Your shoes are more precious than you imagine

DISCLAIMER:  This is for kids.  Adults be warned: you may rediscover a child within you. 

A little girl wanted a pair of canvas shoes.  She’s not so little, actually.  She’s almost 13.  Anyway, she wanted ‘sneakers’.  That’s what the school authorities had told her.  Sneakers was an important part of the dress code for students who signed up for a class trip out of Colombo.  She was kind enough to opt for the cheapest pair out of all the ones she thought would work with the rest of her outfit: jeans and an elephant t-shirt.  Her father was lucky.  He had just enough money with him to pay for the shoes. 

Both father and daughter are privileged.  The family has enough of an income to pay for such sudden ‘needs’.  But if you forget the occasion and the price this is what every father does for a daughter or at least wants to do.  The particular girl, to be fair, doesn’t bother her father like this all the time.  Usually she says ‘if you think it is ok and if you have money could please consider getting me (this or that)’.  On this occasion she just HAD to have the ‘sneakers’.  He understood.  He had money.  They were both happy. 

Happy and privileged.  Yes, that should be repeated.   Not all daughters are, though, and certainly not all fathers. 

There once lived a girl who must have either wanted or needed a pair of shoes.  We don’t know whether it was for a class trip, but that’s unlikely.  Maybe she just needed shoes to wear to school.  Maybe she asked for a pair or maybe she didn’t, perhaps because she knew that shoes are expensive and that there were other more important things that the family needed.  Anyway she did get a pair of shoes. Her grandfather had got her a pair.  To this day, no one knows why it was the grandfather and not the father or the mother who got the shoes.  Maybe the father was unemployed.  The mother, we know, was a domestic worker but maybe she didn’t earn much.  Maybe she didn’t have a father.  We only know of a little girl, her grandfather and a pair of shoes. 

She was a little girl.  Really a little girl.  Just two and a half years old.  Ashwini’s grandfather, Rasiah, worked in a restaurant.  Maybe he had saved money over a period of time.  Maybe he got a bonus.  Maybe he decided that shoes were more important than something else.  Anyway, on the 8^th of August, 2006, Rasiah bought a pair of shoes for his granddaughter.  We can’t really say, but maybe he loved her as much as the father who bought a pair of shoes for the 13 year old loved his daughter.  He must have been happy.  Ashwini certainly was.

The 13 year old, maybe because she was 13 and not two and a half years old, didn’t try on the shoes and prance around the shoe store out outside it, but Ashwini was not 13 years old and maybe the shoes meant a lot more to her than shoes meant to the 13 year old girl. When she got the shoes, she put them on, and decided to walk down the street.  She had kissed her grandpa because she was thrilled and was grateful.  We don’t know, but that probably made him very happy. 

That’s it.  She didn’t return.  She walked to the bus halt.  That’s it. She never walked again, never laughed again and never kissed her grandfather or anyone else again.  There was an explosion.  It was a car bomb that targeted someone else.  She was in the wrong place.  She came to a halt at a bus stop.   That’s where happiness ended for Ashwini, Rasiah and for others too, probably. 

Treasure those shoes you have.  They are precious.  Not because of the price, not because you needed them and not because your father or mother or someone else could buy them for you.  They are precious for reasons that are not easy to write.  And it's not just shoes that are precious.  Think about it. 

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.  

Other articles in this series 

When you want to run away, just fly!

Stop and say hello to an angel 
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

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Good governance, 'good medicine' and relevant ethics

This article was first published in the 'Daily Mirror six years ago (July 24, 2010), long before many yahapalanists heard of 'good governance' and long before its most ardent users robbed it of meaning.  It was titled "Further cuts into the business of medicine and treatment."

The language of resistance or contestation is typically appropriated by the resisted/contested for fairly pragmatic reasons.  Word is weapon and therefore it makes perfect sense for oppressor to pickpocket the lexicon of the oppressed.  So when ‘sustainable’ was used by those who proposed a different, objecting and opposite paradigm to the dominant frames of reference pertaining to democracy, the gurus of the non-sustainable quickly started using the terminology of the objectors.  Today strategies that are clearly harmful to the earth, to life, livelihoods and lifestyles are given ‘sustainable’ tags.  That’s ‘politics as usual’. 

A few decades ago, there was no talk of ‘good governance’.  When it arrived, it was pinned on those Governments that were not interested in or resisted furthering corporate capital interests.  Tyrannies that saluted the mighty dollar (or the Euro, later) were spared the sanctimonious lectures on good governance.  It didn’t take for people to say what was known all along, that if governments are bad, the corporate entities they buttress and/or which make them, are as bad.  That’s how ‘corporate good governance’ started appearing in the annual reports of big names in business. 

Now, at the level of the ‘everyday’; i.e. the seen and heard, the tangible, the things that have a face and whose thieving fingers can on occasion be caught by vigilant gaze; the ‘bad’ of the big boys and girls are hardly ever seen.  Even when someone slips and things are turned inside out, there’s a way in which money (robbed of course) can bring back some white to the dirty linen.  Happens in the courts and happens outside too.  Wimal Weerawansa trespassed, then went on a protest fast; he was rescued by no less a person than the President; those who had been short-changed out of their life savings by Golden Key were attacked when they protested. 

‘Good governance’ is made of a lot of things, but basically its about having checks and balances so that there is transparency, accountability and defenses against hanky-panky.  One of the cardinal principles is of course ensuring that there is no conflict of interest.  You can’t have a naduth haamuduruwange baduth haamuduruwange situation.

Conflict of interest is of many kinds. The worst, to my mind, is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain by academics.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I grew up learning to respect teachers, believing that it was a noble profession.  Perhaps it is because I think of people like Louis Pasture, Galileo Galilei and others who spent lifetimes investigating something without ever once compromising their integrity.  Perhaps it is because I have heard of Senaka Bibile.  I don’t know.   It irks me therefore when I hear of academics being guilty of conflict of interest. 

There are degrees of culpability of course.  At the low level, there are gifts, meals, trips to students, house-staff and faculty from industries that could benefit from particular kinds of research that the particular academic is carrying out.  Then there are speaking fees, consulting fees etc.  At the top level senior faculty, medical school and university leaders are paid by for-profit healthcare corporations, are invited to sit on director boards, paid fees and offered stock options etc. 

The proper way of dealing with such situations is to desist.  Or else disclose.  If an academic fails to disclose the nature, size and intensity of a relationship with a company, then not only is that person’s scholarship suspect, he/she brings disrespect to profession, area of ‘expertise’ etc but lacks integrity and is guilty of fraud. 

All of this was evident in the actions of the Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University with respect to research on treatment of depression. He gave talks, wrote articles and did research on treating depression with Mifepristone, a synthetic steroid compound used as a pharmaceutical even as he sat on boards and held millions of dollars worth of shares in companies that sought to get approval to market this compound.  He failed to reveal the nature and intensity of his financial relationships. 

There are other strategies. Companies recruit physicians who could influence colleagues for peer-to-peer marketing; rope in ‘thought leaders’, ‘key influencers’ and ‘movers and shakers’ (Department Chairs, Vice-Chairs, Directors of Academic Programmes etc), and of course fund ‘research’ that ‘yield’ happy conclusions.

Ask around.  It won’t be stated aloud of course, but there will be enough decent people in the medical profession (this is not limited to that field of course) who will speak about unethical behaviour, corruption and even criminality. They will reveal that the phenomenon is largely unstudied and that it will remain so because physicians don’t want their core values to be threatened by an external source.  Some would think it’s an isolated issue or that their knowledge of abuse was unique.  Few would see it as a systemic problem. 

A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that an Ophthalmologist performs cataract operations using the least expensive lens (costing Rs. 800) while other ‘persuade’ patients to purchase lenses for Rs. 12,000-15,000 that actually cost only Rs.6000.  Don’t we need to identify the collaborators in this scam, separate traitor from patriot?  Should not the innocent and unsuspecting patient who can be robbed of his life savings (who would not pocket out everything if it was a choice between life and death, sight and blindness)?

What is the solution?  Well, vigilance is good.  Some integrity is good. These however can’t be legislated or formalized in ways that are effective enough, especially considering how deep the malady could be.  A possible answer is a Medical Ombudsman. This would create a platform for people to bring to light possible criminal behaviour on the part of so-called professionals. 

We have to understand at some point that big pharmaceutical companies are robbing us, hoodwinking us and have spread their tentacles like a veritable cancer among the medical profession because we let them; we became dependent on their products.  But isn’t it true that there was a time when we didn’t really need them?  We did not borrow, we did not import food or drugs, but our ancestors still survived.  This is not to say no to all drugs, of course, but merely a cautionary note, i.e. we have to clean the process of prescription and procurement from ‘business interest’, ‘criminal negligence’ and ‘interest conflict’.  We need, however, to eliminate dependency on such drugs wherever there is a local alternative. 

Have we studied all low-cost local remedies/alternatives for curative value?  The nectar of the gammalu tree is a locally found equivalent of insulin.  Our spices are all cancer fighting agents.  Tea (import, yes), green or black, taken without sugar, is an anti-oxidant. The list is endless, I believe.  Where is the research?  What research there may be, I am willing to wager, must be channeled through drug companies with gene piracy and patenting rackets being part and parcel of the entire process.    

The bottom line is that knowledge has to be organized and disseminated.  While we wait for the Government to clean itself up, set up checks and balances, create posts that could help things along, such as a Medical Ombudsman, some crooked doctor (yes, yes, other professionals too, academics included) is turning some innocent Sri Lankan’s pockets inside out, keeping some bucks and sending some overseas to some multinational.  Who knows, maybe some officials in the particular ministry/department and some politicians might be getting a cut too.  While we wait, though, our children are running the risk of becoming victims of quacks, traitors and agents of big pharmaceutical companies. 

All professionals come neatly dressed.  They have name boards replete with all the qualifications they’ve acquired.  They don’t say ‘I am being paid by so and so’.  They are not hands-get-dirty pickpockets. They come wearing gloves.  The gloves are labeled ‘professional’.  We have no way of identifying crooks.  The professions don’t have self-regulatory mechanisms.  The Government has not imposed fool-proof mechanisms, not for these professional entities and not for itself.  It’s like we are being told ‘submit to the scalpel or die’; not knowing any better, we opt for surgery (metaphorically and literally).  We lose our whatnot in the process.  And we say ‘thank you’ and tell our friends who lovely it all was.

We deserve better.  Let’s take refuge in the knowledge that crooks are human, that they slip and that if we know what to look for, sooner or later, we will catch the crook before he steals our all. 

Yes, it’s the moment of the community of victims and potential victims.  Community activism.  With or without a Medical Ombudsman.  Mr. President, would you like to join us?

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

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The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Contexts count.  Hostage rescue operations are different from wars.  Responding to military aggression is different from declaring war on a country on a pretext such as the possession of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.  July ’83 is different from July ’16.  Clashes between raggers and anti-raggers are different from the clash that took place a few days ago at the Jaffna University.  Contexts count.   And they frame the assessment of responses.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) called it right.   Well, almost right, but that ‘almost’ can be understood, again given the context of constituency.  “We regret that several students have sustained injuries and that the Sinhala students had to be evacuated from the university and Jaffna as a precautionary measure," was what the TNA said.  The TNA, moreover, urged the evacuated Sinhala students to return and called on their Tamil counterparts to welcome them. 

The University of Jaffna Teachers Association (UJTA), in comparison, fudged it a bit.   They expressed dismay, concern and condemnation.  They pledged to protect cultural rights.  They flagged the communal element without naming names.   

The Jaffna University Science Teachers’ Union (JUSTA) embarrassed itself by the vagueness of its statement.  They sought to ‘educate’ the public thus: “Some unwanted incidents related to the freshers’ welcome party led to violent clashes.”  Drawn from an uneasy template obviously.  Less understandable, but let’s leave it at that.

The Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) tied itself in knots.  Although calling authorities to identify perpetrators and bring them to justice, FUTA studiously (!) avoids stating the main facts.   Condemnation is easy. Calling for justice is easy.  However, if you want to give ‘context, seek the indulgence of an audience for a historical rigmarole and outline a sociological treatise it is silly to beat around the bush.  On the face of it, for FUTA, this was just one of those clashes between two groups of unnamed (unnamable?), unidentified (unidentifiable?) university students.  Sweeping ‘ethnic’ under the carpet and then urging everyone to be vigilant about ‘brutality, ethnic conflicts and violence,’ is plain silly. 

No surprises then that the Minister of Higher Education Lakshman Kiriella stole a page from the FUTA handbook to pooh-pooh it all: ‘This was a clash between two students groups as it happens in any other university.’

The Government Information Department undressed itself.  The official position of the Government, which came to light a full three days after the clash, was slightly better than the FUTA in terms of ‘sociologizing’ the incident, but was a worse howler because it was an absolute lie.  The Government Information Department said “although some people tried to stress that it was a racially motivated conflict, this was a clash between two groups of students and the government condemns the violent behavior of some students.”  Just compare the above with the TNA statement.  Dr Ranga Kalansuriya and Deputy Ministry Karunaratne Paranavithana have embarrassed themselves here.   

The 'Left' suffered the worst knicket-twisting.   It is almost as if it were they and not the Sinhala students of the Science Faculty, University of Jaffna, who were attacked.  Anuruddha Pradeep Karnasuriya describes this undressing thus:

‘It is not the Sinhala students but the leftists in this country that got the worst beating.  Nothing in the recent past has made these people this vulnerable.  They cannot bring themselves to say that the attack was unjustified.  They can’t urge authorities to take action against the perpetrators.  They cannot issue statements about the freedom of art.  They cannot offer scholarly opinions on tribalism.  What is this tragedy that has befallen them?’

Karnasuriya singles out Ajith Perakum Jayasinghe as an exception. There are probably others, but by and large he is correct about the malaise that has afflicted self-proclaimed leftists. 

The lords and ladies of rights, reconciliation and justice kept mum. Let us also not forget that those who are quickest to respond to any clash that has even the faintest communal trace blanked out: the UN, diplomats from the USA, Canada and Europe, the BBC and other news agencies.  Telling.

It is about context, yes.  It is also about the truth.  Truth, let us not forget is what we are told reconciliation is all about.  Well, truth and justice.  The Jaffna University incident tells us that one’s political preferences and the particular incident confer varying degrees of truth-comfort.   Certain ‘truths’ are privileged while others are typically downplayed or even dismissed.  This is the ‘natural’ issue of power structures.  However, truth-advocates cannot demand half-baked stories.  Indeed, when truth-demanders utter barefaced lies or resort to scandalous and laughable distortion, they can kiss truth goodbye. 

The Jaffna incident is mild and thanks to statements such as the one issued by the TNA shows encouraging signs of being resolved and more importantly forging a more wholesome embrace between Tamil and Sinhala students.  If it was left to Kiriella, FUTA, the Information Department and the leftists it could have got worse.  Indeed, these entities by their political jugglery still have the potential to add fuel to unnecessary fires. 

What is important here is to understand the power of truth, equal in power only to falsehood, and the power of half-truth.  If reconciliation is truth-based then it has to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  This is where we move away from the Jaffna incident.  This is where we draw from the Chilcot Report, its good and its bad. 

The ‘bad’ is about gaping holes and language-comforts that give life-lines to the guilty, Tony Blair and George W Bush in particular.  The ‘bad’ is also about the readiness to receive truth, i.e. by the grandmasters on the subject in the international community, namely Ban Ki-moon (UN Secretary General) and Prince Zeid (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights).  Yes, that’s about an Orwellian world of human rights advocacy and what Ayca Cubukcu calls “21st century platitudes: democracy, the people, human rights”. 

The ‘good’ is about (at least on paper) the mandate for the whole nine yards; the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  John Chilcot’s team had to look at the build-up, the period of engagement and the aftermath.  And this is where it becomes most relevant to Sri Lanka. 

Just one example would suffice to drive home the point. On October 21, 1987, the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) massacred over 50 Tamil civilians in Velvettiturai.  The Daily Telegraph (UK) observed editorially, ‘This massacres is worse than My Lai. Then American troops simply ran amok. In the Sri Lankan village, the Indians seem to have been more systematic; the victims being forced to lie down, and then shot in the back’.   The IPKF killed doctors, nurses, attendants, patients and members of public in a 24 hour period. 

The ‘whole truth’ is not only about what happened during the last stage of the historic hostage-rescue operation leading up to May 18, 2009 and all the wrongdoing that may have taken place as alleged.  It is about everything that happened since the LTTE killed Alfred Duraiappah on July 27, 1975.  Indiscriminate killings, crimes against humanity, suicide bombs, extra-judicial killings, shelling civilian areas, conscription of children, political assassinations, everything, everything, everything must count.  And it is not about the Sri Lankan security forces and the LTTE only.  The IPKF and the other militant Tamil groups such as the EPRLF, EPDP, EROS, TELO and the Karuna-Faction cannot be ‘counted out’. 

It’s the full truth-story that ought to count if reconciliation is to be truth-based, because there are contexts and there are contexts.  There are ‘small’ contexts (like the Jaffna University incident) and there is the larger context (of the entire period of conflict and all acts that yielded dispossession, dismemberment, displacement and death).   Certain kinds of deceit (such as we saw over the past few days) can be ‘understandable’ but none are ever ‘pardonable’ in terms of the truth-reconciliation matrix and certainly not the larger contexts that frame the reconciliation discourse.   

Related: Truth and reconciliation must begin with truth, not myth

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene. Blog: malindawords.blogspot.com.   This article was publishedon July 21, 2016 in the 'Daily Mirror'.

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Jayasena Jayakoday: an architect of our today

Six years ago, Prasanna Jayakody, film-maker, came to see me.  This was a couple of months after his father, the renowned writer Jayasena Jayakody had passed away.  He spoke of his father and about the the difficult times.  He told me that his father had broken both legs in an accident and once broken his arm as well. Accidents. He was arrested in 1971, he said.  

‘Arrested?’ I asked.  ‘Was he involved with the JVP?’  

‘Yes he was.  I remember the day the Police came to take him away.  He was on top of a tree, trying to pluck a Jak fruit.  He asked the Police whether it was to obtain a statement from him or something else.  He was smiling from the corner of his mouth.  My mother was upset, but I remember him brushing her away, saying something to us (my older brother and I), changing into a shirt and trousers and getting into the vehicle.  He was in jail for a year and a half.’

At the time I wrote a daily column for the Daily News titled 'The Morning Inspection'.  The conversation as well as other conversations that had taken place earlier in the day prompted me to write a piece titled 'Some days are not made for writing'.  

The following is a tribute of a kind for Jayasena Jayakody that I wrote around that time. 

  Last evening (Friday, July 16, 2010), I was toying with three possible subjects to write on.  First there is the long overdue note on the website run by the International Crisis Group.  I promised the ICG’s Communications Director, one Andrew Stroehlein, that I would visit this site. I asked him to send me official ICG media releases pertaining to demands for investigations into US/UK actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and instance of clearly evident systemic torture regimes in places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. He was silent.  The website itself was thin on the above and indicated that the ICG is quite comfortable with what the USA/UK rogue states are perpetrating in these territories and is at best quibbling about modalities on marginal matters and even then placing the blame squarely on ‘rebels’ for creating conditions warranting military action. A predictable European Conquistador narrative, I felt.  A full review was an option.

A second option was a note to the following British MPs who said a lot of things about Sri Lanka and alleged war crimes (key-word being ‘alleged’):  Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab), Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab), Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op), Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con), Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op), Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con), Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab), Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op) and Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op).  The ‘debate’ was punctuated by the usual nauseating British parliamentary etiquette of ‘right-honourbling’ and ‘my friending’ before and after each sentence, but what was utterly insufferable was the ignorance, the double-standards and the sanctimonious posturing by these representatives of a nation that’s right up there among the worst perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity (and I am not talking of the past only).  

Ban Ki-moon to me is like Richard Nixon to Art Buchwald; he’s a perennial subject for comment and a funny one too.   So ‘common’ that I am not counting him here.  The third, then, is a man called Edward Mortimer who has written in the web version of the Guardian about ‘Sri Lanka’s (alleged) descent into dictatorship’, with the loud ‘aside’ about media freedom.  He’s been talking to and/or reading the wrong people, I believe and would do well to investigate where their loyalties lie, whose bucks put words into their mouths and take into cognizance the fact that many if not all so-called journalists whining about media freedom in Sri Lanka have been found guilty of fraud.   He could also read up Eva Golinger’s piece on how the USA goes about purchasing journalists to undermine Governments that are ‘uncontrollable’.  That’s about Venezuela.  He would find that similar thrusts are evident in Sri Lanka as well, not necessarily from the same sources of course. 

