‘Thank you for coming, thank you so much for coming,’ President JR Jayewardene repeated, each time more emphatically, less earnestly. ‘It’s so good to see you, Doctor. Mrs Rajan, you look beautiful as always. How are you both?’ He didn’t wait for a reply, prattling on with pleasantries about their drive, the weather and the selection of teas his servant boy could offer them.

Rajan smiled, wondering if his garrulous wife had finally met her match. The President didn’t need to pause to breathe during his monologue. He must have a very special respiratory and otolaryngological system in order to achieve that conversational marvel. Nala would be jealous. She usually had to pause in order to take a breath. She was only human. Jayewardene on the other hand was no ordinary human. After his role in the riots, many Tamils believed he wasn’t human at all.

Not used to being silent for so long, Nala launched her own strategic attack of social homilies. ‘Thank you, Mr President, thank you so much for having us today. You didn’t have to, you must be so busy.’

‘Didn’t have to?’ Jayewardene countered. ‘Of course I had to. There is no way I could allow the best surgeon in Colombo and his fair wife to leave without a proper goodbye. I would never be too busy for you—’

She interrupted him. ‘Yes, but you must be particularly busy at the moment. It’s very kind of you to see us.’

Rajan smiled quietly at her nerve. She would not be talked over.

‘Yes, yes, yes, there is so much to do at the moment with all the troubles,’ the President agreed.

The troubles. The Troubles. Trouble. Rajan thought it such an odd word for the carnage that happened last July and the fighting that was tearing through the jungles of the north now. Decades of latent anger unleashed through canisters of petrol and a match.

‘Doctor, I don’t know how Black July happened—and so quickly. I was just as shocked as you were,’ Jayewardene paused.

You couldn’t have been quite as shocked as we were, Rajan thought bitterly.

Jayewardene continued, ‘One moment we were burying those poor soldiers who’d been killed in Jaffna. Thirteen dead, you know—damn those Tigers. We were burying our soldiers at Kanatte Cemetery. We chose to do that so we didn’t cause a disturbance, you know. We didn’t want to pour fuel on that fire.’

Poor choice of words. Even Jayewardene realised and stumbled on quickly. ‘Anyway, Dr Rajan, I just don’t know how it happened. It was ugly, so ugly,’ he repeated, ‘and so unnecessary.’

The English language was clearly limited. There were other words for what happened in July: words in Tamil and words in Sinhalese. But in their common medium of English, the harshness of what one had done to the other was muted: neutered, politely sanitised into socially acceptable conversation pieces.