Malinda Words

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

On sweeping close to one's feet

Jayanath Bodahandi (Bodhi), the eldest in his family, would have been just out of school when his father, an illustrator at an advertising agency, passed away. Bodhi could draw and the kind people at the agency offered him a job.

There was a problem. Bodhi lived in Balapitiya and the salary would hardly cover expenses such as rent, food and bus fare. There was a solution. The hamuduruwo of the village temple arranged for him to stay in a temple in Colombo.

Bodhi returned to the temple late after his first day at work to find there was no food for him. The loku hamuduruwo had explained that it wasn’t a rich temple frequented by wealthy and generous laity; it was not possible to provide meals.

Bodhi went to sleep hungry. He was up early the following morning. He decided that this arrangement wasn’t working. He had just enough money for the bus to Balapitiya. So he went to work. No, not to the advertising agency. The temple.

He picked up an idala (ekel broom) and started sweeping the temple premises. As he was finishing, he noticed the loku hamuduruwo watching him. When he was done, he kept the idala aside, went up to the loku hamuduruwo, worshipped him, thanked him for allowing him to stay and told him that he had decided to give up on his job and return home.

The loku hamuduruwo understood Bodhi’s predicament. He dissuaded the young man: 'thiyena vidihakata kaala imu; yanna ona naha (you don’t have to go; let’s manage with what we have).'

Years later Bodhi said that in retrospect the exercise of sweeping the temple compound was like an advertising campaign.

It was a simple act. An act of gratitude for something simple that he received — a roof over his head for one night. It led to a career in advertising that saw him become a creative director at a top agency and then starting off on his own.

Two things reminded me of Bodhi’s story, a poem and a photograph. First, the poem.

පා අවට විතරයි
පිරිසිදු කළේ ඉදල
අවසානයේ
අතුගෑවිලා මිදුල

Essentially: the ekel broom sweeps around or close to the feet, but it is an entire compound that has got swept.

The poet throws soft light on the simple and commonplace and makes visible profound truths, as is evidenced in most of the poems in the collection, Suminda Kithsiri Gunaratne’s sixth, Prisma (Prisms).

And the photo: that of a hamuduruwo, idala in hand, sweeping the compound of the Buddhangala Monastery in Ampara, apparently belonging to the Digamadulla Kingdom, 4th Century BC. Buddhangala, although located deep in the jungles around Ampara, was brought back to life, so to speak, by a brave young hamuduruwo in 1964, Rev Kalutara Dhammananda Thero. I am not sure if it is this hamuduruwo who is captured in the photograph, but most certainly the complex developing to what it is now owes much to the fact that the Thero had focused on sweeping close to his feet.

On a tree close to where the hamuduruwo is sweeping there’s a board with the following line from the Dhammapada: ‘Appamado amatha padang — nopamaava nivanata hethu ve,’ which can be loosely translated as ‘timely action, i.e. without delay, paves the way to nirvana.’

That which needs to be done right now, then, needs to be done with absolute integrity of the faculties, with composure, dedication and unwavering resolve. Large and complex extents, physical and otherwise, get cleared thereby.

Bodhi was sweeping the area close to his feet; the entire compound got swept . Rev Kalutara Dhammananda Thero was sweeping the area close to his feet; and now people know there's a place called Buddhangala in Ampara. The hamuduruwo in the photograph is sweeping the area closest to his feet; it’s an example, a study in concentration that throws a lot of light on right conduct.

Tharindu, in his photographic endeavours, is essentially covering or rather clearing nearby-ground; he ends up clearing vast areas of the mind, his and (at least) mine. Suminda uses pen as an idala. He removes clutter, keeps things tidy. He is in fact casting a thin ray of light on the mind’s prisms which duly disperses and shows things in their true colours.

All sweepers. Focusing on that which needs to be sorted in the here and now. The rest follows.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

Other articles in this series:

To be an island like the Roberts...

Debts that can never be repaid in full

Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday

Gunadasa Kapuge is calling

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

Hemantha Gunawardena's signature

Pathways missed

Architectures of the demolished

The exotic lunacy of parting gifts

Who the heck do you think I am?

Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha'

The Mangala Sabhava

So how are things in Sri Lanka?

The most beautiful father

Palmam qui meruit ferat

The sweetest three-letter poem

Buddhangala Kamatahan

An Irish and Sri Lankan Hello

Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership

The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked

Pure-Rathna, a class act

Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna

Awaiting arrivals unlike any other

Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles

Matters of honor and dignity

Yet another Mother's Day

A cockroach named 'Don't'

Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth

The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara

Sweeping the clutter away

Some play music, others listen

Completing unfinished texts

Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn

I am at Jaga Food, where are you?

On separating the missing from the disappeared

Moments without tenses

And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have)

The world is made of waves

'Sentinelity'

The circuitous logic of Tony Muller

Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'

Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist

Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses

Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced

Some stories are written on the covers themselves

A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature

Landcapes of gone-time and going-time

The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie

So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists?

There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords

The books of disquiet

A song of terraced paddy fields

Of ants, bridges and possibilities

From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva

World's End

Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse

Street corner stories

Who did not listen, who's not listening still?

The book of layering

If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain

The world is made for re-colouring

The gift and yoke of bastardy

The 'English Smile'

No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5

Visual cartographers and cartography

Ithaca from a long ago and right now

Lessons written in invisible ink

The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'

A tea-maker story seldom told

On academic activism

The interchangeability of light and darkness

Back to TRADITIONAL rice

Sisterhood: moments, just moments

Chess is my life and perhaps your too

Reflections on ownership and belonging

The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha

Signatures in the seasons of love

To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows

Sirith, like pirith, persist

Fragrances that will not be bottled

Colours and textures of living heritage

Countries of the past, present and future

A degree in creative excuses

Books launched and not-yet-launched

The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains

The ways of the lotus

Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace

The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville

Live and tell the tale as you will

Between struggle and cooperation

Of love and other intangibles

Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions

The universe of smallness

Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers

Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills

Serendipitous amber rules the world

Continents of the heart

The allegory of the slow road

28 April 2023

23:56

By Malinda Words

In: Coachella Music and Art Festival, Kumkum Fernando, Malinda Seneviratne, The Morning Inspection

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in the California desert

Kumkum. Kumkum Fernando. What a name! ‘He’s the only Kumkum Fernando in the entire universe,’ his father, Ajith ‘Ajja’ Fernando, philosopher and traveler, pointed out. No, exclaimed. I put down the tone to paternal pride, but then again, he has every reason to be proud of his son. And then, yet again, all Sri Lankans can also be proud of young Kumkum Fernando.

The young man, in his early thirties, is among the very few artists invited to feature installations at the prestigious Coachella Music and Art Festival later this month. The curators apparently ‘scour the globe for artists, architects and designers to transform the Empire Polo Field,’ a golfing facility located in the Coachella Valley of Southern California.

There’s more: ‘Newly-commissioned, large scale art installations offer fans art as landmark, public space and icon — to be viewed from perspectives as diverse and dynamic as Coachella’s lineup of performers.’ In short, you need to be among the very best in the world in terms of creative excellence to be featured.

What Kumkum has achieved so far is remarkable. His father collected antiques and curiosities; Kumkum says he collected stones, spoons, statues, masks, and other ancient marvels and treasures. He has always been fascinated with the world of gods, giants, demons and aliens. Jonatha LeVine observes that Kumkum ‘proudly derives inspiration from this heritage, bridging fine art and design with a deep appreciation for ancient and traditional forms.’

It’s not just a fascination with the past though. : Vân Anh Nguyen following an interview with Kumkum for Monopo, Saigon, noted that for Kumkum ‘history contains lyrical messages, and his creative job is nothing but to translate them into what the future can truly appreciate.’

Design by Reborn, which he founded, truly embodies this. Speaking on his first solo show ‘Temples, gods and robots,’ Kumkum explains ‘Reborn’: ‘It’s about bringing something from the past and turning the found materials into contemporary art objects. Sometimes, they can represent the future like those robot-looking sculptures. It's history, it’s people from the past, it’s what makes us who we are now.’ He says he’s fascinated by comparative religion and philosophy and that art is his platform to explore them.

And it’s all part time. In his ‘day job,’ he is the creative director of Ki Saigon, the advertising agency he co-founded almost ten years ago with Indraneel Guha who he met when they both worked for Lowe Vietnam. Kumkum had already been recognised for his advertising skills, securing a gold and two bronze lions for Lowe Vietnam at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2014.

That year he also won the award offered by Ad Age for the best cover, the submission being used for the issue of the magazine that is distributed at the Cannes. The brief: show the meaning of creativity. He created an installation ‘to show that everything is connected in the contemporary world,’ explaining that he felt that brands also have an invisible line connecting them to each other.’

Kumkum Fernando is a storyteller. A multi-media storyteller. Stories are important to him because ‘[they are] like the soul of each tangible object.’ The futuristic artworks featured at the Singapore Art Museum, Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts and at the Jonathan LeVine Projects in New Jersey are all stories where he draws lyrical messages from history and ‘translates them into what the future can truly appreciate,’ as he once told Lankaweb.

‘Each story contains the concept of the world surrounding them. For example, I used to collect wood from demolished old houses in Saigon and turn them into toys in the “Toys with History” Series. You can also tell from the name “Reborn '', it’s about bringing something from the past and turning the found materials into contemporary art objects. Sometimes, they can represent the future like those robot-looking sculptures. It's history, it’s people from the past, it’s what makes us who we are now.’

Kumkum has come a long way from creating art installations for cafes and bars using objects he’s collected since he was a child including World War II circuit boards, antique spoons and African masks. It has certainly been a fascinating journey from St Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia, through RMIT, Australia where he studied creative advertising and movie-making, Grants McCann, Colombo and Lowe Vietnam to Ki Saigon and Design by Reborn. There’s a lot more to come, obviously.

For now, though, Kumkum, with an 80 foot tall creation, has offered another chapter of a story he’s being narrating since the time he was a small child, scribbling on walls, drawing aliens and telling his parents, ‘don’t ask me to become and doctor or an engineer; I want to make films.’ He has essentially installed something Sri Lankan (and of course Vietnam and other parts of the universe from which he collects objects that fascinate and inspire) in the California desert.

Papa Fernando is justifiably proud. So are we all.

10:52

By Malinda Words

In: Dr Panduka Karunanayake, Humanitas, Malinda Seneviratne, The Morning Inspection

To be an island like the Roberts...

Panduka Karunanayake and bibliographic windows

Many decades ago, Piyasiri Pelenda, friend and colleague at the Agrarian Research and Training Institute, speaking about his studies in the former USSR, related an interesting story.

Apparently at the first meeting with his doctoral supervisor, the professor had given him a box. He may have also given him some cardboard sheets or some cards, I can’t remember. I do remember what the professor told him: ‘this is the beginning and end of your PhD.’

This was long before word processors and software that made academic life that much easier. Piyasiri was required to write down on a card the title of each book he read, along with author’s name, publisher and year of publication. In this way he would compile his bibliography. And that would literally be ‘the end’ of his doctoral work.

Bibliographies are part of a graduate student’s life. Indeed, even an undergraduate, whether it’s a thesis or even a term paper, is required to attach a bibliography to the treatise. On the other hand, they are also useful for those who aren’t working on some thesis, dissertation or academic treatise.

Bibliographies tell us something about the author, the kinds of scholarship that has informed him or her, the kind of theoretical schools that frame the thinking and the dimensions of academic exploration. Offers useful insights but more than that tells us what else there is that we might be interested in reading. And it doesn’t have to be an academic. Anyone can flip to the back of an academic treatise or look up references and do even a cursory exploration on the internet. One has nothing to lose.

A few days ago, the word popped up quite by chance. It was immediately after a Humanitas program called ‘Members Only’ for ‘anyone who ever loved,’ at the Medical Faculty, University of Colombo.

Now ‘Humanitas’ is a special monthly programme for students where certain subjects are discussed using artistic expression. Humanitas is a Latin word drawn from the Greek concepts of philanthrôpía (loving what makes us human) and paideia (education). That should explain what the programme is all about.

Back to bibliographies. I was speaking with Dr Panduka Karunanayake, Chairperson of the Humanities Society and Professionalism Stream of the MBBS Programme in the Medical Faculty. Panduka, a classmate, wears many hats, some with labels and some without. To me, he’s a doctor who is also a sociologist but most of all a student of the human condition and a quiet activist who in innumerable ways tries to set up systems that can benefit society. Humanitas, I was told, was his brainchild. Heartchild. Whatever. I wasn't surprised.

I told him that his book, ‘Ruptures in Sri Lanka’s Education: Genesis, {resent Status and Reflections,’ ought to be recommended reading in all courses on education. And he spoke about the bibliography.

‘It could be useful to someone who wants to do research on these issues.’

True. The book, which was shortlisted for a State Literary Award a few years ago, covers much ground about how we came to where we are, the hiccups, the debacles and the resilience as well as the things that need to be addressed if education is to be meaningful and of benefit to society. The bibliography is a map to the extensive areas that Panduka has meticulously examined and reflected on.

And then he spoke about another book which he had accidentally come across at a ‘book sale’ that was being held, funnily enough, on a particular floor of a clothes shop.

‘It was Anuruddha Pradeep Karnasuriya’s undergraduate dissertation on the politics of rural socialism. Dr Gamini Samaranayake, who supervised the dissertation, must have encouraged him to publish it.’

Panduka found the subject fascinating but was also impressed by the bibliography. I told him that Anuruddha was a brilliant mind and that he had translated Fukuyama’s essay on the ‘end of history’ and Huntington’s one on ‘the clash of civilisations.’

And later that evening, I remembered the young archaeologist Ishanka Malsiri who, by diligently and exhaustively delving into sources through footnotes and bibliography, comprehensively refuted the thesis on Dutugemunu’s ‘conscience’ written by Gananath Obeysekera.

We learn. We learn to unlearn. We unlearn. We re-learn. And in this way, obtain subtext from text, detail and nuance from thesis, hone humility and engage in our respective communities, academic or otherwise, in more meaningful ways. It has something to do with learning to love that which makes us human. At some level.

And so, when we open windows, including those called bibliographies, we learn to understand that we become better teachers when we become better students. As is the case of Dr Panduka Karunanayake.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

Other articles in this series:

Debts that can never be repaid in full

Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday

Gunadasa Kapuge is calling

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

Hemantha Gunawardena's signature

Pathways missed

Architectures of the demolished

The exotic lunacy of parting gifts

Who the heck do you think I am?

Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha'

The Mangala Sabhava

So how are things in Sri Lanka?

The most beautiful father

Palmam qui meruit ferat

The sweetest three-letter poem

Buddhangala Kamatahan

An Irish and Sri Lankan Hello

Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership

The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked

Pure-Rathna, a class act

Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna

Awaiting arrivals unlike any other

Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles

Matters of honor and dignity

Yet another Mother's Day

A cockroach named 'Don't'

Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth

The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara

Sweeping the clutter away

Some play music, others listen

Completing unfinished texts

Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn

I am at Jaga Food, where are you?

On separating the missing from the disappeared

Moments without tenses

And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have)

The world is made of waves

'Sentinelity'

The circuitous logic of Tony Muller

Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'

Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist

Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses

Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced

Some stories are written on the covers themselves

A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature

Landcapes of gone-time and going-time

The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie

So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists?

There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords

The books of disquiet

A song of terraced paddy fields

Of ants, bridges and possibilities

From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva

World's End

Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse

Street corner stories

Who did not listen, who's not listening still?

The book of layering

If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain

The world is made for re-colouring

The gift and yoke of bastardy

The 'English Smile'

No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5

Visual cartographers and cartography

Ithaca from a long ago and right now

Lessons written in invisible ink

The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'

A tea-maker story seldom told

On academic activism

The interchangeability of light and darkness

Back to TRADITIONAL rice

Sisterhood: moments, just moments

Chess is my life and perhaps your too

Reflections on ownership and belonging

The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha

Signatures in the seasons of love

To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows

Sirith, like pirith, persist

Fragrances that will not be bottled

Colours and textures of living heritage

Countries of the past, present and future

A degree in creative excuses

Books launched and not-yet-launched

The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains

The ways of the lotus

Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace

The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville

Live and tell the tale as you will

Between struggle and cooperation

Of love and other intangibles

Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions

The universe of smallness

Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers

Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills

Serendipitous amber rules the world

Continents of the heart

The allegory of the slow road

27 April 2023

12:25

By Malinda Words

In: Malinda Seneviratne, The Morning Inspection

3 comments

To be an island like the Roberts...

The Roberts: neighbors, friends, family

By the time I was 9, I knew only a handful of people who had what could be called English names. Well, there were many in my parents’ and grandparents' generations, but they were maamas, naenads, kudammas, loku appachchis, aththas and aththammas; their respective parents naming offspring after a fashion.

So there was Tony Maama (Tony Muller), Eustace Maama (Eustace Fonseka), Maurice Maama (Maurice Perera), his wife Aunty Jean, Richard Maama (Richard Lewis) and his wife Aunty Hazel.

Then we moved to a small lane in Pamankada, at the Southern edge of the Colombo metropolitan area and I encountered lots of ‘English names’ all living in the same house. The Roberts.

Doughie Robert, I learned, was a former Mister Ceylon (1959, 1960 and 1961) and his wife Jeannette Schuilling runner up to Sushila Gunasekera in the Miss Ceylon contest, 1960. Uncle Dougie with his signature cowboy hat was a muscled presence down the lane and remained that way until he passed away at the age of 72 in 2000. Aunty Jeanne, as we called her, a mother of seven, was strikingly beautiful at the time we arrived. Still is at the age of 84.

What I remember most, however, was that they were kind, friendly and had an open-door policy for one and all, although not all neighbours chose to walk in and out as if it was their own house. I did.

Ok, the names. Davinia (Davi), Rudy (Sonna), Franciene (Bucky), Dolloraise (Dollo), Doughie, Soji and Travis (Rocky). Colourful characters, all of them, each in his or her own way. Aunty Jeanne has 19 grandchildren and eight great grandchildren. Too many names to remember. Except Davi’s husband, Robert Ephraums. As much a Robert as any of my friends and not because his christian name happened to be ‘Robert.’

This is not about names that sounded, let’s say, not really ‘Sri Lankan,’ but which nevertheless became as familiar as any Sinhala or Tamil name. It is about the Roberts.

Davi, who had been runner up to Rosy Ramanayake in the Miss Sri Lanka contest in 1980, was older. The girls were roughly around my sister’s age. Sonna was my age. Doughie and Soji were small but old enough to play cricket down the lane. Rocky was a baby.

They were neighbours. They were friends. They were family. In and out of our house as we were in and out of their house. They were our first friends down that lane and remained so, long after many of them had moved on with their lives and relocated themselves elsewhere just as we had. Didn’t have to meet or communicate. Run into them randomly and it’s like meeting cousins distant on account of residence but not in terms of the relationship.

Davinia

Roberts. No frills. No filters. Judged but steadfastly non judgmental. Not even of those who may have passed around whispers or smirked at misfortunes or did the oohs and aah and did-you-knows of the gossip guilds that invariably exist.

Whenever I think of the Roberts, I am reminded of virtues recommended by the Buddha: loving kindness, equanimity, compassion, rejoicing in someone else’s joys; qualities that I don’t always see in ‘Buddhist’ families or Buddhists. They live. They let live. Their annoyances at each other pour out of windows and doors and float into the neighbourhood now and then. Just as their love spills out for anyone to see. No frills. No filters.

There was a time when the entire country was sequestered due to Covid-19 and some people found it hard to attend to the needs of loved ones who were old or sickly. In my case, partly because neighbours who we grew up with have moved out of the lane and some out of the country, but mostly because the Roberts were to us more family than neighbours, it was an easy call to make.

‘Uncle eats like a bird, don’t worry about it,’ Davi said when I called and asked her to check on my father. Robert would walk up the lane and spend time with him. For months.

That’s how this island has worked for centuries. Being there for one another when it matters. Stopping to say hello and talking for a long time to catch up with each other's lives. Inquiring after the children. Talking to children about what they are up to and offering any advice if it was felt that you could be of some help.

I watched my friends grow up. I watched their children grow up. There were so many that I still don’t know whose children they are. They are all Roberts. That much was certain. That much was enough.

The Roberts. They coloured the lane. They coloured our childhood. They were real, remained real and reminded everyone else that being real was easy, made sense and a proposition that ought to be embraced. They didn’t prescribe. They just lived. Well. And taught me, among other things, the true meaning of the words that Jesus of Nazareth spoke to the Pharisees: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "Love your neighbour as yourself."'

There are Roberts all over this island. There are Roberts in all communities. They are the islands that make this island called Sri Lanka so very blessed.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

Other articles in this series:

Debts that can never be repaid in full

Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday

Gunadasa Kapuge is calling

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

Hemantha Gunawardena's signature

Pathways missed

Architectures of the demolished

The exotic lunacy of parting gifts

Who the heck do you think I am?

Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha'

The Mangala Sabhava

So how are things in Sri Lanka?

The most beautiful father

Palmam qui meruit ferat

The sweetest three-letter poem

Buddhangala Kamatahan

An Irish and Sri Lankan Hello

Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership

The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked

Pure-Rathna, a class act

Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna

Awaiting arrivals unlike any other

Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles

Matters of honor and dignity

Yet another Mother's Day

A cockroach named 'Don't'

Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth

The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara

Sweeping the clutter away

Some play music, others listen

Completing unfinished texts

Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn

I am at Jaga Food, where are you?

On separating the missing from the disappeared

Moments without tenses

And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have)

The world is made of waves

'Sentinelity'

The circuitous logic of Tony Muller

Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'

Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist

Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses

Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced

Some stories are written on the covers themselves

A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature

Landcapes of gone-time and going-time

The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie

So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists?

There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords

The books of disquiet

A song of terraced paddy fields

Of ants, bridges and possibilities

From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva

World's End

Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse

Street corner stories

Who did not listen, who's not listening still?

The book of layering

If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain

The world is made for re-colouring

The gift and yoke of bastardy

The 'English Smile'

No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5

Visual cartographers and cartography

Ithaca from a long ago and right now

Lessons written in invisible ink

The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'

A tea-maker story seldom told

On academic activism

The interchangeability of light and darkness

Back to TRADITIONAL rice

Sisterhood: moments, just moments

Chess is my life and perhaps your too

Reflections on ownership and belonging

The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha

Signatures in the seasons of love

To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows

Sirith, like pirith, persist

Fragrances that will not be bottled

Colours and textures of living heritage

Countries of the past, present and future

A degree in creative excuses

Books launched and not-yet-launched

The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains

The ways of the lotus

Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace

The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville

Live and tell the tale as you will

Between struggle and cooperation

Of love and other intangibles

Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions

The universe of smallness

Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers

Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills

Serendipitous amber rules the world

Continents of the heart

The allegory of the slow road

12:14

By Malinda Words

In: Malinda Seneviratne, The Morning Inspection

Debts that cannot be repaid in full

A friend joked recently that there was a time when friends and relatives would ask ‘aren’t you thinking about being married?’ but now they ask ‘haven’t you thought about migrating?’ Clearly times have changed from relatively bearable to hard and worse. Understandable too.

