Malinda Words

Continents of the heart The allegory of the slow road

10:38

By Malinda Words

In: Kisara Freeman, Malinda Seneviratne, The Morning Inspection

The gift and yoke of bastardy

The world is made for re-colouring

Colouring books for kids are usually designed to train them to stay within the lines. It’s probably meant to help them develop a steady hand. So when they start out, they cross lines and, by and by, they develop a better understanding of spaces and lines.

Now some might claim that this is all a part of instilling in their minds some pernicious doctrine of submission to a rule book. Could be. I’ll leave that question for art teachers, artists and those better versed in the politics of pedagogy.

There are, I recently found, colouring books for adults as well. The illustrations are far more intricate. They are not made of just half a dozen lines used to create a dozen or so spaces. The criss-crossing makes for highly complex motifs, some geometric and some not. So there are, literally, hundreds of spaces to colour. As you will.

Most adults, whether or not they’ve taken art classes even at a rudimentary level, have steady enough fists not to stray across lines. Maybe this is because they’ve lived long enough in a discipline-and-punish world that they are subconsciously agreed to remain contained. The exercises could also be seen as an extension of a kind of control regime, but I doubt it. Most adults come to terms with realities one way or another. The instruments of containment and coercion that work are of a different order.

‘It teaches patience,’ my niece Kisara Freeman explained, as she, along with her sister and cousins diligently played with pencils and paper.

True. You can’t really do this in a rush. Flourish will trip you and ruin the whole thing. And yet, it’s not just about lines and spaces. It’s about colour. That’s up to you. In short, there are innumerable colour combinations that can be used for a single illustration. It’s how we paint the pages that confront us. Some come with illustrations and are coded — this colour for that number, for example. That’s how it is for kids, sometimes. Adults are not thus constrained. Whim and fancy are given free rein.

Sometimes illustrations come half-coloured. The colours used may not be to our liking. It’s up to us to use spaces and colours available to execute a salvage operation so that in the end it’s something that we still find pretty.

Sometimes there are no illustrations and that might be liberating. Illustration, lines, spaces and colour — all ours to play with. Of course, not all of us understand line, space and colour. Some are good at colouring, some are atrocious. So we learn. Patiently. Through practice. Through hard work. We learn to salvage, we learn to create anew. We could also, if that be our preference, chuck the piece of paper into a wastepaper basket because, say, we don’t like the texture, and look for a ‘canvas’ more to our liking.

We can paint walls. We can paint conversations. We can paint relationships. We can paint the way we engage with the world. We can draw a question mark in the middle of a system that we find unpalatable. We can share paint and paper with friends and strangers who would rather illustrate collectively. We can stand before a multitude demanding that blankness be celebrated and submitted to and raise a nondescript paintbrush dipped in love and thereby express a simple statement: no.

Our world seems fully coloured, and yet, sometimes, it seems that whoever did the colouring was colour-blind or didn't really know how to use the instruments of colouring. Our world calls out for different colours in different combinations. Calls out for white breathing space, some shade for perspective and so much more.

Our world is made of innumerable colours. There are shapes wherever we look. There are so many lines. There’s containment and there’s freeing. Books, closed and open. Canvasses marked ‘touch-me-not’ and those that whisper, ‘come, paint.’ There’s forbidding and there’s permissiveness. And a lot between the two. So we walk on eggshells or we stumble in the dark or knowingly and with great conviction about direction, destination, marginal benefits and marginal costs, alone or with others, march through. We leave a trail. We leave footprints. And that’s the illustration, half-coloured, that we leave for those who will come later.

There’s always a need to make paper. There's always a way to make paper. And paint. And brushes. There's always a need to sketch something. There’s something that can be coloured. Or re-coloured. You can pick the pink or the red, blue or green, yellow or orange, not forgetting that white and black are also colours and like the others come in many shades. You can borrow a colour pencil. You can share yours with someone with a colouring-urge. You can discuss with a friend and, yes a stranger, seek an answer to this question: ‘so what kind of picture do we want the world to gaze upon with us?’

Colouring books. They are not just for kids. It’s what we do, whether we like it or not, whether or not we are aware that colouring is a lifelong human habit. If many find our work pretty, good. If not, well, there’s always a way to re-colour.

Other articles in this series:

The 'English Smile'

Continents of the heart The allegory of the slow road

24 January 2023

23:53

By Malinda Words

In: Carla Risseeuw, Malinda Seneviratne, The Morning Inspection

The gift and yoke of bastardy

Towards the end of the last millennium with some countries worrying about glitches associated with Y2K or the year 2000, a magazine, maybe ‘Time’ or ‘Newsweek,’ asked world renowned people a simple question along the following lines: ‘what would make the world a better place in the next millennium?’ Maybe it was ‘next century,’ I can’t really remember. What I remember is the only response that struck me when reading through what scientists, artists, writers, statesmen and stateswomen, sports stars etc. had to say.

