First it was Lanka Bell with their 100% Sri Lankan campaign, promising a sizable dose of ‘abhimanaya’ (pride) enough for any self-proclaimed patriot to sport semi hard-on.
All you have to do is chat with your friends on your very own Lanka Bell CDMA. Swell deal, especially for those white-haired members of the PNM (Patriotic National Movement) who find themselves having to depend on pariah products like Viagra to achieve the same feat.

These are good times for patriots– there is a war going on and it’s completely fought by other people. All the patriots have to do is cheer on the ‘Api Wenuwen api’ commercials while forwarding the latest Sirasa-bashing emails to friends and family and cousins living in Melbourne or London. Of course such moments of patriotic bliss come at small price, all of us are required to tolerate the sky-rocketing inflation, and sit patiently while one of the 100something ministers decide to take a ride across Colombo as part of the new National Security measures, designed to protect us from the terrorists during our president’s War on Terror.

Occasionally some terrorists would succeed, but a quick look at Daily News would confirm that “everything’s cool, east is clear, all they have is toy planes, and we are winning the war”. Hell, if you are lucky enough you might even catch a glance at His Excellency himself, smiling almost as widely as Thamilselvam during the latest foreign visit on his very own budget airline.

With the state of arousal in the nation at an all time high, everybody seems to be setting up their own Patriot organisation, the latest in the fold are the Telecom Patriots. Yes, after all, these are modern times and certainly if shares of the ‘National Telecom Operator’ are been sold to a Malaysian Tamil, there’s got to be something fishy and unpatriotic. The Jaffna-Tamil roots confirm he is a Tiger, and therefore a Terrorist (notice the Ts).

But no worries, now that the ‘Telecom Protection Front’ and the nation’s most patriotic son – Comrade Weerawansa - is on the case, these unpatriotic moves would soon be thwarted.

This would give patriots much needed time to focus on other burning issues of the nation, like finding a coach for the nation’s cricket team, (who everyone agrees should be a white middle-aged Australian) to induce the unique brand of Sri Lankan cricket our ‘sinha patau’ (lion cubs) play.

So until the next national crisis needing the urgent services of the patriots, suffice to say, the nation and its bhoomiputhra’s are on full alert.