The revolutionary who succeeds underground is not the one who hides like a mouse under the floorboards, shunning the light of day and social involvement. The successful and resourceful underground worker takes a most active part in the everyday life of those around him, he shares their weaknesses and their passions, he is in the public eye, in the hurly-burly, with an occupation which everyone understands… The wisest way is also the simplest: to combine your secret and your overt activity easily and naturally.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lenin in Zürich
On the outskirts of the ancient Swiss town of Bern lies an open space traditionally used as an allmend, or collective pasture. The southern part of the field has been converted into an exhibition hall, used off and on to display and sell agricultural machines. The open ground is still large enough to be known as the grossé allmend. However, no cows graze there anymore. Empty during the week, on Sundays the field is home to groups of little boys playing football, or frisbee, or flying kites, or simply walking with their fathers and their dogs.
Every year, in August, this Swiss field is colonised for a weekend by a crowd of Tamils. Some are resident in Bern, others come from Zürich and Luzern, still others from Netherlands and Germany and England. But they all came, originally, from the northern districts of Sri Lanka, and many still hope one day to return there. That the civil war in their island does not yet permit; hence this annual get-together in Bern, where four or five thousand Tamils gather to underline and affirm their spirit of community.