Balachandran, slain LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran’s son, whose cold-blooded death stirred up emotions across nations, has been reported to be a shy, reticent and a lonely child.
Balachandran was a lonely child craving for company, according to one of his bodyguards. With brother Charles Anthony hooked to the computer and sister Thuwaraka glued to her books, Bala had no one to play with or talk to, except his bodyguards.
As for father Prabhakaran, he was not always with the family, having to shift his location frequently for security reasons. In fact, when Bala was born in 1996, it took Prabhakaran a while to come and see his child.
In an interview published by Sudar Oli in Colombo and Uthayan in Jaffna on Sunday, the unnamed bodyguard said the kids of LTTE military commanders Swarnam and Shankar used to drop in to play with Bala. But such visits were infrequent. Like all kids, Bala wanted to go out and play, but he was not allowed.
“The lonely child would plead with us to set aside our work and play with him. If we didn’t oblige, he would threaten to escape from the house. He had actually carried out the threat on a few occasions,” the bodyguard recalled.
“When we went out to gather firewood for the kitchen, he would insist on accompanying us. We had no option but to take him along. And out in the fields, he would sit quietly on a log and watch with great relish the wide expanse of land in front of him,” said one of Balachandran’s bodyguards.
Bala wasn’t too fond of his mother’s cooking. At meal times, he would slip into the security post to eat the food which the bodyguards had made for themselves. It was in Puthukudiyiruppu that Bala began his schooling.
“He was keen on studies,” the bodyguard said. At school he was shy. “He would not eat his packed lunch in front of other boys. He would eat hiding behind his school bag.”
Bala had an innate sense of equality, he said.
Earlier, photographs of Balachandran, which suggest that he was cold-bloodedly shot, evoked predictably strong reactions across the political spectrum in Tamil Nadu. Only 12 years of age when he was shot five times in upper torso, Balachandran was no child soldier of the LTTE, which abducted and indoctrinated hundreds of children into brutality of Prabhakaran’s unending war. As the war entered its final stages, where the Sri Lankan Navy blockaded LTTE’s sea exits on the east and the troops were closing in from all sides, it became crystal clear to everybody that Prabhakaran would meet his end at Puthukkudiyiruppu or thereabouts. There was avid speculation if Prabhakaran would send his family across the Palk Straits to Tamil Nadu to relative safety. It still remains a mystery why he did not: there developed an unbridgeable distance between him and reason.
The Sunday Standard