On idleness and rasthiyadukarayas

[Originally published in 'The Island', September 8, 2002]
Book titles fascinate me. One of the more appealing ones I have come cross is that which Peter Gourevitch used for his book about the then unfolding tragedy of Rwanda, "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families". Chilling, I thought. When I mentioned this title to a friend, she told me about an equally breath-catching title: "This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen". It was about the Jewish holocaust that Tadeusz Borowski and Barbara Vedder wrote. I am sure other holocausts are written about with as much passion. Who knows, such narratives might have titles whose heart-stopping potential is higher. There is another interesting title "The right to useful unemployment". I think the author was Ivan Illych. It is a book that I have been meaning to read for the last twenty years. Anyway, it got me thinking. How can one be "unemployed", usefully? Would this mean that a rasthiyadukaraya has some intrinsic worth? What would a rasthiyadukaraya choose as his handbook? "The right to useful unemployment" or Bertrand Russell’s "In praise of idleness"? I haven’t read either of these books so I don’t really know if they speak of rasthiyadukarayas or if a rasthiyadukaraya would find anything useful (!) among the pages. But a few months ago, something really interesting happened. I was interviewing a lady who had a story to tell. It was about a bank loan and about how the bank was going out of its way to ensure that she is forced to fold up her business. For some unexplainable reason, this lady was quite taken up with they way I questioned her. Almost at the tail end of our conversation, she said that she was convinced that I could "do much better" than journalism. I suppose different world views, life expectations and other factors make people see things differently. In any event, the lady, to my surprise (for I had never associated myself or my "potential" with that kind of figure) said that she could easily find me a job which paid Rs. 80,000 a month plus a car. I laughed and told her that I can’t guarantee that I will continue beyond the first month. Anyway, when I returned to Kotikawatte, where I lived with a couple of friends, I told them about this "offer". Asanka, a brilliant young man of around twenty said, "I was offered a job to teach three hours a week in an international school. They said they’d pay me 20,000 rupees. I refused." Priyantha, idealist, visionary, unemployed and happy chipped in: "I was offered 150 rupees a day...badaama ananna. I refused." We all laughed. I am not sure if we are unemployed, under-employed, under-paid or what. I am not sure if we are "usefully" unemployed, or whether our "idleness" is praiseworthy. Wasantha Wijewardena, self-confessed "Professional Rasthiyadukaraya" advocates a "do-nothing" life style, following the time-tested and efficient model of agriculture, "Do nothing farming". He says that the typical villager often responds to life thus: "anicce dukkhe". According to Wasantha, this is not the remark of a defeatist. "It is life-affirming, positive and lends to beneficial engagement". Too many ideas and concepts crowd my mind. Nothing should cause headaches in life. So let me stop with this thought. "Life is relaxing. Always. If only we choose to live in a particular way. For example, as the Buddha advocated, treating the vicissitudes of life with equanimity."
POST SCRIPT:  My friend Wasantha (referred to in the previous blog post, arrived in Sri Lanka last night, deported from India and thanks to monumental efforts by our High Commission in Delhi.  His long suffering mother, who was feverishly communicating with the Delhi mission from my office, frequently breaking into tears, met him at the airport early this morning, after the CID and NIB were done with recording statements.  She called and gave me the phone.  Wasantha, naturally, was in high spirits.  He said, 'Malinda Aiya, Budusaranai!'

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George Mastrakoukos echoes Wasantha Wijewardena

[This is another piece written in Greece, a year and a half ago.  Was thinking of thickets and burning last night and thought I would share]

George Mastrokoukos, Chief Organizer of the World Youth Chess Championship 2010, currently underway in Halkidiki, Greece, ran into me as I stepped out to get a breath of fresh air a couple of days ago.  I was close to midnight or perhaps even a little bit after. 

‘It’s late,’ he observed.

‘The best time,’ I replied.

‘Yes, yes.  It is healthy.  Let me tell you something I know.  It’s my quote. Those who want to walk in the light must first learn to work in the night.’ 

We laughed. He got into his car and drove off. 

I am in charge of 17 young Sri Lankans who are accompanied by 12 parents.  It is easy to manage kids not least of all because when they are not playing they spend hours with our coach, Rajeendra Kalugampitiya who has had very little sleep because he works around the clock preparing and coaching.  Parents are a different kettle of fish.  ‘Greater love’ and an ‘I know what’s best for my kid’ attitude is quite taxing because is fractures team discipline.  Arrogance when married to ignorance can produce weird creatures. 

