindranath Tagore’s influence on Sri Lanka’s national anthem and his naming of a university near Colombo. A postage stamp on Tagore is being released later this evening to mark the great poet’s 150th anniversary, which incidentally, falls today.

Tagore’s influence on the Island nation’s art and culture as it turns out goes way beyond simply influencing Ananda Samarakoon’s song, ‘Sri Lanka matha.’

“Tagore is fondly remembered by a wide spectrum of Sri Lankan society, by artistes, poets, dramatists, literary critics as well as by common people and if we are to mention one foreign figure who has had the widest influence over the cultural life of Sri Lanka the name that will come up readily will be that of Rabindranath Tagore,” KNO Dharamadasa, who taught Sinhala at the Peradeniya University, wrote this week in the Daily News.

The Rabindranath Tagore Society of Sri Lanka, going through a revival of sorts, has come out with a commemorative journal ‘Tribute’ to celebrate the poet. It has more than 20 articles in English and Sinhala about Tagore’s impact.

The government, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the High Commission of Bangladesh and many individuals through the Society are coming together to celebrate Tagore through the year. Seminars, exhibitions, staging of his dance dramas and film festival are few of the functions on the Tagore calendar here.

“Sir Ivor Jennings, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ceylon had said ‘Tagore had more influence than anyone on the revival of the arts in the island. His love of learning, his deep sense of poetry and his feeling for literature makes his light a beacon for youth of Ceylon to follow,’” author Shireen Senadhira wrote in a recent article.

Alas, the same thing probably cannot be said about the other man mentioned in this blog.

From an official at the visa section in the crowded Immigration department to a Lankan railway engineer sitting across a spicy dinner table, the more informed wanted to know what impact the report will have on Sri Lanka.

I got the feeling that they were worried about it. The gory details of civilian casualties, the allegation of incessant shelling of hospitals and civilian zones, the allegation that surrendering Tamil Tiger leader and combatants were shot dead in cold blood – the reemergence of these details two years after the end of war could have given a jolt to some.

This despite the government’s expected and complete dismissal of the report, calling it flawed, fictional and preposterous. Ministers have gone on the offensive in public denouncing it as a result of conspiracy hatched by the powerful Tamil diaspora. For the authoritarian government, it’s come as a perfect excuse to pander to its semi-urban, rural constituency, drumming up the foreign hand attempting to destabilize the ‘miracle of Asia’; to continue to play on the perception that the international community was always pro-LTTE.

The hilarious Wimal Weerawansa, a rare politician, of course has seen an opportunity in the situation: he’s suggested that President Mahinda Rajapaksa now has the chance to launch a new UN. Yes, a new UN. (I am still waiting with bated breath for the formidable minister Mervyn Silva to get into the act.)

Will the UN move on the recommendations? As of now, it seems unlikely. Since the report was handed over to him, UN chief Ban KI-moon has said he was not in a position to launch an international investigation – as recommended by the panel – without the endorsement of member states and the host nation.

Any movement on the report in the UN Security Council is likely to be vetoed by China and Russia, Colombo’s firm friends. India is also very unlikely to take a stand against Sri Lanka in any international forum. Though Indian diplomats here have not commented on the report, the brief statement from New Delhi indicated that its first priority will be to engage with Sri Lanka on the report and gauge Colombo’s response. Indian diplomats probably also feel that the evidence to back up the serious allegation of war crimes is missing in the report. Whatever it might tell the Rajapaksa government through quiet diplomacy, New Delhi will be against Colombo being hauled up in an international forum.

Interestingly, former UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss, has said India was aware of what was going inside the `no fire zone’ – hinting that if civilians were killed by the “tens of thousands’’ inside the NFZ, India was well aware of it.

Post-report, Sri Lanka’s international image – at least that of the democratically elected government’s – image could take a beating. Already, a British public relation firm is on the government’s payroll to brush up Lanka’s image abroad; mostly to counter the war crimes’ allegations that have surfaced against the government frequently. The UN report has made it just a bit more difficult.