Sometimes, however, I think we worry about these puny and ignorant noise-makers far too much.  It is better to focus on what we have, build on it, stand firm against storms that come our way, retreat when we are forced to, but resolve never to panic.  That was not, however, what made me opt to pass the opportunity to tell the above mentioned ladies and gentlemen some home truths.  Sometime late on Friday afternoon I was informed of a death.  Jayasena Jayakody’s.  The man’s death, consequent to his life, reduced Stroehlein, the British MPs, Ban Ki-moon and Mortimer into ant-size.  

It is hard to assess the impact of an author.  We can use number of books, sale-volume, number of literary awards and even a content analysis, but it will be necessarily inconclusive and subjective.  Jayakody wrote.  His novels explored various aspects of our nation’s social, economic and political processes, all foregrounded to a sense of history and heritage.  He won three State Literary Awards in th Best Sinhala Novel category ('Aswenna' or 'Harvest' in 1971, 'Parasathuro' or 'The Invaders' in 1977 and 'Raigam Puththu' or 'The Sons of Raigama' in 1989).  He has also authored several novels based on Buddhist philosophical themes and historical personalities.  

He was self-effacing.  Many of his lines have become regularly quoted ‘self-evident’ type truisms.  He is rarely mentioned by way of acknowledgment.  This never bothered the man, I learnt last night at his house in Kananwila, Horana.  His son, reputed film-maker, Prasanna Jayakody said that he had once pointed out that the old man’s books contain a wealth of quotable quotes which are duly quoted but source never cited.  He had pointed out, also, that some of these quotes are attributed to others, more colourful personalities.  He had, Prasanna said, shrugged it off thus: ‘That’s how it should be.  What is important is the message and if another name or body carries it more effectively, all the better’. 

Jayasena Jayakody was not a politician.  He was not an author who was also street-fighter, one who was thick in the debates of his times.  He had his political views, convictions and preferred outcomes of course but was more interested in writing a story.  The politics, invariably, got woven in, but unlike others who write novels with the intention of promoting political position, Jayakody’s work is not ‘sloganish’ and therefore far more effective. 

The decade of the 1990s was clearly the worst as far as nationalists and nationalism are concerned.  In a scandalous rush to write a more ‘inclusive’ history, a lot of Sinhala and Buddhist ‘history’ was deliberately erased which myth and legend with a lot of frill were inserted to narratives in an anti-intellectual and misguided need to correct perceived narrative-anomalies.  Now there are those who attribute Sri Lanka’s victory over the LTTE as either the political genius of Mahinda Rajapaksa or the military acumen of Sarath Fonseka (and the other service commanders) or both, with a few others added in.  Victory, having many fathers, we had many paternity claimants after May 18, 2009.  No one mentioned Jayasena Jayakody.  He didn’t complain.  That was not his intention anyway. 

He focused within.  He talked about who we were, who we are and who we ought to become.  He gave us pride.  Dignity.  Self-worth.  He gently reminded a generation about their parents, their ancestors, who they were, what they did, how they suffered and for what purpose.  All that ‘fed’ the nationalist discourse that took place outside the tv debates and exchanges in newspapers.  He was not a monsoonal shower that took away the top soil; no, he was a poda wessa, a gentle and at times imperceptible drizzle of knowledge and reflection that seeped deep into the bowels of our sensibilities.  He didn’t point fingers.  He mentioned personalities.  He spoke of Keppetipola, Bootewe Rate Rala, Kivule Gedara Mohottala and others who sacrificed their lives for the nation. He spoke also about the traitors and the many facets of treachery.  The extrapolations he left to the readers.  That was the magic, the unguent, the empowerment.

And it was not just about politics. I just received a note from a friend, who commented on a facebook post about the man: "His book, ‘Portrait of the Buddha’ had significant positive impact on my life! One should be lucky to read it either in Sinhala (Ama Wessa) or English!"  There will be appreciations.  History may or may not mention the man or what he did in shaping the destiny of this country.  I don’t think he would have cared, either way, but it is incumbent, I believe, on those who now inhabit the landscape he made more livable to acknowledge. Here’s my thanks:

For Jayasena Jayakody (1936-2010)

All the fathers

the father-claimants

and other

contributors

had to be spawned themselves,

re-birthed,

baptized

cleansed;

Yes,

there was another father,

one of many, yes,

but one who never raised hand

never claimed paternity,

but nurtured nevertheless

the sons and daughters

who would make the stand

and win back the earth,

the land made 'ours'

by all our fathers.

You.  

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

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Jeerers and applauders are also part-players in spectacle-politics

This article was published on July 17, 2010 in the 'Daily Mirror'.   A different time, different players but perhaps it is about a drama that is often played out and not entirely unknown in these theatrical times.

Somewhere in the middle of the year 1987, I was present when a conversation took place between two friends, Kanishka Gunawardena (now the Director of the Programme in Planning, University of Toronto) and Asoka Hewage (presently the Principal, D.S. Senanayake College).  Kanishka and I, quite opposed to the SLFP-led coalition that was in the process of being formulated and of course the fascist tendency of the JVP, were leaning towards the SLMP led by Vijaya Kumaratunga.  Hewage wanted to stick to the so-called ‘meda mawatha’, the ‘Middle Path’ of the SLFP.   

At one point, in exasperation, Hewage interjected, ‘deshapalanaya kiyanne sinamaawak nevei’ (politics is not cinema) to which Kanishka responded, ‘lokaya rangahalak nam deshapalanaya sinamaawak wena eke veradda mokadda?’ (if the world’s a stage then what’s wrong in politics being cinema?).  The reference was to Shakespear’s reflections on the seven stages of a ‘man’.

William Shakespeare, in ‘As You Like It’, divided the average human being’s brief sojourn on earth into seven parts. He tied them all together as a kind of seamless movement from one act to another, role to role and relevant costume-change that comes unannounced and sometimes without the consent or consciousness of the player concerned.  The seven stages are less known than the introductory to their elaboration, ‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their exists and their entrances’.  Few would like to admit that this is what their lives are about, though, i.e. they wear decreed costume and appropriate frills, including body ornament and make-up, that life is an endless process of replacing face with mask, mask with mask and that there comes a point when person and perceiver of person are both unsure what’s face and what’s mask. 

That was more than twenty years ago.  We were at the time merely crawlers in a world that was at the crawling-stage of the Age of Communication.  Spectacle was, we knew, part and parcel of politics, but it was yet to be bathed in spotlights and confetti.  Today, though, it is not part and parcel of politics. It is politics.  It has come to a point where even ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’ have to come wearing costumes that emit subliminal messages conveying these ‘attributes’.  It has come to a point where nothing short of public self-flagellation can convince anyone of someone’s commitment to cause.  Indeed, I would say that in this age of cynicism, even open wound might not be enough.  Yes, hara-kiri might be the one way to defeat the cynic. 

Politicians can’t blame anyone for this.  They have played the spectacle game for so long (and been very creative about it too, may I add?) that the public has come to accept it as par for course.  J.R. Jayewardene sensed what was to come. This is why immediately after the famous ‘parliament bomb’ incident he attended the cabinet meeting wearing the same (now blood-stained) clothes he was wearing.  It is alleged by some that Chandrika knew beforehand of the 1999 bomb in which she lost an eye and that this was the price for re-election.  Wimal Weerawansa’s naadagama outside the UN premises a few days ago, then, was ‘business as usual’ and quite in order. 

Wimal, more than any other parliamentarian, understands ‘spectacle’. To my mind there are three exceptional communicators in Sri Lankan’s political firmament. Mahinda Rajapaksa is No.1. It comes naturally to him. He never breaks into a sweat.  He delivers punch without script, without cue.  Champika Ranawaka is not gifted this way.  He is no actor.  His edge is a composite of irrefutable logic, an exceptional memory, a commitment to doing the hard yards of reading and the intellect to synthesize.  Wimal was, is and will always be ‘drama’.  His edge is turn of phrase; he has nothing of Rajapaksa’s natural charm or Champika’s sharp, analytical mind. 

He tripped when he barged into the UN premises.  That was a classic error.  People should stick to what they know best. Wimal is made of word, not of agitation.  He tried to scale a wall that was too high for him. He slipped and fell flat on his back.  Yet, let’s give him credit, being consummate politician, he made the best of a bad situation; fall on back, stay there like that and say ‘fast unto death’.  Made perfect political sense.  He is enough of a public figure and has a long enough history for the politically alert to predict the what-is-next of the relevant political script.  Everyone knew that sooner rather than later, Mahinda Rajapaksa would offer a sip of water or thambili and persuade Wimal to end the fast.  That was the one ‘exit’ available after Wimal messed up his ‘entrance’. 

A lot has been said on the incident.  The pundits have thundered that this was the wrong way of dealing with Ban Ki-moon.  They’ve pointed out that Wimal’s theatrics were counter-productive.  I agree.  He was in damage-control mode the moment he ‘fell down’ and to be fair by him, I don’t see if there was any other way he could retreat.  His party claims that the ‘fast’ was an awareness-creating exercise and that it had ‘achieved success’ in terms of galvanizing support for the political position locally.  Perhaps.   There could have been other ways of achieving such goals, but I’ll let that pass. 

I’ve argued elsewhere that unbecoming and ridiculous as Wimal’s ‘entrance’ was, his ideological stand was to my mind without error. I said that I would still stand with him and by him against Ban Ki-moon’s theatrics (yes, that man is also a spectacle-case, a point which very few of Wimal’s detractors are willing to acknowledge or even see).  The man has been lampooned mercilessly and that’s a price that all actors ought to be ready to pay.  Time will tell us who will have the last laugh of course but that’s not my concern. 

When limelight-hugging politicians whisper, it comes out as a roar; one false step and it appears like a major and crippling slip.  That’s one part of the limelight story.  The other part is the limelight-absence does not make audience impotent, without agency or passive recipients of theatre and theatrical.  Those who applaud and those who boo are also part of the overall spectacle.  I remember Gamini Haththotuwegama, widely recognized as the Father of Street Theatre in Sri Lanka, after a performance at the Peradeniya ‘Wala’ (open-air theatre) falling on his knees and worshipping an applauding audience.  It is the audience, friends, that makes stage, births player and scrip-writes the political drama.

I have read all the jeers and much as I am nauseated by political theatre in general and Wimal’s recent antics in particular I found myself asking, ‘what have these jeerers done that gives them the moral right to laugh at Wimal?’  There is an email doing the rounds with pictures of Wimal close to a box of Lemon Puff biscuits, the insinuation being that he was not really fasting.  That’s spurious on the face of it and inconclusive, especially given the intense media coverage and the now taken-for-granted presence of mobile phones.  If Wimal sipped, he would have been media-murdered by the sipping.  I don’t buy it. 

That was a minor laugh, though.  What bothered me was the veritable salivating on the part of some analysts in newspapers.  We all know that people don’t die easily in these fasts-unto-death, for a number of reasons.  Some have howled in protest that Wimal was insincere, and this too is legitimate.  And yet I have wondered if the true source of their discontent is that Wimal did not die.  Would they have rushed to fall on his coffin, weep their hearts out and hailed him as a true patriot and the one sincere politician they’ve encountered in their lifetimes had he in fact perished?  I doubt it. 

To my mind, Wimal’s theatrics were matched, breath to breath, one foodless moment to a corresponding ‘fooded’ moment experienced by the applauders of jeerers.  It is easy to say ‘Wiman dug his grave, let him lie in it’.  That’s an acceptable position to take.  Gamini Gunawardane, retired DIG, in a letter to the Island puts things in perspective when he comments on what two individuals present at the protest had to say. One of them, an elderly person, had said he hadn’t fought in the war and that therefore he came to show solidarity. Another, a woman, she didn’t lose sons to the war, so she had come as a mark of solidarity.  These were individuals who may or may not have seen Wimal as Actor, but recognized the validity of his objection, and in this were implicitly charging Ki-moon of being an actor, a role-player, as much a ‘theatrician’ as anyone else.   Both individuals and Gamini Gunawardane are part of the spectacle, as are those who jeered at Wimal in the newspapers, but they brought a different dimension of ‘light’ to the proceedings.

I got an email from Ramzeen Azeez, a friend.  He, like most people who sympathized with the political objective of the protest, condemned the action and was by no means given to hero-worshipping Wimal.  He put things in context:

‘The fast in in the month of Ramadan (falling around 9th Aug this year) is an obligatory one and one that we expect and (surprisingly to non-Muslims) happily awaited each year. It’s a month of spiritual cleansing. We also observe optional fasts during the rest of the year. This may be either to upgrade piety levels or in fulfilling a vow, calamity, thanksgiving etc.

Optional fasts are more difficult. While the obligatory fast is like income tax (hence easier to undertake) the optional is like giving a donation. The latter is not an imposition - good if you give no problem if you don't. Hence in the case of the optional fast the most difficult moment is when making the INTENTION (we also have a stanza in The Qur'an that echoes Buddha's "chetanahan bhikkhawe kamman wadami" - Kul a'maalin bin-niyya or all actions are judged by their intention. That's why I admire WW's action. The intention to carry out the fast would've been his most trying moment. Those who laughed him off cannot and will never comprehend this aspect.’

Now a man can of course suffer all manner of pain in order to make a point.  Indeed, history is full of self-flagellators who embraced what many would consider ridiculous and even violent causes.  The above, however, ought to sober those who are upset that Wimal didn’t die.  Perhaps they would realize if they meditated a little on these things that jeering is as much spectacle as that which is jeered, that they too are players on a political stage and that they are not more innocent or less culpable than Wimal Weerawansa or anyone else in detracting from the national interest. 

I told Ramzeen that I am disturbed by the venom and that I wondered how these people would write about Wimal’s fast if they themselves (for no reason at all) fasted for 24 hours.  Ramzeen continues: ‘He did it for 52 hours and that's a marathon of a fast! We do it for about 14 hrs for 29 or 30 days.  If one starts fasting at 4.30 am the result is usually a thundering headache around 3pm. The pangs of hunger cringes the stomach linings around 10 am. One can sleep but one cannot sleep away the convulsions of the digestive tract.’ 

And concludes thus: ‘Wimal it seems had a genuine axe to grind with the UN to carry it out and since we know what it was - 3 hearty cheers to Wimal, Hip hip hip..... I've since updated my opinion of the man but still have a few reservations: after all, he's a politician.’  

It was not just Wimal who made an entrance and an exit.  We all enter, we all exit.  We are all applauded or jeered.  This doesn’t mean we cannot or should not pass judgment of course, but perhaps we ought to consider being a little sober about it. 

The last word on theatre and relevant politics is not with William.  It was written earlier, in fact, by Omar Khayyam:

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

If one does not go overboard with the ‘fate’ element here, there’s a message to all of us.  There is complicity.  There are degrees of complicity.  And complicity can be witnessed and assessed in both applause and jeer.  We are not all saints and neither are we all demons.  Again, nothing wrong in politics being cinematic if the world’s a stage, but there’s something wrong in actor pretending to be audience and therefore conferred with privileged rights to be art critic.  Wimal’s theatrics made me reflect on my stage-strutting.  I wonder if others are or were conscious of their stage-spot. 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at malindaseneve@gmail.com

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The unsung and un-honoured also make history

‘No man is a front,’ they say.  There are rare instances when the action of a single individual has changed the course of history, but typically there is a long ‘before’ and a considerable ‘after’ that allows for event and personality to be associated with singular historic moment.   Also typically that kind of marking is largely contingent on the chronicler’s preferences. 

We talk, for example, of the great King Dutugemunu and his efforts to liberate the island of South Indian invaders. We talk of his one-on-one engagement with the good and much loved Chola king Elara, and how this prevented much bloodshed.  Elara was an elderly man at the time and Dutugemunu in the prime of his youth and this point has been made by those who are loath to grudge any historical significance to the latter.  The relevant point however is that the challenge was valid regardless of the age of the challenged; Elara could have been 18 or 80.  It is to the credit of Elara that he accepted it.  And there is nothing to say that had he not, his forces would have prevailed. 

The pertinent point is that many know the above story but few acknowledge the role of Dutugemunu’s father, the patient, wise, far-seeing and humble King Kavantissa, who silently suffered the ignominy of being gifted women’s paraphernalia by his obnoxious elder son, Gamini. 

My friend UdayasiriWickramaratne who I have described in these pages as the foremost voice of Sinhala literature of my generation, explored this issue in a fascinating novella titled ‘Swarnamali Maharaja’ (The Great King Swarnamali or ‘The Great King of the Golden Jewellery).  It is essentially a reconstruction of Gamini’s remorse in the manner of an extensive soliloquy after leaving the Royal Palace upon humiliating his father.   

Udayasiri suggests that the Ruwanweliseya, also known as SwarnamaliMaha Seya was not named after the nymph/spirit by the name of Swarnamali who resided in a tree at the proposed site (legend has it that Dutugemunu requested this spirit to find another abode, promising that the dagoba would be named after her), but was an expression of remorse regarding his arrogant and hurtful act against his father, King Kavantissa.

Kavantissa makes up the long ‘before’ of that triumphant moment enshrined in history and legend when Dutugemunuvanquished the Chola invader.  It was he who set the stage by determining that the moment of engagement was yet to come, uniting the Sinhalese through strategic marriages that linked royal houses and encouraging economic activity, especially paddy cultivation, to create the foundation for a long battle.

I am thinking of the war against terrorism, those who made it happen and those who claim the glory.  Historical account privileges rulers.  We associate the Taj Mahal with Shah Jahan and not the architects, the landscape planners, engineers, bricklayers, artists and other craftsmen, for instance. The same applies to all the magnificent architecture that has arisen on our soil and in the course of our civilizational unfolding over several millennia.  When ‘history’ is recent, individuals other than rulers are mentioned. Claims are made. 

Our ‘recent’ is made of a lot of embarrassing braggadocio.  Names need not be mentioned.  There are names however that were hardly mentioned.   Among the less mentioned names is that of then Rear Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda, the Commander of the Navy during the most critical years of the war on terror and the massive humanitarian operation to liberate the hundreds of thousands of civilians held hostage by the LTTE.  Politics has a way of sweeping aside certain names and certain contributions from the public transcripts.  People reinvent themselves and in the branding exercise this tends to snowball into, other names are made to occupy the back benches of public memory. 

The Navy played a critical role.  The following is a quote from ‘Chapter Closed’, a Government Information Department publication written at the end of the war:

When Wasantha Karannagoda took over as Navy Commander the Sea Tigers were playing a pivotal role in the LTTE’s overall military operations.  Their fleet of suicide boats was crippling the Navy’s ability to protect the coast and provide security for ships carrying supplies to soldiers and civilians in the Jaffna Peninsula.  He knew the constraints that a small country with a weak economy had.  His was a home-grown solution.  He manufactured his own vessels. The small boat concept revolutionized the Sri Lanka Navy and effectively neutralized the threat posed by the Sea Tigers.  Most importantly, he developed what was essentially a brown water Navy into an outfit capable of carrying out blue water operations. The Sri Lankan Navy went into the deep sea south and east of the island to destroy the problem at its source.  Close to a dozen ‘floating warehouses’ which supplied arms to the LTTE were tracked down and destroyed in operations that earned the admiration of far more powerful navies in the world.   Thanks to these operations, the LTTE became isolated on the ground and was starved of arms and ammunition. The Navy played a role. An important role. It played it to perfection.

Shamindra Ferdinando, reports in ‘The Island’ about a glowing report made by a Japanese member of the the UN Law Commission, Shinya Murase to an unnamed diplomat for his work subsequent to taking over the diplomatic mission in spite of radiation fears caused by the destruction of the Fukushima nuclear facility, on March 11, 2011.  The diplomat, Murase says, arrived at a time when many embassy staff members were fleeing the city for fear of radioactive contamination. 

‘But this ambassador was different. Right after his arrival, he visited the evacuation centers in the affected area with his fellow countrymen, cooking and serving hot food that was much appreciated by the evacuees who had been living under freezing temperatures without heat. His government donated the victims a huge amount of money for this small country, as well as 3 million bags of tea produced in his country. Furthermore, he led some 15 military personnel from his country to clean-up the debris in the tsunami-stricken area. These actions went well beyond his basic diplomatic duties, but his efforts were immensely appreciated.’

All this was before Kumar Sangakkara made us all proud with his remarkably forthright speech.  Karannagoda is not a speech-maker.  Not taking away anything from Sangakkara’s effort of course, but this former Navy Commander has done as much or more. 

There are men and women behind certain outcomes.  Some seek glory, some get glory, deserved and underserve. Then there are those who neither brag nor are talked about.  That’s the kind of individual I would like my children to grow up to be. 

Wasantha Karannagoda was never a limelight seeker.  This note is hardly limelight-facilitating.  Still, there are times when gratitude needs to be expressed even if the deserved are self-effacing.  This is one such moment.  Thank you Sir.

This was published on July 15, 2011in the 'Daily News'

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

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