I can only imagine what it must be for George to be in charge of an event where there are over 1400 players with at least a third of them accompanied by parents.  It can’t be easy for him.  I figured that he must have spent many hours walking and working at night. 

Got me thinking, his words did.  I remembered a walk in the night.  A dust road in the South East Dry Zone of Sri Lanka.  A few miles off the Thanamalwila-Haldemmulla Road.  Shrub jungle on either side.  At several points the road was intersected by stream-beds. Dry. It was Amawaka, a moonless night.  The half-light from stars was barely sufficient to illuminate anything. The luminosity of memory, however, was bright enough to light the way for my travel companion Wasantha Wijewardena, a self-confessed professional rastiyaadukaaraya, whose approach to life and the world had been unequivocally stated when in his last year at school he had opted to refuse the most prestigious prize at Royal College just to make the eventually recipient, his supporters in the teaching staff and the principal happy.

We had many miles to go.  It was anecdote time, a time for song and light humour, a time to talk about life and love; the life we lose by living and the love we lose by loving.  A rastiyaadukaaraya or vagrant is a gatherer of narratives. Such people are magnets for folklore. They are repositories of narratives that did not warrant front page mention or place in history.  Wasanth knew stuff.  He regurgitated stuff. A lot of stuff.  Right now, I am reminded of an observation he made that keeps surfacing in my mind whenever I encounter violence of any kind.  This is what he said:

Those who set fire to the thicket do so because they are intimidated by the dark and its secrets.

This is George, speaking in another voice belonging to another body and in a language he is not familiar with.

It is true, isn’t it?  We are fragile creatures. Timid, for all our big talk, arrogance, professed courage and what not.  We are bad at adapting to circumstances so we spend lifetimes manufacturing circumstances we are comfortable with, even if it means we have to desecrate landscapes, destroy cultures, massacre communities and disrupt the cycles of the natural earth beyond the point of regeneration and thereby bring ourselves and all life on earth to the brink of extinction. We are pyromaniacs. That’s the signature trait of our species. 

We set fire to all thickets, real and imagined, as literal entity and as metaphor.  Out of ignorance. Out of fear.  And yet believe that setting fire will clear cloud and density, repel ignorance and doubt, and that the resultant light will help obtain wisdom.

Wasantha told me that the forest is a friend and that it protects those who are innocent in intent, humble in disposition and benign in all engagement.  ‘It is not that there are no dangers Malinda Aiya,’ he said, ‘just that there are always safeguards for any eventuality.’ One has to cultivate a certain way of thinking and being in order to obtain the eyes and second-nature skills necessary to turn dark into light, forest into clearing, enemy into friend and danger into plaything.  That was what he said.

‘The sacred is secret, Malinda Aiya.  There is a reason for this.  Secrets are not revealed except to friends, and friendships are hard won things.   We think we can dissect things, split them and somehow unearth the philosopher’s stone that reveals all. We are so wrong.  We do learn this way, but not anything that is important when it comes to perceiving the eternal verities, the sadaathanika sathyayo.  The touchstones that light up truth are there but few can see and they are always invisible to the arrogant, to those who would burn the forest, cut the trees.’

It is 10.25 am where I am right now.  The hotel lobby.  I don’t see George Mastrokoukos around, but I think he is somewhere nodding in agreement. 

Post Script:  Wasantha's wanderings took him to India and to Ladakh.  He told me he wanted to be ordained as a bikkhu.  He emailed me saying that he had tossed his passport into the Ganges.  The last I heard of him, he had been arrested in Kashmir for lack of identification. He is now happily in a jail, just like all of us, except for the trappings. 

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On heart-unbuckling

It is morning here in Chalkidiki, Greece.  Early morning.  Six o’clock.  It is still very dark.  In the hotel lobby, there is a young Chinese girl checking out places of interest in Greece on the internet, I am sure.  There’s music.  The theme music from the classic film ‘Zorba the Greek’. 

