Are we progressively going mad? Or is this the insanity of a few which the world sees as a collective malaise and so brands us all as barbarians who have shed the animal skin for the more sartorially acceptable?

The Latin saying above might not be everybody's cup of tea as it were, since we gave up the more civilised system of education for practical learning like planting a bomb among civilians or physically violating the fundamental rights of people to dissent and express a point of view that is contrary to the one held by those in authority.

Still for all it sums up the society in which we live, a society that is inexorably turning to the barbarism from which our great and frequently trumpeted civilisation is believed to have emerged some 2500 years ago.

Vesak villainy

While the majority of the people of this country were paying homage to their great religious leader and observing the teachings of the Buddha during the Vesak season,  those who had little respect for the Buddha Dhamma or that of any other, were already planning the villainy that would make Sri Lankans bury their heads in shame and the world to look at us aghast.

It was only the next day that the public heard about the abduction and torture of Keith Noyahr, a journalist from another Sunday newspaper who worked diligently but kept his head low. While journalists before have been subject to physical violence and even death as in the case of Richard de Zoysa and some others in those dangerous years in the late 1980s , it is only in recent years has there been such a concerted attack on journalists irrespective of ethnicity or their political orientation.

It must be admitted however that Tamil journalists have been victims of brutality more than those of any other ethnicity.

President Mahinda Rajapakse himself admitted last week to some editors he met that there was considerable agitation in the country when it became aware of the fate of Keith Noyahr.

Naturally it was the main topic of discussion when we met at Paradise Club, our favourite watering hole in Colombo after the Vesak holidays. There was genuine shock and anger among the habitu‚s of Paradise Club as we gathered that evening.

The tragic event of the days before was somehow lightened by a comic sub plot in which the principal character was a chap called Lakshman Hulugalle who heads something called the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS). It is one of those nondescript organisations obviously set up to provide the fellow a job, now that environmental degradation, especially the felling of trees is thoroughly frowned upon by the Environment Minister and the world at large. Perhaps Hulugalle would care to tell us something more about it some time later.

Not favoured reading

"I say you fellows be careful. The Sunday Leader is not the favoured reading of the powers that be," said Kosala "The Fixer" Kehelmala, a man about town with a nose and ear to the ground.

"Some fellows burnt your printing presses the other day. Have they caught the arsonists?" asked Dr Ananda (Andy to the foreign NGOs) Ansabage with a knowing smile on his lips.

"You must be joking," remarked Goti Sinhakodiya, recently elected a big noise in the corporate world. "You think those who come and go through high security zones and checkpoints as though they owned the damned things are ever going to be caught?"

"Look you guys seem to have missed an important point in the hullabaloo that followed. In fact even the big noises in journalism seem not to have noticed it and so it has passed by everybody," I said.

"Ado Pachoris, so what is this great thing that everybody has missed?" asked Tissa Isakudichchi, secretary to the Ministry of Ali Boru.

"I am talking of the Noyahr abduction, torture and eventual release," I said.

"I say Pachoris, he is not telling us what really happened no. He didn't make a statement no. Otherwise the police could have made some arrests already," argued Isakudichchi, rising to the defence of the authorities.

Missed the point

"That is not what I am about," I said. "There is something else that has been missed. If you read some of the stories and commentaries written after the abduction, they said that had the newspaper and its editors not contacted high-ups in the administration immediately they heard about the abduction of their colleague and got them to move in the matter, Keith Noyahr might not have got away at all."

"So what is wrong with that. They probably saved the man's life," observed Puli Pachchathanni, the poet laureate of Pungodativu.

"That is so Pachoris," chipped in Wendy van Rinderpest that one time beauty queen of Ceylon. "Are you complaining about it?"

"No, of course not," I remonstrated. "But you chaps miss the point just like my colleagues in the media. If it is claimed, as it has been even by some writers from NGOs, that it was the promptness with which the authorities were contacted and informed that saved Noyahr from further abuse, what does it tell you people."

"Ah haa, I begin to see some light," chuckled Hamid "Fast Cash" Mansoor, Colombo's Casinopathi.

"I see what you are getting at Pacho, you are a marvel. You should have been an investigator," added Pandu Pusvedilla of the Notorious Peace Committee.

"Perish the thought. We are being investigated enough without me joining them too," I added

"Are you saying that the authorities could not have helped save Noyahr from further torture, had they not known who to contact or how to contact?" asked Bandu Bahubootha, university academic turned NGO top dog.

Someone knew

"I am not saying so at all. But if what has been claimed by the journalists and other writers is correct - and I don't know whether it is - then the conclusion surely is that somebody knew whom to reach to stop the torture and have Keith delivered at his doorstep."

"I say now I come to think of it, Pacho is right in reaching that conclusion. But that is not all. Noyahr was dropped near his home in the early hours of the morning. Now did the vehicle that brought him back from Dompe at that time of the morning pass through checkpoints without being stopped and searched?  These are questions that need answers," Dr Ansabage said with a worried look on his face.

"Remember the call from his mobile phone was traced to some place near Gampaha? That means the vehicle had passed through dozens of checkpoints from the house in Dehiwela and back again" I added.

"Don't you people worry," Tissa Isakudichchi, the secretary to the Ali Boru Ministry added confidently. "Three special police teams are inquiring into this incident. They will find the perpetrators."

"Oh yeah. Just like they found the others who attacked and killed journalists, is it? Who told you all this, that Hulugalle fellow who is talking through his hat or whatever he has on that hat stand of his?" laughed Kesara Kasalagoda, Royal College and SSC and they all laughed with him as Isakudichchi squirmed.