Remembering everyday mothers this Mothers’ Day

Pic by Sandra Mack

Today is Mothers’ Day.  Today is everyday mothers’ mothers’ day, mothers’ day of everyday grandmothers and everyday great grandmothers.  Today I remember two mothers, two grandmothers and one great grandmother and the mother, grandmother and great grandmother all rolled into one, 

Joyce Gunatilleka, 82 -years-old, mother of five, grandmother of 11 and great grandmother of 4. 

She passed the SSC and got through the teaching exam.  This would have been in the 1950s. She had been posted to a school in a remote part of the island.  She had to refuse for she was married and pregnant at the time.  And so, she ended up as what would be called ‘unskilled worker’, a necessary add-on but, someone who added much to the company she joined in January 1968 and left 27 years later, Ceylon Biscuits Ltd., better known as ‘Munchee’. 

According to this grand old lady, ‘Mee-archchie’ to her great grandchildren who mischievously called her ‘Meeya’ (mouse), a notice had been posted asking employees to come up with a name for the company.  Since it was a local company producing an authentically local product, she had suggested ‘Lanka Biscuits’.  The owners went with ‘Ceylon’ but who can tell if that name was not inspired by Joyce’s suggestion? 

She was part of the company from its difficult birthing, through its tense infancy and rocky childhood. She was there in the adolescent years and saw it maturing into splendid adulthood. She was not sole wet-nurse and neither does she claim she was, but Joyce Gunatileka did a lot of mothering, both at home and at work. 

‘Back then there were no cooling mechanisms, so we would go home sometimes with blisters on all ten fingers.  We still came to work the next day.’

She did the had-to-do things, even in the most difficult times when JVP dominated unions ordered the employees not to come to work or march around the company premises carrying placards and shouting slogans.

Twenty-seven years is time enough to have lived and created a history.  Eighty-two is not ‘too old’ to recount it all with surprising clarity.  History is version and is usually written by or writing in ways that privilege the powerful, but there’s a narrative that was indelibly inscribed in Joyce’s mind and this she has put down into words.  It is of the first and last draft kind, neatly written down in an exercise book. 

She read, with no sign of fatigue, for more than an hour, stopping only to respond to questions or to elaborate when felt necessary.  She read with unwavering voice, a smile on her lips, and without glasses.  That history, along with other narratives of ‘Munchee’ will make interesting reading no doubt, but what stood out was her maternity in all things.

She was a friend, a good friend. When co-workers involved with the trade union had to ‘take time off’ to negotiate with the management, Joyce happily agreed to take on their work.  She had it tough, tougher than most of her co-workers.  There were days she went without food, I found out.  During those fun-filled, exciting, taxing and nevertheless hard early years, Joyce had just one sari.  That tells another story, another history.

She is a great grandmother of the everyday kind.  So she is grandmother and mother too.  Like my mother, who passed away exactly four years ago, gone but still an everyday mother to me, an everyday grandmother to her grandchildren.  There were things she readily went without. That’s because she was an everyday mother who thought only about giving everything she could to her children.   

Joyce Gunatilleka must have been a skilled worker.  She was and is full of life, endowed with both clarity of eyesight and clarity of vision.  She has a memory, she knows how to describe.  ‘Mata puthek hamba una (I found a son)’, she said after the interview ended.  And I remembered my mother.

She was full of life. She was an excellent teacher.  She could writer and could teach how to write. She is now unburdened of memory, those fragrant and those eminently forgettable. 

There are days set aside to celebrate peace, love, labor and maternity.  The 13^th day of October is a good day as any to remember our everyday mothers, those who still breathe and those who made us breathe.  This mothers’ day, it feels good to think of Joyce Gunatilleka.  My mother would understand.  

[Malinda Seneviratne can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com]

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View from Ritigala [First week of October 2013]

Elephants at worship

 

A wild elephant carrying a wound in a leg is reported to have come to the Kebiliththa Devale to worship.  We don't how wild or mild the two-legged cousins of this devoted elephant are. We don't know if the wild elephant's wounds got healed.  But considering all the wounds inflicted on those in the elephant party again and again by voters, a trip to Kebiliththa may not be such a bad idea!

 

 

 

 

Pavithra's Masurang Katha

 

CHOGM will open up priceless opportunities for Sri Lanka, Minister of Power and Energy, Pavithra Wanniarachchi claims.She was talking about the 'real ground situation' and says that Sri Lanka can tell the world 'what type of a country and people' we are.  Let us hope that 'The World' will not check the front pages of our newspapers! 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ranil's doosra stumps Sajith

 

The empire strikes back. Sorry, the emperor strikes back!  Ranil Wickremesinghe in the midst of the now usual post-election moves to oust him has come up with a fresh idea. Yes, a FRESH one; he usually gets into defensive mode and employs delaying tactics. This time he has got the Matara District UNPers to propose Sajith Premadasa as the party's Chief Ministerial candidate at the forthcoming Southern Provincial Council election.  Given trends, only a miracle will save the UNP from yet another embarrassment, this everyone knows.  If Sajith takes up the challenge, he will get to share the loser tag with his leader. If he doesn't, he will be called a coward.  Smart move by the Leader, for a change.  

 

A nudist colony in Sri Lanka?

 

Deputy Minister Premalal Jayasekara has vowed to walk naked through the streets of Ratnapura if anyone could prove he had used illegal means to grab land belonging to state companies.  While this implies that he may have used LEGAL means to get a few square inches of soil, what is more important is the challenge. Now all ministers, deputy ministers and indeed all elected politicians can take a leaf from Jayasekara's book, pledging to shed.  Did we hear someone say redi gelavei (the clothes will come off!)? 

 

Who is the SLMC taking for a ride?

 

General Secretary, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) M.T. Hassan Ali has said that the Government could not take the Tamils for a ride.  let's forget whether or not this government or its predecessors took the Tamils for a ride or whether Tamil politicians and terrorists took these governments for a ride. Let's forget that Tamils were taken for a longer and bumpy ride by Tamil leaders.  But isn't it true that the SLMC has been taking the Muslims for a ride for a long time, with the leaders betraying popular sentiment just to save their ministerial portfolios?  What say you Mr. Hassan Ali?

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Nudity is not a bad thing

[Written more than two years ago but still 'fresh' I feel]

Years ago, when my friend Mahendra De Silva was working at Telecom, he would now and then man the help-desk over the graveyard shift. This was in the early days of the Internet. One day a man had called, clearly distraught. He had misdirected an email. He was wondering if Mahendra (or anyone else) could stop the email from going to the unintended recipient.

The answer to the query had been a polite ‘no’. Since SLT was the service provider, the man had asked if there was an Internet equivalent of a mail sorting centre or even a postbox from which such a missive could be retrieved. Mahendra said he didn’t know how to alleviate the caller’s distress. We found it amusing. We saw also the tragedy and the pathos.

I had forgotten this story. It came to me last night by accident. I was searching the internet for something I had written more than four years ago and came across something else I had written.

This was when I was working at The Nation newspaper. I used to write 10-15 questions for the features section. This was a set I had not saved and could not remember having written.

‘When the violinist painted the landscape before him in melody, did the trees bend low in gratitude or exhaustion?’ I had asked. I had also contemplated trees and rivers. Here’s the relevant set:

‘What else can the river say to the tree but ‘passing through’? And the tree, can it say anything else but, ‘I can see that’? And when tree and river become dust and sand do their respective footprints indicate a better, more enduring embrace?’

Sandwiched between tree-river conversation and music-tree commerce was the following: ‘What do telephones talk about when they gather after the day’s conversation is done?’

There was a time I took the notion that ‘walls have ears’ literally. I couldn’t understand the line. I’ve wondered, since, whether things inanimate have lives of their own. Another question in that set spoke to this notion: Isn’t it true that when we move our eyes over a page the words look back with equal scrutiny? It is possible that the ‘telephone-question’ was a logical extrapolation, for we read wordless things and as such the ‘un-worded’ (such as wall, desk, ballot-box, love letter, heart-stop moment, held-back tear, stifled laugh and so on) do have things to say.

It is interesting to mix things up or at least to imagine that things mix themselves up on the sly, when no one’s looking. Imagine computers and email accounts secretly exchanging passwords. I know there’s a thing called hacking and that email accounts are peeped into deliberately. I am not talking about human-hand explorations, though.

What if walls actually had ears, if inboxes could exchange knowing glances with one another or if mobile phones occasionally forwarded ‘sent-messages’ to random phone numbers? It would persuade us to exercise a greater degree of circumspection, I think. In the very least, it would make one examine the gap between self and projected-self and ask ‘who am I fooling here?’

It could be pretty disconcerting, really. Like getting around without any clothes. Or being under constant surveillance. I remember spending a couple of months in the psychiatric ward of the General Hospital, attending to a friend who was suffering from depression. At one point he removed all his clothes and said ‘now I have nothing to hide’. Undressing the tasteful wraps of the mind is far more difficult of course. In the end, however, we have to confront the mirror that is our conscience. It is an inconvenient thing for it is designed to summarily undress. It would be far easier, in a sense, to be naked. The problem is that it would be easy only if everyone else is ready to be thus undressed or remain naked.

It boils down to individual choice. We can mimic the rest and fool ourselves. We can make conscience mirrors go to sleep. Telephones, if they can talk, would then have to go silent and walls, out of seeing the same nudity fresh as the beginning of time would shut their eyes. Pages would not have much to say. People would gasp of course, but I’ve heard that there’s nothing like sleeping naked. Mahendra would say that such a person would never have occasion to call SLT in the middle of the night and beg for something, anything, to cover his/her nudity with.

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On (mis)reading election results

It is not hard to understand dismay at defeat.  It is also natural for the defeated to blame everyone else but themselves.  And so, when Harin Fernando, UNP MP, takes pot shots at the voters of the Wayamba and Central Provinces, eyebrows don’t get raised.  It is after all the utterings of a political neophyte which could result in the party faring even worse in these provinces next time around.  No harm to Harin, for he will contest from Badulla. 

It is also understandable when vicarious satisfaction is sought, in this instance by cheering the TNA’s victory in the Northern Province.  ‘Someone taught the Government a lesson!’ is easy to say and if that’s all the consolation the UNP can get and if that is consolation enough so be it. 

It is not just the Harins of the UNP that are trying to tag themselves to the TNA in order to drag themselves out of political despondency.  Just the other day, someone posted an interesting comment on Facebook: ‘My respect for the Jaffna Tamils has increased since reading the memoirs of various Missionary Wives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The Jaffna people had to put up with the people who wrote this stuff. It is so dead boring, filled with ruminations of the goodness of god and the wonders of the universe.’  This drew the following comment: ‘My respect for the Jaffna Tamils increased after the PC elections’.  The commentator did not elaborate on the respect-reasons, but it is not hard to figure out. 

 

The post-election ‘analysis’ from the anti-Government lobby is full of ‘Harimisms’.  There was the usual tossing around of ‘military shadows’ in the North with random incidents gathered and called ‘tips of icebergs’ and other such exaggerations that’s par for the course for these politically and ideologically displaced commentators. 

The North, we are told, voted for ‘freedom’, for an un-clutching of totalitarianism, whereas in the other two provinces, if the voter is past being swayed by post-2009 terrorism-defeat-euphoria he/she is still prone to preying with goodies, cellphones, sarees and whatnot.  Well, if voting for a terrorist mouthpiece that is still to get the tiger out of its collective gut amounts to a vote for freedom, then the people of the North have pretty short memories.  What is more likely is that the TNA offered (for purely communal reasons) a better comfort-sense than the UPFA, which too fielded Tamils by the way.  Communalist and chauvinistic rhetoric does draw hurrahs but not from the majority.  The more ‘familiar’ in the North (for whatever reason) is the TNA, not the UPFA.  There was ‘rejection’ of course or at least a statement that development though necessary and appreciated is just not enough.  If there was ‘un-clutching of totalitarianism’, then the glorifier of totalitarianism, C.V. Wigneswaran wouldn’t have ended up securing the highest number of preferential votes. 

It’s about painting one’s political agenda (and resultant) dismay on a result and not reading the result for what it could be (and it could be many things, of course).  The Wayamba and Central Province voters are painted as a bunch of morons who didn’t know what’s good for them.   In Wayamba, at least, the candidate with the goodies got 200,000 less than the man who used the party network and who did the hard basics of going out to solicit votes.  That must say something.  More importantly, if un-shackling of any kind is desired, the question must be asked, ‘what were the options for these voters?’   Were these pundits wishing that they voted for some other party?  If so, which one? 

If the Northern voter is respected with no mention of voters in the other two provinces, it implies disrespect or less respect for the latter set.  What could these voters have done to earn the respects of these ladies and gentlemen?  The UNP?  The DNA? The JVP?  It boils down to political preferences then and immediately all the stories about democracy, unclutching of this and that becomes hogwash.   More seriously, it is patently arrogant to imply that those who helped produced an outcome not to one’s liking are stupid.  It is like saying ‘I know what’s best for you!’ 

People’s choices come out of a consideration of multiple factors.  We can talk about the political implications of outcomes, but if an election result is a punching bag to vent frustration on that’s not political commentary.  One might as well say ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’

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A physician talks of quacks and quackery

[In a parallel universe called 'Humility']

No, I am not saying that we are a perfect breed.  We are as imperfect as your random pick from any other profession.  There are levels of competency. There are levels of honesty and integrity too.  We cut corners, we peddle drugs, milk formula and other stuff for a little ‘something’. Some of us are in the business of selling costly lenses and stents. We too use threat and cajole in the right mix to persuade our patients to empty their pockets.  Oh yes, we know how to pick if we want to. Not all of us of course, but some most certainly.  

We do have something called pride.  Dignity is important to us.  Like all professionals, we are not happy when there’s a slur on what we do.  As I said, not all of us are clean, and as such there are many who deserve to be called ‘quacks’ both for professional incompetence and lack of integrity.   

And yet, the quackery that we as a collective are guilty of is nothing compared to the quackery of those who have had little or no medical training. I am talking of those who have been trained to read prescriptions masquerading as physicians, and of course outright crooks with no medical training whatsoever, not even dispensing drugs, setting up shop to diagnose and prescribe for a fee.  There are many.  So when they get caught I am happy. 

The thing about such quacks is that they can be caught at any time and they are too, sooner or later.  What really gets my goat are the quacks who not only give us a bad name, but flaunt their quackery in public and get a lot of bucks for the flaunting to boot. 

You see them on television all the time.  All it takes to be a ‘TV Doctor’ is to have a long white coat the kind that you see doctors wear and a stethoscope.  Wait, it also helps to wear spectacles and in the case of male ‘doctors’ to be clean shaven and to have a well-groomed look, hair nicely combed and all that. 

What really bugs the hell out of me is that these quacks actually endorse products, brands and practices as though they have obtained license from the World Health Organization to do so, often acting as though their claims are backed by solid research that yielded irrefutable conclusions. 

Now we do get so-called professional associations endorsing products or ‘clearing’ them in the classic whitewashing exercise that many find to be very remunerative.  We see their office-bearers similarly offering endorsement as though it is the official view of the membership.  But ‘TV Doctors’ are the limit.  If real doctors are small time pickpockets, these TV quacks are big time embezzlers. 

Those of us who bend the rules here and there, but these jokers don’t have any rules.  Don’t get me wrong, it is not about jealousy.  The problem is that people look up to doctors.  Since patients don’t know any better, they take the doctor’s word as though it is Gospel Truth or an extension of the Chaturarya Satyaya or the Four Noble Truth expounded by the Buddha Siddhartha Gauthama. 

Most, if not all, don’t know that the jokers who flash across the TV screen are models and not qualified physicians. Not just these quacks but the peddlers of the brands and products they ‘endorse’ as well as the relevant media stations are guilty of deliberate  attempts at mass duping.

Oh yes, it’s not just on television, these quacks are often ‘posted’ to remote places where fresh markets of gullible consumers are being explored.  The long white coat and stethoscope will do it.  Heck, out there in the back of beyond you can even call these quacks ‘doctor’ while peddling your energy drinks, skin-whiteners, toothpaste and whatnot, and most will go along; no one will ask for the degree certificate after all. 

So yes, I am livid.  I am wondering why the Ministry of Heath, the Sri Lanka Medical Association and the Government Medical Officers’ Association are letting these quacks get away with murder.   I am wondering what the true worth of my medical degree is.  I am wondering whether it would have been easier for me to get beauty treatment and try out as a model instead of sweating it through medical college, for if quackery is permitted and if outright quackery is more remunerative, then a doctor is a poor cousin to a TV quack.   

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Sandaru and Damith as students and teachers

A week ago few outside family circle, teachers and school friends would have heard of Sandaru Sathsara Balahewa.  Today, if there’s any 10 year old child whose name is known outside of such domains of acquaintance, it has to be this little boy from Mahinda College, Galle.  Sandaru scored an incredible 198 out of a possible 200 at the Grade 5 Scholarship Examination.  That’s no mean feat and therefore eminently warrants attention and accolades, both of which have been showered on him in abundance. 

Recognition and rewarding of achievement encourages recipients.  It also spurs those who are to follow, that is the little ones who are yet to sit the exam.  There is also the downside of course, for example of parents wanting their children to bask in similar glory and therefore slave-driving them to their books at the cost of other necessary and healthy activities that make for wholesome childhood and meaningful growing up.  Still, nothing should take away from the achievement and deserved celebration, not even the outrageous promise by the Southern Province Education Minister to send little Sandaru to Disney Land, a promise that is disproportionate to achievement and worse, could have unintended but nevertheless disastrous consequences for one so young and impressionable. 

There were others who did remarkably well. They too had their media moment; voice-cuts, interviews and such. Even those who scored above the ‘cut-off mark’ but did not obtain exceptionally high scores, would have been rewarded in some way, in the very least with modest treats from parents and smiles from teachers.

Let us not forget the disappointed, among them the children who just missed the cut and the parents who invested too much hope but most of all those for whom this exam was of the make or break kind, at least in the minds of parents.  Let us hope that the efforts were educative and inspirational and that the disappointment hardens resolve to do better; the Scholarship Exam is, after all, one of many hurdles and stumbling here does not mean that the race will not be completed.  Turning defeat into victory is not obtainable by policy, but mind-set of child, parent and teacher.  There will be other moments to celebrate, let us hope.

Sandaru, for now, has the nation’s eyes because the media, following society, turns gaze on the big winner.  But ‘lesser’ gazes, shall we say, focused on lesser stories, lesser victories, and lesser reasons to celebrate. 

Two come to mind. One, a little boy who passed and said that the only reward he wanted was for his father to stop drinking; when the results were announced, the boy’s father wasn’t around to greet him with smile, kiss, hug and promises of gifts for he was in hospital, courtesy his indulgences in things that did nothing for his child.  That boy had little to celebrate but who can say that he deserved anything less than what Sandaru received?

Then there is little Damith Nuwan Kumara from Wellawaya.  He too passed.  Damith, however, did not attend school, did not study.  In the first week of January 2013, this little boy was admitted to Lady Ridgeway Hospital; he had been diagnosed with cancer.  No one promised him trips to Disneyland. No one can promise him a return to a childhood where perfect health permits everything that children his age take for granted, like ‘tomorrow too I will play with my school friends before school starts, during the interval and after school too!’ 

Let no one take anything away from little Sandaru, he deserves it all.  He achieved.  Even if few had known his name a week ago, few would not have known his school, Mahinda College.  Damith Nuwan Kumara had attended Buduruwagala Maha Vidyalaya; very few would be able to mark the district in a map of Sri Lanka and fewer still find it in a map of the district.  Forget all that; little Damith’s achievement is rare.  It is real and in some ways more ‘newsworthy’ than the stories of the kids who scored higher than he did. 

If the ‘Disney Trip’ was reward unreal then it also spoke about proportions or lack thereof.  And if Sanduru’s achievement is real (and it is!) then Damith’s is no less tangible.  It also speaks of proportions, the exaggerations we indulge in and the strange, structured and sad downplaying we are all guilty of.  Both children have, in their own way and without intending to do so, taught us all some lessons.  Both are deserving of accolade, both are deserving of the warmth of embraces we wish upon them, and both have made their parents proud and made us all proud.  Let us not assess relative merits or be frugal in our cheers and giving; let us instead draw deep from the abundance of lessons that their little hearts and minds, and tiny strengths have put together, in their childhood and in their innocence.  

 

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