Who brought the elephant into the room and who will remove it?

Elephants are majestic creatures.  They are also beasts of burden.  They give stature to pageants.  Those who have tusks are especially valuable to the point that they are hunted, killed and divested of their prized ‘possessions’.   They also enhance status of owners.  Elephants are sought then for a variety of reasons.  There are therefore laws about acquisition.  Whether these are adequate is a moot point.  What is clear is that enforcement is a joke.  What’s worse is that there are sinister forces which deliberately and systematically subvert enforcement. 

We are talking here about the case of the illegal capture of elephants.  This is an issue that has been in the news for quite some time.  It is not just a matter of one status-seeking ruffian ferreting away a baby elephant, coming up with all kinds of excuses when found out and then working the system with whatever oil works to give slip to the law.  We are talking about an entire set of rogues working in concert.  We are talking of a system that is tailor made for theft.  We are talking also of a culture that encourages wrongdoing, trips those who would dare, by way of carrying out duties, subvert such machinations. 

The allegations are serious enough.  Environmentalists have complained that forged documents have been submitted to support applications to register calf-elephants.   An audit query carried out by the Auditor General’s Department has revealed that this allegation is correct and that the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance and the Public Property Act have been violated. A single permit (No 229) has been issued for two elephants (one male, one female).  Four other permits (Nos 331, 334, 358 and 359) have been issued by the Department of Wildlife Conservation although the stated information does not tally with the size of the animals.  In the case of Permit No 331, the elephant for which the permit was sought is a male although the application indicates it is a female.  Permits 226 and 338 contain forged signatures of former DWLC Director General, Chandrawansha Pathiraja. 

The hanky-panky with respect to registration has been well documented.  Officials are yet to respond adequately to allegations. It would have been disturbing enough if relevant authorities had taken refuge in the ostrich option.  What we see, however, is active collusion by authorities.  In one case, for example, a magistrate is implicated over improper registration.  The owner of the Hambantota Bird Park Ajith Gallage as well as the now suspended Wildlife Officer and Flying Squad chief (no less!) have been identified among those involved in forging documents to obtain licenses for elephants captured illegally from the wild.

What is most disturbing about the current situation is the sudden and inexplicable transfer of a key official involved in the investigation.  Deputy Auditor General A. H. M. L. Ambanwela, previously in charge of the DWLC, Forest Department and Central Environment Authority (CEA) sections was transferred to the Labour and Sport section.  Ambanwela, coincidentally was the person who compiled the audit query.  His transfer is nothing less, at least in appearance, than throwing a spanner in the wheels of a process that would clearly have embarrassed a lot of important people.  The Auditor General has not covered himself in glory here.  Indeed it appears that either he himself is implicated or he does not have the integrity to defend the honor of the institution he heads in the face of political pressure.

This is not the first time that Ambanwela has been in the news.  When he was working on an audit of procurement in the Central Province he was subjected to an acid attack.  He is a man who has suffered and has borne his suffering without a flinch, clearly a man of integrity who takes his job seriously.  His track record is unblemished.   His new post, not surprisingly, carries little responsibility. A officer of his caliber and experience, one would imagine, would have been ideal to oversee areas such as the  ETF, an entity that had been rocked by scandal after scandal. 

The problem here is that Lalith Ambanwela being sidelined from the case is not a random, one-off affair. It is one of what has come to become routine whenever any official or politician comes under investigation.  Lalith Ambalwela had acid thrown on his face.  A key witness in the case involving a politician forcing a school teacher to get on her knees was found dead inside a well recently.  Police officers who crossed the path of politicians, big and small, have been transferred by the dozen. 

It is clear that rules and regulations, law and order, are not worth much in this country.  When a country reaches a point where honest officials with skill and a strong sense of integrity are deliberately sidelined or are subjected to threat, intimidation and attack, when a country comes to a point where the institutional apparatus does not function or is replaced by informal arrangements where political interference is what counts, it can be described as anarchic. 

Lalith Ambanwela is not the only official who takes his job seriously.  There are countless others in the public service.  He is not the only such official who has been given the short end of the stick.  That’s what is most bothersome.  When such people are attacked, a strong message is given to all.  Those who are faint of heart will fold up immediately.  Over time a culture is produced; a culture of complacency, of looking askance and of doing-as-told-and-shutting-up.  In such a situation people like Ambanwela are quickly dismissed as mavericks and offloaded.  Or worse, one must add, considering what he has already had to suffer. 

