A note on doggerel and nonsense inspired by Charles Wesley

Responding to a recent article in which I mentioned that my late mother used to sing hymns, a friend of mine very kindly wrote a note about hymns.  I am a Buddhist and not at all conversant with things associated with the Christian faith. I was grateful for the information. This is what was written:

"Do you know that the RC church was not really 'hymn' prone. They had chants and liturgies. Their hymns were a mixture of praise not only of God but of the Holy Mother of God-Mary. The Vatican occasionally equates her with Jesus himself. The Protestants broke away from that- we revere Mary, the Holy Mother, but don’t worship her.  Hymn writing really came into its own with the advent of the Methodist church-you can say that Methodism was born in song. And the most prolific writer of hymns was Charles Wesley the co-founder of the Methodist Church, in 1779.His preface to his collection of hymns is delightful. I loved this bit-'Many gentlemen have done my brother and me (though not mentioning our names!) the honour of reprinting many of our hymns. They are welcome to do so as long as they print them just as they are. I desire that they do not try to mend them; because they cannot. Let them stand just as they are, take them for better or worse.  So that we may not be held accountable for the nonsense or doggerel of other men!'”

The hymn-history fascinated me.  Church history, on the other hand, is like any other ‘history’ prone to multiple interpretations in accordance with faith and ideological predilection.  What really struck me was Wesley’s request about keeping lyrics intact.  These days such things don’t come as requests but with warnings that are pregnant in copyright assertion.  Wesley’s request was to my mind both innocent as well as philosophical. 

Lyric-tinkering can be both good and bad.  T.S. Eliot dedicated his much celebrated poem ‘The Wasteland’ to Ezra Pound.  Eliot called him ‘the better craftsman’.  That’s ‘with permission’ of course.  There are people who can add value to a lyric or anything else, with or without the permission of whoever came up with the original articulation.  It is a delicate thing and utterly subjective too.  One might strive for enhancement and believe to have achieved the same when in fact what results could be perversion and rob something of the original.  Time passes and people die.  The dead cannot make claims.  They might ‘will’ authority on friend of family but time is long and the longer the time, the weaker the strength of ‘rights’ and greater the possibility of ‘loopholing’.  The Wesleys are now out of the picture and lyric-purity can only be pleaded, not obtained as right and protected by law. 

The Wesley Principle, if I may call it that, is something that all human beings have to deal with.  Our words don’t belong to us and that’s the hardest thing to acknowledge and live with.  We deal with it temporarily by seeking legal cover against plagiarism, quite forgetting that we’ve all had our fill from other people’s wells, and in the end find them reconfigured and even thrown back at us like so many grenades. 

It’s not just words of course.  Everything upon which we inscribe ‘MINE’ is appropriated one way or another. This is not surprising since ‘I’ is such an untenable proposition.  The water that makes such a big proportion of who we are, did not belong to us a few days ago and will not be with us a few days from now.  Our thoughts are not ours.  Our cells die.  We came from dust and to dust we go.  In the long span of time, our lives are finger-snap moments, destined to be forgotten. 

The other pertinent thought that the Wesleyan comment provoked was about interpretive authority.   Teachers are very (too?) often held accountable to the nonsense and doggerel of their followers, especially (sadly) when they choose to interpret without any caveat-insertion regarding frailty the ‘word’ of the ‘Master’.  I doubt if teacher would mind, if they are around to see where their words have gone and what levels of frill and ‘unclothedness’ they’ve been made to acquire.  What is worrisome is that interpreter often (sadly) will use the name of the teacher to justify project. 

The problem is that even if words are printed ‘as they are’, there are no bounds to interpretive freedom.  The same words can be taken to mean a range of different things.  This is why people who worship the same god or pledge allegiance to the same teacher find that apart from teacher-commonality, they are very different sets of individuals.  This is why we speak of ‘denomination’.  This is true of all faiths, whether they are religious or otherwise.  

In the end, it comes down to the particular individual.  At some point faith-assertion, symbolic allegiance and congregation (for all their obvious wholesome benefits to collectives) gives way to a within-struggle.  We have to come to terms with the word and how we read it.  In the end it is not about what the word is or who said it first, but what we make of it.  Some may say ‘defer to faith’ and I have no doubt this can give peace, but that decision itself is a product of a consideration of an information compound, coloured by culture and habit perhaps. 

We return, again and again, to the compelling, overwhelming and yet empowering realization that what we know is of miniscule dimensions compared with the sum total of human knowledge, which in turn is a grain of sand compared to the infinite nature of collective human ignorance.  Theoretically, one can argue that someday we will know all there is to know, by incremental gathering, collation, analysis and extrapolation.  Perhaps.  That does not help the individual of the here and now though. 

I don’t know where to go, but I do find solace in the Charter on Free Inquiry as expounded to the Kalamas by Siddhartha Gauthama.  In the very least it helps protect me from the pitfalls of my own interpretive tendencies. 

This morning I would like to end with one thought, inspired (even in its ‘nonsensicality’ and ‘doggerality’) by the words of my friend: perhaps we should worry more about the nonsense and doggerel that we produce than about being made accountable for the nonsense and doggerel of others who wear the words we weave. 

This article was first published in the Daily News (June 24, 2011).  The lady whose words prompted this note is no more.  I re-post as a tribute to her memory.  Go well Saji Cumaraswamy.  

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene

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There are mirrors that stop us

Did the night notice how the mirror looked at you while you were asleep?

There are times I feel that there is nothing more fascinating than a mirror.  No, I am not talking about the vanity-element embedded in mirrors and what they do, meaning ‘reflection’.  Take mirror and use it as metaphor and I believe a can of worms is immediately opened, a can that we don’t want to open but we have to if we are to purge ourselves of ego and other unholy and/or intellect-clouding things. 

Human being are vain creatures. We doll ourselves up in ways that we believe make us look pretty/acceptable to those we care about or who we wish to attract or impress.  We do it with clothes, hair-gel, hair-style, lipstick, shoes, sandals, colour-mix, accessories, gestures, tone of voice, choice of words, planned silences etc.  ‘I do it to feel good about myself’ some say, but that’s incomplete answer.  Yes, there is an element of feel-good-need that is factored into the dolling process, but a large part of the ‘I’ of the ‘I feel good’ is but an aggregate and mean of the ‘I’ that people get to see or the ‘I’ we want people to see. 

It is nothing extraordinary.  As social animals, we are defined by who we are and by who we are not, the places we inhabit and the places forbidden to us, the love we give and the love we get, the things we take and the things taken from us and of course we are all shaped by the eyes that we permit to look at us. ‘Permit’ meaning those eyes, voices, minds, hearts and bodies whose opinions shape in one way or another the choices we make. 

To the extent that we depend on other people, form associations, are ‘social’ in our interactions, we are to a greater or lesser degree victims of this condition. In other words, we cannot operate as though we are alone or that norms, values, laws and other contracts and relevant obligations do not exist.  On the other hand, we must not forget that there’s a point in this ‘contracting’ and ‘being’ (read, ‘living up to others’ expectations’) beyond which we lose ourselves, a point where we are called upon to exchange face for mask and beyond which mask replaces face forever.

Who are you? Who am I? Do we dare, ever, ask ourselves these questions?  As we walk through the field of masks and masking that constitutes most of what social life and intercourse is all about, are we conscious that we might be approaching this point, the mask-replace-face point?  Who do we belong to when we concede self in order to satisfy self-requirements of society or some institution, a set of laws, household ‘prerogatives’, the responsibilities of role, chosen or chosen for us? 

There is a moment when we fall asleep. Is ‘Slumber’ a country where we can be who we are?  Is this why we dream?  Is ‘dream’ nothing but longing for a real ‘us’ that we cannot be, paradoxically, in reality, in our wakeful hours?  I like to think that in these hours of sleep, the invisible but ever-present mirror that helps us define the we that we ‘ought to be’, takes a break as well, sitting on our beds, looking at our faces.  I like to think what kind of footage we would get if there was a set of cameras set up so that the face on the mirror gets recorded, the facial expressions, smiles, grimaces, frowns and other contortions, just so that when viewed, we would really know where we stand, who really calls the shots, who laughs at us, who is sympathetic etc. 

I sometimes think that the mirror is key, not reflection, not us, that we are both creator of mirror and created by mirror.  I believe that we are imprisoned, from birth to death, by the tyranny of mirrors (I am remembering Bruce Lee in ‘Enter the Dragon’ and the lacerations that mirror, (mis)reflection and the image-fracture engender). 

I think life is nothing more, nothing less, that a systematic as well as random battering of senses with a myriad mirrors and that these, rather than reflecting and showing us who we are, in fact do the opposite, distort, refract, deflect and in other ways confuse us and worse, prevent us from making headway along the path that leads to ‘re-discovery’ of self and thereafter the true meaning of who we are. 

We don’t notice whether the mirror looked at us while we slept, but it is not hard to imagine.  Why let others judge us when we are perfectly capable of judging ourselves?  Why judge others when we haven’t even started the long process of self-interrogation?  How can we pronounce sentence when we haven’t stood trial and haven’t exposed ourselves to the most formidable prosecutor, that shady and utterly laze creature called ‘Self’? 

