Time can be sliced and scrambled

“Were you aware, perhaps in a sacred moment of intoxication, that an evil guard imprisons us by the winding of clocks?”

A close friend of mine was hospitalized for depression and related conditions which warranted close medical observation and indeed restraint for he was convinced there was nothing wrong and consequently given to violent objection to ‘treatment’. This was in 1985. I believe in August or September. I spent a month and a half in the Psychiatric Ward of the General Hospital, Colombo with my friend. Nights.

He was convinced that he had acquired special powers. He once blinked and said ‘nuwara archchi merenava hathai visi pahata’(‘My grandmother in Kandy will die at 7.25). It was 7.10 pm. He was claiming that he had willed her death. As the minutes passed, it was clear he was beginning to doubt his powers. He instructed me to go to his house and bring back his brother’s watch, a digital contraption, where time could be stopped. Well, not ‘time’ but its indication on a display screen. My friend was playing with time in the most innocent manner. He was devastated when 7.25 p.m. came and went. He broke down and cried.

For years I thought time, despite its ‘capture’ for display purposes in a circular frame, was of linear orientation. It just went straight ahead, it seemed. Towards death, I might add.

I was intrigued by the ‘international date line’ when Mrs Palliyaguru, my Grade Four class teacher told us about it. I managed to grasp the logic of how different places can have different times, but was still thrown a bit when I encountered ‘daylight saving time’ in the USA. 

It is all relative, now I understand. I know now that time travel is not impossible. We can go back in history courtesy memory and far into the future thanks to imagination. And since each individual remember things in particular ways at particular moments and also imagine things in ways that are distinct, conceptions of ‘time’ can vary from one person to the next.

Some people divide life into childhood, adolescence and youth; some into childhood, middle age and old age; some into childhood, bachelorhood, married life. Other dissections are possible of course.

Sometimes time passes very slowly, too slowly in fact and that’s a product of anxiety or anticipation. Sometimes the good times pass by very fast. Too fast. 

There are years we will never forget, moments too. Then there are years that are eminently forgettable and indeed duly forgotten. Moments too.

It is not just individuals. Communities, groups and countries can have different time-notions. An American of the USA, for example, might collapse time and distance, viz ‘it’s three hours from here’. The driver of an intercity coach would speak of distance not in miles or kilometers but the number of audio cassettes that can be played from A to B: ‘cassette piece pahaka dura’ (a distance of five cassettes). Or CDs.

Governments have five year plans. Some have 10 year plans. We are told to plant rice if we want to plan for a year, plant trees to plan for decades and to teach the people if we want to plan for a century.

What all this says is that ‘time’ is more complex that it seems. All this is a long foreword to a simple observation that won’t take too many words. I believe that the vast majority of people in this country, while they plan and execute with deliberate or instinctive reference to lifetime, are nevertheless deeply conscious of the plural, i.e. lifetimes. The time-frame is not measurable in the number of cassettes, hours, miles etc., but is sansaaric in dimension.

Deep down, I believe this is why we are a laid-back society. We are not in a hurry. The average Westerner is appalled by what he/she perceives to be scandalous slowness, which is immediately (and understandably) labeled ‘sloth’.

Are we slothful? Well, I don’t know. I think it is about what it important to the particular individual or collective. Is ‘life’ an aggregation of meetings? Is ‘living’ directly related to size of bank balance, companies/territories acquired etc? Is ‘living’ amenable to capture in photographs and/or videos? Is life, on the other hand, about seeing, hearing, breathing, touching, tasting and synthesizing in real time and real space and remembering without the aid of recording device?

I don’t think we can conclude either way. This much is true, though; things that are proposed and implemented have a better chance of proceeding smoothly (meaning, with greater acceptance and therefore less convulsion) if they are tuned to the pace-ethos of the particular community.

I am thinking of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, i.e. that horribly anti-democratic piece of legislation and process of legislating following the Indo-Lanka Accord. That was totally oblivious and dismissive of ‘OUR CHOSEN PACE’. Passed. Resulted in 60,000 deaths. 

Did not work.

These things are akin to stuffing one’s mouth with food. If it’s too much you gag on the food. Or vomit it out. It depends also on the type of food. Certain foods cause allergies to certain bodies. True for individuals. True for countries. You can force-feed. The body suffers. Can die. Or even revolt and grip by the throat the force-feeder and strangle him/her to death.

Things happen. Things are happening. There’s a ‘pace’ involved. Right now, I believe, in substance and pace, there’s a mismatch. Not healthy. Certain things cannot be stopped with a watch that can ‘stop’. No, it is not about time passing.

Time does pass. Moves. Let’s say ‘forward’. Nations don’t necessary move in concert, in the same direction. They are entities that can go back and indeed self-destruct to levels that forbid reconstruction.

This was first published in the 'Daily News' eight years ago (September 6, 2010) under the title 'On dimensioning time'.

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Notes for a Manifesto: Education Reforms

If anyone doubts that the entire education system should be reformed, a quick listen to statements made by the Minister of Higher Education Wijedasa Rajapaksha (WR) would force a re-think. On the one hand he extols the virtues of private education and insists that this way lies the future. Then he submits a Cabinet Paper to take over the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT).

The reasons offered are hilarious. WR tells us that SLIIT was initially managed by a private company although owned by the Government (he probably meant ‘state’) with money being released from the Mahapola Trust Fund (MTF) to construct the first building.  Three years ago, WR claims, SLIIT had paid some 400 million rupees to the MTF and purchased a new lease for the property.  

WR is concerned that there are no government officials on the SLIIT board now. He believes that less than half a million rupees is a gross under-valuation considering the worth of SLIIT assets, which by the way were not paid for by the Government. He’s most concerned about the fate of SLIIT students since ‘there is no rightful owner to this institution’!  

That’s WR’s SLIIT story. Another version would give a more comprehensive and detailed picture. It would speak of SLIIT being established in 1999 by a group of eminent academics and professionals as a Company Limited by Guarantee in order to address the demand for IT professionals. It would mention how SLIIT expanded, establishing centers in Matara, Kandy, Jaffna and Kurunegala, while creating opportunities for the study of other fields. 

It is a success story, by and large. If an ‘ownerless’ institution can offer graduate and postgraduate degrees in multiple disciplines, secure accreditation from renowned international certifying authorities in a country where the ‘owned’ universities have little to brag about, it is clear that ownership is not an issue.  PerhapsWR should study how not-for-profit entities operate, assess the track record of SLIIT, compare it with institutions such as the one he wishes to turn SLIIT, and check his tongue before making statements if only to curb contradiction and obtain coherence. 

It’s more than an issue of private versus public (or a mixture). It is about institutional and programmatic coherence and it is also about quality. Let’s consider the current situation.

The state spends billions on education and yet the end product clearly indicates that the return on investment is low.  It appears that the relevant authorities have not updated themselves about the objectives of education, new methodologies and the need for synergy.  

At present the public education system lags behind private systems by as much as two years. It is an exam-oriented system and one which effectively pushes a 15-16 year old into a particular stream. A student that young cannot know what he/she is good at or what would sustain his/her interests. Moreover it makes it impossible for him/her to shift streams in the event it is discovered that he/she chose poorly.  Blinders are imposed early and a student cannot explore other areas of study. For example, the course-rigidity does not allow a mathematics student to learn biology, commerce or literature.  

This needs to be corrected. It cannot be impossible to come up with a system which gives students more flexibility in the combination of subjects, especially at the tertiary level. For example, it should be possible and indeed compulsory for a student focusing on the social sciences to obtain more than rudimentary instruction in commerce, mathematics and biology where the student can select from a basket of subject options.  The entire examination schedule can be restructured to allow for two or more exams that count for the final overall result where a student, if he/she feels that he/she has made a mistake could, after the initial set of exams, shift disciplinary focus.  

While there are assignments, group projects and such, they do not count towards the final grade that a student receives. Therefore, naturally, what is fostered is a culture of exam-mania. It’s a do or die matter and those who die are buried, as per ‘custom’. 

Ideally, there should be a system which strikes a balance between school based assessment and evaluation through competitive exams. Centers could be set up to facilitate schools and teachers to conduct such assessment and also oversee the integration of new and innovative learning/teaching mechanisms.  

In any event, there has to be a strong civil-education component in the school curriculum especially to ensure that students who benefit from subsidies are made aware of how much is spent on them, who coughs up the money and what this entails in terms of ‘giving back’ at some point. 

Such an initiative would have to be complemented by a licensing system for all those who aspire to be teachers. Having a degree does not mean one is automatically suited to teach. It is unfair to subject children to the supervision by those who are engaged in on-the-job training. That’s like getting a medical student to prescribe medicine.

The overall idea is to ensure that when a student exits school, he/she has a more rounded education, is empowered with the ability to work with others, a healthy curiosity, good communication skills in at least two languages (including English) and an innovative frame of mind among other things. 

There are other issues. International schools operate largely without any supervision. In this case it is not about curriculum, but policies and practices, some of which are highly questionable. What is proposed is of course not policing, but a system of licensing that requires adherence to standards across all areas of operation. 

There are lots of institutes devoted to higher studies, both private and public. There are also institutes that focus on technical education. There’s overlap and there’s sidelining. Such things can be corrected by reviewing and if necessary restructuring the institutional arrangement to obtain a greater degree of coherence and enhance synergy.

Education is obviously a key element of national development. Therefore higher education (subsequent to the empowerment through a reformed school education structure) has to be tied to overall skills requirements. This necessitates a comprehensive occupational classification based on current realities and those that envisaged development could produce.  In other words we need to know what kind of human resources we need, envisage the needs down the line and ensure that these ‘needs’ do not compromise the fundamentals of education — a solid enough foundation in the sciences, mathematics, social sciences and humanities regardless of whether or not direct arrows can be drawn from courses to jobs.  

Unfortunately, we are stuck in a mindset that’s best exemplified by the confusion betrayed by the Minister of Higher Education. The preference has been for uttering truisms, misunderstand and misarticulating the problem, addressing piece of it and in an ad hoc manner, and leaving things by and large unchanged. 

We can and must do better.  Please take note Nagananda Kodituwakku, Rohan Pallewatte, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Patali Champika Ranawaka, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Maithripala Sirisena and any other individual entertaining hopes of becoming the next President of Sri Lanka.

Other articles in this series:

An introductory note

The State

Justice, Law and Order

Understanding the Executive

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindasenevi@gmail.com

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Sulochana Dissanayake’s world of giants and ants

Sulochana Dissanayake’s life and work have been about diminishing and enhancement.  Of various kinds.  As an undergraduate in the United States of America, in addition to dealing with all the issues of not being white in a predominantly white population of New England which made ‘identity’ a political concern, Sulochana encountered a direct form of diminesion by way of name-truncation. 

‘In Sri Lanka we shorten names for affection. In the USA it’s a convenience, especially when people find it hard to pronounce “foreign” names.  So I went from Sulochana to Sulo. One day, when I was doing the midnight shift while an intern at the Williamstown Theater Festival, helping support a massive 10 foot wall, someone asked, “you, what’s your name?” and I said “Sulo”.  He said “Ok S, move it along!”’

She said that sometimes international students did the shortening themselves to spare themselves the tedious process.  So Tamiur from Pakisatan became ’T’ while Qingan (pronounced ‘Chinlan’) would say ‘I am Qinglan but you can call me Q!’ 

Today, Sulochana, who is the founder and artistic director, ‘Power of Play Pvt Ltd,’ engages with different kinds of identity issues and different issues of dimension.  Recently, for example, Power of Play, built the tallest female puppet ever in Sri Lanka.  ‘The little girl giant of Sri Lanka’ as it is called is 14 feet tall.  

“Little girls are not taught to become giants, they are in fact told that it’s ok to be ants and in fact it’s even virtuous to be that small; but the problem is that over the course of their lives they are expected to do giant-like things. They have to be employed, contribute to the household income, bear and take care of children, cook, clean, entertain and be excellent on all fronts, which of course is humanly impossible.

‘Even as they continue to be treated as ants; small, insignificant, close to invisible and inconsequential,’ one might add.  

The interest in issue of identity and her fascination with theater began at an early age.  The youngest of three children whose passions were enthusiastically supported by their parents, Sulochana had been too small to take part in drama workshops conducted at the National Museum by disciples of Somalatha Subasinghe. She had to sit on a table and watch her older siblings do their thing.

‘I was transfixed, though. I would repeat the whole thing with my father. He and I did skits while my brother and sister made up a critical gallery, usually flooding the performance with a deluge of insults that my poor mother tried in vain to censorLater I told myself that if I could have survived their criticism, I could survive any audience.’ 

It was natural that at St Bridget’s Convent she would get involved in the band, the choir and in theatre productions.  She remembers that time vividly, but most importantly was conscious of the absences.

‘I always felt that theatre had more scope than Lionel Wendt and John De Silva, metaphorically speaking.  School dramas were mostly musicals or Shakespeare. Of course Shakespeare is supposed to be timeless but the way we did it was to my mind outdated.  It was only in inter-house competitions that original content was allowed.  Unfortunately apart from Sinhabahu and Maname I wasn’t really exposed to Sinhala theatre as it wasn’t common practice to attend events such as the Rajya Natya Ulela (State Drama Festival).  So when I was introduced to Ruwanthi De Chickera’s work it was a revelation. She was the one of the rare directors telling contemporary Sri Lankan stories in the English theatre scene.  I felt this was what theatre ought to be, that it should be relevant to contemporary audiences. 

‘I wasn’t too keen on going abroad to study after my ALs in 2005, but my parents told me that I could always come back.  School had forced me to confront the realities of discriminatory structures and their rigidity.  So I was rather frustrated and felt that it would be a good idea to study abroad.  My father came up with a few liberal arts schools that were small enough to enable me to have one on one interaction with educators. That’s how I ended up at Bates College, Maine.

‘I wanted to study theatre but my brother suggested that I base myself in a more formal, mainstream discipline from a career perspective. Bates had a good economics program, so although I preferred to study business, I figured that since economics is about studying human behavior it is related to my fundamental interests.   So in the end I did a double major, economics and theatre.’ 

Her undergraduate thesis allowed her to combine her love of stories and the rupees and cents that inevitably come into play.  It was about  an independent organization called “Friends of Prisoners’ Children (FPC)” which had been founded by Sulochana’s mother, Florine Marzook (the wife of the then Commissioner of Prisons, Rumi Marzook) and by Sr Immaculate, the former Principal of St Bridget’s who ran ‘Welcome House’ which is a haven for teenage mothers. 

‘I analyzed how the annual cash grant of Rs 1000 a month, given at the time by FPC, affected school attendance and performance of the recipients.  The money came from independent contributors and at that time they financed around 150 students. I believe the number now exceeds 400.’

Since she was also majoring in theatre, Sulochana had to come up with a final year production. She chose Sam Shepard’s ‘A lie of the mind’.  

‘Sam, who passed away recently, was a premier American theatre writer and actor who wrote about modern realities, in particular the struggle of modern Americans.  The play was set in rural American.  The fact that so much of America was so rural really surprised me at the beginning as it was in stark contrast to what Hollywood portrayed.  So upon arrival, Maine actually felt like Kekirawa to me. Anyway the play was about the isolation faced by white American families, white poverty and domestic violence, thing that we, as outsiders, rarely associate with America.

Apparently Bates would have two major productions a year and they were usually by faculty members, so a student-directed main stage production was unique.

‘I had always been interested in directing players, even as a freshman.  I directed for the Robinson Players, a student theatre group.  The faculty noticed that I was serious.’ 

Sulochana had, by her senior year, obtained a lot of hands-on experience in theatre productions. In her junior year she won a coveted internship at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, one of the top 10 regional theaters in the US which exposed her to the inner workings of professional theater in USA. In the summer of her sophomore year at Bates she was selected to intern at the Williamstown Theater Festival, which we mentioned earlier.  

‘Interns were essentially workhorses. I got to see the dark side of theatre. It was hard, back-breaking work. It opened my eyes to how many people are needed to make things work. In Sri Lanka we grow up believing that it’s about acting and little else. In the USA, sometimes stage managers get paid more than the actors; stage managers essentially run shows sometimes even for 30 years!  Every element of production had a professional behind it.  It was a far more informed process. Everyone is focused on his or her role and the industry supports them all. In Sri Lanka we don’t have that. So we have amateur productions where actors and directors get better over time.

‘I was a woman, colored and I had an accent. At Williamstown, I got called only for one audition in two and a half months. So I asked myself whether I had come to move sets and pick up cigarette butts. I told myself, “no, I am going to be a director.”  They had intern nights where interns could get together and do something creative. There were about 70 of us but only about 10 were getting regular acting roles.’

What was it going to be about? Sulochana had decided, ‘identity’.

‘Identity was an issue that I felt strongly about. Bates was predominantly white. My roommate would jokingly say that I am the poster child for Bates simply because I represented a minority. Now the campus is fairly mixed given the hard driven initiatives to recruit students of color, but a decade ago, someone like me was a rarity.

‘Identity is a lot of things but it could even be as simple as food preferences.  So I asked the interns a simple question, ‘have you ever felt you were a part of a minority?’ The outpouring of personal stories was amazing. There was for example a boy, the whitest boy with the blondest hair and the bluest eyes, who talked about how difficult it was for his father to accept that he was gay.  There was a Jewish woman who was allergic to bread. She said “I am a red-headed Jew who is allergic to bread!” So in reality no one ever really belongs 100% of the time. None of us.’

