• You’re bigger than a rock star in Sri Lanka, aren’t you?

Not really. I think I’m a normal person, just like everyone else (Laughs). But the thing is, I’m a cricketer, and in Asia, cricket is very popular, not like other countries. Cricketers are very well known and well looked after.

• You may have been asked this question before, but you are in a divided country in many ways, and you, in some sense, are a symbol who shows that people who are otherwise divided can stay together. You’re the only Tamil in the national team, and now you’re helping rebuild a Sinhala village. Have you ever thought about it?

Yes, because we tried to help Trincomalee and Batticaloa, but at that time we didn’t have the people who wanted to do this kind of thing. Kushil was known as my manager and my friend, I know him very well, and before that we had helped people. This village was very badly damaged.

• So, you’re working to build a Sinhala village, you see nothing unusual about it? Do you see yourself as a Tamil or as an outright Sri Lankan?

I like my race as well, but the thing is we’re all human so we don’t think of ourselves as Sinhalese or Tamil, we’re all human beings. There’s a saying that you don’t know how long you’re going to live in this place, because at the end of the day you just take the memories with you. So I just want to be happy and help people as much as possible and live a memorable life. We are planning a programme to bring some kids, around 30 to 50 of them, every five to six months and we’re making arrangements for teaching computers, teaching English. We’ll keep them here, teach them and send them back to Jaffna or Trincomalee, that’s the area. This is the future plan.

... contd.