A love note on eternal Tuesdays and recurrent Julys

I think it was Pablo Neruda who said that the saddest lines begin with the words ‘if only’. Come to think of it other people, poets and philosophers included, must have figured this out long before Neruda did; it’s just that I remember reading a poem by Neruda which makes mention of this truism. 

It is not just about love, though.  Human beings are frail creatures.  Burdened by ignorance and arrogance they blunder along wounding and getting scarred, with and without intention.  One might think this is as it should be considering the enormity of the collective ignorance of our species compared to the miniscule dust-speck of what we do know or, to be more precise, think we know. 

I believe though that species-ignorance in its voluminous all is not what makes us walk into trap, run at breakneck speed to breast a gummed-tape rolled in glass-shard.  Sometimes it is the truth that hurts us the most. We walk into knife not because we believe it s heart or petal but precisely because we know it is iron-made and sharp. No, not to satisfy some masochistic urge, but rather out of a deadly blend of arrogance and innocence, blind faith in knife-holder and the unshaken belief that a resolute heart will stand the test of the sharpest instruments of torture and death,.

I remember an evening in the year 1971.  Navarangahala. It was the ‘interval’ during a performance of Sinhabahu. My father was explaining the story to my brother and I, 6 and 5 respectively.   I am not sure if he told the entire story right then or just what had happened up to that point.  Maybe he did a post-play recap for our benefit.  I do remember one thing.  He spoke about the Lion. He said that the Lion, upon recognizing his son, felt only love.  He said that this is why the arrow could not find its mark, did not pierce skin and kill.  He said that at point love was replaced by anger and this was what thinned that shield, if you will (I am using this-age words and not the words I heard almost 40 years ago).  Maybe I got it all wrong.  I like the story though.

We might be dead wrong in believing that the knife-holder would not knife, intentionally or unintentionally; but if we are of resolute heart, full of love, no knife however sharp or however deep into breast it is thrust can take away life.  There are things that are more death-resistant than others. Like hearts. Not all hearts, no. Some.  Those that have resolved to accept that loving is made of giving and that a price is often exacted for the related bliss.  They are made for knifing.  Not just once, but many times.  Their hearts, as Faiz Ahmed Faiz once observed in an Urdu verse, having to know knife after knife after knife, cannot pause for grieving. 

On the ‘this side’ of that rarified land called Happily Ever After which is the least populated place on earth, there is a community of insane people who are fluent in the ways of the heart.  The clarity of their love is of a transparency that they can walk across the national boundaries that separate the sane and insane, without visa, without detection.  They do not transgress for their universes are unbounded.  They do not break rule for a heart that is ruled is not heart but mind. 

And so they err in the eyes of the world and the beloved, who even if he/she is as insane in the sanity of love and loving is as given to wandering in blind banishment.  They graze on lands made of words and silences, these heart-lost, mindless creatures whose life-breath is made of presence and waiting.  They share this earth with rule-preferred creatures who knowingly and unknowingly see and mis-see, say and slay. Slay, yes, but not heart, just togetherness. And they go as deigned by fractured orbit and un-fuelled drive, but nevertheless undaunted, convinced of another embrace, a second chance, a third, a fourth and so on. They do no feel knife because they are convinced that some encounters are embraces and some not and that certain embraces are dew-made pacts that are coated with a grace that makes it impossible to sleep and, sadly perhaps, impossible to die. Ever again.   

And so it is that some among us speak of eternal Tuesdays and endless Junes (or other days and months as preferred or decreed). They speak of recollection, vague and indelible, of lime slice and bitter lemon, words that are not found in the thesaurus, of capitulation and kneeling, penitence and the waiting for the executioner’s sword to severe head from body just so that heart will not be clouded by reason ever again.  They talk of things mis-named that bring misery and distance, abandonment and torture and yet are prompted to smile the smile of those sentenced to life imprisonment on account of heart-surrender. They speak of Tuesdays in week-less existences and Junes that did not break off from a tender May or bled into a tragic July but remained in a manner that wrecked calendars and calendarizing for all time. 

What is knife for those destined never to sleep again?  Nothing, absolutely nothing.  Just a pricking-instrument thrust again and again not to kill (because this is not possible) but to convince knifer that heart is too tender to be sent through paper-shredder and mind. 