What does all this tell us of the overall picture?  The Government is clearly not clueless or spineless.  In fact it is showing remarkable clarity and spunk.  It is in in-your-face mode.  It is doing the dirty and asking ‘so what?’  In short the entire institutional apparatus has collapsed.  Fresh paint on façade cannot fool everyone.  The ‘dirty’ of the inside is, after all, seen by all and all the time too, whether it is in a police station, in a crime scene or a traffic accident involving VIPs. 

There are two things one might do well to remember.  If the boss is up to no good, it  amounts to a license for everyone under him or her to likewise indulge in wrongdoing.  Secondly, if anyone in any institution is up to mischief, the chances are that those above are either up to mischief themselves or else incompetent and/or powerless to put a stop to it.  There’s a huge elephant in the room.  It is a wild elephant.  It is not the kind of creature that is the kathaanaayaka or protagonist of this story.  It has a name. Corruption.  It has been brought in by the powerful.  It is on a rampage. 

  

Read more

Memories of 'Mihira' and days when life was so much sweeter

The cover page of the maiden copy of 'Mihiri'

Some years ago someone made a suggestion: ‘write about your first love’.  That’s a hard one.  It’s not because writing about love or lovers is difficult.  It’s the ‘first’ part that’s difficult to figure out.  I concluded around that time that the ‘last love’ is also the first.  But I responded to the request. I wrote about my favorite Montessori teacher. 

But there’s love and love.  People and things.  We use the term love loosely and therefore we are always in love with a multiplicity – people, places, things.  Looking back now if there was one relationship that shaped thinking, feeling, life and living from the early days of exploration, it is the mihira paththare. 

‘Mihira’, literally ‘sweetness’, was a weekly newspaper for children.  Mihira celebrated its 50^th anniversary a week ago.  We (i.e. Mihira and I) are roughly of the same age.  There’s a difference though.  I grew up with Mihira but Mihira remained a child.  I lost childhood and child, Mihira didn’t.  It took me decades to understand the wisdom of not growing up and it’s quite a struggle to recover child once that happens, but Mihira didn’t have that problem.  Mihira was allowed to be a child.  Indeed Mihira was not required to ‘grow up’.  No one said ‘It’s time you grew up!’  No one said ‘Grow up and be a man (or woman)’. 

Mihira was not a best friend or rather was never seen as ‘friend’.  However, while ‘best friends’ came and went, Mihira stayed.  Didn’t utter a single word but communicated so much.  Mihira educated me, showed me places I’ve never visited, introduced me to people I had never met and most importantly, entertained me in ways that no adult could.

'Mihira' at 50

It all happened in the early 70s.  I would have been 6 or 7.  It is hard to pin down the true ‘age’ of that kind of newspaper.  At times Mihira seemed to be about 5 years old, at times 12 or 13 and sometimes even older.  Mihira came to me during holidays.  ‘Holidays’ back then was synonymous with ‘Kurunegala’ and my maternal grandparents’ house.  

My grandfather bought the ‘Daily News’ and ‘Observer’.  He was old and his eyesight was poor.  He would get one of his grandchildren to read out the headlines.  If anything sounded interesting it would have to be read out in full.  Once he was through, we got the chance to read what we liked.  The only thing that really interested me was sports.  Sure, I was intrigued, I remember about the Arab-Israel conflict and I remember reading about ‘Munich’.  There were other things too, but nothing like sports.  Anyway, this is how mornings went.  Slow.  Not drudgery by any means, but not too exciting either.  Once that was done, it was the outdoors with a break for lunch until nightfall. 

Mondays were different.  I was conscious of Mondays.  Monday was Mihira Day.  I am not sure if my siblings were as conscious, but I remember watching out for the newspaper delivery man on Mondays.  I wanted the first read.  The first Monday of January was special.  Mihira came with a beautifully decorated school time table.  It was all about who remembered.  Some years, I won and in others my brother did. 

But Mihira was more than all that.  It was about the fascinating cartoon story, Boo Baba Saha Thulsi.  Mihira gave us Batakolaachchi. There was also the crossword puzzle.  Then there were the features.  I’ve never seen schools being featured as comprehensively.  I got to read about events and personalities.  Places and place names were dissected in wonderful ways. 