‘The only idea that could save us is for women to run the affairs of the world.’

That’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who in his biography ‘Living to tell the tale,’ writes at length about the women in his household, grandmother, grand aunts, mother, aunts, cousins and others, the things they did and did not do, the assertions and dismissals, idiosyncrasies and convictions, based on which he concludes, ‘they (women) are the ones who maintain the world while we men throw it into disarray with our historic brutality.’

Not just brutality, though. A fascination with the grand, the monumental, the ‘all-encompassing.’ They are gamblers, wagering on the ‘all’ and typically obtaining the ‘nothing,’ with women typically having to suffer the consequences of poor investment. Women would no doubt add to this list.

But we are talking of ‘running the affairs of the world’ here. And reflecting on this, almost a quarter century later, I remembered a book my wife told me about around the time she was a postgraduate student: ‘The fish don’t complain about the water: Gender transformation, power and resistance among women in Sri Lanka,’ by Carla Risseeuw published in 1988. Couldn’t get my hands on it but my search did yield her ‘Gender, Kinship and State Formation: Case of Sri Lanka under Colonial Rule,' an article published in the Economic and Political Weekly in 1992 which does cover the material my wife and I discussed.

While there is evidence that the position of women, strong from the 5th Century BC to the 4th Century AD, had declined through the middle ages, Risseeuw contends that the traditional forms of family and marriage were largely independent of religion and the state or, if you will, administrative concerns.

It was the British who messed things up, she argues. Between 1795 and 1947, the British systematically brought the traditional forms of family and marriage under state control. An acting district judge named Berwick foresaw in 1869 that changes envisaged would lead to increased violence as well as women and children becoming even more insecure. He said that neither the uncertainty of paternity (in the existing system) nor women owning land and property were related to instability in the unions between men and women. He called the new laws ‘a bitter gift of bastardy.’

It was all about access to land, not just for the British but local ‘elites.’ All men, by the way. It was not about some moral indignation regarding relations between men and women, but a fundamental inability to understand the complex culture of inheritance (matrilineal and protective of women) and moreover a need to wrest control of property. The marriage and divorce legislation in effect complemented the draconian Waste Land Act (1840) and other ordinances that followed (1841 to 1907).

The British not only ensured the considerable downgrading of the status of women in marital unions but also enabled men to take control of property. In the new social and economic order women were paid less than the (underpaid) local workers. They were forced into an entrenched in certain employment categories, further concretising the gender-based division of labor.

Risseeuw summarises thus: ‘Both sexes were confronted with immensely harder work conditions. There were advantageous opportunities for a minority, which was predominantly but not exclusively male, with a tendency for males to take over female domains if they became lucrative. Thus slowly women found themselves in the least beneficial sectors of paid labour and trade.’

[By the way, those Kolombians and Kolombian Wannabes who lament that the British ‘left’ (they did not, as even a cursory consideration of political economy would show or, simply, an acknowledgement of the fact that the US Ambassador operates as though she’s some colonial Viceroy) would navel-gaze if they read Risseeau, never mind looking around and reflecting on what the British gave and took].

Despite all this, in conditions of violence, humiliation and insecurity that were largely non-existent before Dutch and the British hordes imposed their religions, their morality and their laws to facilitate plunder, women still ‘maintained’ their respective worlds. Then and now. In this island and in other lands where such impositions were similarly executed or were home-grown as the case may be.

Now it can be argued that it is not prudent to extrapolate from household to community or beyond, to country and a global order, even though the affairs of the world, especially things economic, is exactly that. The word economy is derived after all from the Greek words ‘oikos (house)’ and ‘nemein (manage),’ But more than all this, considering the historic disarray that male arrogance, ignorance and unforgivable brutality has caused, it almost seems silly not to consider very seriously the proposition articulated by Marquez.

We can blame the invaders. Sure. They plundered. They perpetrated genocide. They did their best to erase culture. They drenched our lands with blood. They burnt libraries. They razed temples and kovils to the ground to build churches. They enslaved bodies and minds. They put in place systems that could ensure continued extraction of value that fed their economies and people.

We have not corrected all that. Men, in particular, have continued to exploit laws and institutional arrangements the invaders put in place to further strengthen inequalities and obtain advantages.

We are in a social, economic, political and environment crisis that cannot be fully blamed on others. A key part of it is patriarchy manifested in multiple ways in the society we live in, the institutions we swear by and do nothing to rehabilitate, and the ridiculous laws we uphold. There’s a yoke of bastardy we have yet to unburden ourselves from. Indeed, we swear by it and leave it out of discussions on system change. Our daughters pay the price. Our sons too.

Other articles in this series:

The 'English Smile'

Continents of the heart The allegory of the slow road

09:53

By Malinda Words

In: Malinda Seneviratne, Suminda Kithsiri Gunaratne, The Morning Inspection

That ‘English Smile’

‘English with a smile’ is the title of a series of study guides for students and teachers of English written by W.H. Samaranayake, the renowned educationist, grammarian and philanthropist. Samaranayake was magnanimous and must have made thousands who had previously found English a hard language to master speak it with ease. He probably made them smile through the lessons and thereafter.

‘English smile’ or rather the ‘English-laugh’ is different. It’s a term I heard just a few hours ago for the first time during a conversation with Suminda Kithsiri Gunaratne who has just come out with his sixth collection of poetry, ‘Prisma (Prisms).’

In the year 1991, some students of Eheliyagoda Central College were taken on an educational tour. They had visited the Martin Wickramasinghe Museum, the Galle Fort and finally the Narigama beach. It must have been a lot of fun of course, but an unexpected gust of wind had dampened the enthusiasm of a few students. The incident was recorded in poetic form and written on the blackboard of the class when next they attended school.

කොග්ගල ප්‍රාඥයා බලලා
ගාල්ලේ කොටු බැම්ම නැගලා
ඉස්කෝලේ අද්දියාපන ගමන දිගේ
අපි ආවේ...
නාරිගම වෙරළට!

එක පාරටම නෝබිනා හුළඟක් ඇවිදිල්ලා
සුදු ගවුම් කීපයක් උඩ ගියා!...

විලි බියෙන් කිළිපෙළූ බාලිකා
දෑත් දෙදනේ ඔබා
එක තැනම ගුලි වෙලා
නැවතුනා!...
එය දුටුව නාකි දඬු සුද්දියක්
සුදු වැල්ල බදාගෙන
හෙළුවැල්ල මුදාගෙන
කට කොනින්...
හිනැහුණා!...

It was titled ‘Ingreesi Hinava’ and later published in Sumina’s maiden collection of poetry, ‘Chakkaran Kotuwa (Hopscotch Square).’

Ok. The translation:

Having visited the Wise Man of Koggala,
and walked the ramparts of Galle Fort
in this educational tour
we stopped next
at the Narigama beach!

A delinquent gust of wind
came suddenly by
And a few white frocks swept up!

Stung by embarrassment
the girls clutched at their knees
crouched and stopped!

A gaunt old suddi
hugging the white sand
exposing her nudity
having seen it all
from the corner of her mouth
smiled!

The play of the word වැල්ල (wella, meaning sand) in the words sudu wella (white sand) and heluvella (nudity) is hard to translate. The irony of course is obvious.

Suminda would have written this when he was around 14 years old. He would agree that it could have been improved upon with a few technical tweaks he probably wasn’t aware of at the time.

He noticed something. He recorded something that happened and worked into it the irony that many others probably missed. Good stuff for a 14 year old.

What’s interesting is that even if the incident is random and isolated, the overall play is not. It’s part of what this society is. To be more precise it describes much of the politics of language associated with English. Something gets exposed (language-deficiency) for no fault of the victim and it prompts a knowing, cynical and even mocking smile. That disdainful smile, indicative of a superiority complex, is hardly disguised in certain circles. What it reveals of course is a certain nudity.

It’s a we-know-you-don’t syndrome. It’s not limited to English and a certain class of people who think language competency is indicative of superior wisdom or even technical know-how. We see it among ‘the educated.’ We see it in the flaunting of certificates and social status. We see it, ironically indeed, among those who claim to be engaged in emancipatory projects. Condescension, at best, but at worst it is absolutely malicious.

Not everyone can have ‘an English smile,’ obviously. It’s an elite-thing or in its more pernicious form an elite-wannabe-thing. Something we can do without.

We all see through tinted glasses of one kind or another, the truth passes through prisms ideological and otherwise and in the scattering of light into colours we are bombarded with truth-slivers which are therefore, inevitably, half-lies.

There will always be gusts of wind that can embarrass. We respond as best we can. No one needs to laugh, but there will be ‘white’ people or rather black-white people (kalu-suddas)’ who will laugh or politely stifle a guffaw, perhaps not noticing is that there’s another tribe, culturally ‘white’ in the post-colonial context if you will, who is laughing at the embarrassed as well as those amused by the embarrassment.

The English Smile. Look out for it. It will tell you a lot of things about the cultural politics of our times and the pathways people traveled to get to the Land of Derision.

Other articles in this series:

Continents of the heart The allegory of the slow road

09:50

By Malinda Words

In: Lakshmi Jeganathan, Malinda Seneviratne, The Morning Inspection

No 27, Dickman’s Road, Colombo 5

Aunty Lakshmi with her student (and my sister) Ru Freeman

That’s an address. How on earth could it be the title of an article? It could. Well, it is. And this is partly attributable to what the address means to me. Here's the story and keep in mind that the tenses will, as they should, be scrambled.

One night, at my sister’s wedding, I was struggling to introduce a lady to my girlfriend. I wanted to say that she taught me elocution, but then stopped myself because those lessons were not just about pronunciation and enunciation. I wanted to say ‘effective speaking’ but that was not exactly true either. ‘Speech and drama?’ Yes, but that wouldn’t do it either.

The teacher smiled, probably recognising that the four year old boy who she had met more than twenty years before hadn’t really outgrown his struggles with articulation.

‘I taught him his A-B-C, darling!’

In the thirty years that have passed since then I’ve had many occasions to remember Mrs Lakshmi Jeganathan, Aunty Lakshmi to me and to thousands of students and their parents. It was easier when I had to play out a script on a stage. The lines were already there, except on the odd occasion when circumstances wrecked things and one had to improvise. For the most part, things could be rehearsed. But it was not just a matter of reading something out. Again, enunciation. Voice projection. Characterisation. The need to read and reread the play. All this she had taught. All this I had learned, sometimes enthusiastically but mostly out of fear and for the most part not really recognizing who did the teaching.

Most students were terrified of Aunty Lakshmi. I know two who were not. My brother Arjuna, for whom everything came easy (acting, music, chess, public speaking, programming, you name it), and my older daughter Mithsandi who ‘got’ Aunty Lakshmi. She could see the conscientious teacher and her desire to see her students grow, all beneath the stentorian roar and strict demeanour. There may have been others.

Most, I’m sure, are grateful to Aunty Lakshmi for giving them the confidence that comes with learning, especially in articulating their thoughts.

Back in the day I didn’t realise that Aunty Lakshmi was in effect arming me for the years ahead. I have not discussed such things with her, but it doesn’t take much to realise that English is a weapon in this country, a sword that not just cleaves in pernicious ways, but hurts, puts down and even destroys those without appropriate defence mechanisms.

And yet, never once, did she talk about wars or weapons. Never once did she even imply that this language instrument could be used to cut, chop and move ahead. I can’t speak for others, but I can state with utmost certainty that those of her students known to me, especially my siblings, cousins, daughters and her son Pradeep, one of my dearest and oldest friends and a much respected Loku Aiya to me, have understood the politics of language and never abused the skills she gifted them. If at all, they would use English to protect those who needed protection, deploy it to speak of injustice as perceived and to empower emancipatory political projects.

English has a snooty history and in certain ways the snootiness seems more pronounced now than before. Indeed it’s as though English has a way of extending one’s nose to the point that one cannot help but look down on the rest of the world. Some are, so to speak, born with such extensions, some cultivate them, some even imagine them. Aunty Lakshmi, simply put, wasn’t into nose jobs.

Her students learnt a language. They were exposed to literature. She taught them that all the world's a stage and that there are effective ways of playing parts assigned to embraced. She enabled them to acquire skills to understand how language works, how to dissect texts of all kinds, how to read between the lines, how to develop a grasp of metaphor and meaning, and how literature can help us be kind to one another.

The address. I’ve not forgotten. And I will not either. No 27, Dickman’s Road, Colombo 5. It’s not ‘Dickman’s Road’ any more of course, but we remember the addresses that had meaning to us, never mind name-changes and other dislocations.

Nothing has changed in that house. It is as it was so many decades ago. Aunty Lakshmi has not lost one bit of her wit. She’s as updated as anyone else about the world and literary debates of the day. She had, as she always does with everyone probably, long shed the sternness the moment we ceased to be her students. A striking presence as always, exuding regality as always, she reminded us, i.e. her son, my brother, sister and myself, of things we had forgotten, like the fact that my brother was the first of her students to take a class in her place. And there was pride when she told us how she had spoken about my sister’s novels and her son’s collection of short stories to a student who had said she wanted to become a writer.

As for me, she taught me how to be crisp in communication. And most importantly that it is possible that 'No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5' is as legitimate a title as any.

We all know of a No 27, Dickman’s Road, Colombo 5. There are memories waiting to be unearthed inside. It is also possible that the memory-maker who unbeknownst to us did much to make us who we are still lives there. We don’t visit No 27, Dickman’s Road, Colombo 5 often enough, do we? Not that the resident would hold it against us of course. Still, it’s good to visit. Good to say ‘thank you.’

Other articles in this series: