Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has recently lamented that "unfortunately we cannot choose our neighours." What a sad plight this must be.

Whatever the worries of the Indian Prime Minister about the country’s neighbors, we in Sri Lanka too have much cause for lament about our own inability to choose our neighbours. Now that we are in the post-Mumbai phase of international terrorism, there is always the temptation to be gleeful about the plight of one’s immediate neighbour, especially after all it did to train our own terrorists, who are known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam; giving them succour, shelter and arms and at times air support too, by way of a paripppu drop, allegedly to help the suffering people in the North of this little neighbour of India.

In keeping with a currently popular neighbourhood refrain, not strange to India, we will now be told that the Sri Lankan tigers trained in India, who gained much more international fame that India’s own threatened Bengal and other tigers, were "non-state actors" who functioned from Indian soil; and although it was indeed a very RAW deal given to Sri Lanka, we should forget such unfriendly acts in the interest of today’s common struggle against terrorism.

Setting aside the current friendship and understandings with the powers that be in New Delhi today, Sri Lanka still has much cause for a constant lament about our own inability to choose our neighbors, especially when they happen to be in parts of southern India. These are not ‘Non-State actors" as New Delhi is told by Islamabad. In fact, they are very much state actors, playing their chosen roles in the State of Tamil Nadu.

Those who play to their political galleries in their chosen roles against Sri Lanka that is reaching new heights it is own fight against the common enemy of terrorism, range from Karunanidhi and the DMK to Vaiko and Ramadoss, and those celluloid heroes of Tamil Nadu, who will not be in the reckoning even for Filmfare Awards, but are great teary-eyed performers on behalf of the suffering Tamils of Sri Lanka’s North.

Whatever the problems Dr. Manmohan Singh may have with the neighours that India cannot choose, what we in Sri Lanka are doing now is to say go to hell with the neighours we have no choice about across the Palk Strait, and do our own thing, the way we know how best to do it. And that is what we have done all the way up to Kilinochchi, and now even beyond that.

To hell with unfriendly neighbourhood feelings in Tamil Nadu we now say, as the genuine actors of he Sri Lanka state have come within grabbing distance from Elephant Pass and Muhamalai, and know the task they have to carry out in Mullaitivu.

Sri Lanka is now doing it Our Way and not the DMK, Vaiko or Ramadoss Way. As we do it this Our Own Way, we are showing he world this way that can overpower even Indian nurtured tigers, and their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who through all these three decade had it all His Way. It was the way made easy for him by the TN State actors of our closest neighbour, the State actors within Sri Lanka who enjoyed dancing to his tune written on a score sheet know as the Cease Fire Rhapsody, as well as actors in western embassies who mistook diplomacy for support for naked terror, and the many NGOs and INGOs, including those who scream about Media Freedom and Transparency, who were the chorus singers in what was the lucrative Symphony of Tiger Achievement.

Talk of doing this Our Way, it was interesting to receive these lyrics by a Sri Lankan in Frankfurt, Germany, written with apologies to the lyrics of "My Way", by the well known Lebanese born, Canadian and American singer and lyricist Paul Anka, and made famous by Frank Sinatra. So here it is for your enjoyment.

My Way, Lost!  By Vellupillai Prabhakaran  

(created by a Vanniye Attho clansman in Frankfurt/M Germany)

And now the end is near,

And so I face the final curtain,

My Thamil friends, I’ll say it clear,

I’ll state my case, of which I’m not certain.

I’ve lived a life that’s really awful;

Mothers, Kids, Heads of States, I’ve blown away  

But more, much more than this,

I did it my way.

Regrets, I have none;

But then again, not worth a mention,

What I had to do - I made others do

And saw it through without exception.

I planned each bloody deed;

Bombings ‘n suicide killings - all along the way.

But more, much more than this,

I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I surely knew,

When I bit off more than I could chew,

But thru’ it all, with all my clout

I over ate, and became stout

And faced it all, in my bolt hole,

And did it my way.

I’ve killed, I’ve doped, and plundered,

I’ve had my fill, my share of losing,

Kilinochchi lost - more in the coming.

I find it all so terrifying.

To think I did all that;

And may I say - not in a shy way

"With help all the way of, Pottu Amman"

I did it my way".

They are closing in, and, what have I got,

Diaspora, INGO’S, all forgot

Guided bombs, and rains of steel,

They keep coming down, although I kneel.

I’m taking blows, along the A9 highway -

…. I’m doing it my way….

I am permitted to disclose that "The Vanniye Aththo" clansman now in Frankfurt, who has dedicated this to the President, Armed Forces, Police, and the People of Sri Lanka, is none other than Sam Samaradivakara, that living Legend of Tourism who continues to do his thing for Sri Lanka from Deutschland.