29 February 2020

09:29

By Malinda Words

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Akalanka Athukorala, at 13+ already a hurricane-hunter!



Hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones, even if you’ve only seen them in photographs or videos, are terrifying spectacles. They capture us with their sheer force and size. And yet, no one would in their right mights willingly venture into any storm with that kind of magnitude for the wind and swirl are certainly forbidding, to put it mildly.

For this reason, the term ‘hurricane hunter’ intrigues. When the said hunter happens to be a Grade 9 student who is just 13 years old, it’s even more intriguing. Well, Akalanka Athukorala didn’t really hunt down a hurricane and certainly not one on another planet. He wrote a book called ‘Hurricane Hunters’. It was his second book. In the first, he was, so to speak, a ‘tornado chaser.’ That was when he was in Grade 5. Compelling reads, both, but this however is not a book review. 

Akalanka obviously has a vivid imagination, like all children. Children inhabit worlds that adults have forgotten exist. They converse with aliens, planets, angels, gods, trees, mountains and all kinds of creatures just as they would with people. Not all children write down their extraterrestrial experiences. Akalanka did.

Sumathy Sivamohan, award winning writer and senior lecturer in English at the University of Peradeniya, speaking at the launch of the book correctly observed that the story and indeed its publication speak of boundaries. Crossing them, to be precise. Akalanka may or may not have thought about the entire exercise in such terms. He’s not the hero in the story. And yet, high winds and swirling things were what he took on, overcame and about which he spoke. In a sense. 

He spoke briefly. There are super heroes and they stand out. Fiction is full of them. In real life, individual brilliance, courage and self sacrifice is rare. On earth, if challenges are overcome, it’s very rarely that it is an individual affair. Akalanka understands this. Teachers, parents, adoring older sisters, friends and well-wishers were part of the story of writing and publishing, he observed. Such appreciative words are common and par for the course at such events, one might say, but then he did say something that demonstrated absolute authenticity of gratitude.

Akalanka mentioned that one of the reasons why he wanted the book published is to encourage others his age to write down their stories and share them with others in book form. Others backed him, he’s backing others. Simply. He chased down a hurricane and in doing so, even if only in some small way, said ‘can be done and you can do it too.’ He has taken out the fear of hurricanes from kids his age, known and unknown. Well, he’s tried to. Sometimes saying ‘I did it, so can you,’ is not enough, but few would even do that little bit for others. 

Hurricanes. I’ve never seen one. Hurricane hunters, I’ve never heard of. The one I did meet in Kandy a few years ago was tiny. He didn’t have super hero paraphernalia. No cape. No strange head gear. Didn’t have claws for hands. There was no ‘HH’ embroidered on the front of his shirt. He seemed happy. It was a special day, after all. Didn’t strut. Wasn’t philosophical. He just talked about those who encouraged. It was a piece of fiction but there was absolutely nothing fictional when he, in a few words, said he hoped the exercise would spur others his age to explore the worlds their imagination conjured and to be as creative as they wanted to be. 

‘Come hunt a hurricane,’ he did not say. ‘It’s easy,’ he did not say. However, in act and word he told one and all ‘not impossible.’ Without really saying it. 

Akalanka Athukorala. A champion, certainly.   

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [February 26, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com


Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]

Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry
Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 
Sriyani and her serendipity shop
Forget constellations and the names of oceans
Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?
Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons
Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane
Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer

09:02

By Malinda Words

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Did the mountain move and if so, why?



Takeda Shingen, a powerful Japanese feudal lord in the Sengoku Period once advised his aides that in the event he dies, his death must not be announced for at least three years. At least that’s how Akira Kurosawa played it in his acclaimed film, Kagemush or ‘Shadow Warrior.’ 

‘Guard our domain, do not move from it,’ he insisted, warning that it they set out to attack, the Takeda clan would be destroyed.

He dies. Fortuitously a common criminal who had just been arrested was found to have a remarkable resemblance to the feudal lord. So he is tasked to impersonate. He is taught to be and think like the late lord. And he does it so perfectly that on one occasion when Shingen’s son tries to unmask him at a council of the generals by soliciting opinion on matters military, he simply says ‘A mountain does not move’. Until he is found out and duly banished.

The mountain does move, so the story goes, because the son believes it should. And the Takada clan is vanquished.

That’s one mountain story. Here’s another. 

Chandrishan Perera, cricketer and ruggerite, in a rare face-off with the Black Caps in a 7-a-side (if I remember right), found that his opposite number was Jonah Lomu. 

‘There was a mountain right in front of me. I moved. The mountain also moved.’  

Then there are people who, it is claimed, can move mountains. And we have heard that if the mountain doesn’t come to you, then you have to go to the mountain. And Bob Dylan once asked, rhetorically, ‘how many years must a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?’ And an unknown writer once asked if mountains and seas exchange places in secret when no one is looking. Premakeerthi De Alwis in a song immortalized by Victor Ratnayake, miyuru kalpanaa (sweet musings), in sweeping confidence exclaimed, ‘himagira mata veil ahuraki (the snow capped mountains is but a fistful of sand, to me).’ 

In the theme song of ‘An Office and a Gentleman,’ written by Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings and sung by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, the same determination comes soft. ‘There are mountains in our way, but we climb a step every day.’ 

Moving mountains. Conquering them. Mountains. Mountains of mountain stories. But here’s one that moved me. It’s from Palitha Senaratne’s ‘Haiku Mohotha’ or ‘The Haiku Moment.’ 

Dutuvemi kandak yanavaa 
an kandu atharin midee
Kandu nethi palaathakata

A mountain did I see
from other mountains freed 
heading to where no mountains stood

Haiku. A a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five. Sinhala Haiku is essentially short verses that have flips, twists and reverses. Clever word play with little or no deference to stated format. But then again, what’s in a name, what’s a brand when poetry is what which suggests rather than asserts, a shadow rather than detailed sketch, a blur, a mist and a silken thread that soothes, agitates or blows the mind as much with style as with content? Will the mountain find the promised land desired? Will it stumble, will it fall? Will it lose its way and lose itself? Will it grow in stature or diminish? Will it be arrested by a cartographer and returned to a worn out map? And if so, will it be a poet or a mendicant who could and would set it free again?

Palitha’s book has gems. This one was an emerald or perhaps a ruby, depending on how you held it to which light and at what time.

Was Palitha talking of giants whose magnitude was lost among other giants and in an ego-rush was determined to look tall, stand heads and shoulders above everyone else, a Gulliver looking for a community of Lilliputs? Was it about claustrophobia? Was it about things that are but should not be so? A search for truths unavailable in the here and now of mountain range, perhaps? 

A departure, certainly. Or an arrival. Who can tell? A mountain that is a grain of sand and is resident in a particle. A poem. A poet. A book that can be read and which might, unbeknownst to reader and writer, be reading them both. 

Let’s go look for a mountain. Let’s follow one. Let’s be one. Or put it in a box lined with velvet and marked ‘love’. 

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [February 24, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]

Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry
Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 
Sriyani and her serendipity shop
Forget constellations and the names of oceans
Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?
Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons
Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane
Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer


07:50

By Malinda Words

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SLMC: having the cake, eating it and more


The 29th Delegates’ Conference of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress is reported to have adopted a resolution to renounce the proposal to completely repeal the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA). The Conference has instead ‘resolved to reform it in keeping with Islamic teachings and on what had been agreed upon by Muslim parliamentarians.’

The wording of the missive includes condemnation of what the Conference believes is an attempt to ‘deny the democratic right of representation to minority communities and smaller parties by increasing the electoral cutoff point from 5% to 12%.’

The Conference is loud on fundamental rights and human rights. ‘Of every citizen of Sri Lanka,’ no less. It wants to pursue and support ‘reconciliation and good will among communities.’ It has tossed in or alluded to terms such as equality, dignity, peace, co-existence and ‘democratic political aspirations’ via power-devolution. 

They’ve thrown in the Rohingya Muslims too and predictably have not uttered one word about the atrocities committed by that community on Buddhists and Christians — quite reminiscent of certain communalist Tamil politicians maintaining silence on ‘the boy’ (that is, the LTTE, the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization).

The SLMC, as the party name shouts out, is about Muslims. Muslim interests is what that party is all about, if we go by face value. Nothing wrong in that. It’s the whines and the inconsistency that irks. 

Let’s start with the MMDA. They are ok with ‘reform’ and object to repeal. First of all, agreement to reform is a positive step. It indicates (at least) an acknowledgement that the MMDA is flawed. It’s however a teeny-weeny ‘positive,’ considering the strong objections raised from within the Muslim community itself, especially certain Muslim women’s organizations. They have offered cogent arguments to the effect that the MMDA is anti-democratic, sexist and violates multiple fundamental rights. 

I would argue that ‘reform’ in these kinds of situations only produces inordinate delays in true resolution of issues. ‘Issues’ include anomalies within the community and vis-a-vis other communities. ‘Reform’ of the kind that the SLMC envisages is so trivial that considering the long struggle of Muslims themselves and especially Muslim women, resolution (yes, nothing short of repeal) would take that much longer (it’s not hard to do the arithmetic in terms of time-length alone, that being a critical factor here).

What’s strange about the resolutions is the democratic pretensions of the SLMC and the ‘concern’ about human rights. How can one be selective about things like democracy, equality and fundamental rights? How can ‘interests’ only be about Muslims or, in this case, Muslim men?

Speaking of the poorly written and perniciously passed (essentially bypassing the Supreme Court) 19th Amendment, the SLMC mentions ‘democratic gains.’ Maybe Rauff Hakeem and Co haven’t read the 19th at all. The SLMC believes that the 19th Amendment created independent commissions and an independent Constitutional Council (CC). A quick look at the compositions of the CC might educated Hakeem and his friends. The 19th did not defined ‘National Government’. That was deliberate and we must conclude this was only to make a mockery of the limit on cabinet-size. The SLMC makes much of the 19th. What more should we say about that party’s understanding of democracy and indeed all things constitutional? 

Let’s move to co-existence and equality. Does the MMDA affirm the principle of equality? No, it does not. It does not treat men and women equally. Neither do the ‘reforms’ sanctioned by Muslim parliamentarians restore gender equality. The SLMC wants ‘reform’ to be in line with Islamic teachings. Now, which ‘Islamic teachings’ is the party referring to? There are many schools of Islam. Who has the last word on ‘THE Muslim word’? Rauff Hakeem? The SLMC delegates? The ISIS? 

It doesn’t matter. Sri Lanka is not a Muslim theocracy. It’s not a theocracy, period. No religion has any special status in Sri Lanka (yes, we have Article 9, but it is effectively negated by sections of Articles 10 and 14, and yes, we should do away with all). Does the SLMC want religion to override the state and the corpus of general laws? If so, would the SLMC object to legislation that offers certain religions rights denied to those in other religious communities? The Muslims have more religious holidays (in terms of overall days once we count the Ramadan ‘off days’ and ‘Friday Prayers’) than any other religious community. Muslim women enjoy more ‘grief and distress time off’ in the event of divorce or widowhood. 

The SLMC wants all that to remain. It wants to be a privileged religious community. It wants Muslim women to submit to male-will. In the name of ‘religion’ it chooses to be silent about the infamous and terrorist-breeding madrasas. The Delegates Conference is upset about Rohingya Muslims but has not uttered one word about those who in the name of Islam massacred hundreds of people on Easter Sunday 2019. 

The SLMC does not want to co-exist if that term implies mutual respect, equal treatment and so on.

No. The SLMC wants to have the cake, eat it and rub the crumbs in the fact of non-Muslims, virtually saying ‘go fly a kite.’  Correction, Muslim MEN in the SLMC  want to have the cake, eat it and rub the crumbs in the fact of non-Muslims and Muslim women, virtually saying ‘go fly a kite.’  And the liberals who have ranted and raved about religion and cried themselves hoarse arguing for a secular state, separation of church and state and so on, are dead silent.  

Humbuggery is interesting, in a way. We live in interesting times. 


This article was first published in the DAILY MIRROR [February 27, 2020]

07:39

By Malinda Words

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Ever been out of Colombo?

 A view of Ritigala from Barnes Place, Colombo 7. Really.

Tharindu Amunugama, described by Asela Abeywardene as a wanderer and memory-keeper, lives in and out of Colombo. He knows Colombo. He knows what is not Colombo. And he says that he knows of people who go out of Colombo and yet do not see what’s out of Colombo. Simply because they carry Colombo with them, so to speak.

What does one call a place that is located outside the Colombo municipal area or even outside the district? Kandy, Kurunegala, Jaffna, Galle, Kegalle, Badulla? Well, they are all valid answers.  It could also be Pimburaththewa, Mihihagalkanda, Kaludiyapokuna, Maara Veediya or anywhere else that Tharidu has visited or is yet to visit. Let’s call it Ritigala, for reasons of convenience. 

Where is Ritigala and where is Colombo in relation to one another? Take a map and look. You’ll find both. Google the location and you’ll find how far away Ritigala is from where you are, the quickest route and how long it would take for you to get there. Suppose you do make a trip to Ritigala. Could you say “Here we are…Ritigala!’? Sure. It’t not Colombo and not any place between Colombo and Ritigala. It’s Ritigala. After all, the google lady would have confirmed, ‘you have arrived at your destination!’  

So what does Tharindu mean, really? In short, place is really a state of mind. You can take Colombo to Ritigala or you can leave Colombo behind when you take off to Ritigala. Take Colombo with you or summon Colombo in whatever form and way possible and you would be in Ritigala, geographically speaking, but you would still be in Colombo. 

There are photographs to take in Ritigala. There are sights that can get etched in mind or rather you etch in mind deliberately. Could end up being quite indelible of course, but still, Tharindu might say ‘I am not sure if you really got it.’ Simply, there are two ways for things, places, processes and people to get scripted in mind and heart. One, you do it. Two, you let such things encrypt themselves. The former would be Colombo-framed and the later would be Ritigala as Ritigala chooses to reveal itself.  

Shedding place so another place can get into bloodstream and play in concert with heartbeat is easier said than done, I am sure Tharindu will agree. The observer’s signature (dis)colors the observed, physics now claims what the ancients knew all along. Abandonment of frame, reference and received/acquired ‘wisdom’ is no easy task. We see constellations but not the stars, we name oceans and trap them on maps and we forget that the waves and currents are oblivious to naming and moreover disregard lines of convenience. We see a Ritigala in terms of what Colombo is not and not necessary as what it really is, OUT of Colombo. 

Why does ‘Colombo’ conjure notions of ‘urban’ and why is ‘Ritigala’ rural? Sociologists have pointed out the errors of false dichotomy and yet we take Colombo to be concrete and Ritigala as  foliage, mountain, ancient, historic and even mystic.  We might not say ‘dead’ but we classify, if only subconsciously, as ‘past’. 

You could flip it too. Ritigala is not a monastic complex, it is in Colombo. Colombo is a jungle and not one made of concrete. And it is a jungle not because you’ve brought Kumana all the way from the South East Dry Zone. It is a jungle in and of itself. It is as rural as Liyannagama, Galgamuwa and that’s not because you are framed by the Kurunegala District. 

When things are allowed to come to you and their own pace and in the forms, colors, fragrances, textures and music of their choice, distinctions disappear, theories vanish and truths appear in naked clarity. As beautiful as it gets. 

For the record, Ritigala is Ritigala as much as it is Colombo and Colombo is Colombo just as it is Ritigala. There’s nothing wrong in carrying Colombo with you when you travel. You can consider it as something as ‘essential’ as a toothbrush or something you can’t leave behind, like your heart. Sometimes things, places, people and processes drop out by accident. Sometimes by design. Sometimes they dissolve over time. Mists in their allurement can reveal or hide. Mistless days can do the same. If hearts are open truth enters, and if closed, keeps away. 

Happy journeys!

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [February 21, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com.

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]

Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry
Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 
Sriyani and her serendipity shop
Forget constellations and the names of oceans
Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?
Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons
Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane
Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer