Anyone driving around the city of Colombo these days can see the eased but not completely nonexistent security check points. Once in a while a vehicle gets pulled to the side of the road and IDs are checked. Even the officers checking the IDs are all smiles, friendly greeting the occupants of the vehicles.

The trip from airport to my temporary home in Kotte last Friday took more than two hours in the snarling morning traffic, and I only saw one vehicle being checked.

People move like a swarm of bees in the streets of Colombo. Each occupied with their own daily routines with no care for the person next to them. Every three-wheeler has the national flag flying. The supermarkets and shops are full of people shopping long into the evening. It seems like nobody is in a hurry to get to home.

I didn’t realize what a great effect the end of this 30-year long war had on the people of Sri Lanka until I talked to a wife of a soldier.

“I don’t have to go to every temple praying to bring my husband home alive now that the war is over,” she said. The soldier, a young father of two small children with another on the way, was on the battlefront in Mullaitivu.

And the mother of a high school girl told me that every time her daughter was late to come home from her tuition class, she would panic, fearing possible suicide attacks in the city.

Life has changed for everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters who are breathing a sigh of relief today. Everyone has a story to tell, everyone has been affected by the war in some way, and finally everyone is relieved that it is over.

While celebrations are still going on, the government has now focused on the bigger issue of rehabilitating and resettling the nearly 300,000 displaced civilians. Even with the aids of UN and other humanitarian agencies, it is still a daunting task for the Sri Lankan government to provide for the basic needs of all the innocent civilians who were displaced by the war and to help rebuild their lives.

Much needed mine clearing operations, rebuilding of roads and bridges, and providing of electricity, transport services, and other facilities for the war-torn North have been instated. These services need to be completed before the government can resettle the IDPs in their original homes because most of that land was mined and the houses were destroyed.

So many organizations and people in the South have stepped up to collect relief items and provide for the basic needs of the displaced people in the welfare villages. All the doctors in the country are required to volunteer their services for 5 days each month to treat the sick and injured civilians in the Manik Farm welfare village.

Unfortunately none of these efforts by the Sri Lankans are appreciated or given due recognition by the Western governments or the Western media who are so taken by the LTTE misinformation campaign and who are just blind to the reality of the whole situation. They are more interested in pushing the LTTE agenda through to blame the Sri Lankan government for the heinous atrocities committed by the LTTE against the civilians and to cover up the LTTE's role in the war.

This is the time, we, as Sri Lankans, can and must rise to the occasion, forgetting any race, caste, religion, and political division amongst ourselves to support the Sri Lankan government. A government that will strive to bring normalcy to the lives of the people whose were unfortunately shattered by the war. And despite how the LTTE sympathizers want to depict us, we must show the world how we truly are; Sri Lankans who come to the aid of our fellow citizens in their utmost hour of need.