If things are unbearable, there are two options. One, do your best to make things bearable. If this cannot be done alone, then seek like-minded people, network, build a community, turn idea into ideology. Fight. That’s if ‘this place,’ however you define it, is considered to be of value.

That’s not easy when one’s mind has been and is constantly bombarded with negativity about the country, the culture and history even as it is injected with all kinds of fairy stories about some other place.

So there’s the second option: leaving. Decide to leave and you can support the decision with countless arguments. In other words, once you’ve convinced yourself about a decision or a course of action, it’s easy to convince the world, especially because even if the world objects, you’ve justified things to yourself.

Nothing wrong with this.

Recently I met a school friend, Esala Hettiwatte. He spoke about these matters.

‘I have told my children, “go wherever you want to go, but remember that there’s no land like this.’

Now someone could argue that it’s a place-bias born of long years of residence. ‘There’s no place like home,’ after all it is not a country-specific assertion.

I get him though. When people ask me why I returned to Sri Lanka (and many have, over the years), I’ve told them, ‘there are two reasons: first, I am a beneficiary of free education and that’s a debt I cannot every hope to repay in full, and secondly I can’t think of a country more beautiful or a people more enchanting than this.’

It’s not just free education though. Just think. The vast majority of Sri Lankans benefit from free education and free health services including complicated surgeries which would cost a fortune if done in a private hospital. They benefit from all kinds of subsidies. Much of it can be calculated but we don’t add it up to overall income. Someone paid for someone’s education. That beneficiary is not asked to repay that someone. Indeed most beneficiaries aren’t even conscious that these can be seen as debts and that the civilised thing to do is to repay in one form or another.

So, being ignorant or feigning ignorance allows us to absolve ourselves from any guilt. Indeed, no one will say ‘hey dude, pay your debts before you leave!’ I am not saying that either, don’t worry. One doesn’t have to be resident in a village, a community, a household or country to serve the relevant place or people. And there’s no deadline either. If you do feel obliged to repay, you can do it as you wish, when you wish.

Esala was not talking of any of these things. He feels blessed to have been born here. He feels blessed to live here, despite all the deprivations. I feel the same way.

The beauty needs no description. All you need to have done to love this country is to have traveled. It’s a small island. Easy to cover, so to speak. Easy to discover and rediscover. It’s more than that.

There was a sitcom that was very popular in the USA a few decades ago titled ‘Cheers’. The theme song had a line that was almost an ad: ‘where everybody knows your name.’ Familiarity. That’s what was special and was being marketed.

In Sri Lanka, any conversation of any length has the potential of producing life-long friendships. Talk to a stranger for a few minutes and you’ll probably find that the person is related or knows someone you know or there are places both have been to or things both are fascinated by.

Maybe it is the size of the country. Maybe it is the culture. Maybe it is just Esala. Maybe just Esala and myself. But maybe there’s some truth in the Victor Ratnayake song, ‘Okkoma rajavaru (all kings)’ where he claims, ‘we are all fathers, we are all mothers, we of the Thun Sinhale are all related.’

Yes, people have issues with ‘Sinhale’ thanks to those extremists who have misread the name and are convinced that it confers exclusive ownership to a particular group identifying itself with a particular language and thanks to those who have different fixations about self and community. Sinhale, though, is a composite of the Yaksha, Naga, Deva and Raksha, the four hela communities. And 'Thun Sinhale' refers to the island’s geography separated into the three provinces Ruhunu, Maya and Pihiti.

That’s an aside.

We are all related. A nation of relatives. We will be there for each other, even those we dislike or consider to be enemies, in moments of triumph and moments of tragedy: we are present at the magula (celebration) and the maranaya (death).

We can never leave. We can never completely pay off the debts we owe. True for me. True for Esala too, probably. But more than that, this country is way too beautiful to leave. Some loves are like that.

Other articles in this series:

Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday