Tomorrow is Tuesday the Second of June 2009, did you know?*

More than twenty five years ago, my brother Arjuna and I paid a visit to our father at his office. He was at the time a Deputy Director at the Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration.  We had gone there to obtain permission to go on a camping trip to Horton Plains. He later reported to our sister that we had been hovering outside his office like to union leaders. 

It was not exactly a flat ‘no’ that we got.  ‘I don’t have money to give you,’ he said.  We had already sorted that one out, our aunt having kindly agreeing to finance the trip.  We were due to leave on the 24^th of December. He asked us when we would be returning. ‘January 2^nd,’ I answered.  ‘Then you can’t go because the family has to be together on the first day of the year,’ he objected.  It did not occur to me then to remind him that ‘New Year’ to any Sinhalese even vaguely conscious of his/her identity dawns around the 13^th of April.

‘That is a more serious objection than lack of money,’ I told him, adding impertinently that he mentioned money first, indicating that he really didn’t want us to go and was fishing for a reasonable enough objection.  He was not amused: ‘Ok, go! But remember that if you do, you cannot come back home!’  I went. Aiya stayed back.  I did come back but that’s another story.  The issue here is the first of January.  What it means.  What any day means. 

A friend of almost four decades once wrote to me after reading my article ‘Diaries, diarizing and the happily ‘un-diarized’’:

“Long ago, I read a piece in a Reader's Digest where a narrator (a man from New York) relates his journey with a group of Eskimos.  He wrote that Eskimos, “funnily”, have no sense of time and their focus is only on doing something; they never raise or answer the question "when..?"  

Harsha Wickramasinghe, who works at the Sustainable Energy Authority, and has on numerous occasions offered comments that have illuminated many dark corners of the universes that I have ventured to explore, asked me if I had read it.  I had not. 

‘I removed the t axis (the x axis which denotes time) from my life,’ he wrote. I was not sure if the ‘I’ referred to Harsha or to the author of the article he had mentioned.  It doesn’t matter. 

What matters is that ‘time’ is made of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years and so on and at the same time these units are mere conveniences and have no absolute and overarching value.  Time is what we make of it.  I once asked, in jest, ‘Were you aware, perhaps in a sacred moment of intoxication, that an evil guard imprisons us by the winding of clocks?’  Think about it. 

There are cultures that think time is cyclical.  Some people measure it in hours, some in terms of life expectancy and some in terms of lifetimes, i.e. in ‘sansaric’ dimensions.  The dimensions of time, then, are culture-bound.  I remember Champika Ranawaka writing an article to ‘Vidusara’ in the late nineties, i.e. around the time ‘daylight saving time’ was introduced courtesy a power crisis, using the notion to explain how time is a relative concept.  We can think of time in terms of the last flood, the number of harvests since an event occurred, the number of moons that have passed, the last time we felt the magic of love and so on. 

And yet, we are time-bound. ‘News’ arrives at a particular moment. We ‘clock-in’ and ‘clock-out’. There is a thing called ‘retirement age’. Insurance policies mature on a particular date. There are ‘auspicious times’ that are consulted.  On the other hand we can pick and choose the degree of our slavery to Father Time.  We can wreck frames of reference.  Life can be made to be less predictable and this can be good and bad of course.  But if, like Harsha (or the author he quotes) we take out the t-axis or at least think of it less as rod than as string and therefore hold one end and shake it a little, a million pieces of magic can be startled to flight. 

The first day of January is like your birthday.  There’s something special about it, we have been taught to conclude.  I remember another December, perhaps a year after my father issued that forbidding end-note to our ‘union’ meeting.  Another trip.  We were to leave on December 31^st.  The point was the see the first sunrise of the new year from atop Samanala Kanda.  Chamath, who was to join the party, had not got permission from his father.  He had asked Chamath cynically, ‘anith dawas walata vadaa godaak venas athi neda?’ (it must be very different from other sunrises, right?).  