I haven’t met Zorba yet but then again I’ve been here less than a week.  The music took me back to the year 1990 and Boston, where I first saw the film.  Films, for me, are creative works that give you two or three thing to reflect on and maybe something that opens hitherto unopened eyes to see things in ways unseen before.  Good films, I should add.  Forgettable films are forgotten quickly.  ‘Zorba’ is a classic because it gave me many eyes and showed me colours I had not seen before and one or two yet unnamed. 

Remembering is now-made.  It is the today and this-moment of our lives that makes us remember certain things and not others, from films as well as any other art form.  This morning I remembered a scene from Zorba that is at once funny as well as illuminative of certain eternal verities. Here goes.

Zorba and his master (referred to as ‘boss’), the owner of a lignite mine in a Greek island are confronted by a beautiful widow who is looking for a stray goat.  The two men return the goat.  Zorba notices the glance exchange between his boss and the woman and says, ‘boss, she wants you.’  The boss reflects a moment and responds, ‘no Zorba, I don’t want any trouble’.  Zorba’s observation is a classic: ‘but boss, life is trouble; just unbuckle your belt and embrace trouble!’  Anthony Quinn as Zorba roars with laughter.

I hadn’t read the book on which the film is made then.  I read the Sinhala translation by Saddatissa Wadigamangawa (more than adequately saluted at his death by W.A. Abeysinghe in a classic tribute to a newspaper titled ‘Zorba nam voo sinhalaya’ – Zorba the Sinhalese).  Zorba’s retort was laid out thus (my translation is poor):

‘Lokka, one day you will die and go to your maker.  He will ask you, “Lokka, that innocent woman came to you looking for comfort, for softness, for love. Did you comfort her with tenderness and love, Lokka? No, you did not!  Off to hell lokka!”’

It turned Christian morality on its head, spoke to something far more fundamental and indeed divine about the human condition, the purity of heart-things, of loving regardless of consequence and being honest to self and world.  We are not like that, are we?  We are, for the most part, a mind-species, given to calculation, weighing of marginal costs and marginal benefits, preoccupied with insurance policies and playing safe.  Our brave words and flamboyancy is make-up and disguise and say more about our fears, flaws, ignorance and poverties than anything else. 

I met a Zorba, a Sinhalese, in Kandy a few years ago.  Zorba Lelum Ratnayake was attending the wedding of a mutual friend, Zorba Chaaminda Ratnasuriya.  ‘Malinda, mama dan premawanthayek (I am a lover now, Malinda)’.  ‘Aadarayata aththe ekama namai, machang,’ I said.  He said he understood me perfectly and pointed out that if love is love and if it is to reside in the dizzying but ultimately pure heights of virtue, then it must be cognizant of and comply with the sathara brahma viharana, metta (compassion), muditha (ability to rejoice in another’s joy), karuna (kindness) and upekkha (equanimity). 

There is a lot of love we lose by ‘loving’, that is loving in accordance to convention, being according to norm, doing the ‘right thing’ as defined by convention, which in the final instance is nothing but rule-sets defined and ratified by flawed human beings, whatever the rhetoric and reference pertaining to divine edict.  There is a lot of life that we lose by living.  And we dare not say the truth of heart and heartbeat because of the costs involved, the ‘life’ that such confession/affirmation we would be deprived of. 

We love and live within pre-defined boundaries and this is not bad or wrong of course.  Societies must have coherence and anarchical love and living can blur boundaries and cause much distress.  And yet, there’s something primordially innocent in Zorba-love that is not synonymous with the physical act implied by belt-unbuckling. 

The Chinese girl stayed on that web page until the theme song was over. I was at that moment listening to a song from the 1973 Hindi movie ‘Bobby’, Main Shayar To Nahin, ‘I am not a poet’.  We don’t have the words, I felt.  The theme music of ‘Zorba’ conjured a thousand images and thoughts and a million sensations, all collapsible and collapsing into a definition of love that is taboo. 

We don’t unbuckle heart-belts for love. We undress for sex. 

Such a pity!

[written in October 2010 while in Greece as Manager of the Sri Lankan Youth Chess Team for the World Youth Chess Championships] 

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A short story about Route 167 and parallel lives

[I met some school friend on Sunday, a couple of whom I hadn't met in almost 30 years, Assajith Ranasinghe and Chandana Panditharatna.  It was reminiscing time.  And we talked about people and things, from back then.  Updates came. The following story, written about a year ago was referred to by someone.  It's an old story, and not one that is only about the characters mentioned. Thought I would re-share.]

Way back in the seventies, according to P.K.S. Wijeratne, classmate in Grade 8 and 9, there was no school bus plying between Royal College and Kotahena.  Those who went in that direction would have to wait for the Dehiwala-Kotahena bus, Route No. 167.   More than twenty years later, when I was working at the Sunday Island, I would take this same bus, getting in from Town Hall.  Waiting for that bus, sometimes for more than half an hour, I have often told myself that certain things don’t change.  All I remembered about the 167 from that seventies was that there were very few buses and therefore long waits for the commuters.

PKS confirmed all this when I met him five years ago.  This was a few days after I had met him at one of our group-gatherings.  I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years and he was for a few minutes unrecognizable.  He was bearded.  When he spoke, though, his voice, smile and eyes turned him into a 14 year old schoolboy who once whacked several sixers off me in a home-and-home class match.  No one knew he could bat until he came in at the fall of the 5^th or 6^th wicket and took the game away from my team.  He never played leather-ball cricket.  He was a presence in class but not a giant. Not a dwarf either. 

Time takes us in various directions on various vehicles, some of our choosing and some not. His life rolled on those parallel lines made for movement, poetry, romance and of course death. PKS is an engine driver.  No one claims unhappiness in public and he didn’t either.  We all live with the choices we make, the circumstances we create for ourselves or which are created for us and convince ourselves and others that this was how it was all planned.  PKS told me that his father wanted him to work in the public sector and that an opening in the Railways brought him to where he was.  No complaints.  Contentment was written all over his face.  I remember being happy for my friend and I remember this happiness being stained by a tinge of envy. 

PKS remembered old times and recollection made him want to reconnect with people who had gone far away on different wheels, endowed or acquired.  Among them was someone whose life path was invisible.  He is a big name now in the mobile phone service industry.  Let’s call him Nishad Thambimuttu.  Laksiri Chandana Kurukulasuriya, who sat next to PKS in our Grade 8 class and earned his ire once for scribbling the word ‘Caribbean’ (in Sinhala) on PKS’ desk (PKS didn’t know that the word was a proper noun and referred to a region; he thought that ‘Kurukulaya’ had deliberately written filth), used to call him Nishad ‘Bikki’.  This was forced evolution: Thambimuttu to Thambi to Thambikki to Bikki.  I am not sure if it was Kurukulaya’s coinage or something that Buvendra Kumar Ketagoda Gamage (‘Boovalla’) had come up with.

Anyway, PKS wanted to talk to Bikki.  I had his number, but warned that Bikki was a busy man and that on the one occasion when I had called him to seek sponsorship for a chess tournament he had been brusque.  He did remember my name but said, ‘We don’t do indoor sports,’ he said. ‘Why not?’ I asked.   ‘I don’t have to tell you that.’  ‘Oh dear!’ I thought to myself and told him that if there is a policy change to kindly think of chess as a possible beneficiary of his corporate largesse.  I didn’t call him ‘Bikki’.  I told all this to PKS and also mentioned that Bikki was now ‘Perera’. 

A few days later PKS called me.  He was in shock.  He had called ‘Perera’.  This is what he told me (in translation): ‘I didn’t call him to ask any favour. I don’t need any favours.  I called him only because he was the only one in our class who lived in Kotahena.  For two years.  We would sit on our suitcases and wait for the 167 bus. We talked. Everyday.  For two years.  He might have thought I was in need of help or something.  He did not remember me or pretended he did not.  He said “mata mathaka nehe, mata mathaka nehe” and hung up. How could he not remember?’

I didn’t have an answer.  I remember saying that we have not been privy to his life, that he might have his reasons and that in the end these things matter very little.  We laughed about it.  We talked of other things and he insisted that I bring my two little girls for ride in the train so they could enjoy the rare ‘driver’s view’. 

A few days ago I ran into ‘Perera’ at the launch of a new sports television channel.  Someone introduced us (!).  I said ‘we were in the same class.’  ‘Perera’ said ‘Yes I know him’ and turned 180 degrees. He must have had his reasons.  I wondered, driving home that night after the function, about what was important in life and what kind of value one ought to attach to human being and why.  We cannot demand friendship or acquaintance. We cannot request or plead for remembrance.  I won’t pretend that I was affected by what happened, after all it made me remember a lot of things, especially a conversation that had taken place 5 years previously. 

I remembered our school song and a particular line in it: ‘we will learn of books and men and learn to play the game’.  PKS taught me. ‘Perera’ too.  About playing the game.

I don’t know when I’ll see PKS again but one thing is certain.  I am going to take my girls on his train.  I must thank ‘Perera’ for reminding me about that invitation that has gathered a lot of time-dust. 

There are lives that run on parallel lines but they do not forbid togetherness. There are also lives that are about connectivity but are so tragically disparate.  It’s a wonderful world isn’t it?

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com

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Action in the ‘Missing’

When Premakumar Gunaratnam and Dimuthu Attygalle went missing and later resurfaced, the issue of abductions and disappearances as well as the primacy of the law and related matters once again took centre stage.  While some claim that ‘international pressure’ on human rights and civil society activism were instrumental in the two reappearing, it is inconceivable that the Government, if it was indeed involved in the incident, had not calculated the repercussions.  

At the end of the day, the shadowy ex-JVPer was reduced to some kind of prankster suffering from delayed adolescence, the JVP was pushed against the periphery of public notice and Gunaratnam’s party left rudderless and discredited on account of being led by someone confused about his identity and suspected of being an agent of a foreign government.  Yes, the Australian High Commission also suffered a bit of egg-on-face. 

If Gunaratnam’s case is to crest the banner of human rights it would be tragic, not least of all because the current champions of the cause are severely compromised on account of a long history of thieving and pandering to the designs of terrorists and violators of the self same rights, the USA for example.  The new found love for the likes of Gunaratnam makes a sad story because many of these HR champions were in the thick of a gunfight with the JVP in the eighties, and were hand in glove with the LTTE and now with its rump.   Gunaratnam calling for ex-LTTE cadres to join him completes the picture.  It is not about human rights, but petty power games.

Human rights games are pantomimes, but victims are not players, even if they are used and abused for bucks and power.  As of now, over 15,000 people have been recorded ‘Missing’ since the eighties, the vast majority of them during the UNP-JVP-OLD LEFT Bheeshanaya of 1988-89.  Complaints made to international organizations about those gone missing in the last phase of the war more or less corresponds to the figures generated by enumerations.

Now it is well known that many of the ‘missing’ have taken on new identities and migrated with the ancient sob-story of persecution and Gunaratnam’s story is just an iceberg-tip in this regard, i.e. the multiple-identity racket.  Some of them are also guilty of making others go ‘missing’.  Some of the ‘missing’ would have died wearing military fatigues.  Mothers will weep for sons, widows for husbands and children for fathers, but public sympathy will not go to those who created gaping holes in the hearts, minds and lives of other mothers, wives and children whose loved ones were killed by these people who subsequently went missing themselves. 

On the other hand, 99 killers going missing is not reason enough not to find out what happened to the 1 innocent whose whereabouts are unknown.  The relations and loved ones of that person need to know and it Is incumbent on the state to leave no stone unturned in finding out what happened.   

  

A nation that comes through tragic times and in particular a bloody armed conflict can and does get over the losses collectively.  This is what happened in 1971 and in 1988-89 and also the tsunami of 2004.  Personal loss is different.  Collective closure is not salve for personal wound.  Individuals need to get on with their lives and full knowledge of what happened is a prerequisite for this. 

This Government has proved time and again that it has the resources to track down dangerous criminals, including underworld figures and terrorists.  It is no easy task to find out what happened to 15,000 people, especially 20 years after many of them went missing.  It seems that the painstaking work has started, especially with the census exercises.   The people, especially those affected, must have a way of knowing what’s being done.   The long struggle against terrorism is over.  No one should go ‘missing’ now and if anyone does, the government will stand indicted for complicity or inability. 

Finding what happened to those who are ‘missing’ is something that society as a whole owes those members who suffered and continue to suffer. It is something that the state owes the citizenry.  It is something that the LLRC has recommended.  It’s not part of some NGO conspiracy or a coercive tool employed by pernicious international actors.  It is part of our nationalism, if we are to be worthy of being called a nation. 

['The Nation' Editorial, April 22, 2012]

 

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