you're referring, of course, to 1983 when the civil war broke out between the tamil tigers separatiststamils make up about 15% of the population in sri lanka, 22 million people, and they are hindus. and the majority sinhalese are buddhists and they make up 70% of the population. but why do you feel that you, as a sinhalese buddhist, share some of that guilt? because there were many innocent sinhalese who had no part in this violence. good point. you see, i'm an innocent sinhalese in that sense but, you see, soon after my graduation from the university, i was working in this wonderful buddhist site called dambulla golden temple as a trainee murals conservator. so i'm preserving these ancient murals. so on this particular day, i was coming to colombo and i walked into this — this bloody event and actually, those things that i tried to preserve at dambulla and what was happening right in front of my eyes could not reconcile. they could not live together. and for a moment i thought what was happening is inevitable. that was the thing that changed me. could not reconcile. i said, like, "how