They know all about ‘if only’. They know that it is just two words that have no meaning except in the commerce of the sane, those of the 10 year plan and the slicing of lifetime on the chopping board of reason.  They know time will not pass.  They just wait. Bathed in tears and love.  

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The 'unseen' underside of Black July

He was at one time the foremost Tamil leader espousing the Eelam cause, a man who fired the separatist imagination of a generation of Tamil youth, a man who went from being referred to ‘Thalapathy’ (Commander/General) by admiring supporters to ‘Thurogi’ (traitor) by the very same one-time admirers and later killed by forces he himself unleashed.  He was assassinated on July 13, 1989.  Only the inimitable D.B.S. Jeyaraj, provider of the above information, remembered the 25^th anniversary of his assassination.  Everyone else forgot ‘Thalapathy’. 

‘July 1983’ or ‘Black July’, a part product of the communalist politics that the likes of Amirthalingam indulged in and benefited from, is annually commemorated on the other hand.  There’s politics and commerce in commemoration.  Chandragupta Thenuwara, for example, gets mileage for his ‘art’, claiming unending trauma associated with July 1983, a kind of angst that did not touch him in the far more brutal and mindless violence at the end of the same decade. 

‘Black July’ is also a frequent referent used by those concerned with (obsessed by?) peace, conflict-resolution, reconciliation and other such processes/concepts that have currency in the ‘free’ market of ‘activism’.  The NGO-economy has thrived and the money that has propped it does not and will not come agenda-free.  ‘No More July’ is therefore an assured fund-bringer in the political economy of commemoration. 

Let’s not get confused here.  July 1983 happened.  It should not happen again.  Not to anyone.  To the extent that commemoration reminds, warns and insures against reenactment, it is certainly a useful exercise, dampened only by the not so innocent politics of the commemorators and other profiteers.  

This side of the positives, looking back, is an issue which is less colorful and hopeful than what the kites, lamps, candles and other commemorative frills exude.  Let us call it the underside of ‘Black July’.

It’s more than 30 years since ‘Black July’.  Rarely have those who consider the Sinhalese (and of course Sinhala-Buddhists) as villains (for whatever reason) failed to tag the entire community to that violent political moment and the blame-game pertaining to it.  The politics of commemoration and reminder have gone beyond the blaming, in both intent and effect.  ‘July 83 PLUS’ (shall we call it?), that is a moment and violence blamed on all Sinhalese (‘anti-Tamil pogram’ implies unanimous intent and involvement by the communal other, the Sinhalese), was thrown in the face of every Sinhalese who thought fit to object to Tamil Nationalism/Separatism in any of its many ideological forms and concrete articulations including assassinations, explosion of bombs and other acts of terrorism. 

There was a time when affirmation of identity was denied to the Sinhalese and Buddhists through instilled fear of vilification.  Instead they were required to affirm and champion a ‘Sri Lankan identity’ even as identity was not only the flagship political of other communities but was affirmed by gun, bullet and bomb.  Proxies of that kind of politics included a deliberate vilification of any political position that championed the unitary state.  The Sinhalese, by being constantly reminded of ‘Black July’ were duly ‘guilted’ into ideological silence.  Communal projects of other groups had a field day throughout the nineties and in the first few years of the new millennium. 

So who benefitted?  Certainly not Appapillai Amirthalingam, Vettivelu Yogeswaran, his wife Sarojini or the many Tamil politicians who planted and watered the communalist seeds in Tamil youth.  Extremism was empowered and one reason is probably the fact that objection from Sinhalese was muffled or stifled.  That empowerment effectively robbed voice of those who advocated saner and in hindsight more pragmatic courses of action.  Extremism had a good run, but in the end the entire Tamil community suffered the kinds of violence that put ‘Black July’ to shame.  Abduction of children, hostage-taking, the obvious depravations of armed conflict, assassination, infighting among Tamil groups, you name it, it was the Tamils who lost most and not at the hands of the so-called ‘Sinhala Buddhist State’ alone.  In short everyone lost.

We are not done with commemoration politics, it seems.  ‘Black July’ was resurrected when ‘Alutgama’ happened.  There’s logic to it that goes beyond narrow communal politics and the by now old and boring vilification of Sinhalese and Buddhists. Few wanted an ‘Alutgama’.  Few want another Black July.  But there was over simplification, wild extrapolation and veiled and direct vilification that did not and will not help the cause of national unity.  Lost in ‘Alutgama’ was ‘Welipenna’.  That’s not an accident.  That’s political. 

If the politics of reminding forced Sinhala objectors to Tamil chauvinism, separatism and extremism to preface statement with apology and solemn vow not to let Black July happen again, today those who have ideological issues with certain extremist Muslim political positions or even justifiable anxieties of intense identity assertion by that community are forced to first back-foot themselves, apologize on behalf of extremists and for violence they unleashed.  It’s post-Black July all over again, one might say. 

There is danger in silencing through vilification.  There is danger in taking the majority community out of the equation of identity politics. It will not affect those who are ideologically predisposed to vilify the Sinhalese and Buddhists, among them of course agents of destabilization located strategically in NGOs with fairytale names, adherents of other faiths operating under the cover of ‘secularization politics’ and thereby winning space for cultural erasure and other kinds of body blows that make control easier.  But it will impact the very same communities in whose name and in whose ‘defense’ this silencing is attempted. 

Today, no one talks about the critical role played by thugs who were part of the then ruling party’s trade union, the JSS in ‘Black July’.  There may very well come a ‘tomorrow’ when few remember the BBS and ‘Rev’ Gnanasara.  There is many a Black July waiting to happen. Theoretically there can be any number of ‘Nandikadaals’ too.  Between these, there’s only one thing possible: tragedy.  For all. 

 

See also: 

'Black July: Never Again!'

 Never again

Those other Black Julys

 

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Nostalgie04: An exhibition of heart

In August 2012, like in Augusts that came before, one man like many other men walked around Notre Dame.  Like other men before him he came, he saw and he took pictures.  We have no way of knowing if others saw Notre Dame and the life around the cathedral with similar eyes.  We don’t know if the photographers, forever strangers to one another, were moved by or to similar frames, enchanted by similar play of light and shade, or inspired by architecture, part architecture, sculpture, curve, fine lines and patterned elegance in similar ways.  

All we can tell is that in August 2012 an amateur photographer armed with the limited sophistication of what he described as a primitive, can-hold-in-the-palm, camera, took some picture.  All we know is that the photographer decided to share the what-my-eyes-saw that he captured. 

Kumar de Silva has shared his click-captures before.  This is the fourth such exhibition he has held.  Nostalgie04 is a trip around Notre Dame, literally and metaphorically.  He tells us that he wanted to capture the life around the cathedral.  Well, there’s certainly a lot of it, including birds, visitors and others who feed the feathered creatures, photographers photographing one another in preferred frames, notices of concerts and other signs of life naturally more fluid than the majestic edifice. 

This is Paris.  This is Notre Dame, Paris.  And yet, to Kumar, it is but a microcosm of ‘the world out there’.  True enough.  He could theoretically obtain a similar capture-set of any stand-out piece of architecture in Colombo or Anuradhapura or anywhere else for that matter.  The exhibition animates the architecture, inscribes movement upon the stone and adds to the human story narrated therein. 

It is all what Kumar saw or rather a set of 30 images which in his view give a representative slice of the subject.    What is particularly interesting is that by focusing on element rather than seeking a sweeping ‘overall’, the photographer animates the parts his gaze chose to dwell longer on and this ‘detailing’ enriches our several times removed visual dialogue with the Notre Dame.  That choice or rather the more memorable of what his eyes saw can be read as an exercise in animation.  It whets the appetite for more, more of Notre Dame naturally but more importantly more of the details. 

Kumar insists he is an amateur and moreover that he will remain as such.  The fact remains that the cold matt laminated exhibits, none of which were subjected to computer manipulation, makes one stop and ask question after question.  Perhaps that’s just this writer, whose knowledge of the visual and therefore the ability to assess visual-quality is as or more ‘ameteurish’ as Kumar claims his adventures with the camera have been. 

Kumar, deliberately ‘unhampered’ by the lack of sophisticated equipment, was moved to offer Sri Lankan audiences a flavor of that which caught his eye.  Talk to him about the exhibits and the photographer would give the who, what, where etc embedded in the image.  But if he exuded the agenda-free excitement of any young person delighted by achievement and opportunity to share an experience using an art form, Kumar was as emotional about the add-on associated with this particular version of ‘Nostalgie’.   

The artist has enough social capital acquired over many years to cover most of the expenses and obtain much publicity in the media, not just for Nostalgie04 but for what Kumar had turned it into.

“All proceeds from the sale of these limited edition photographs will be donated to one of my friends of Sri Lanka’s media fraternity - photographer Rukshan Abeywansha who has begun a long process of recovering in hospital after life-saving surgery to a ruptured spine following a motor accident. His total medical bill up to date has gone beyond Rs. three million, out of which his insurance would only pay a small fraction. All his friends have rallied together in an effort to help his family bring him back to normalcy.”

That was an inevitable tag to the notices he passed around.

Kumar of course was ‘hands-on’ during the exhibition and excited though he obviously would have been by offering it for public scrutiny, he was no less a happy schoolboy when he spoke of Rukshan.  It was almost has though he had forgotten why he had put together an exhibition in the first instance. 

Rukshan is our colleague and a dear friend to everyone in the larger Rivira family.  When Kumar heard what had happened, he was already in the thick of organizing the exhibition. He knew Rukshan because on one occasion Rukshan had accompanied someone who was interviewing Kumar for ‘The Nation’.  Rukshan, Kumar explained, was not well that day.  He had fever.  He need not have come, Kumar said for he had enough photographs with him to decorate the article anyway.  Kumar had not forgotten Rukshan’s commitment.  And so he, Kumar, decided to offer all proceeds from the exhibition to help Rukshan’s family pay various bills and repay various loans. 

‘Guess what, I sold such and such a number of photographs,’ he would text.  ‘I sold so many and so many people offered to make separate contributions for Rukshan,’ he said.  Experts on the subject of photography would offer the best assessment about Kumar’s eye.  We can talk of his heart.  Simply, Kumar de Silva has no clue about its dimensions.  He obviously does not recognize the fact that his heart has eyes; he saw, he recognized need and he saw to it that he would channel all his energies to ‘give what the heart feels’. 

What has all this got to do with the Notre Dame? Everything.  It is what allowed photographer to equalize gargoyle with apostle, inscribe egalitarian sentiment on human and bird, unite with fellow photographer, see in part the whole and make it as much a local experience as a view of the foreign.  That’s heart.   

Portrait of Kumar

Unnamed apostles and unnamable gargoyles

the elegant counterpointing

of grotesque and angelic

the twitter of the immovable

the stillness of the fluid

the swirl of moment among the seemingly timeless

the blush of the historicized

and brashness of the nondescript

passed over by chronicler

but who in anonymity and chance

offer everyday frills

so brick and marble can breathe

can speak, laugh and weep

the narratives of sculptor and faith

the Mephistophelean traps

of revelation and deceit

the clarities of the oblique

and the confusion of the smooth

the slanting by sun

the casting of doubt

the irreverence of assured orbits

and the interruption by human error

that other cathedralizing

in the gaze of a sansaric tourist

and as such

whose credentials

amateur or professional or bit of both

are unchecked

for reasons uncheckable.

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Is it too late for Arshcharya?

Leader of the Opposition Ranil Wickremesinghe has stated that if national unity is to be obtained then the primacy of the law has to be protected.  He has made the further point that the collapse of law and order has not only caused anxiety among Muslims and Tamils but has impacted everyone. 

He is correct.  While Wickremesinghe has taken pains to cite specific instances where the behavior of law enforcement authorities have been suspicious and even downright scandalous necessitating finger-pointing at political figures, fear and apprehension are not the preserve of the opposition or Tamils and Muslims.  There is a palpable lack of confidence among the general population about the efficacy and integrity of the entire legal edifice of the country, the judiciary and the police included.

There is a vast distance between politician and citizen with ruling party politicos holding sway over the police and, according to some, over judges too, to the point that ‘no one is above the law’ is a notion that would be laughed at.  If it weren’t worrisome, that is. 

There are countless instances where politicians have prevented police officers from doing their job.  Countless too are instances where police officers have happily deferred to the will of politicians.  Then there is highhandedness on the part of police officers.  Police brutality followed by intimidation that forbids proper investigation is another issue that goes into the ‘countless’ column.  Countless also are the number of times the Police Media Spokesman Ajith Rohana has had to twist and turn to defend police action and inaction.  He’s been the butt end of countless jokes.  But it’s not funny.  He’s just a fall guy for a system that could only be called ineffective if it were not corrupt. 

This state of affairs has served to exacerbate fears and anxieties, adding grist to the lie-mills of the most pernicious elements in the political firmament.  Interestingly, we have a situation where all communities place the blame on the police for rising unrest, anxiety, mistrust and violence.  However, as Wickremesinghe points out, it is not a communal issue alone; the breakdown of law and order affects everyone in multiple ways. 

Not only does it pose severe challenges on efforts to reconcile communities and obtain national unity, it compromises the smooth functioning of all institutions including businesses, government agencies and religious organization.  Indeed even the day-to-day of citizens going about their lives and their work are tinged with disconcert and unpredictability that speaks of an unhealthy social order, clearly a disappointing state of affairs in a country that was supposed to recover and flourish in the aftermath of putting behind a terrible three decades of death, despair, destruction and dismemberment.

Whatever the doomsday prophets may say, a country which boasts of more mobile connection than its population cannot be said to be suffering deprivations that make for an insurrectionary moment.  That aside, a polity which is adequately fed is not necessarily one that will suffer other shortcomings.  Where justice is a privilege and where that privilege is the preserve of the powerful, where power is linked to wealth and where relative wealth implies relative poverty, the underclass thus described (naturally the majority) will not exactly salute the state of affairs.  ‘State of affairs’ will necessarily be seen as the regime’s baby. 

Sloth, foot-dragging and tacit and open encouragement of all elements that metaphorically drop pants and show all to ‘the law’ in defiance, arrogance and outright ridicule, has brought about a situation where things are less compromised than they are outrageously out of control.  The question has to be asked, ‘does the government want to pull things back?’   There’s a second question, ‘can the government pull things back?’   Right now it looks as though rhetoric will not help and therefore ‘more of the same’ or worse is what the options for the regime have narrowed down to. 

If anyone can turn things around, it is President Rajapaksa.  If he does deliver on this, then indeed that much talked of and vilified word arshcharya or miracle would recover some respectability and thereby cover both president and regime with glory.  If not?  Well, the answer is single word that should sober one and all: scary. 

msenevira@gmail.com 

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The word ‘defense’ is confused

I am a noun.  Check your online dictionary and you’ll find that I am a useful noun.  Indeed, I am a necessary noun in these times of arrogance and aggression and not just originating from verbal (meaning ‘from verb’) quarters.  That’s always been the case, come to think of it.   But these are aggressive days of the missile kind.  In such a reality my worth naturally is enhanced.  It’s best to get a hang of who I am so let’s go with definitions.

Defense. The act of defending against attack, danger or injury.  A means or method of defending or protecting.  In sports it refers to the act or an instance of defending a championship against a challenger.   In law it is an argument in support or justification of something.  There’s a serious element to it too: It refers to the military, governmental, and industrial complex, especially as it authorizes and manages weaponry production. 

There is an antonym too.  Well, antonyms, really: harm, injury, capitulation, flight, hurt, betrayal, desertion and surrender.

I am a noun that is confused.  Here’s my confusion.  Just the other day some morons decided it was fun or expedient to harm some people.  The idiots were associated with the Palestinian organization called Hamas and the victims were citizens of Israel.  That set the ball rolling.  I was thrown this way and that, up and down. It’s been quite a rollercoaster ride since then.  Since then it’s all been about me.  The noun.  Defense. 

People have used my name like they never have before. Well, not really, for whenever someone wants to justify any kind of aggression they pick me as a kind of shield.  It’s the same with words like democracy, peace, justice and freedom.  Lots of crimes including those against humanity have been committed in our names.  But these days it’s all about me.  Defense. 

A man called Benjamin Netanyahu has, in my name, vowed to ‘do whatever is necessary’.  Now ‘whatever necessary’ is a codeword for unleashing anything from bullet to chemical weapons, noxious and poisonous gases and even the atom bomb, history is full of examples.  Netanyahu’s pals in Washington have more or less endorsed the man’s position.  Again in my name.  Defense.

Now for my confusion.  In my name things have been done that harmful and injurious.  People have been killed in my name.  The death count has passed 200 I heard.  That’s ‘defense’?  That’s me?  I can’t recognize myself in the mirror, sorry in the text voice-cut transcripts, any more.  Who am I?

Then, if that weren’t enough, outfits people by those who make their living peddling peace, justice, freedom, rights and such, people who abhor and cry and scream against violence, injury, conflict etc., are to be brought under an authority set up in my name.  A ministry in fact.  The Ministry of Defense.  Not in Israel, but here in Sri Lanka. 

Is that to defend those valiant and ‘blameless’ people from the horrors of this world?  Or is it to defend the ministry and whatever it stands for FROM those same people? Is it something that’s neither or something that is made of bits of both?  Whatever it is, I am confused.  I am defense.  I feel defenseless.   

*All this in a parallel universe

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Chitrasena's Gift: to be preserved and nurtured to perfection

A giant did not fall on the 18^th of July, 2005.  A giant went his way, left stage as gracefully as he always had, left a signature as formidable in its absence as in its presence.  That was Chitrasena; Deshamanya Chitrasena, the honorific probably not one which he would care much for today if he were a live considering the kind of people it has been conferred upon.  

Nine years is a short period in the time-scales of tradition, but glitter and frill, the subterfuge of costume and other trappings readily available for the camouflaging of sloth and mediocrity has certainly done its destructive work.  This is a world of short cuts and get-by-as-we-cans.  Chitrasena probably saw it coming, but like all true students of art forms to that which he held sacrosanct he was devoted and so too the more gifted of his students, ‘gifted’ not only in the exercise but in the ability to comprehend the sacred embedded in the art. 

Not many among those present today would have heard of Maurice Dias Amaratunga.  Some still know the name Chitrasena.   Few, though.  He was described as follows a short while before he died: ‘Chitrasena was the teacher of teachers. The guru of Arjuna of the Mahabharatha; in fact one of Chitrasena’s most memorable performances was of Arjuna; a great teacher who use(d) a variety of languages, all of them, where appropriate, subsumed in dance.’ 

Chitrasena as Othello

In the end, however, an artist’s remains, if any, are not found only in territories of recall but in traditions preserved, ethics endorsed and fidelity to the notion of seeking perfection.  That’s what the Chitrasena Vajira Dance Foundation is all about; a commitment to elevate Sri Lankan traditional dance to a globally recognized classical art form.  And like all projects of that nature endowed with sobriety, the current custodians so to speak of the Chitrasena legacy are focused on the fundamentals, work, hard work, practice, practice, practice and an endless pursuit of greater refinement in step and movement. 

Today there are some 350-400 students attending classes at the appropriately quaint kalayathanaya on the corner of Park Road and Elvitigala Mawatha, Monday through Saturday.  The classes begin at 9 in the morning and end at 6 in the evening except when there’s a performance in line, in which case time is not a factor. 

Upekha, Chitrasena’s daughter, and Janaki, his daughter-in-law, who spoke with The Nation have no illusions about young students staying on and on and on until they are possessed by the dance to a point it becomes part of their everyday.  Typically, children or rather their parents try out this and that at that age.  Some stay, some move to other ‘interests’.  While they are here, though, they have fun and they interact with children from all kinds of social, cultural and religious backgrounds. 

Then there are students who are at the O/L and A/L stages in their formal education.  At school they learn a lot of theory but for obvious reasons cannot spend as much time on ‘practicals’.   

On the other hand, there are about 15-18 students who are different in terms of life goals, dance goals and the commitment of time, resources and energy.  They are all scholarship holders, courtesy HSBC.  The majority of them are university students.  It is a continuation of a tradition in a sense for the great guru also had students he didn’t charge.  He could not give them an allowance. Times have changed, but to the credit of the current custodians of his legacy, these students, many of whom are from places far away from Colombo, do not have to worry about food and other expenses. 

‘It is about performance and it is about teaching,’ Janaki said.  When Chitrasena was in his prime there weren’t many dance troupes, but they started mushrooming in the eighties, she said.  Quantity in these things has an inverse relationship with quality, it seems.  The Foundation will not take short cuts, though.  This is why they want to focus on both performance and teaching.  The objective is to develop a critical mass of accomplished dancers and a set of teachers who can pass on the knowledge from one generation to the next.  All this is captured in the twin notions ‘Gift of Dance’ and ‘Preserve the Dance’, the former being the scholarship program mentioned above and the latter a program to ensure that professional dancers and teacher are assured of a decent livelihood.

To this end, they plan to develop the Centre.  The Master Plan, once implemented, would see better facilities including rehearsal rooms, a mini theater and hostels.

It is no easy task and yet, watching the family, the students and teachers go about their work, it seems that these goals do not weigh any of them down, not the matriarch, Vajira, not Upekha or the obvious heiress apparent to the legacy, Thaji. 

It is almost fashionable to say at the passing of great personalities that there will not come such another.  The stature of Chitrasena is such that few would find fault with that kind of prediction.  Indeed, this is perhaps why they have not even toyed with the idea of performing Karadiya.  There was Vajira and then Upekha and now her niece Thaji to do just to the female portrayal, but both Upekha and Janaki freely admit that they are still struggling to develop a strong male character.  They have no doubt of course about the abundance of dancing talent.  It’s the commitment over which there are question marks. 

No one can tell when another Chitrasena will grace this earth.  But it is the nature of reincarnations to seek fertile birthing ground.  The Chitrasena Vajira Dance Foundation is putting things in place.  The rhythm, grace of movement and ambience certainly make a habitable home for such a resurrection.  In time, as value accrues to the gift of dance and when dance itself is preserved to a point that it cannot be robbed of divine grace, there will be a rebirthing of excellence, one feels.  Others, the slothful and mediocre included, will naturally profit.     

msenevira@gmail.com

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The ‘inability’ and ‘ability’ elements of sharing

Twenty years ago, while a student in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I received a letter from a friend in Ampara. He wanted to buy a ‘Landmaster’, a hand-tractor.  He had some money but was short of some Rs.20,000.  This friend was a batchmate at Peradeniya. He wanted to buy this for his younger brother, Kumara.  The oldest in the family was a teacher and the youngest in the Police.  Kumara worked the family fields.  I will never forget the last line in the letter: ‘meka nayak nemei; mage nohekiyaava saha umbe hekiyaava padanam karagena karana illeemak’ (this is not a loan, but a request based on my inability and your ability).  The financial aid package I received from the university I was attending allowed me to save quite a bit of money. I sent the cheque.

It was not a ‘giving’ but a sharing, for I had received so many things from my friend and his family both in the university and whenever I visited their home in Ampara.  ‘Sharing’ can be learnt. It is also in our blood, I feel.  This morning I received an email from a retired senior Police officer, Gamini Gunawardane, Gamini Maama to me, for he was, like his wife Sushila, a contemporary of my parents at Peradeniya in the late fifties.    

This is what he wrote, in paraphrase: ‘Until consumerism consumed us, our style of life was one of sharing. Looking back, at life at our flat in Cambridge, that is what we did with all of you around. Of late, people only enjoy themselves, all by themselves to the exclusion of others. They have no time for the earlier pursuits; instead intent on grabbing everything for themselves and themselves alone. On the contrary, the beauty and richness of our - Eastern - Buddhist - life was in sharing, something that the GDP cannot capture. Sharing happines and sorrow for example; the old village funeral house arrangement etc., the present 'Maranadhara Samithiya' which is supposed to be one of the unique NGOs in the world.’

I remember the summer and the semester spent with them in a small flat in Peabody Terrace.  I shared a room with their son, Kosiya.  Free of charge.  There wasn’t a single moment when I felt I was a boarder. They treated me like a son and their son treated me like an older brother.  Like all sons I did rub these lovely people the wrong way now and then. Like all parents they admonished me.  Like most parents, love and caring followed the awkward moment.  Thanks to them, I saved about US$ 4,000 in those few months.  It was about their ‘hekiyaava’ (ability), yes, but not about my ‘nohekiyaava’ (inability). These things did not matter. 

It was nothing for me to give away all that I had saved thanks to the love and hospitality of the Gunawardane family.  There were several ability-inability requests made even though they were not articulated as such.  There was very little take-home money at the time I graduated. After buying a bottle of whisky and a carton of cigarettes for my father, a bottle of perfume for my late mother, some t-shirts for my brother and my closest friends, I had 12 dollars left.   A friend at Peradeniya seeing the 10 dollar note asked its rupee equivalent. ‘Eight hundred,’ I remember saying.  He kept it.  I don’t know what happened to the last two dollars.

All this is nothing compared to the sharing that has been and still is part and parcel of our lives.  There’s logic behind the saying ‘magulatai maranayatai neththam vedak nehe’ (What’s the point of a person if he is not present at a wedding or a funeral?).  We come together to rejoice, we come together to commiserate in times of grief.  Sri Lanka recovered from the devastating tsunami in record time. The first lorry-loads of relief items were sent to the North and East. By ordinary people. The largesse cut across class, caste, religious affiliation, political ideology, region, age etc. 

And it is not just in moments of calamity that the ethic of sharing turns up with hand raised. Deep down I believe that we acknowledge the superior worth of the collective (over the individual).  We are not saints, not arahats, true.  We are cruel and careless, true. And yet, there are acts of kindness and empathy that are hard to explain. All the time.  There is a term that I am convinced rests on all our lips, ‘aney pau’ (untranslatable).  That’s not about ‘self’ but a recognition of self as part of collective and understanding of associated responsibilities. 

Yes, as Ranbanda Seneviratne once said, there was a time when 50 people would gather upon seeing the carcass of a dog, a time that gave way to not a dog being bothered by the death of 50 people. There are times like that, especially when body-burning by the roadside is a common sight.  It is a tribute to the strength of our value system that we recovered from those terrible times without losing our humanity.  Our sense of the collective. Our sense of one another.  Despite consumerist drives. 

We feel terrible if we are unable to attend a wedding and don’t forgive ourselves or try to make up somehow if we miss a funeral.  This is a country that turns into a dansala (giving-shop?) twice every year (Vesak and Poson) and where neighbours share sweetmeats among each other on festival days regardless of whether or not that particular day is celebrated by recipient.  We are a nation that has not abandoned yet the idea of come-together.  We still know about hekiyaava and nohekiyaava and that these are common to all of us, one way or another.  We do what needs to be done when something needs to be done.  We have ample reason to hope.  

msenevira@gmail.com

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Mahela's timely retirement and other tidbits

Mahela's decision

Mahela Jayawardena has announced his retirement from Test Cricket.  Good.  He's realized he has reached his peak and is on the way out anyway.  Best time to go.  Like Murali did. Like Sanath did not.  Now if only everyone knew how to pick that moment to say 'This is it, I am done, thanks for the good times, bye-bye!'  Sarath Fonseka had a good thing.  He blew it. Mahinda Rajapaksa...well, some would say he's had his ups and downs and perhaps has already had his last 'up'.  Ranil?  Did he ever peak?  Anyway, thanks Mahela for all the great moments.  

NGO Security

All Non Governmental Organizations are to come under the Ministry of Defence, we are told.  This could mean one of two things.  One, many NGOs are paying the price for the crimes of a few NGOs whose track records indicate that they were and/or are a threat to national security. There could be a difference reason for this decision.  Maybe the Government believes that NGOs NEED security.  Maybe this is because there are some NGO personalities who can't stop whining about their lives being under threat.  If this is the case, these NGOs should applaud this move.  Now, if something goes wrong, if some NGO activist is insulted, assaulted, abducted or killed, the blame will fall squarely on the defence establishment.  Maybe that's the silver lining to this move which some have described as being 'black' and 'ominous'.  Hardly discernible of course, but a line surely and silver-colored too!

Mental disorders and teaching disorders

It is reported that over 250 teachers in the Eastern Province are suffering from mental disorders and that the authorities don't know what to do with them.  The authorities can be forgiven.  After all they are not physicians and treating illnesses is not their job.  On the other hand what are the authorities doing about the thousands of teachers in and out of the Eastern Province who are suffering from 'teaching disorders', i.e. who don't do a stroke of work in class and/or are totally incompetent and therefore unable to offer proper instruction?

  

Sachithra's degrees

Sachithra Senanayake exceeds 43 degrees, the headline of a news story blared out.  Wow!  Even Mervin Silva (Dr) has just one.  But 43 degrees?  Where did he have the time to collect them?  It would be tall order to imagine Sachithra with a single 'degree cap but impossible to think of him wearing 43?!  Now we hear that he wants to bring it down to less than 15 degrees.  Good on him.  When will Mervin follow suit?

What the Govt can do, the NGOs can do better!

The Government of Sri Lanka has called upon the concerned parties to exercise utmost restraint in a bid to halt the violence and ensure a climate conducive to the recommencement of negotiations for a lasting solution to the conflict in Gaza.  The Government certain took its own cool time to issue this call, but then again the Govt was also slow in calling people to 'exercise utmost restraint' when 'Alutgama' happened.  On the other hand, sections of the NGO community that's so big on reconciliation and conflict resolution, and which operates much like voice-cut advocacy artists could have been prompt in response. Didn't happen.  

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