Sri Lanka in Indian TV quiz!

‘Connexion’ is an Indian Tamil-language celebrity game show on Star Vijay. The game is played by three teams – each team has one celebrity and the other person could be their friend or family. It is a team game and consists of four rounds. Before the actual games start, they have a warm up round known as ‘Javvu Mittai’. In this, the anchor starts off with some random word. Each team should say a connecting word, i.e., if team A says a word connecting to the one told by the anchor then team B should say a word connecting to what was told by team C. Soon after this warm up the, Round one starts. In this round, two pictures are shown. The team has 30 seconds to guess a common word/homonym from the pictures. These two pictures were shown side by side. One picture displayed bundles of dollar notes and the other the map of Sri Lanka. Within 12 seconds came the answer from one of the competitors; ‘Sri Lanka for loan’! Anchor accepted it as the correct answer for the loud applause from the audience. Imagine what an insult to our motherland.

Having still not discovered from what we saw in the TV show, we read about the travel advisory to Sri Lanka from the British High Commission in Colombo, informing travellers about the economic situation in the country and how it is deteriorating with long queues on the streets. This is at a time we are desperately looking for tourists. It has also pointed out mosquito-borne dengue fever despite the fact that this is not pandemic like COVID-19 to fear about. No way it is carried from human to human. Finally, the travellers are warned about a likely terror attack which is totally unlikely. I am afraid this message would have reached at least all commonwealth member countries by now.

What Sri Lanka is experiencing now is something none of us ever dreamt. Please don’t ever think being away from the country helps us to live in peace. Our thoughts are always on our countrymen and about the hardship they undergo every day. We urge the government which came to power giving high hopes to the voters to seek the assistance of party leaders and this is not the time for party politics. Our country and its people should come first!

S. H. MOULANA