I’ve been talking to my fellow Kolombians. It’s almost as if they have been silent for
almost five years. Some of them, not
all, talk as though they’ve taken out words they had put in some back bedroom
of their plush mansion, shaken off the dust and are now re-using them. The same words I heard when Sarath Fonseka
put up what appeared to be a much more than a ‘good run’. He ran so fast through our minds that some
of us thought that he could best Usain Bolt, forget Percy Rajapaksa (yes, I’ve
not given up hope that he’ll accept Kolombian membership, honorary at
least).
They are at it again.
Back then it was SF, SF, SF even though not too long before there were
some Kolombians doing their darnedest to get Percy and SF to let up and give
Prabhakaran a breather. Talk about not
understanding our own interests! Anyway,
now it’s all Maithree, Maithree, Maithree.
And these are folk who wouldn’t know the meaning of either ‘Maithree’ or
‘Paalanaya’ if you were to ask them.
This Maithree business is splitting our community in two,
that’s what’s bothering me most. There
are those who see only ‘elephant,’ the color green and the letters U, N and
P. It was hard enough for them to think
of the swan. To their credit they
managed to make the mind-shift. I am
betting that they can do the same this time too.
That’s one lot. Then
there’s the other kind, those who don’t mix that which ought not to be mixed,
identity and business interests. We are
essentially a selfish species. We can
complain about all kinds of things even if we are benefitting from whatever
that is wrong. Like business, for
example.
We don’t have proper regulations. There is no even playing field. Now why should a Kolombian even worry about
such anomalies when anomaly is what puts food on our plates, allow us to build
mini gymnasiums at home, party until we drop and of course strut around
hollering to one another in English even as we look down our nose at the next
guy who is resident on the other side of Anomaly-Town? Beats me!
This is not only a flawed system but the flaws are
structured to benefit us. Sure, now
there are walkways in godforsaken places like Biyagama and Boralesgamuwa, but
you get what I mean, right? When it
comes to business, it is all about theft.
The other day I was listening to a couple of upstart ‘walkers’ around
Diyatha Uyana who were talking about something called the Labor Theory of Value
which some fellow called Marks and his friend Angles had come up with. It made sense to me. Extracting surplus value, I heard them
say. But this theft that we see today is
something much better. It’s not
something that is put in small print to escape the eyes of the gullible. It’s in-your-face simple. All about greasing palms.
So what? Whatever
makes the wheels turn, right? ‘Hand over
fist’ is already too old a turn of phrase.
‘Minting money’ is boring. I
can’t come up with anything that can truly describe the process and the proceeds. Us Kolombians have never had it this
good.
But now, some of our less knowledgeable Kolombians want to
give it all up. For what? Regulation?
Streamlining? Haven’t these
people heard about the goose that lays the golden eggs? Amazing!
We don’t say it all the time, but I think we should say it
now. Hanky-panky is our thing. Underhand is also our thing. We don’t like terrorism and political
stability but we love loopholes and flawed systems. It’s time we acquired some class
conciseness. Yes, that’s another term
I picked up listening to those two Yakkos at Diyatha Uyana.
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