That was the genesis of 'Project: Identity' - Created and Directed by Sulochana Dissanayake and Philana Gnatowski in collaboration with the Apprentice Company of Willamstown Theater Festival '07 (MA, USA).   It was a compilation of monologs with 2-4 player scenes.  Philana was a brilliant writer -  She and I sifted through the interviews we had gathered and wrote a short script.  

‘One scene was about filling forms in a waiting room, essentially trying to fit into boxes.  My monolog was a scene in an airport where accents and unfamiliar names forced people to slow things down, giving rise to comedy.  It was also about how Sulochana came to be reduced to “S” - completely nullifying the original meaning of the name in my mother tongue.  People said it had made a huge impact. In fact people started calling me Sulochana.’

The US economy had collapsed by the time she graduated from Bates in 2009. Jobs were hard to come by.  Interviews were rare.

‘The process was also a revelation. I was called for interviews but got very few call-backs because I mentioned economics with theatre.  My theatre advisor, a Hungarian lady caleld Kati Vecesy said, ‘you idiot, take theatre out; pretend you didn’t do it!’  The number of calls thereafter amazed me.’

However, nothing interesting had come up. Then Christine McDowell, a theatre professor at Bates who was the designer for the theatre department, had told her about the Watson Fellowship offered by the Watson Foundation funded by IBM Corporation.  It was open to students from 40 small liberal arts colleges and allowed recipients to follow a lifelong passion in countries they had never been to.  

‘Writing the grant application gave me clarity about who I am and what I wanted. I wanted to start my own theatre company in Sri Lanka. I wanted to use theatre for reconciliation, for communication and to share stories and perspectives. I wanted theatre to be something that helps us understand where we are coming from.

‘The US was the pinnacle in terms of training. Sri Lanka, on the other hand lacks the infrastructure. I wanted to learn how countries such as ours use art as communication.  Chris had been involved in a Shakespeare project in South Africa which faced issues similar to ours. The Watson Fellows had to go to at least two countries. Some went to as many as 10, but I wanted to have a more immersive experience.  

Sulochana spent six months in Grahamstown and Cape Town, South Africa, and was exposed to modern puppetry and masks. This was where, in a conversation with Janet Buckland (Founder of UBOM Theatre Company, based out of Rhodes University in Grahamstown) she realized that the secret of successful theatre is for the audience to identify with the actors. Grahamstown also hosted the 2nd largest arts festival in the world - 2nd only to Edinburgh Festival and this was where she had come across giant puppets by Les Grandes Personnes: ‘it was like being in Alice in Wonderland’.

In Capetown she worked with FTHK, a young and independent theatre company that had a simple message: listen with your eyes. It was non-verbal, visual theatre which integrated deaf and hearing artists, audiences and educators.    

‘It was like walking into a different universe.  Everything was in sign language.  All production was non-verbal. in the USA we were told voice and eyes are the most important connecting points for an actor. Here people were in full masks and didn’t have eyes & they didn’t speak. It was like watching a picture book come to life. There was no language, so it could be any nationality, any age. This was how I felt that we could do so much with non-verbal performances back in SriLanka to bridge the gap created by language and ethnicity.

‘It was Prof Gina Fatone who decided the second country for me. She was an ethnomusicologist who had done fieldwork in Indonesia. One day she brought a 3D rod puppet to class. She made it breathe! I was hooked. I felt that if that little thing could engage someone like me, then this is what I should do.

‘So I also went to Indonesia where I learned about Wayang (puppets ). Kulit or shadow puppets was the original that arrived from India and it was an elite form of court entertainment. It gained so much popularity that people wanted to watch Wayang during the day time too - which gave birth to Wayang Golek - the 3D wooden rod Puppet form, which is a a folk form which was not too stylized. The stories could be about Rama and Sita but they could include localized characters to mimic local politicians, clowns & commoners.  Everyone had something to watch. It was all night long - very much like our bali thovil.’ Sulochana studied under the late wayang golek maestro Dhalang Asep Sunandar Sunarya and his puppet troupe Giri Harja III. 

Sulochana brought all these experiences back to Sri Lanka. She began teaching drama and puppetry at the Moratuwa Centre of the Merrill J Fernando Charitable Foundation run by Dilmah. It is based in the old Velona Factory where the warehouses have been repurposed to house inclusive learning spaces to serve low income families including children with special needs.

‘I realized that puppetry was essentially dead in Sri Lanka because there was no economic incentive. I felt that we needed to create a demand for it.  Around four years ago, while perusing YouTUbe for light weight giant puppet designs, I came into contact with Felix Norgren  who had been trained by Les Grandes Personnes . After four years of trying to find funding to organize a giant puppet workshop in Sri Lanka (with no luck from the related embassies).

Felix finally saved enough money to come to Sri Lanka with his family for a holiday and offered us a workshop free of charge. I pitched the idea to Dilmah as an ideal opportunity for us to turn the center in to a base where we can create giant puppets which could be used commercially. Dilmah agreed to sponsor the space, labor and material for the workshop as the centre was already training young people in carpentry and with Felix’s help we managed to create a giant puppet in 3 weeks from January - February this year.  Now we have come to a point where we can offer workshops to corporates on soft skill development, gender sensitizing and emotional intelligence via the medium of theater and Puppetry.

That was not going to be the beginning and end of Sulochana’s forays into puppetry.  In fact, as far back as 2011, she got an opportunity to do a skit in Jaffna on the occasion of opening the American Corner (of the US Embassy), which was a non-verbal performance addressing post-war social realities which included teenage pregnancies and the how new technologies were tearing apart the social fabric.

‘We did two 10-minute performances using hand-made puppets and they were well received. We were invited to perform in Jaffna schools. 

This year, she had won a small competitive grant from the British Council’s ‘Voice and Choices’ program, where recipients had to focus on developing voices and choices of women and girl children. Sulochana is in the process of  creating a puppet show of a little girl who grows up with the  do’s and don’ts of Sri Lankan society but is blessed with a grandmother who told her to follow her passions and be kind. In this way, fantastically - overnight, she becomes a giant, Sulochana explained.

Giants. 

‘That’s what I want little girls to be. I want them to be the giants they can be.  We are a post-war nation but for me the wars of the household have always been more interesting and in need of more urgent attention.  We can’t talk about rape culture if we are not even teaching children about the rights to their own bodies. Do we give them choices? can they decide?  And it’s true for boys as well.  

‘I’m inspired by Seema Omar who is a puppet creator and also a creative counsellor.  From her I’ve learnt that all art, puppetry, music, theatre etc., can heal people, can facilitate introspection, build empathy and resilience.  It can help us reconnect with ourselves.’

So, in this way, she has used well-known stories such as Mahadenamutta but have transformed the golayas. Dhalang Asep’s son Bhatara Sena collaborated with Sulochana to create a set of Sri Lankan characters in the Wayang Golek form for the ‘Modern Stories of Mahadanamuththa’ - so she has Polbemoonee and Puwakbadillee - where the traditional male characters have been replaced by their female and male relatives/friends of multiple ethnicities to more accurately represent Sri Lankans of today. And ‘the characters are not talking about the eluva and the muttiya (goat and the earthenware pot) but about HIV and sexual bribery!’

Sulochana doesn’t have all the answers. Indeed she insists that sometimes we need to tell ourselves and one another that we don’t have the answers.  What’s important is to engage in ways that make others engage with us, to bring puppets to life, and to have the tools and attitudes that allow us to be open, honest and become the giants we can be.

You can learn more about Sulochana's work @ www.powerofplay.lk and through powerinfoplay (facebook)

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The unbearable lightness of brieflessness

Pic by Mary Lou Kayser

A friend of mine (let’s call her Brenda) lives, breathes, consumes and is consumed by advertising. I remember, years ago, she returned after the official launching of the scandal-tainted ‘Water’s Edge’. ‘It’s a nice location for a shoot’ was how she described the place. I owe a lot to Brenda because she taught me a lot about advertising. That comment on Water’s Edge, for example, taught me that the world is not made of places, but ‘locations’, the former being of old-world usage while the latter had market-value factored in.

She taught me other things. One afternoon she said she was tired of being inside the office and wanted me to take a walk with her. We walked up the street. She noticed a side lane (she notices a lot of things). I noticed a sign indicating a book store (I see only books). She noticed an art class in progress and suggested that we take a look.

There were a dozen or so children, around five to 10 years. Among them was a little boy totally engrossed in his work, with the paint he was using totally engrossed in his face, so to speak. He was full of colour. Literally. Cute to the max, one might say. Brenda said ‘Look at him!’ and followed this with the inevitable, ‘would look lovely in an ad’. She was like that. Made of location, model and prop. To my mind, way too professional for her own good. I even asked her once, ‘Brenda, when are you going to get out of this world of locations, props and models and start considering your life brief?’ She just smiled in a way that implied, ‘dude, I do have a life brief, I live, on my own time in ways you might not understand’.

I shared the location-prop-model story with others in the creative department of the advertising agency and how I asked Brenda when she’s going to live her life brief. I told them that Brenda was made of briefs. Ruwan, clearly the quietest art director in the business, waited until everyone else had finished laughing and said, ‘kotinma, maalinda, brenda kiyanne brief case ekak!’ (In short, Malinda, Brenda is a brief case!).

It was all light hearted stuff. We laughed. I duly reported to Brenda that it was concluded that she was a ‘brief case’. She duly smiled that same smile. Today (August 31, 2010), I heard another ‘briefcase’ story. My batchmate from Peradeniya, Werawellalage Gedara Premasiri was the narrator. Premasiri is one of thousands of our citizens who spend around seven hours a day on average in trains and railway stations five days a week. He has train stories. This is one.

‘During those terrible days when there was a constant threat of bombs exploding, we were very concerned about parcels, suitcases and such.

People were required to carry their baggage. There was a big problem in trains carrying people to and from work. Briefcases. There were just too many. Everyone had one of those James Bond type contraptions.’

Briefcases had nothing to do with convenience. It was a mind-thing, Premasiri said: ‘the average briefcase had a torch, umbrella and a lunch packet’.

People had to get up early and walk some distance to the railway station. Hence the torch. The umbrella was a just-in-case precaution. And lunch had to be had.

‘It made people feel important. By the time you reach the office, the peon is waiting for you and your briefcase. It’s the peon who takes it up to the relevant desk.’

Yes, it is all in the mind. All about appearances. Status. Not all briefcases are of the James Bond type. Briefcases take different form. If you wear a set of glasses that filters out the necessary and shows all the frills people carry to look good and big and better and important, you will be astounded by the clutter. You don’t have to go too far. Take a look in the mirror. It’s a lot of baggage we are talking about.

Brenda had a job to do and the mental notes she was making hardly filled any space. It certainly didn’t trip anyone and didn’t cause worry in any over-cautious mind, fretting about bomb explosions. She didn’t seem to be overburdened either and even if she was, that was her business.

We have problems, Premasiri said. The transport system needs to be revamped, for example. There are little things, he said, that can be sorted out, not by the State but the people themselves.

Briefcases are bulky things. A briefcase is a harmless thing. Imagine however a trainload of briefcases. That’s heaviness we can do without, burdened as we are with a million worries.

Premasiri said that he had talked about briefcases on many occasions. ‘Not a single person dumped his briefcase,’ he said with a laugh. Some briefs are hard to drop, especially those unnecessary things we pile upon ourselves with a neat guilt-reliever called ‘necessary’. 

This was first published in the Daily News (September 1, 2010) to which I wrote a daily column titled 'The Morning Inspection'.

malindasenevi@gma

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'Disappearances': acceptance and apportionment of guilt

Saliya Pieris, President’s Counsel and Chairman of the Office of Missing Persons, has spoken some interesting words at an event called ‘No more disappearances’ held to mark the International Day of Enforced Disappearances.  

He opines that accepting that enforced disappearances had occurred in the country for at least four decades is the only way Sri Lanka can achieve reconciliation. We don’t have the full speech but it is likely that his elaboration was more nuanced. After all, if ‘accepting disappearances’ makes for reconciliation, then it would be pretty simple. Someone says ‘yes, this happened,’ and everyone says ‘hurrah!’ and that’s it — we are a reconciled nation.  

People have different notions of what ‘reconciliation’ means. TNA parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran for example says that even though not all problems of Tamils would be resolved by it, a new constitution is non-negotiable and that the Sinhalese must accept this. Again, we don’t know if he detailed what this ‘new constitution’ is all about for, theoretically, ‘new’ does not necessarily mean ‘good’ or ‘better’. 

He’s only said ‘simple majoritarian rule is unjust’.  Well, we don’t know how ‘simple minoritarian rule/manipulation’ could be ‘just’.  If he means devolution of power then of course he has got to match that particular ‘solution’ with grievances that can be established, he has to move from myth models to fact, he has to talk about all the economic, historical, geographical and demographic realities that make mockery of devolution as currently articulated.  

Pieris’ contention merits serious comment because it is about dealing with the less tangible but more resilient demons of conflict: memory, grief, anger and the desire for retribution. Dealing with these are necessary even if they are not sufficient preconditions for reconciliation.   

The picture is dark and not unknown and yet it is a picture that needs to be painted, a story that has to be narrated again and again.  After all, the lack of narrative, has all but obliterated memory of the worst period in post-Independence Sri Lanka in terms of rights violation, brutalization of society and bloodshed if you want to go with killing-rates: the period from 1988 to 1990 aka ‘The Bheeshanaya’. This is how Pieris puts it:

‘If we speak of the numbers of missing in Sri Lanka, it is one of the highest not only in Asia but also in the world. We have to accept that people had been forcibly disappeared for at least four decades. Accepting this is the only way to achieve reconciliation.’

Again, we don’t know if Pieris spelled it out, but he’s hit on the most important element: ‘there are some elements who are still unwilling to accept that incidents of enforced disappearances had taken place in the country.’ He adds, “for some, still, the perpetrators who are responsible for making people disappeared are heroes and the victims are traitors.’

He is correct. The entire narrative of war crimes and disappearances, the stories of crimes against humanity and all related horrors has been dominated (and Pieris knows this) by a strange (pernicious?) focus on the last stages of the conflict, i.e. the months leading up to mid May 2009 and the Nandikadaal Lagoon. We’ve heard what the UN agencies have said. We have heard what the International Crisis Group (ICG) has said. We’ve also heard the rights outfits in Sri Lanka who would have us believe that they represent ‘civil society’.  It’s all about those last few months.

All of a sudden, it’s as if ‘horror’ was evident only during that brief period. No blood, no bullets, no grief from July 27, 1975 (when the Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiappah was shot dead by Velupillai Prabhakaran) to the point when the LTTE had no place left to drag several hundred hostages. It all happened thereafter, it seems. So, no horror or grief in the early years of armed conflict when soldiers retaliated to LTTE attacks by slaughtering Tamil civilians. No horror when the Indian Peace Keeping Forces did the same. Nothing when different Tamil militant groups slaughtered each other. Nothing when the LTTE killed Tamil academics, clergy, civil society leaders, professionals and politicians. Nothing when suicide bombers of the LTTE did their work targeting civilians. 

Pieris speaks of four decades, which takes us back to at least 1978. That leaves out the horrors of 1971, but forces us to contend with all the gory stuff at the end of the eighties where JVP terrorism was upped by several notches by UNP terrorism, both largely on unarmed peoples.  

All this needs to be ‘accepted,’ Pieris would accept, I’m sure for there were disappearances in all periods flagged above. We have to acknowledge and we can’t be selective in this. We can’t allow outcome preferences discolor approach in this process, as politicians, political parties and communities have done. 

Every single person who was maimed, dispossessed or killed outside the legal process (being killed in battle is clearly a separate issue, but ‘disappearing’ prisoners of war is not) is a victim, regardless of his/her political views, aspirations or even method-preferences. Every person who maimed, dispossessed or killed outside the legal process is guilty. Such a person is no hero but one who has scarred his/her family, community, country and all citizens. The traitor-hero narrative has on place in this even if the ‘solution’ is not necessary one of taking eye for eye.  

The entire process is of course fraught with all kinds of angst on the part of all concerned parties. Why us and not them, people ask. Why only us, they ask. Justice for all else justice for none, is another cry that will no doubt be raised. 

Perhaps there should be some ground rules about the repercussions since wounds are still new, memories not deadened and anxieties (real or imagined) constantly being articulated.

Nevertheless, we must begin where the OMP suggests we do: acknowledgment in the general sense. Of course, there’s fear, anxiety and long painful histories that get in the way. One community or its representatives could very well think ‘If we acknowledge and they will not do likewise, where will it leave us?’ On the other hand, those who take that risk are the truly courageous. They, in my book, obtain moral high ground. They set the pace, they give direction, they design the parameters of all future engagement. They do all this, but only if they resist the urge to say ‘ok, your turn and if you remain silent, that’s it…you can kiss reconciliation goodbye!’ 

In other words, acknowledgement should not come with caveats. Humility is what might carry us through. Let’s hope the OMP understands this, fleshes things out and resist the tendency to make misleading assertions. It’s not only the OMP that has been forced to walk on eggshells. Each and every citizen has to do so too, unfortunately. We can’t stand still just on account of this reality.

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