Tomorrow is the 2^nd of June, 2009. It is a Tuesday.  I am convinced.  How about you?

*First published on December 31, 2009  

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

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Diaries, diarizing and the happily ‘un-diarized’*

These are diary days.  Calendar days too.  All institutions, big and small, private and public, are busy getting diaries out.  It is probably considered a serious come down for a self-respecting corporate entity not to print diaries for distribution among clients, employees, politicians and friends, corporate and otherwise.  The diary bug seems to have stung the SME sector as well.  Everyone seems to feel a dire need to print a diary, even a pocket-size one.  Calendars too. 

These are also diary-asking days.  The cleaning lady wants one. Three wheel drivers, corner-shop mudalalis, garbage collectors, policemen, teachers and other everyday people in your life wants one, have you noticed?  Years ago I wrote a short note on diaries. It was titled ‘Diary days’ and appeared in the Island newspaper.  I was amazed by the diary mania that invariably engulfs Sri Lanka in late December and lasts until mid January.  Here’s a paragraph from that piece:

‘But people are obsessed with diaries. They do not want a diary. They want many diaries. I’ve never figured that one out, so this time I actually asked the question, "what for?" Followed by the explanation soliciting, "do you have so many appointments that you have to keep track of them for fear of forgetting?" and "do you record everything you do?" I know of at least one person who diligently did. Chula Unamboowe, my friend Bradley’s father, who insisted on maintaining a record of everything he did, everyone he met, everything purchased and so on. But none of these diary-seekers were anything like Uncle Chula. Diarizing was not what they did. Some I am sure have not written anything down in years.’

This was in December 2003.  Seven years later, nothing has changed diary-wise.  Diaries, I observed, were made for recycling.  The three-wheel driver wants to give one to the owner of the vehicle who passes it to his/her child’s class teacher, who in turn gifts it to the Grama Niladhari and so on. For what purpose, I asked then.  I still don’t have an answer outside of being noticed, being counted.  This time around, however, I have a different set of questions to ask. 

What happened on appointment-less days?  Why were some appointments marked and some not?  Were the unmarked appointments missed? Do blank pages of dairies used for jotting down observations indicate un-lived days?  Do people count the number of blank days at the end of the year?  Do blank pages view the inked ones with envy or vice versa?  What are un-inked days like? Are they made of things neglected, erased memories and absences, given and received?  Do inked pages object to being linked with the un-inked if diaries are recycled?  Do recycled appointments yield more fruitful conversations?  Do diary-gifters trace the pathways that gifted diaries take and do they visit them at their final resting place? If they do, would they observe a minute’s silence out of respect for distance traveled or guffaw uncontrollably at the utter ridiculousness of diarizing?

I wonder if anyone has calculated overall national diary-wastage.  I wonder if people wonder about the number of trees that are transformed into empty pages that do nothing for ‘diarizer’.  On a more serious note, what do people make of ‘blank days’?  And what do blank days do with people or themselves and one another?  In blank-worlds are expressions necessarily blank and do kisses cross each other out into happy oblivion? 

There are days waiting to be written.  Lived. Loved. Days that stand on their own, with or without diary, appointment and observation. 

What kind of 2011 have you planned, I wonder.  Mine will be diary-less as has been the case for many years.  Perhaps I’ve not lived if inking a diary or using the information therein are considered preconditions to be counted among the living.  Perhaps others are never sure if their ‘today’ is a Monday or a Saturday, whether it is the 14^th or the 27^th and therefore find diaries useful.  As for me, I have decided that I will spend the rest of my life in an eternal Tuesday, happily ‘un-diarized’.

*First published in the Daily News on December 30, 2010

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

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It rained upstream this morning…*

[Remembering my dear friend Sidath Dharmaratne]
 
A student of the Arts Faculty, University of Peradeniya who was also a member of the Student Council was found guilty of misconduct and suspended for three years. This was in 1997.  The boy’s nickname was Meeminna.  Meeminna was from Bandarawela. He had got involved in student politics not on account of party membership but out of a strong sense of justice.  Universities are not perfect and there is a lot of hanky panky that warrants agitation.  That political parties abuse these conditions for their own purposes is a different matter. Meeminna was drawn into politics and before he knew it was in the thick of things.  He was by default supporting the JVP agenda. 

Reality hit him when he was suspended.  He did what he had to do. At a time when university students didn’t have mobile phones, he decided to cross the river to use the pay-phone and inform him older brother of his fate.  He was stopped on the Akbar Bridge by no less a personality than the then JVP ideologue at Peradeniya, an engineering student who was known as ‘Gurula’. Now Gurula was a heart-and-soul JVPer and one who was lacking in intellect even by JVP standards.  He had immediately launched into a lecture which I reproduce in translation thus:

‘Comrade Meeminna, you have been granted the favour of a long vacation. You are good with words, you can write. We have several newspapers such as ‘Gamana’, ‘Seenuwa’ and ‘Niyamuwa’ and you can write to any one of them. 

‘Now Meeminna Sahodaraya, look at the Mahaweli.  The water flows and flows. The fish swim downstream and upstream. Look at the bamboo.  They bend over the river with so much grace.  But Meeminna Sahodaraya, you are not permitted to write about such things. You have to ask, “why is it that the river is so brown?”’ 

Meeminna had muttered an apology and made his escape.  He told me later that he didn’t have the heart to tell Gurula Sahodaraya that it must have rained upstream and that’s why the water had such a bora-colour.   

I’ve heard the story about glasses, half full and half empty.  There are two sides to a coin.  The betel leaf is polished and smooth on one side, but its underside is rough and ungainly.  I know about the ata lo dahama, the play of praise-blame, profit-loss, fame-notoriety and sorrow-joy and the virtue of treating these vicissitudes with equanimity.  Different eyes see different things, attribute reason in different ways and respond differently. 

This morning I traveled the road I travel almost everyday.  There were vehicles. There were people. The world had woken up not very different to how it had the previous day and probably as it would tomorrow. 

I am not on Akbar Bridge right now but if I were I could describe the view in Gurula terms.  Or be silent.  The river would flow as it had the previous day and as it would tomorrow. 

All I know is that it must have rained heavily upstream for the river of life is in spate on account of a death, ironically. 

A week ago I visited a friend at the Maharagama Hospital.  Ward 17.  I was worried that I might not recognize him.  I looked for ‘face cut’. Found. Went right up to him.  Looked at him.  Concluded that I was mistaken.  I walked away and swept my eyes across the room, pausing at each bed, each patient.  Then I heard a voice.

‘Samadanie, anna balanna, maalinda maava hoyanava’ (Look at Malinda, Samadanie; he is looking for me).  I was with my wife.  I recognized the voice which contained intact the entirety of his identity as a good humoured, genial, laid-back individual.  I went to cheer him up.  He cheered me up instead.  As he always had.  Sidat was one of the few individuals I know who has never ever held a grudge against anyone.  He was wronged by many but he never betrayed even an iota of ill will towards his detractors. 

It must have rained hard but who am I to complain or judge, for perhaps it rained just to make a life-boat go faster from here to there.  The water is murky but a smile arrives from a long ago, a voice seeks me.  Wipes a tear. Leaves a smile, leaves me without adequate words to say ‘goodbye’ but says nevertheless ‘see you soon’ or ‘ennam’ (I shall arrive) as we are wont to say at parting.

*Published in late December, 2010 in the Daily News

 

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

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The chains we love too much to lose

‘How is your brother?’ I asked a friend who is now domiciled in Canada and was here in Colombo for a few days.  ‘He’s a glorified slave!’ my friend retorted with his signature and infectious guffaw. 