I asked this question a long time ago, ‘Did you notice how the mirror looked at you while you were asleep and how the shoes took a walk wearing your skin?’  I didn’t comment on the second part.  I think that’s what happens when we look at mirror and see reflection and not glass, when we look at ‘film’ and see the play of image and story line and do not see screen.  Yes, our shoes take a walk, wearing our skins. We wake up and are clothed in foreign skin. That is the source of our eternal discomfort with self-image and why we use make up and dress. 

There’s a mirror somewhere.  It is saying softly, ‘investigate me’.  We can hardly hear.  It is so inaudible that we could easily tell ourselves that we heard nothing.  The next time, though, it will scream in the manner of the random victim of the green-red bheeshanaya, when silenced in the form of a pen being hammered into ear drum.  

The article was published in the Daily News, June 24, 2010 under the title "

On the necessary investigation of mirrors whose existence we refuse to acknowledge" 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene. 

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The approvers are leaving the Yahapalana building

A few days ago a diehard UNP loyalist shared a story on Facebook.  The claim was that First Phase of the Colombo-Kandy Expressway will be completed in 36 month. There was a comment along with the post: ‘For the bayyas who are saying that the Yahapalana Government is not doing anything’. 

 
The post captures the essence of this Government: promises.  It’s all future tense.  In the early days (and let’s include 100 or even 300 days beyond the end of the first 100 Days, i.e. of the ‘100 Days’ Programme’) it was perfectly alright to be patient and call for patience.  A friend of mine recently chided me for ‘not giving them (the new government) enough time’.  Well, ‘new’ is a misnomer, but let’s say we did just that – ‘give more time’.  The 

problem is that less than a year after the United National Party was elected to power (with the blessings and not so subtle support of the President they helped get elected a few months before that), it’s the diehards of the yahapalanaya project that seem to have run out of patience.  

Understandably.

Things they thought would get done are not only being shelved or forgotten there seems to be a manifest fascination on the part of the Yahapalanists in doing the same-old, same-old.  We have seen dismay being expressed by prominent individuals who had come out in support of Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe.  Some have expressed concern and some have been horrified.  Some are incredulous and wonder how the new government could do an about-turn on election pledges.  There’s a feeling of betrayal. 

A group calling itself ‘Purawesi Balaya’ whose spokespersons include prominent academics and NGO personalities as well as the ‘Sadharana Samajayak Sandaha Vana Jathika Vyaparaya’ which was led by the late Ven Maduluwawe Sobitha Thero, recently organized a seminar on this issue.   They raised a question: ‘Is this the good governance on which we placed our hopes on January 8?’  On the same day, Harini Amarasuriya asks, in an article published by Colombo Telegraph, “Wither Yahapalanaya?”

None of these people were ever Rajapaksa loyalists.  They supported Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015 and in effect were forced to (let’s be generous) support the UNP in August 2015. 

One cannot fault these people for believing that they or their organizations played a key role in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s defeat (I would say, for example, that no one worked harder on this project than Mahinda himself).  As for the ‘hope’ of ‘change’ they talk of, well it’s an indication of political immaturity.  We can call it innocence or naiveté (again, if we are generous) but it’s rather arrogant of them to think that those who voted for Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015 and for the coalition led by the UNP in August 2015 shared their sentiments and idealism vis-à-vis ‘Yahapalanaya’.   

Regardless, it is clear that they are upset or at least that they are claiming to be upset. 

What this means is that such people have suddenly realized that Yahapalanaya was never taken seriously by their champions.  It is strange that they didn’t know Yahapalanaya was scripted to be washed down the toilet at the first opportunity.   

Simply put, you cannot expect good governance in a system where the architects, engineers and the ath-udau-kaarayas don’t give a hoot about it and, worse, affirm by desire and practice its opposite.  The ‘saviours’ did have histories, after all. 

There have been positive changes of course.  First and foremost, as in the case of any regime-change, there was an immediate change in the sense of freedom.  Hope is also a healthy thing.  But then again, was it because of the Yahapalana promise or the usual post-election honeymoon sweetness?  Looks like it is the latter and therein lies the dilemma.  Maybe our Yahapalana approvers were simply being too ambitious or aiming too high, quite apart from being sophomoric in reading the political.

When these worthies ranted and raved against the Rajapaksas, they dismissed questions such as ‘Are you saying these people (those who they wanted to place in power) are better?’ with statements such as ‘first things first – let’s get rid of this corrupt, dictatorial regime’.  The first thing was done.  The problem is, the second step (of many one would think) is not being taken.  Indeed, it seems it cannot be taken.

So, if this regime and its movers and shakers are as bad as the previous regime and its kingpins, it simply means that placing faith in politicians is no longer an option for those who truly want good governance.  And it is not just about politicians.  Amrit Muttukumaru in an article published in the Colombo Telegraph titled ‘Unaccountable accountants mock good governance’ raises important questions for outfits such as Purawesi Balaya, their spokespersons and (blind?) followers:

“While holding no brief for anyone, I ask whether any of the alleged terrible corruption and abuse of power under the Rajapaksa administration could have taken place without the complicity of professionals – particularly chartered accountants, lawyers, economists and corporate bigwigs? How come good governance activists have missed this?  Those reluctant to ‘name and shame’ and hold professionals, corporate and NGO bigwigs accountable for wrongdoing have clearly lost the moral authority to speak of good governance and any pretense to combat corruption. This is probably why successive governments do not take them seriously.”

The incredulous, ‘innocent’ and horrified at this point, following Muttukumaru, need to indulge in a lot of soul searching, no doubt.  Perhaps this is why the above mentioned seminar was held.  What’s pertinent to the political moment is that when these kinds of backers back off or back out, then it’s politics old-style that’s left.  They are after all elements of the ideological apparatus.  When such approvers leave the building it is baahu-balaya and not purawesi balaya that regimes have to depend on.

The honeymoon, then, is officially over.  Yahapalanaya might offer a few crumbs, but in the main, ‘the system’ seems to have proven how robust it is.   The future tense, then, is not about Yahapalanaya.  The operative word is ‘tense’.  

 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene. 

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I was birthed by a bullet on July 21, 1984*

I can’t remember what the paper was.  Perhaps Economics.  Maybe Political Science.  This was the final term exam before the A/Ls. The year was 1984.  June 21, 1984.  Exactly 26 years ago (when this appears in print).  Even the most focused student would surely have been distracted for a few seconds at least.  There was a billow of smoke rising above the tree line on the other side of the school ground, i.e. from Colombo University or beyond. 

It had to do with something that had happened two days before in Peradeniya, I told myself. On June 19, 1984, a student was shot dead in Peradeniya.  Padmasiri Abeysekera.  A year later, when I entered the University of Peradeniya, Hasinee Halpe, a year senior to me said, ‘those guys were drunk!’  The ‘those guys’ were a bunch of students who had attacked the Police Post that had been set up on campus.  The ‘those guys’ had been returning to their hostel (Marcus Fernando Hall) when the incident had happened.

I felt even then that there was some inevitability in it all, that the moment the authorities decided to establish a police presence on campus it was scripted that some Padmasiri Abeysekera would get killed. 

I am getting ahead (or behind) my story.  I remember scribbling off the rest of my answers and rushing off.  I found a group of younger students walking in the same direction, i.e. along Reid Avenue, towards Thunmulla. Among them was Chiro Nanayakkara, Vasudeva’s son.  The campus was deserted.  We walked on towards the smoke.  We found the source.  A bus.  Burning.  This was at the Havelock Road – Keppetipola Mawatha junction, just where years later a statue was erected for Ranjan Wijeratne.  The news rose like a ghost from off a road that was trembling with shock.  There was a name. Rohana Ratnayake.  Dead.  Shot.  There were no ‘those drunk guys’ here.  Just students protesting an unnecessary death. 

An interested reader, if he/she perused the newspapers in the days following December 12, 1986, might find a photograph of some students carrying a coffin. That was Rohana’s funeral.  Right in front, carrying the coffin, was another student.  Daya Pathirana. He was abducted and slaughtered by the JVP.  That’s all I saw of Rohana Ratnayake. 

I remember well that moment.  Chiro let out an expletive in his explosive fashion….Munge ammalaata (sorry, impossible to translate).  Asiri Gunasekera, now a partner I believe of Ernst and Young, observed, ‘if you and I were in campus, it could have been either of us machang’.  It was a truth-moment.  For me.  Whatever it was that produced things such as this had to be challenged. One way or another.  The political decisions that prompted strategies that caused unnecessary provocation, the systemic fault lines that prompted such decisions, the reactions that were invested with degrees of passion that overruled reason, all these, had to be considered anew.  That was a moment. 

I remember something my late mother told me the day she left me in a boarding place in Katugastota a year later: ‘Putha, don’t get involved in unnecessary things; I am telling you this even though I know that you will do what you want and what you think is right, which is what I want all my children to do’. 

I didn’t get involved.  I was involved that day, June 21, 1984, and I think I had very little choice in the matter.  I did not know then that by the time I left university there would be so many convulsion, so much violence, innumerable deaths, running into tens of thousands, all of them unnecessary, most of them caused by a despotic regime that gave rise to a fascist insurgency and reacted with a terror-unleashing that was a hundred-fold more violent and indiscriminating. 

On June 21, 1984, we were given notice. It was a sign. A warning. A beginning or more accurately a reiteration of a beginning (that had taken place two days earlier).  The road map from there to the bheeshanaya of 1988-89 ought to have been obvious, but we were so young then.  Back then it was seen as a should-not-have-happened death.  Now we know, it was a death, a waiting-to-happen death.  It was ‘unnecessary’ only to the extent that the randomness of victim-selection.  All the peranimithi pointed to a death in Peradeniya followed by one in Colombo and 60,000 deaths by the end of the decade given political realities, economic ‘prerogatives’, a regime that fed and fed on insurrection for its survival and a leadership that was prepared for and wallowed in blood-letting.  As I said, we were young, too young to have the analytical ability to read ‘moment’ and to extrapolate accordingly.  All we could do was to say ‘munge ammalata…’

Fast forward to June 1986.  Batch trip.  Sigiri-Dambulla.  Some students had expressed concerns about bomb-threats.  Yes, even then there was scare-mongering by disgruntled elements.  The ‘concerns’ had originated from a group that had proposed Haggala as an alternative destination. The organizer of the trip, W.G. Premasiri, when I told him about the ‘concerns’, said ‘Mage ammata maava nethi wei, umbe ammata umba nethi wei…echcharai’ (my mother will lose me, yours will lose you, that’s all).

In the end that’s what happened. It is 26 years since Rohana and Padmasiri were killed.  They would have been in their early 20s then.  Their parents probably close to fifty and if alive today, almost 80.  They lost their sons.  Who can tell today what life for them might have been if randomness had not picked out their sons for punishment, example, sign and signal of things to come? 

Something died in me that afternoon in June, 1984. Something else was born.  I haven’t been the same since.  I can’t even begin to imagine what it meant to those who were near and dear to Rohana and Padmasiri. 

I wrote about Padmasiri 26 years ago. Here are a few lines:

‘One feels the embalmed silence

Among the flowers;

Peradeniya

Where a random student died.’

And of Rohana, a year later:

‘…you will for a long time haunt

The deep canyons of our souls

When with bloodied ash

You etch a memorandum

To serve a petition to our conscience,

Cradled as we lie

In the haven of a witness box.’

Crude, yes.  It’s true though.  A student was shot dead 26 years ago.  I was re-birthed. I did not come out bawling then. I did not shout.  Today, though, I am surprised by the tears.  I really don’t know why. I cannot explain. Perhaps I never will be able to.  

This article first appeared in the Daily News (June 21, 2011) under the title "A student was shot dead 26 years ago...".  (should have been '27').  Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene.

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A double-crossing regime arrests a double-crosser

Udaya Gammanpila is a politician.  That’s as bad a character certificate that one can get.  He is a pompous, self-righteous politician whose principal edge is the ability to justify any position (even the total opposite of the one taken a day before) with a turn of phrase, random examples taken out of context and pure and simple gumption.  
 

He’s a man or immense ego and one so large that he himself doesn’t know when he goes overboard with it.  He called himself ‘Clean and Clever’ when he contested the Western Provincial Council Election.  ‘Clever’ is not necessarily a positive virtue.  There are clever pickpockets, clever car thieves, clever manipulators of the share market, for example.  ‘Clean’?   Was he saying that he has never been guilty of wrongdoing?  Well, there are all kinds of wrongdoing and not all of them are related to money. 

Regardless of what one’s political preferences are, his somersaults just prior to the last General Election showed him to be nothing more nothing less than a two-bit politician.  Just days after lambasting President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Government when his party (Jathika Hela Urumaya) left the ruling coalition, Gammanpila rubbished the positions he himself had previously defended and ran into Rajapaksas arms.  That’s not crossing, it’s double-crossing!

True to form he defended both moves and did his best to paint virtue all over his choices.  That is what politicians do, no big deal.  We are not talking here about parties, coalitions, objectives and ideologies.  They matter very little to politicians.  He is not the first to switch loyalties.  His claim to crossover-glory is the fact that he could double-cross within a few days – unlike, say, Ronnie de Mel whose life-expectancy of party loyalties usually ran into several years. 

There are two questions.  One is about being clean.  Money-wise.  That’s debatable.  There’s an allegation.  There’s been an investigation. One can hope that the relevant case is heard quickly and he’s given a fair trial.  He’s innocent until proven guilty.  

The second is about timing.  Dayan Jayatilleka has posted an FB comment on the arrest:

“I just heard (at the airport) the appalling news of Udaya Gmmanpila's arrest . Even when I have disagreed with some of his views, I have always known Udaya as a decent, educated, civilized and honorable young gentleman.

“How to explain this timing and this escalation? Is this meant to be an example of reconciliation? Is this arrest an attempt to divert attention from the Arjuna Mahendran affair, and to provoke the Joint Opposition? Is it because Udaya is a close supporter of Gotabhaya? Or is Udaya being targeted to prevent him from challenging the federalist Constitution in the Supreme Court?

"As the possibility of a Referendum over the anti-unitary Constitution is on the horizon, is Udaya's arrest only the first of a series of Oppositionists due to be locked up in the same way that an earlier UNP Government arrested Vijaya Kumaratunga on false charges, before the infamous Referendum of 1982?”

Educated, yes, but ‘decent, civilized and honourable’?  I will reserve comment on those attributes.  Still, Dayan may be right on the rest.  And that’s serious stuff.  But let’s put it down to Dayan’s current outcome preferences and therefore outcome anxieties.  It’s the issue of timing that is interesting and worrisome, regardless of the reasons for what clearly appears to be a politically motivated move on the part of this so-called Yahapaalana Government. 

Today, almost a year after the Yahapaalanists came to power and a year and a half, almost, since a Yahapaalanist President was elected, there are few who will call this Government squeaky clean.  From the Maithripala Sirisena appointing his brother as Chairman, Telecom just days after being elected President to shady operations in the Port, this Government has turned ‘Yahapalanaya’ into a joke.  We’ve seen the celebration and rewarding of nepotism, mismanagement, theft and thuggery. We’ve seen woeful foot-dragging on pledged constitutional reform.  They have showered perks on themselves while taxing the poor.  The Port City is not scrapped, it is back on track.  And the cabinet gets bigger all the time (courtesy the 19^th Amendment)!

These people were supposed to be different and supposed to do things differently.  Political victimization, for example, was to be a thing of the past.  About a year ago, the first time that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe met heads of media institutions, he was asked whether all financial wrongdoing would be investigated or just those that are alleged to have taken place during the previous regime.  It was pointed out that selectivity cannot be healthy.  Wickremesinghe said, “we have to start somewhere and anyway, it is hard enough finding the documents and other evidence from even recent years”.  Dodgy, but one could go with it. 

Today, with Gammanpila’s arrest over something that happened 19 years ago where he is only a suspect, in the context of clear evidence that authority has been abused by the Prime Minister’s blue-eyed Governor (and of course other pranks by fellow-travelers), we have to ask ‘are you serious, dude?’   

If charity begins at home, there are people in his cabinet who should have been arrested before they were appointed.  In fact in the first place they shouldn’t have been offered nominations, shouldn’t have been smuggled in through the National Lists and certainly should not have been offered portfolios. 

So let’s call it as it is. 

This Government doesn’t know the ‘Y’ of ‘Yahapalanaya’.  This Government is nothing like it promised to be.  It is not different.  It is the same.  It is corrupt and vindictive and it is a BIG JOKE that such a bunch of jokers are actually talking about ‘reconciliation’!  Forget that! 

Udaya Gammanpila can’t really cry ‘foul’ considering his recent choices of bed-fellows, but every single individual who voted for Maithripala Sirisena, the United National Good Governance Front (sic!) or any of the crooks, bandits and jokers in this Government needs to wake up and acknowledge the fact that these people are the pits.  Of course this doesn’t mean they need to back the Joint Opposition or campaign for the ouster of this Government.  But if it was about ‘meaningful change’ it is high time they admit, ‘we were short-changed’.  If it was about not liking the Rajapaksas for whatever reason, then of course there’s no problem as long as you don’t toss around fairy stories about good and bad, clean and corrupt and so on. 

Udaya Gammanpila is a double-crosser and an unabashed one at that.  This government, however, has double-crossed every single individual who believed in the lies about good governance and decency.  That’s far worse, isn’t it?

 Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene

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Sequence matters, dear rebel

When I was working at 'The Nation' I wrote a column for the FREE section of the paper which was dedicated to youth.  The title of the column was 'Notes for a Rebel'.  I wrote a total of 52 articles in this series.  I have resumed by 'Notes for a Rebel', this time writing for the website www.nightowls.lk.  Scroll down for the other articles in this series on rebels and rebellion.

Let’s say Kumar Sangakkara is facing Dale Steyn.  There are motions that he has to go through.  If he was Sanath Jayasuriya there’s a whole lot of ‘musts’ that he would do which have nothing to do with facing a good delivery from a skilful bowler apart from helping calm your nerves (or whatever).  Sanath had a long process of tapping and adjusting his gear before facing up to each and every delivery.  We are talking about the process that begins after that. 

Consider a situation like the following:  Kumar Sangakkara executes a lovely cover drive, checks his stance, then takes his guard, shuffles his feet to rattle the bowler and then gets his back-lift done to perfection.  There’s a problem.  The ball is yet to leave Steyn’s hand! 

You’ve heard the dictum about putting the cart before the horse.  It simply doesn’t move, doesn’t work and doesn’t take you anywhere.  It’s all about getting things in the right order or the right sequence.  Think of cooking.  There’s a sequence.  If you want the food to come out a particular way then you have to toss in the ingredients in a particular order.  Mess the sequence and you’ll still be able to eat, but it won’t taste as good.

Revolutions are like that. 

It is true that many roads can get you to a single destination, but if each journey requires a particular number of steps, you have to understand that the steps are in a sequence.  There is no way around it.  This is why they say ‘first things first’.  Seems easy, but in the case of revolutions it’s tough to know which should be done first and which later. 

Think of it this way. 

It’s like capturing a police station and then asking yourself ‘what next?’  Of course those who have decided to say ‘no’ to some injustice or say ‘yes’ to a different order of things won’t be that silly.  It’s a way-out example, offered just to illustrate the point. 

Meaningful social change cannot be obtained overnight.  Typically it involves long struggles.  The envisaged end cannot be seen – it is so far away.  There will be rivers to cross and mountains to climb.  You’ll fall into traps and struggle to get out of them. You’ll lose your way and spend a lot of trying either retracing your steps or finding a path that puts you back on track. 

So it is not easy.  The trick is not to make it more difficult for yourself than necessary. 

Perhaps you want to secure a big advantage through an ambush somewhere down the line.  However, you won’t gain any advantage if the timing is wrong or if either you or the enemy doesn’t get to the particular location.  You’ll have to push things in the preferred direction and you’ll have to get there yourself. 

Chess players would know something about this.   If you’ve planned a series of moves that allows you to capture a piece and secure a decisive advantage, you have to get the move order right.  A check on the opponent’s king one move early or late might kill the entire attack. This is perhaps easily understood if you go through the famous game between Gary Kasparov and Vaselin Topalov in 1999 ('Kasparov's Immortal').

Sequence matters also because typically you will have lesser resources than does the enemy.  Sequence-errors on your part can cost a lot and sometimes too much whereas the enemy can err and still recover. 

What are the steps? Well, you would know that.  It depends on the objective, the resources at hand, the preferred methodology and so on.  That’s up to you to figure out, but while figuring out, you have to get the order right. 

Sangakkara would know.  Sometimes it is about spacing the innings.  If the RRR (Required Run Rate) is, say, 8.3 runs per over, he wouldn’t aim to score 9 an over or more.  He would think of a few overs where you take stock of the wicket, he would resolve to be happy scoring 4 or 5 off the opposing team’s best bowler and 12-15 off by targeting the less potent bowlers.  That’s also factoring sequence. 

Sometimes you take a hit. Sometimes you suffer an insult.  There’s a time to be silent and a time to shout.  A time to keep moving and a time to stay perfectly still. 

Sequence.  Think about it.

 

Other articles in this series

Make sure you don't miss the bus!

Revolution is a game, really

Little things to matter
Combine the energies!

Think of roots and wings

Crawl into the enemy's brain

T is for Trivial

There are nights in the middle of the day

Don't hold back when you groom

The sun will never set
When the enemy expands consider inflation
When you are the last one standing
Targets visible and targets unidentified
When you have to vote
So when are you planning to graduate?
The belly of the beast is addictive
When you meet pomposity, flip the script
When did you last speak with an old man?
Dear Rebel, please keep it short
Get ready for those setbacks
The rebel must calculate or perish
Are you ready to deceive?
Dear Rebel, 'P' is also for 'Proportion' 
Dear Rebel, have you got the e-factor out of the way?
Have you carefully considered the f-word?
It is so easy to name the enemy, right?
The p-word cuts both ways
Cards get reflected in eyes, did you know?
It's all about timing 
Heroes and heroism are great, but...
Recruiting for a rebellion
The R, L and H of 'Rebellion'
Pack in 'Humor' when you gather rebellion-essentials
When the enemy is your best friend
The MSM Principle of Engagement
Dear Rebel, get some creature-tips!
Dear Rebel, get through your universities first
Read the enemies' Bibles
Poetry, love and revolution
Are you ready to shut down your petrol shed
The details, the details!
Know your comrades
Good to meditate on impermanence.
Time is long, really long
Learn from the termites 
Be warned: the first victory is also the first defeat
Prediction is asking for trouble
Visualize, strategize and innovate
How important is authority?
Don't forget to say 'Hello!'
It's not over until you clean up!
Have you met 'PB' of Alutwela?
Are you sure about those selfies?
Power and principles
'Few does not mean 'weak'

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Stop and say hello to an angel

One of the greatest delights in my brief career as a journalist was writing for the kids' section of 'The Nation'.  I wrote over fifty articles in my last year at that newspaper.  I have resumed the series, which is now published in www.nightowls.lk.  Scroll down for other articles in this series.

Pic: www.ridethebuses.com

Close your eyes and think of angels and fairies.  What would you imagine?  A delicate, amazingly beautiful creature with the most wonderful smile, with a pair of wings attached to shoulders fluttering around with a wand, right?  Can you see a shimmering light and a halo?  The angel moves. No, no, no.  Floats.  That’s the word.  Or ‘glides’.  There’s music too.  Soft melodies that make you think of mountains rolling down into flower-laden valleys through which streams with crystal clear water flow. 

Open your eyes.  See any angels?  Well, speaking strictly for me, I’ve fervently believed in angels and fairies.  I spent years looking for signs of their passing.  I’ve checked under mushrooms to see if tiny fairies that are supposed to gather under them had left behind a shoe.  I have believed that the intricate pattern of dew on gossamer is a fairy-creation.  When things that cannot but go wrong somehow come right I’ve wondered if it is the work of angels.  

I still believe in angels and in fact I’ve seen millions of them.  They sometimes float around, they wear dresses of different colours and dance with the wind. They breathe in and out, they sing with the wind, they never complain however harsh they are treated by us (in our ignorance) or by the elements.  The just give and give and give. 

You’ve seen them too, I am sure, but maybe you haven’t recognized them to be the angels that they are.  This is because they are nothing like the pictures of angels you’ve seen in books or on the internet or in movies.  And they are right before your eyes -- that’s the strangest thing.

Leaves.  What do you know about them apart from the fact that they come in different colors and shapes?  Well, scientists will tell you that they are like little green chemical factories which use the energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into compounds such as sugars and of course oxygen, the stuff you and I breathe and cannot live without.  That’s like a fairytale isn’t it?  The truth is, it is positively angelic of these little green things we see all the time but don’t even bother to acknowledge. 

Every leaf of every tree, bush, fern or houseplant you’ve ever seen has produced lots and lots of oxygen.  Indeed, even the grass on which you walk is an oxygen factory.  Yes, it’s an oxygen factory that you’ve stepped on.   It’s a whole host of angels that the gardener just mowed down.  But don’t feel bad.  They are angels.  It is not easy to get rid of them simply because they are made of love, they allow us to breathe even if we want to pour concrete over them. 

You don’t have to, but next time you walk, remember angels.  The next time you look around you, feel blessed.

Other articles in this series

Three-wheelers are tortoises and hedges are sentinels

Besties are butterflies

I don't have anything to wear! Un-cluttering is an art

It begins with the first soiled spoon

You have loads of time, you know

A puddle is a canvas Venus-Serena tied at love-all
Some jokes are not funny
There's an ant story waiting for you
And you can be a rainbow-maker
Trees are noble teachers
On cloudless nights the moon is a hole
Gulp down those hurtful words
A question is a boat, a jet, a space-ship or a heart
Quotes can take you far but they can also stop you
No one is weak
The fisherman in a black shirt
Let's celebrate Nelli and Nelliness
Ready for time travel?
Puddles look back at you, did you know?
What's the view like from your door?
The world is rearranged by silhouettes
How would you paint the sky?
It is cool to slosh around
You can compose your own music
Pebbles are amazing things
You can fly if you want to
The happiest days of our lives
So what do you want to do with the rain?
Still looking for that secret passage?
Maybe we should respect the dust we walk on
Numbers are beautiful 
There are libraries everywhere 
Collect something crazy
Fragments speak of a thousand stories 
The games you can and cannot play with rice
The magic of the road less-traveled
Have you ever thought of forgiving?
Wallflowers are pretty, aren't they?
What kind of friend do you want to be? 
Noticed the countless butterflies around you?
It's great to chase rainbows
In praise of 'lesser' creatures 
A mango is a book did you know?
Expressions are interesting things
How many pairs of eyes do you need?
So no one likes you?
There is magic in faraway lights
The thambilil-seller of Giriulla
When people won't listen, things will
Lessons of the seven-times table

Read more