Someone described Mihira thus: apita kiyavana pissuwa purudu karapu paththare (the newspaper that got us started on this insanity that is reading).  Perfect description.  After encountering Mihira, few would not be fascinated about words, phrases and stories.  It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair, one might say. 

My friend Nilooka Dissanayake said that she used to wait for the newspaper man and used to hum to herself something like the following: ‘pera davase mawetha gena mihira hetath gena aa yuthu ve’ (the mihira that came to me on an earlier day must come to me tomorrow as well).  Again, perfect.

Mihira was a friend. A teacher too. A loku aiya. A memory cherished by so many across several generations that I am persuaded to believe that if there is a community of readers in this country, a collective that loves stories, a group that writes, they are ‘one’ because they all lived in a fascinating world made especially for them by a single newspaper.  Mihira.  If success in life is about recovering innocence and if innocence-recovery is about rediscovering childhood, then all we need to do is revisit our individual Mihira-days.  We are lucky.   

M.S.

Read more

Resurrect the General Practitioner!

If you have a persistent headache you might rub some medicinal oil on your head or take a Paracetamol tablet.  If you have aches and pains, there’s peyava, there’s koththamalli with some venivelgeta or Siddhalepa.  Even a cat medicates itself, chewing on kuppameniya when feeling out of sorts.  A little boy trips and bruises his knee and his friends will administer first aid for example in the form of grating a kurumbettiya on a rough surface and packing the pulp on the wound.  It is when the ‘bad feeling’ persists that people think of a vedamahattaya or physician in general, although in these dengue-scare days worried parents rush their fever-ridden children to hospital (after making them take a blood test of course). 

Now there’s nothing wrong in self-diagnosis when it comes to slight temperature, a bout of sneezing or body-aches after a hard day’s work.  Nothing wrong in self-administering some goda vedakam such as coriander, samahan, jeevani or Siddhalepa.  The danger lies when non-specialists either diagnose or prescribe or do both in the case of serious illnesses.  In a world where even the best medical practitioners (like those in other professions) err, it would be downright silly for a layman to believe he can do as good a job as a physician.  Sadly, that’s what a lot of people do.

There was a time when patients knew that doctors knew better.  They were not presumptuous.  They did not self-diagnose. They waited their turn and when they were called they described ailment to the best of their ability, answered questions, let the doctor conduct his or her own rudimentary tests, conclude and prescribe a course of treatment.  If the doctor felt that a condition was serious to warrant examination by a person who specializes in the particular area the patient would be referred to a relevant specialist.  That was what a GP or General Practitioner did.

Today, however, except in areas so remote that the first ‘port of call’ was the local physician, patients have taken over some of the critical functions of the GP.  They decide first that they are so seriously ill that they need to see a specialist.  In other words they presume that they, more than anyone else including a GP have a better idea about what’s wrong with them or which part of the body needs specialist attention.  So they ask around.  They do their own referrals. 

It is of course good business for ‘clinics’, consultancy centers and private hospitals, but all things considered it is an unnecessary cost produced by arrogance and ignorance on the part of patients (or their loved ones).   

What is forgotten or rather what patients have ‘learned’ to forget is the role of the GP.  The GP provides person-centered, continuing, comprehensive and coordinated whole-person healthcare to individuals and families in particular communities.  It is in recognition of all this that GPs are called ‘family doctors’. 

The GP is an integral and central component of an effective healthcare system in a country.  The GP is cognizant of a patient’s needs, values and desired health outcomes and these are central to evaluations carried out.  Long term relationships with patients are critical to understanding and trust.  A continuing doctor-patient relationship has a positive impact on wellbeing and resilience.  Take that out, or rather replace it with what is essentially and ridiculously a self-assessment element, and you deny yourself all the benefits freely available (in Sri Lanka as of now) that make for better health. 

Most importantly, a GP is endowed with high level diagnostic and therapeutic skills.  Deny yourself that and you pay for it (with considerable interest) when health falls apart.  All you have to remember is that a GP will yield a referral if and only if it is necessary for specialized treatment.  A specialist, in turn, will treat a GP’s referral with the sobriety it deserves.  Sure, he or she will treat you if consulted but might very well prescribe exactly what the GP would have (counting out of course the compulsion to over-prescribe the unnecessary for monetary rewards from the pharmaceutical industry). 

Today, in Sri Lanka, there is no regulation over referrals.  The GP has been effectively axed from the process and exists more as default option than as integral component of an effective healthcare system.  Those responsible ought to seriously consider re-installing the General Practitioner in his/her true role as far as patients are concerned: first stop this side of medical emergencies.  

Read more

Rearranging prejudices

William James once said that a great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.  That’s a quote sent by my quote-provider, the late Errol Alphonso.  I think James was being ungracious.  The thinking comes first, the rearranging later.  Once you’ve decided to rearrange prejudices, the only thinking required pertains to modality.  Such people might want you to believe they are in a thinking process; the truth though is that they’ve finished with thinking.  

The past few weeks I’ve been reflecting on the fact that people change.  They switch loyalties.  They fall in and out of love and in love again.  The truths they believe in are junked and replaced with other truths. Nothing wrong in any of these things.  It happens all the time. It is done all the time.  You can believe something to be correct based on what you know.  Tomorrow you might unearth some information that shatters your assumptions.  The conclusions, naturally, collapse.  You have to build a new edifice of ‘truth’.

In some instances such processes are marked by absolute honesty and integrity.  You can, for example, conclude something based on incomplete information and flawed analysis.  Additional facts can subsequently emerge.  The new information can be processed in less erroneous ways.  The result is a different set of conclusions.  One can be but is not required to be humble about error and explain the logic of the new stand one takes, except of course when the intervening ‘factor’ has nothing to do with truth, additional information and superior analysis but the factoring of unadulterated self-interest. 

When self-interest overrides all else, the first casualty is truth.  Self-justification requires a quick and seamless burial of truth, along with other casualties such as integrity, principles, values etc.  No one is perfect. I like to think that among those who err in favour of self-interest the best are those who are upfront about it.  ‘I did it for the money’ such a person might say, for example.  Now that’s ‘redeeming’ in my book. 

Next there are those who have rearranged their prejudices but out of embarrassment, don’t talk about it.  They too are sufferable.  One notes patterns of course; they move out of old circles and inhabit new ones, adopt behaviour patterns appropriate to the now preferred prejudices, even if they don’t exactly wave the flag of the club they have obtained membership from.  They’ve made a choice.  That’s ok.  We all do.  They can’t really defend this choice given statements they’ve made earlier. That’s ok too. In the very least they don’t embarrass themselves nor insult others by trying to paint self-interest as sudden revelations that require loyalty-shift in order to further some collective interest. 

There are no laws against having prejudices or changing them.  One can say there are ethics pertaining to these things but then again these are seldom powerful enough to impose limiting clauses.  We have to accept the reality that while it can be hard to forgive someone else, there’s nothing easier than forgiving ourselves.  Fooling others is difficult but self-delusion is the easiest thing on earth.  Especially in public.  Once you are at home, in bed for example, right and wrong come to interrogate, haunt and torture. Out there in ‘society’, one has to act virtuous.  And, as is always the case when it comes to acting, you’ve got to get inside the part, you have to rehearse ‘virtuous’ at least in appearance since in substance you cannot (just like on stage; you are no prince, but you have to look and act ‘prince’ in Hamlet). 

None of this should bother anyone except when such prejudice-shifts impact others, a whole lot of others.  It is not about someone falling in love, deciding that the object of love was not what he/she appeared to be at first, falling out of love consequently and falling in love (with someone else) thereafter.  Such prejudice-change is understandable, common and eminently defensible on all counts. Then again, there are situations, where people assert certain positions, realize that the costs of assertion outweigh benefit (to self that is, and not society) and rearrange parameters to effect location-change.  In other words, move to a more comfortable and comforting place. 

When the issue is public or refers to a larger collective than say ‘circle of friends’ or a love-situation, then others need to be wary. They need to keep watch. They need to note argument-shift, the dropping of names, the failure to mention certain things and the inexplicable negligence of pertinent fact. When prejudices promote certain policies over others, push for certain outcomes over others, the privileging of particular social class over other etc., their shifting/rearrangement need to be viewed soberly. It’s not like lover-changing. 

The interesting thing is that in appearance, the two sets of procedure (lover-change and policy-preference shift) are similar.  There’s the classic and time-tested method of avoiding eye contact, obtained best by absenting oneself from the object that is sought to be avoided.  If, on the other hand, you can’t be avoided, then one can discern a certain dodgy-element in eye and conduct.  If you manage to button-hole the person, a lot of babbling results, typically with a slew of big words no one understands, a lot of technicalities and verbal somersaults. 

Once it is established that prejudices have been rearranged, it is easy to operate. You have to know when and where you can get played out and identifying the player is the first step in minimizing negative fallout.  The more important thing is to identify the shifter early.  You have to read the signs.  You can tell, generally, when your lover is on his/her way out of your life or when he/she is pushing you out of heart and life.  Think about it. The signs are not too different.  Avoidance.  Blaming. Justification of that which is unthinkable.  Shift in hangout-choice.  Shift in vocabulary. Facial expressions.  Degree of comfort in different kinds of company.  Difference in preferred distance. 

When people rearrange their prejudices, contrary to what William James said, they don’t think they are thinking, they WANT us to believe that they are in ‘thinking mode’.   When others rearrange prejudices, we need to take note. We need to think.

msenevira@gmail.com

Read more

The White House is a torture chamber!

A torture chamber called ‘The White House’

No, don’t get us wrong, no one is getting ‘rendered’ in the White House, no fingernails are being pulled out, no ‘water treatment’, no truncheons in the anus and such.  But someone does get tortured there all the time.  Right now it’s a man called Barack Obama.  He tortures himself (self-flagellation, we believe it is called).  The man doesn’t know what to say, can’t defend himself and his words, slick though they are, indicate moral confusion. 

Obama says ‘We tortured some folks’.  That must be again some convention the USA is signatory to, but he doesn’t seem to mind.  He says ‘We did some things that were contrary to our values’.  He doesn’t know that the word ‘values’ has no meaning in US foreign policy, except to the extent it is associated with ‘profit’.  He says it may have been due to the pressure felt by people responsible for national security. 

Let’s break it down for Barack.  It’s ok to compromise values and torture people if the torturers are pressured to secure the nation.  Get it?  That’s a blank check folks. 

Back in 2009, Barack speaking on the subject Barack said ‘I want to look forward, not backword’.  That’s another Double-O deal: license to kill.  The moment after the fact of torture, assassination, drone-attack, the fact begins to gather a dust called ‘Past Tense’.  You can look to the future from that point on. 

Obama might have made a good James Bond if only he divested himself of his liberal pretensions. 

Upul Jayasuriya’s ‘followers’

President of the Bar Association Upul Jayasuriya is being followed.  That’s serious folks; not because he’s Upul Jayasuriya or the President of the Bar Association, but a citizen of this country.  No one should have to look over his or her shoulder.  If anyone has to then it indicates a serious flaw in the law and order apparatus of the country.  Jayasuriya’s political affiliations are known.  His antipathies are no secret.   If he’s being hounded for these reasons it’s indicative of a jittery regime.  

That said, it is not inappropriate to comment on followers and following.  Jayasuriya has a following; after all there are lots of lawyers in this country.  Jayasuriya also follows.  His outfit gets oodles of dollars from a foreign country.  In the name of ‘development’ of course. Developing what, we do not know.  So is he a pawn?  And if he IS a pawn then what’s the point following him?  What it means is that his flock is being taken for a jolly good ride.  Also, his detractors are clearly after the wrong guy.   

Managing climate change

That’s the new NGO buzz term: climate change.  It’s all about man and nature. It’s about violence unleashed on the natural world by the human species.  Now we are told that the private sector is going to be a key player in remedying the situation.  That’s rich (pardon the pun!).  The ‘Private Sector’ (read, ‘capitalists’) destroyed and continues to destroy the environment in pursuit of profit.  And now they are set to make another killing.  All in the name of managing climate change.  Some people are laughing all the way to the bank, we are told.

India’s love and hate for DRS

Jadeja and Anderson had a spat during a cricket match.  Jadeja was fined, Anderson was not.  That’s the black and white of the new world order or, if you want to call it that, ‘The Big 3 Dominated ICC’.  Nothing ‘new’ about it, one might say.  Anyway, India objected.  The fine was withdrawn.  Anderson benefited from the fact that the ‘action’ was not caught on camera.  India is now whining about the absence of cameras.  Hold on, hold on! Isn’t this the same country that stands in the way of universal application of the DRS system?  Well, you can’t have it both ways, can you M.S. Dhoni?  Sure, this is not about a grassed ‘catch’ or a tight decision over a runout appeal, but still it’s the same principle.  Something happened, you want to know the ‘details’ and you refer footage.   

So what now, Dhoni?  A review of India’s stance on the Decision Review System? 

Jayalalithaa’s love letters

Jayalalithaa is mad that there was a reference to her sending love letters to Narendra Modi.  One can take issue with the MoD for publishing such commentary, but satire is not illegal.  Politicians are caricatured.  They are grist for the cartoonist’s mill.  Part of the deal. Goes with the territory.  If that was objectionable and warrants legal action then Jayalalithaa, given her obsessions and penchant for putting both feet in her mouth would have nothing else to do apart from litigating.  She might as well set up a party office next to whatever court she prefers to file action in. 

But what’s most interesting about this affair is that ‘love’ is a bad word.  The woman is consumed by hatred.  It’s hard to imagine Jayalalithaa being in love (forget writing ‘love letters’) with anyone or anything.  Except of course with hate.   ‘Jayalalithaa in love with hate’.  Wonderful headline, eh?

Read more

A kiss awaits you on page 223

People have up-days and down-days.  There are good times and bad times. Right places and wrong times, wrong times to be at the right place.  The world is made of mismatches, one might argue.  Anomalies.  Chasms that prohibit bridging, bridges that help your go from nowhere to nowhere. Saviours who are forced to wear devil-dress and of course the satanic that comes decked as messiah.  Liberators who deny freedom and tyrannies that build the solid foundation from which movements seeking freedoms of greater magnitude can be launched. 

The truth doesn’t come like sunlight or monsoon-ending rain. It does not in the manner of bee and butterfly flit from flower to flower engendering life and dream.  It is made also of scream and abandonment, choice-absence and wrong-pick, the safe-bet that tripped and the random shot in the dark that found its mark. 

There are times I really don’t know what is what, times when I wish that things retained their original names. And functions, I should add.  It is not that I don’t like ‘time’ to be defined in terms of the last sighting of the beloved, the distance to the last shared moment of bliss etc.  Metaphoring I’ve found has its down side.  When we think that road is journey and journey road, we sometimes end up thoroughly immobilized.  When we talk we stop seeing gap between letters and refuse to acknowledge the virtues of healthy conviviality between words, between sentences and among human beings.  

Cacophony drowns our hearts.  So we rely on the poorer logic of mind.  We cut and paste. Compare and contrast. Weigh and weigh.  We cost-benefit.   There are days of exhilaration of course, I do not doubt.  There are down-days too; days made of ‘impossible’ screaming ‘give in, give in’ or whispering with a sneer, ‘give up, give up!’ 

On such days we turn to what we believe are the wise words of wise people, we clasp hands in prayer. We put our baggage down, close our eyes to meditate (and find, when we open them, that someone has stolen all our suitcases.  We should laugh out loud at such times and proclaim to the world in soft conviction the good news of liberation, but we lament instead. Most times. 

I was not up or down, sideways or flat on my face.  Didn’t know where I was so the question of being in the right or wrong place did not arise.  Neither did the issue of right and wrong time come up because time had stopped. Just like that.  Was not looking at any of the many version of the truth-map given free with any purchase over 300 rupees in a used book store.  There were so many lies begging for embrace that I turned them all into a massive pile of dried leaves, jumped straight in and swam from end to end in the liquidity of colour and texture.  I came up colourless. 

I was not looking for anything in particular but I think something was looking for me.  So I opened a book. And the answer to the riddle of the universe kissed me on my forehead with all the love of a mother for a child and a lover for a lover at parting: 223.

Don’t stop what you are doing. Be.  A book will open before your eyes.  Trust me.  ‘Book’ as in a container of information and knowledge, insight and lie, buried in whose elusive dimensions is a kiss that delights and calms, ignites and humbles, embraces and leaves and leaves and leaves in an endless unending that brings you back to the irreducible semi-tones of your humanity.  Trust me.

Here’s the name of the kiss that floored me with a caress and lifted me with love: The Optimist.  No one knows where and when that kiss was born, but the love was witnessed and duly recorded on December 6, 1958 in Baku by Nazim Hikmet thus:

As a kid he didn’t pluck the wings off flies

tie tin cans to cats’ tails

lock beetles in matchboxes

or stomp anthills;

he grew up

and all those things were done to him.

I sat at his deathbed;

he said to read him a poem

about the sun and the sea

nuclear reactors and satellites

the greatness of humanity.

[This is from ‘Poems of Nazim Hikmet’ translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, Persia Books. Page 223.]

Open the book. It is there right in front of you.  It might be made of pages, have illustrations and diagrams. It might be an email from a stranger. The blemish on the surface of the table you left your glasses on, the particularities of the curl of pencil-shred that rolled out of sharpener, the loudness of the loudmouth next door, the word you wanted to hear but no one said. It doesn’t matter.  It is waiting to be opened.  To page 223. 

I was silenced.  That’s what kisses do to you by the way (among other things of course). 

msenevira@gmail.com

Read more

Triumphalism gets unpacked

Celebrating the end of war, end of terrorist threats, being wary and mourning unnecessary deaths is 'WRONG'

For a couple of days in May 2009 much of Sri Lanka was adorned with flags. The streets were full of flag-waving, firecracker-lighting people. In many places, following customs of celebration, there were people dishing out milk-rice or kiribath.  Free.  It was all about celebrating the end of thirty years living under the threat of terrorist attacks; thirty years of check-points and being wary of parcel bombs and suicide bombers.  Thirty years of lamenting the unnecessary deaths of young people.  Reason enough for celebration, one would think. 

But no, it was named ‘Triumphalism’.  It was read as ‘crowing over by one community over the defeat of another’.  Balderdash of course, but there you have it – truth and fiction have ascribed values.  It depends on who gets to name the thing.  And that is all about power.  So it was ‘triumphalism’ back in May 2009. 

If the capture of a single bomber warranted such joy....!

Then came April 2013.  Boston.  Pressure cooker bombs.  Chasing of suspects.  A lot of men running around in all direction, armed to the teeth.  They were cheered on.  The cheering reached a crescendo when the suspect was caught.  It didn’t stop there.  Quite a spectacle.  It was not called ‘triumphalism’ of course but then again when the Ku Klux Klan were lynching African Americans those who cheered were not accused of indulging in triumphalism either.

But then again lynching was cheered too

And now we have Israel.  Well, we have ‘Gaza’.  And we have Israelis setting up arm chairs on top of hills from where they could see their brave military launch missiles into Gaza.  There was cheering.  Partying.  No one called it ‘triumphalism’. 

But in a parallel universe things can happen differently.  Let’s explore.

Barack Obama, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace decides he should do justice to the fact.  Barack Obama deploys the entire State Department to pressurize the world (not much needed given the resources at Washington’s disposal) to censure Israel.  Barack Obama gets things moving in Geneva to impose sanctions on Israel.  Most importantly, Barack Obama suspends all military and other assistance to Israel. 

Watching the bombs rain on Palestine is 'prime time entertainment'? 

In a parallel universe, the Western Media decides it is time to match truth with reportage, to keep to true dimensions of things and processes. 

In a parallel universe Ban Ki-moon, Navi Pillay and her successor get together and say ‘Look, we went overboard with Sri Lanka but we will be sober about Gaza – it’s far worse than all the horror stories we invented or believed about Sri Lanka’. 

In a parallel universe, Sri Lanka’s triumphalism-condemning NGO racketeers and self-styled social media pundits will say ‘We used that word because we had to have some consolation on account of our outcome preferences not materializing; and anyway we are ready to vilify the majority community at the drop of a hat’. 

And there will be agreement all around that what is being witnessed, ugly as hell though it is, is in fact the unadulterated, no-apologies-offered, ‘ultimate’ of western civilization.  In other words, Barack Obama could issue a statement on the following lines:

‘Look, we’ve tortured some folks.  Sorry, we tortured hundred and that’s routine for our military. We are multi-tongued. Get used to it.  ‘Double-standards’ is the watchword of our foreign policy.  And I am speaking not just as the President of the United States of America (May God Bless us!) but as the spokesperson for North America and Europe, for all white peoples and especially for Christians even if the true followers of Jesus Christ would disagree with us/me.  

'We are the Grandmasters of Triumphalism and that’s why when our allies indulge in some chest-beating we see nothing wrong in it.  This is why talking about Palestine is taboo in my country.  When we have to talk about it we will ask for “balance” which means something like saying “Israel fires missiles to defend itself from missile-firing Palestinians”.  We will say “It is complicated and complex”.  We know that such words are part of our set of prerogatives.  For others, it has to be black and white even when anyone with even partial knowledge would be able to see a lot of grey in it.  We will throw book and verse at anyone as and when we choose.  And folks, trust me, we don’t know the A-B-C of reading ourselves.  Guess what…we don’t give a damn about it either!’

In a parallel universe truth has half a chance.  

Read more