My friend, whom I’ve known since I was in the seventh grade, is an academic.  He is one of the most articulate of my school friends and has one of the keenest minds I’ve encountered.  He is a professor in Urban Planning and Design, and is well verse in cultural and political studies.  The brother, whom I haven’t met in a long time, is the CEO of a company in Indonesia.   I remember him as a fun-loving kid who was into music and if I remember right was a member of a band.  That kid and the word slave didn’t go together.

My friend explained that he had met his brother in the lobby of one of the Colombo’s top hotels.  The moment he saw his brother, my friend had blurted out, ‘you are a glorified slave…..vahalek! vahalek!’

This is what he had seen.   The CEO was seated.  Two mobile devices, one in each hand.  Calling. Texting. Checking and responding to emails. Who knows?  What’s important was that both were ‘at work’.  The brother, to my knowledge, was not ambidextrous.  Perhaps it was an acquired skill, a spin from the adage ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. 

Here’s a rough transliteration of my friend’s home-truth delivery to his brother:

‘When you think of “slave” you think of manacled hands, chains and so on.  The only difference between such a slave and you is that you are missing the chains.  Those mobile devices are your manacles.  You can’t use your hands, you can't have a conversation, you can’t move around.  You can’t put them down. They go with you wherever you go!’

The point need not be elaborated.   The kid brother had smiled.  Maybe there’s some part in him that is unshackled.  Maybe he doesn’t feel he’s in chains, who are we to judge?

There are no doubt people who can say, if pushed to do so, ‘I am unshackled!’ but it’s more likely that such a person would not go around making assertions.  He or she is more likely to smile, much like that young man, but perhaps for different reasons.    

The majority, if they come to think about it, are not too different from my friend’s brother.  Not everyone has two smart phones and not everyone is a CEO (not that a CEO needs 2 mobile devices, of course), but if it’s not a phone-shackle, it’s something else, a something-else-shackle shall we say? 

We are, all of us, bound.  We have our fixations.  We grip things, tangible and otherwise, and the things we hold on to really hard end up possessing us.  We are bound by love and by hatred, and a lot of other things besides.  It is not easy to unshackle, but do we try at all?  Are there things we can do without that we inside on closing our fists over?  When we employ fingers to clutch, don’t we deny ourselves the joys of caressing?  Is it only with our fingers that we clutch?  What kind of slaves are we and to whom or what?

Some chains are visible, some are not. Some kinds of enslavement are pretty apparent, some reside in our unconscious.  Sometimes we see others being handcuffed or even handcuffing themselves, in a manner of speaking.  We are blind to our enslavement. 

My friend related a good story.  It cleared some cobwebs. Unlocked some chains.  That’s a Christmas gift, I think.  Thanks Kanishka. 

msenevira@gmail.com

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Christmas outside Réveillon*

Christmas came to me as cards, the colours green and red, and pictures of snow.  This was when I was a child.  I didn’t know back then that Jesus Christ was not a blond-haired, blue-eyed, white man who was born in a snow-covered day in December.  It took me a while to understand that history can be read as a process of appropriations, re-crafting and the re-crafted being marketed as truth. 

I am a Buddhist so I could be forgiven for growing up thinking that Christmas was a festival; made up, as I said, of greeting cards, Christmas trees, carols and such.  It didn’t take long, however, for me to understand that there was a lot more to Christmas than the glitter. After factoring out frill, myth and appropriation, there’s still so much of value in the story of Jesus Christ and not just for those who see him as ‘Son of God’, ‘Saviour’ etc.  At least, that’s my impression, from my reading of the Bible and understanding of relevant ecclesiastical matters.  This is perhaps why Christmas appears to me as a monumental fiction.

No, I am not opposed to the celebration, the cheer and festive spirit, not at Christmas nor on any other day.  That’s a right and it is healthy too. Down-in-the-mouth is not exactly my cup of tea.  I worry, though, whether this is all it is for the vast majority of Christians.  I have no way of knowing of course about what Christians do in the in-betweens, befores and afters of ‘Christmassing’.  I see a lot of crass commercialization, spectacle and bucks exchanging hands.  Maybe what is not seen outweighs several time what is seen. Maybe not. 

I can only speak of how I, a Buddhist, understand Christmas or rather what I do on Christmas.  This morning I got a Christmas greeting. From a Buddhist.  Jinadasa Liyanaratne’s email message was as follows: ‘This is to wish you and all members of your family a merry Christmas and a very happy and bright New Year.  Although I am a Buddhist (or because I am a Buddhist!) I have great respect for Jesus Christ and his message of love.  It is rather a pity that Christians pay more attention to the Réveillon (Christmas supper) than to the spiritual aspect of the occasion.’ 

As I said, I don’t know what the average Christian does before and after Christmas supper.  I had never heard the word ‘Réveillon’ before either.   As I always do when encountering the unfamiliar, I ‘looked up’. ‘Réveillon’ means ‘awakening’ in French and refers to an elaborate meal taken after attending midnight mass on Christmas Eve.  Apparently, in the past, it marked the end of the four-week ‘Advent’ fast.  I never thought, until today, that ‘fast’ was even remotely associated with ‘Christmas’. 

‘Fast’ is made of a certain kind of denial and is usually associated with a determination to devote time to reflection on the fundamental tenets of one’s religious convictions.  It is a time to reflect on frailties, on error to self, other and (if one so believes) to god.  It is a determination to devote time to meditate on the eternal verities, obtain a sense of proportion on worldly and spiritual things.  It is a time to be penitent; not just ask for forgiveness (from those who are believed to possess the authority to judge and confer forgiveness) but to grieve, to sigh (if one went to the relevant Hebrew word) and commit oneself to changing ways, call it ‘to see God’ if you will. 

One does not have to be a theist to do all these things, or at least to obtain from Christmas that something that makes one a better Buddhist or Muslim, for example.  We all have things to grieve over. We all have done and said things we ought to feel ashamed about.  We all have reasons to reflect. We can all be better than who we are right now.  Jesus Christ’s life was one of generosity. It was one of humility.  He sighed. 

This Christmas I will reflect on Jesus Christ, the beautiful man that he was and the remarkable life he led.  I believe feasting would interrupt or disturb my meditation. I shall fast.       

*First published in the 'Daily News' on December 25, 2010

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

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Reflections on Christmas (as per Isaiah, Ch 58)

I am writing this on the 24^th of December.  You will be reading this, hopefully, tomorrow, Christmas Day.  So Merry Christmas to all of you, especially those of the Christian faith and all those who are inspired by the life and words of the exceptional earth-resident, Jesus of Nazareth. The wishes come from an atheist, just so you know.

There’s a passage in the bible that I return to frequently. It prompts deep self-reflection and also gives perspective to a lot of things in our society.  Isaiah (Chapter 58) always sobers me up during Christmas and here I am thinking about Christmas as ‘event’, as commercial moment, advertising hook and business convenience and not what it was supposed to mean; the celebration of the saviour, what he advocated, lived and died for, the spirit of giving and forgiving etc.

6  Is this not, rather, the fast that I choose:

    releasing those bound unjustly,

    untying the thongs of the yoke;

    Setting free the oppressed,

    breaking off every yoke?

7  Is it not sharing your bread with the hungry,

    bringing the afflicted and the homeless into your house;

   Clothing the naked when you see them,

    and not turning your back on your own flesh?
The relevant passages focus on the notion of ‘fasting’ and like most parts of the Bible, are heavy on metaphor (and therefore open to multiple interpretation; inevitably and unfortunately). I like to think that it is about what could be called ‘the true work of the Lord’, that which could be described as performing the will of the Father in heaven. 

Too often the Bible is read in a strictly literary manner and that always empowers zealotry and not the kind of humility that made Jesus Christ utter the words ‘Father why have you forsaken me?’  Believing fervently that they are indeed doing the work of the Lord, people slip to the by-any-means-necessary mode of operation.  From there it is a short distance to engendering strife and contention, embracing malicious talk and finger-pointing and striking with the fist of wickedness.  That’s not the ‘fast’ that Jesus advocated, Isaiah points out.

What is advocated is a different frame of being, a ‘fasting’ that is of a liberating, giving, sharing kind, one that is about loosening the chains of injustice, untying the cords of the yoke, setting the oppressed free, sharing food with the hungry, providing the hapless wanderer with shelter, clothing the unclothed.  Such an approach will obtain for one the Lord’s guidance, we are told and those who live in this manner would be called ‘Repairers of Broken Walls’ and ‘Restorers of Streets with Dwellings’; in short, they would be healers, architects of those nurturing edifices called community and solidarity. 

But the Christmases of our experience is one of decoration and pomp, glitter and festivity, conspicuous consumption and vulgar consumerism, all accompanied by a manifest disavowal and frequent foot-noting of the fast and Sabbath as described by the prophets. 

And this is not just on the 25^th day of December, but throughout the year.  Even the ‘giving’ is considered in terms smacking of ‘return on investment’, i.e. with an eye on the ‘receiving’ at some later date. This is even true in the ‘work’ of those who have taken on the task of spreading the word of God. 

I am not against festivity, don’t get me wrong.  My concern is that in the rush to ‘celebrate’ there is a clear flushing down the tube of the most salient words of the man from Galilee and the essence of what his life on earth was all about. 

It is this ‘absence’ that has made Christmas a farce and a moment that draws ridicule and even anger from even the most sensitive and tender-hearted among us;  like Langston Hughes, whose poem ‘Merry Christmas’, published in ‘New Masses’ in December 1930, found its way to my email inbox a few minutes ago.

Merry Christmas

By Langston Hughes

Merry Christmas, China

From the gun-boats in the river,

Ten-inch shells for Christmas gifts,

And peace on earth forever.

Merry Christmas, India,

To Gandhi in his cell,

From righteous Christian England,

Ring out, bright Christmas bell!

Ring Merry Christmas, Africa,

From Cairo to the Cape!

Ring Hallehuiah! Praise the Lord!

(For murder and rape.)

Ring Merry Christmas, Haiti!

(And drown the voodoo drums –

We'll rob you to the Christian hymns

Until the next Christ comes.)

Ring Merry Christmas, Cuba!

(While Yankee domination

Keeps a nice fat president

In a little half-starved nation.)

And to you down-and-outers,

("Due to economic laws")

Oh, eat, drink, and be merry

With a bread-line Santa Claus –

While all the world hails Christmas,

While all the church bells sway!

While, better still, the Christian guns

Proclaim this joyous day!

While holy steel that makes us strong

Spits forth a mighty Yuletide song:

SHOOT Merry Christmas everywhere!

Let Merry Christmas GAS the air!

The point is clear.  Christmas is not Christmas and perhaps never was. And yet it need not be this way.  There can be a move towards considering what chains and yokes exist around us and ask ourselves what we do about these.  This ‘usual’ Christmas does not forbid the faithful (and even the ‘faithless’) from sharing, from sheltering and clothing, literally and metaphorically.  Gifting, for example, is a good thing. Wholesome.  It is a bringing-together exercise.  But there are gifts and gifts, those which cost the earth (literally) and those which constitute a blessing to giver, receiver and the entire earth. And there are gifts to the most needy and gifts to those not in want. 

Christmas, then, is a moment where ‘choice’ is exercised. Decisions are made. At every point, this question is being asked of the Christian, baptized or otherwise: ‘are you really doing the work of the Lord, are you really fasting in the way that “fast” has been described in the Bible’.  The way this question is being answered, the answers and their collective thrust is what makes Christmas.  It is what can break Christmas too.

Malinda Seneviratne is a journalist, a Buddhist, and can be reached at malindasenevi@gmail.com.

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