Malinda Words

Tripping along the path the path to liberation

2012-03-05T19:15:00.000+05:30

Women’s liberation is about a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’. It is about celebration and critique. It is based on assumptions too, about the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ and about what is celebratory and what warrants censure. Every year on the 8^th of March, the world wakes up, as it were, to women. Women’s issues including oppression and rights are talked about. Empowerment is advocated. Relevant laws are critiqued, new ones proposed and assessments are made about how far along the road of emancipation women and women’s rights have travelled. And of course what territories are yet to be traversed to get to the promised land.
For a long time, quite in the manner that those who did not subscribe to Western paradigms of development were called ‘backward’ or ‘underdeveloped’, drawing the woman out of the house and household was seen as an absolute necessary precondition for ‘liberation’. Perhaps it is time to see where all this has got the Sri Lankan woman.

‘Getting out of the house’ was seen for the most part as a key pathway out of patriarchal clutches. ‘Job’ was an integral part of ‘liberation’ because it would give some degree of economic independence to the woman.

Whether it was accident or design, the fact is that the moment women got into the cash economy they were automatically endowed with a troublesome tag, ‘Consumer’. We can debate about the length, breadth, depth and meaning of enhanced purchasing capacity. We can measure ‘liberation’ in such terms, but we can’t get away from the fact that there are many facets of victimization, that oppression and plunder are close associates in a political economy and that ‘culture’ (the ‘traditional’ version of which is vilified as ‘backward’, ‘discriminatory’ and ‘oppressive’ is not absent in the seemingly facelessness of buy-and-sell.

The moment there is income, the woman in today’s consumerist world is not only preyed on by those who have to sell her things she never really needed nor felt poor because she lacked them, but is chased by financial institutions that want to make bucks out of her bucks; the vast majority of such outfits for all the rhetoric of helping, uplifting and CSR portfolios primarily and finally interested in the gap between marginal benefits and marginal losses.

It is said that the ‘traditional woman’ is not only disempowered, exploited, abused and robbed of dignity, but her labour, multiple roles in family, household and community go largely unacknowledged and unheralded. Is it different for (relatively?) emancipated ‘modern’ woman, though?

Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan women work outside the country, collectively remitting over US$ 5 billion, by far the largest contributing segment of foreign exchange earnings (close to 35% and amounting to 8% of the GDP). What happens to the money though and what happens to their families? How about acknowledgment beyond lip-service, not just for domestic workers but the other key contributors to the economy, namely the garment worker and the tea-plucker?

These domestic workers send money home. They help sibling sort out their problems. They spend a lot of money buying electrical items produced in other countries, some of which are not really essential but are necessities for status-acquiring purposes. When they return the household is in shambles, their marriages are messed up and the children’s education severely hampered due to the lack of nurturing. They then go back to earn more money and keep the cycle moving.

In the meantime women continue to be sexually assaulted, harassed at the work place, suffer discriminatory wage policies and other indignities that go to show that ‘liberation’ in a capitalist economy is not applause worthy. Indeed, in countries like the USA, touted as being more ‘enlightened’ about these things, we are seeing an alarming increase in violence against women in all forms.

There was a time, let us not forget, that in the so-called inhibiting and disempowered circumstances, women did save in numerous ways, did exercise authority in decision-making processes, contributed to the household economy and social cohesion, and were no less celebrated for all they did.

Is this a suggestion that we should go back to a past that is often described in idyllic terms but contained its own blurs and blemishes? No. But we did have a time when a woman could walk from one end of the island to the other with less chance of having to suffer the kinds of violence she would most certainly be subjected to today if she were to undertake such a journey. Perhaps what all this shows is that piece-meal liberation only props exploitative structures. It is sad indeed that most ‘liberators’ are blind to these realities, a condition wrought perhaps by a flawed reading of history and a slavishness to theories of emancipation birthed elsewhere and uncritically applied in societies with different cultural, economic and political evolutionary paths. We can’t go back, but we don’t seem to be heading in the right direction either. Maybe we just got the fundamentals wrong.

Like in all things, the embrace of the frilled comes with a price tag. There’s a broken home, a child that is pushed away from school and into the alleyways of disaster, a mother who came back in a body bag, a sister whose alcoholic husband pinched her salary and beat her up, a daughter who came home with fine dresses and an unwanted pregnancy and savings that were diverted to fund ‘development’ that benefitted someone else, and other projects that only perpetuated overall exploitation of the same class. It is easy to say ‘men are responsible and they need to be educated’, but that is simply not enough.

Women’s liberation has slipped somewhere along the way. And it was not just women who fell.

[published in The Nation of March 4, 2012]

When ‘time slips away’…

2012-03-04T21:07:00.000+05:30

US Under Secretary of State Maria Otero told the UNHRC session in Geneva that the international community has waited nearly three years for action by Sri Lanka and ‘time is slipping away’ for them. She has also pontificated on the preconditions for ‘lasting peace’, namely reconciliation and accountability.

It is no secret that the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization, the LTTE, is behind a lot of moves against Sri Lanka by the international community, so called, by way of egging on, providing ‘information’ and dishing out money.

If the international community was made up by the USA (and her allies) and the principal ‘victim’ seeking redress was the LTTE, then this sanctimonious posturing about reconciliation and accountability are laughable. The fact is, however, that there are few other takers apart from those who are desperate to make deals or are ready to sell themselves cheap.

If it was really about accountability and reconciliation, then Otero would have raised her hands high and say ‘My country is guilty of monumental crimes against humanity’. As for the West-based LTTE outfits fronting now as ‘Tamil’ organizations they would acknowledge that reluctance to acknowledge LTTE atrocities and admit (in the very least) complicity does not exactly persuade the victims to talk ‘reconciliation’ with them.

If it were a matter of ‘time slipping away’, the end of time for the USA and her allies would come a long time ago. Those who have bucks and guns, however, are experts at finger-pointing and have the (military) means to get away ‘That’s how we do things’ (ref Barack Obama regarding the cold-blooded murder of a man claimed to be Osama bin Laden). So when Otero says ‘action now in this Council will sow the seeds of lasting peace on the ground,’ it is appropriate to ask her ‘Remember Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the 20 plus countries the USA attacked since the Second World War, without any by-your-leave of the United Nations?’

As for the LTTE it is a fascist outfit and fascism is not something the West and Israel ever made light of, either as victim or perpetrator.

Fact 1: Otero was allowed to speak although it was not on the agenda. Conclusion 1: the UNHRC is a pawn of the USA. Fact 2: the USA has no moral authority to pontificate on human rights. Conclusion 2: It is not about human rights but political, strategic and economic interest. Fact 3: the UNHCR is cagey about blatant and proven (not alleged) crimes against humanity perpetrated by the USA and Israel. Conclusion 3: the UNHRC has lost all credibility and has been reduced to a convenient and pliant yes-thing for US-led machinations. Fact 4: the US not only has draconian laws that violate basic human rights both within and without the country, but abuse these to quell dissent. Conclusion 4: Otero is talking through a hat. Fact 5: The USA is the only country that has used atomic energy as a weapon of war. Conclusion 5: the flurry of words about nuclear energy and Iran is sanctimonious bunkum. The list of fact and relevant conclusions would spill out of editorial space and this newspaper too, so let’s stop there.

If, however, the USA is sincere about accountability, then they can give Sri Lanka some tips about how to handle such issues, by way of short-term technical assistance. Otero’s word-jabs, like those of Clinton, Robert O Blake and Patricia Butenis are not constructive when it comes to repairing frayed US-SL ties. It’s a fight they started and as Sun Tzu famously put it, ‘if you start a fight, you have already lost the war’.

Reconciliation and accountability are finally ‘our babies’. We’ve come far on the former and we’ve always been lax on the latter, not just on things pertaining to the execution of the world’s greatest hostage rescue operation but on all issues pertaining to governance. Since we are talking of what’s happening in Geneva, it is incumbent on the Government to take concrete steps to implement the LLRC recommendations, especially those articles that refer to unacceptable acts during the period under review.

The USA’s military ‘policy’ includes torture and all kinds of crimes against humanity (especially for those who are not white and those who are of the Islamic faith), but Washington sets the (flawed) judicial process in motion when the evidence cannot be refuted. Some poor end-point soldier gets court marshaled. We can do better, especially since it is clear that the policy was (as admitted by Butenis) to minimize civilian casualties. Where there is evidence of wrong-doing, the culprits must be apprehended and tried. If it could be done to Sarath Fonseka, the then Army Commander, then no one, however high-ranked he may be should be protected.

This is post-war and moving on must include getting our house in order. On all counts. US-SL relations may have slipped away and the jury is out on whether we should celebrate or lament. This is a time, however, that this country cannot afford to let slip away.

[The Nation Editorial, March 4, 2012]

On the forgotten, forgettable, unforgettable and ‘forgetted’

2012-03-03T18:20:00.000+05:30

[the nauseating demands articulated in Geneva by the worst perpetrators of crimes against humanity persuaded to google 'crimes' and this, writtten on September 13, 2010, came up]

9/11. Two numbers. One stroke. A date. A monumental crime against humanity. A metaphor. An alibi for equally monumental crimes against humanity. Turning point, to some, same-old-same-old for others, chickens coming home to roost for still others. Yes, 9/11 was all that. When you say it (yes say it and see for yourself) you will see the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York crumbling before your eyes. This is the 9/11 of 2001.

Ladies and gentlemen, we all forgot and keep forgetting do we not that there’s a 9/11 every year and there’s been 9/11s since human beings started carving up time into months, days, hours, minutes and seconds, screwed the season in the rush and made it eminently suited to be translated into money a few centuries later. There are 9/11s then and 9/11s. Tragedies and tragedies. Happy days and sad ones. Births and deaths and the innumerable in-betweens. All this and more on this 9/11 and that, in that country or this or somewhere else you and I have never visited or even heard of.

I am not going to be random, sorry. ‘9/11’ in the popular imagination is a specific, as the above experiment I suggested would prove. So here’s another ‘specific’. The Chile of Victor Jara, street artist and poet, lyricist and singer for the working class, whose hands were chopped off so he could not play or hold his guitar not many minutes before they killed him. This Chile of Pablo Neruda. The Chile of a US-backed coup d’etat that overthrew the democratically-elected Government of President Salvador Allende; the violent intervention that saw the Presidential Palace being bombed and thousands of unarmed supporters of the popular president being massacred in cold blood.

That was a 9/11 whose before, after and in between is brilliantly captured in a 3 part documentary by Patricio Guzman titled ‘Battle of Chile, chronicling the political tension in Chile in 1973 and the violent counter-revolution against the Allende Government. It is the 9/11 that brought to power a love-child of US foreign policy, General Augusto under whose tyrannical rule over 3000 people were killed, 80,000 interned and over 30,000 tortured, including women and children. It was a 9/11 that Uncle Sam orchestrated and cheered every bloody minute of the way.

I remember a 9/11. Another specific 9/11. It was a 9/11 when the sequel to Guzman’s documentary, ‘Obstinate Memory’ was screened in Ithaca, NY. ‘Obstinate Memory’ is described as a collection of fractured biographical narratives of those whose lived experiences were erased from public memory in post-dictatorship Chile. Twenty years after ‘The Battle of Chile’ was filmed, Guzman returned to Chile with a copy of the documentary. He showed it to various audiences (including persons present in it and/or their near and dear) and recorded reactions.

I remember, that 9/11 of 1998. Guzman asks an audience of undergrads what they thought of Pinochet, Allende, the Communist Party which he led and other related issues prior to screening the documentary. The students were candid in their answers. Most of them were critical of Pinochet but had generally accepted the official narrative: Pinochet saved Chile from Allende and Communism and had he not, things would have been worse.

No comment from the film-maker. He just showed the film. There was silence thereafter. Then he asked a student what he remembered of that 9/11, the 9/11 of 1973. Silence. Long silence. Then he spoke.

‘I remember that day. I remember that day because I was very happy. I was very happy because there was no school that day.’

Then he broke down and wept like a baby. It had taken him over twenty years to remember that 9/11 in its full significance, to reawaken obstinate memory from a slumber that lasted two decades. It took him that long to understand that there is forgetting and that there is ‘unforgetting’, that there is forgettable and unforgettable. That forgetting doesn’t just happen all the time, on account of event-clutter and the passing of time. That there is, in short, a word that ought to be in all languages but is not: ‘forgetted’.

This is what it is all about. Let me speak for myself. I remember the 9/11 of 1998. I wept that day because I realized that I could never forget people who I knew who were tortured and killed in the bheeshanaya of 1988-90. I wept for Victor Jara. Today is not an 9/11. It is a 9/12. Of the year 2010. Today I remember that I had forgotten the 9/11 of 1998 and the 9/11 of 1973. I remember today that these things were ‘forgetted’ just as much as they were ‘forgotten’. I remember that the privileged 9/11 of 2001, monumental tragedy and reason for mourning though it is no doubt, is nevertheless also a ‘forgotting’ instrument. I forgot.

It all came back because my friend Lydie Meunier alerted her Facebook friends to something they might have forgotten but should not. This was what she wrote: ‘On September 11 1973, the US government of Richard Nixon launched the military coup (or was it a terrorist attack?) that led Augusto Pinochet to become Chile's bloody dictator for 16 years, ousting the presidency of democratically elected Salvador Allende.’

There is something obstinate about memory. There will always be a Lydie Meunier reminding us that we can be afflicted with ‘forgettedness’ There will always be a Patricio Guzma.

There will be remembrances. There has to be.

9/11. Two numbers. One stroke. A date. TWO DATES (at least). Let us remember

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

The ‘Ugly American’ as terrorist-mouthpiece

2012-03-02T12:16:00.000+05:30

Given Robert O Blake's incurable itch regarding Sri Lanka, I thought a re-post of this comment might be useful.

Long before Wikileaks revealed that the current US Ambassador in Colombo, Patricia Butenis was bending over backwards to harass this government and thereby the citizens of this country, those who are alert about things like international relations, the political preferences of global powers and related machinations and of course the behind-the-scenes moves by diplomats. The lady had an impressive track record in the matter of meddling in the internal politics of countries where she has served.

Patricia Butenis succeeded a man called Robert Blake. Now Blake, according to Wikileaks, knew exactly what the LTTE’s political and military strategies were. Not that we are surprised of course, since it is well known that Blake’s bosom buddies in Colombo had been tasked by the LTTE to use whatever means necessary to undermine the Sri Lankan government and create conditions favourable for that terrorist outfit. In fact this same group left no stone unturned in trying- to engineer the escape of the LTTE leadership, clearly so that they could live to fight another day.

The man must have been pretty down in the mouth when for once the US script was flipped by a determined government, a tenacious set of military commanders and a polity that had had enough of the ‘peace’ rubbish dished out by Eelamist apologists and consequently backed the military offensive to the hilt. He left and was later appointed the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs.

Blake, on March 16, 2011, expressed ‘deep concern’ about ‘developments that shrink the democratic space and respect for human rights in

Sri Lanka

’. We didn’t need Blake to tell us that. Our constitution is made to make dictators. As for human rights, parroting LTTE propaganda doesn’t really make a case. In any case, Blake is an employee of a government that goes to war in open violation of the constitution of the country, without sanction from Congress in terms of the section titled ‘Declaration of War’. The last time a leader of that country took the constitution seriously was on December 8, 1941, when Franklin Roosevelt sought and obtained permission from Congress to formally declare war on Japan consequent to the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

Maybe non

citizens are not considered ‘humans’ and therefore it is alright to bump them off. Perhaps it is because the US thinks that brown people are fair game for bomb, bullet, bayonet, stripping, humiliation, torture and entertainment, as has been the case (in recent times) in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya.

Blake’s ‘democratic’ concerns are scandalously selective. Today, the USA is bombing Libya in support of rebels with strong links to Washington (and to the Al Qaeda, ironically) and against a government that has unlike US allies in the region diverted oil generated wealth for the benefit of all citizenry, where there is close to zero unemployment, where usury is prohibited, which enjoys the highest life expectancy and literacy rate in Africa and there’s free health and free education. Neither Blake nor his boss has dared compare all this with their thick-as-thieves pals in the region among whom are many monarchs and tyrants (well, the monarchies are tyrannies as well).

So he’s upset about the 18^th Amendment. I am upset about it too, Bob. But you know what, I am not going to stand anywhere close to you even if you were to hold the same placard, the reason being that you are a man without integrity, a rank meddler and an obnoxious busybody who was and is a spokesperson and agent for the world’s most ruthless terrorist outfit whose operations saw close to 100,000 of my fellow-citizens dying and several hundred thousands injured, displaced and dispossessed. And, for the record, for all the flaws of our constitution, civil life is a million times better than it was when you were around partying with shady characters in Colombo.

Here’s the latest ‘news’. Yes, the quotation mark indicates the fact that it does not come as surprise. Blake has been powwowing with the LTTE rump. He’s been strategizing with known LTTE operatives in the West who built careers and profiles spreading lies about

Sri Lanka

and whitewashing the LTTE of its many crimes against humanity, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Why Blake or any of his colleagues in the State Department have not conferred with the Al Qaeda is mind boggling, all things considered. Blake must be utterly naïve if he believes that the people who run the Global Tamil Forum and the British Tamil Forum never had any links with the LTTE. He’s no baby, this man. He’s quite grown up. They have directly and/or indirectly funded the LTTE and helped procure arms used to kill innocent civilians and consequently need to be named and shamed as the terrorists that they are. But then again, Blake represents a country that has no qualms about giving bucks and guns to insurgents and terrorists and one which in fact has no qualms about slaughtering civilians in their thousands.

There’s a p.s. to the ‘latest’. Blake has told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives that ‘The [Sri Lankan] government's worrying record on human rights, its weakening of democratic institutions and practices, and the way in which it conducted the final months of its conflict against the Tamil Tigers hamper our ability to fully engage.’ If ‘record on human rights’ and ‘strength of democratic institutions and practices’ (both in the USA and outside) is important to these people, they must acknowledge that their ability to engage with themselves are severely handicapped. It means that the decision-makers in the

USA

must require truckloads of sedatives to deliver their REMs.

‘We continue to stress the importance of reconciliation and accountability for the future civility and prosperity of that country, Blake has said of Sri Lanka. Ditto, brother. Sorry, ditto to the 100^th power, in the interest of maintaining perspective.

And now this Ugly American wants to visit Sri Lanka. Come, Blake, come. Be our guest. Enjoy our hospitality. Yes, even party with your old friends in the terrorist-loving I/NGO circle. I am sure you’ve memorized the lines scripted for you by the LTTE thugs you’ve been doing goodness knows what with. Not that you had to, this we understand of course. Fine. Fine. Yes, you can even try arm-twisting. That’s what your boss Obama did when your fellow ‘diplomat’ (hehehe) Raymond Davis emptied his magazine into some innocent bystanders. Do all this, but also remember that even if this government is seen as ‘consolation prize’ by a significant portion of those who voted for it, they would most probably back it to the hilt against the LTTE or its agents (such as you).

P.S. The man did visit and re-visited too. Probably partied too with his Eelam-loving, pro-LTTE pals in Colombo. And he's now playing 'Ugly American' in Geneva. In Sinhala we say 'pau'.

Patricia Butenis needs to sleep (so she can wake up)

2012-03-01T09:37:00.000+05:30

Patricia Butenis, in an interview where she was offered a lot of full tosses, has waxed eloquent about US-Sri Lanka relations. I thought this piece, written a year and a half ago might make interesting reading.
The 4th article of the Dasa Raja Dharma, Lord Buddha's incomparable treatise on good governance is about Ajjava, i.e. honesty and integrity. The ruler, the Buddha said must be absolutely straightforward and must never employ any crooked means to achieve ends. This week I planned to dwell on this particular aspect of good governance but am compelled to employ the idea to dissect something more specific. I write about honesty and integrity but only in terms of how they relate to the month of September.

I am writing this on September 22, 2010. September 22 is significant for a specific and personal reason. It marks an anniversary. On this day, exactly one year ago, the Daily Mirror published an article by me titled ‘Welcome to Sri Lanka Ms. Patricia Butenis'. Ms. Butenis had just assumed duties as the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka. My comment followed a statement she issued to the press subsequent to presenting credentials to President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

She said in that note, ‘No country, including the United States, has a perfect record in safeguarding human rights' but said that even while addressing its own shortcomings, the USA has a responsibility to advocate for the rights and freedoms of people worldwide. Ms. Butenis is aware, I am sure, of the adage that charity begins at home. I expressed in my response to her ‘note' the hope that once she recovers from jet-leg, Ms. Butenis would write a lengthy piece informing Sri Lankans about what exactly the USA has been doing by way of addressing shortcomings.

A lot has happened since September 22, 2010. We've had Nick Clegg of Britain's Liberal Democratic Party confessing while acting as Prime Minister that the invasion of Iraq was illegal. We've had ‘Wikileaks' telling us of the horrendous and systemic perpetration of atrocities by US troops in Afghanistan. We've had the US justice system virtually giving a green light to torture of prisoners as long as it happens outside the borders of that country. We've had President Barack Obama wanting photographic evidence of excesses perpetrated by US troops in Iraq suppressed in the name of ‘national security'. We've not had Ms. Butenis saying a word about these things.

Here are some sobering numbers. The number of Iraqis slaughtered since the US invaded Iraq stands at 1,366,360. That's close to 1.4 million people. The USA has lost 4,739 military personnel. This means that roughly 288 Iraqis have died for each US soldier. Ms. Butenis knows of all this because she tried to buy the silence of one Mohammed Hafidh after trigger-happy security personnel deployed to protect a US diplomat belonging to the contractor Blackwater opened fire on a group of civilians killing his 10 year old son Ali. Ms. Butenis was at the time the Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad and had offered the boy's father US$ 12,500. He had refused. She must know these numbers. She must know what that invasion was about. She must know that the US invaded that unhappy country in order to eliminate non-existent weapons of mass destruction. She must know that in addition to the 1.4 million Iraqis killed after the invasion, half a million Iraqi children died courtesy of the US-led economic sanctions imposed on that country. I am yet to hear Ms. Butenis talk of ‘shortcomings'. Her country has already spent US $ 1,083,252,716,408 in executing the wars on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and I refuse to believe that these adventures did not generate returns that justified investment.

There are 30 days in September. On the 24th day of this month in the year 2009, it was revealed that declassified documents of the US embassy in Bogota showed that US authorities had been aware since 1990 that the Colombian military had been murdering civilians and dressing them up as guerrillas to increase body counts. Colombia is the largest recipient of US military aid in the Western hemisphere. Ms. Butenis knows. She was Consul (1990-1993) and Consul General (2001-2004) in the US Embassy in Bogota. She could not have been ignorant of these matters.

Ms. Butenis also served as the US Political Officer in El Salvador (1982-1985) and as El Salvador Desk Officer (1988-1990). This was when that country was in the middle of a civil war where US-backed dirty tactics (developed using CIA experience from ‘Operation Phoenix' in Vietnam) caused over 75,000 deaths. And this lady had the audacity to tell the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that ‘the Lankan government must seriously address precious human rights abuses, including establishing accountability and rule of law by bringing to justice those responsible for extrajudicial killings, disappearances and numerous attacks against press freedom that have occurred in the last several years'. Ms Butenis could tell us what kind of bringing-to-justice was facilitated by her Government of murders her Government has supported and continues to support in Latin America. Given the posts she has held, Washington's policy directives she had to execute as part of her JD and her sanctimonious posturing, it is indeed surprising that she's in Colombo and not in the Hague.

My ‘welcome note' to Ms. Butenis is no longer available on the internet. I saw it a few days ago, posted the link on facebook, but it's since disappeared. I am not surprised. I have a copy saved though. Here's a quote referring to her meddling stink in Bangladesh:

‘At a farewell speech at the Gulshan Club, Dhaka, she had said that although some Bangladeshis believed she was sometimes too outspoken, this was because Ambassadors must be clear about their country's interests and viewpoints to avoid misunderstanding. I was told that Dr. Abdullah Dewan, Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan University and a Bangladeshi American had observed: There was no "misunderstanding" on our part; she was not just "outspoken", but openly meddled, apparently beyond her mandated duty, in the internal affairs of a sovereign country and made it look like a client state of America.'

Last September I made a list and shook it twice at Ms. Butenis, in lieu of an official red-carpet welcome. This is the list.

US troops massacred 300 Lakotas in 1890. The USA has sent troops abroad or carried out military strikes against other countries on 216 occasions since independence from Britain. Since 1945, the USA has intervened in more than 20 countries throughout the world. People are aware of ‘Vietnam of course, where over 3 million people were killed before the then US President decided to withdraw. There are other unhappy countries. These include China (1945-46), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Guatemala (1960), Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Guatemala (1967-69), Grenada (1983), Lebanon (1984), Libya (1986), El Salvador and Nicaragua (throughout the 1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (ongoing), Sudan (1998), Afghanistan (ongoing) and Yugoslavia (1999). After World War II, the USA has assisted in over 20 different coups throughout the world and the CIA orchestrated countless assassinations and attempted-assassinations of dozens of political heads of state.

I also pointed out that Ms Butenis does not have to read Noam Chomsky to understand that Uncle Sam will support democratic regimes, dictatorships, monarchies, military juntas and all manner of totalitarian regimes guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity as long as US interests are served. That is the bottom line and I was sure Ms. Butenis must have been briefed on this when she was inducted into the US Foreign Service.

The USA has on numerous occasions deployed military police overseas, mobilized the National Guard, sent her Navy to patrol seas off the coast of numerous countries to show strength, carried out covert actions where US forces were not under direct US command, deployed US pilots to fly foreign planes, trained and advised military hierarchies in unpopular and tyrannical regimes and of course assassinated heads of state and other ‘undesirables'.

I strongly recommended that Ms. Butenis read Willian Blum's ‘Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II'. I said that if the US throws the book at us, we can drown them with a hundred books, such is the magnitude of that country's crimes against humanity.

Ms. Butenis' contention that it is good not to have misunderstanding was taken in that spirit. I asked her to comment. I hoped there wouldn't be selective amnesia. One year later, I can report that we didn't get ‘selective amnesia' from Ms. Butenis. We got blanket silence. In Sinhala we would say ‘kata uththara nehe' (silence on account of being tongue-tied).

Ms. Butenis might not have heard of the Dasa Raja Dharma. A year ago I might have though that she would know the words ‘honesty' and ‘integrity'. Today, the 22nd day of September, 2010, one year after Mr. Butenis received that open welcome note I am saddened to observe that this lady doesn't seem to have a clue and this because those are the two most inconvenient concepts for a diplomat from her country.

I finished that note with the following:

‘Don't underestimate us. Don't misread ‘smile' for ‘pliant'. We will be watching your every move, trust us.'

I wished her an enjoyable tenure in Sri Lanka. I take this opportunity to tell her that we haven't dropped our guard or blinked even once.

You are being watched Ms. Butenis. With greater suspicion in fact. You can thank your silence, double-standards, deceit and continued meddling for this.

Cheers.

[This was first published on September 22, 2010 and was edited by Wendell Solomons and posted at http://www.articlesbase.com/international-studies-articles/september-22-is-for-remembering-3333150.html]

The UN is dishing out lunacy, idiocy and knee-slapping humour!

2012-02-29T21:07:00.000+05:30

AND A NECESSARY AFTERWORD :)

I thought it was just Ban Ki-moon and the chief of the panel he’s appointed recently, one Marzuki Darusman, who didn’t know if they are coming or going. Ki-moon said it was just a committee tasked to advice him on things pertaining to

Sri Lanka

. He said, through his representative, that there would be no investigation. Darusman says (magnanimously) that the panel will ‘also’ investigate the LTTE, as though he would be doing us some big favour. LTTE is past tense and we don’t need some ill-advised dabblers to tell us the ‘truth’ about the LTTE. We already know.

Ki-moon’s representative, when announcing the panel and in response to questions from the media, has categorically stated that the panel does not have the authority to investigate or even visit Sri Lanka. Darusman on the other hand clearly uses the word ‘investigate’. Someone’s very confused here. One of the two, i.e. Ki-moon or Darusman is so dumb that he ought to resign immediately or else be kicked out unceremoniously.

On the other hand, we have that ace trouble-maker and Tiger-lover, Eric Solheim, trying to tell us that ‘thousands of lives could have been saved if the LTTE agreed to surrender’ before the leadership was finally eliminated. Solheim says that had the LTTE been agreeable, the surrender would have been overseen by a special UN force. Well, first of all, Solheim’s opinion constitutes toilet wash, given his considerable history as a promoter of terrorism. Secondly, given that the Secretary General of the UN is now a confirmed imbecile, muddle-headed in thinking, moronic in appointment and given to act like executive and not the administrator that he is, I dread to think what such a mechanism would have entailed.

Just imagine Ki-moon and Solheim overseeing surrender by the latter’s pals! Solheim, even as the LTTE killed ‘thousands’ did nothing to ‘save lives’. Instead he rewarded the killers through his Government, the KINGDOM (yes, not democracy) of Norway. At the end of the day killers such as Pulidevan, Nadesan, Prabhakaran, Pottu Amman and Charles Anthony would have been roaming around plotting to set off bombs and kill thousands of innocent people and when that day dawned guess who will be left carrying the baby. Solheim? Ki-moon? No, the near and dear of the dead!

Solheim is Solheim. Tiger-lover to the end, we can’t expect any logic to come from this individual’s mouth. Sri Lanka was his toy. The key word is ‘was’. He was Chandrika Kumaratunga’s favourite and later Ranil Wickremesinghe’s bosom buddy. He’s lost his toy and therefore his whines are quite understandable, poor boy.

The world, however, is full of Solheims and Ki-moons, it seems. Another ‘wise guy’, Mark Toner, the Deputy Spokesman (we are told) of the US State Department, has expressed the support of the USA for this panel. Ever since Robert Blake started partying with apologists for the LTTE in Colombo, Uncle Sam’s position on Sri Lanka has been one of doing whatever possible to undermine the effort to vanquish terrorism. We’ve had Barack Obama sound like the idiot that he is not and Hillary Clinton being, well, Hillary Clinton quite thick and happy in what her President once said was ‘the season of silliness’. Coming from a country whose leaders have perfected the art of genocide, double standards, myopia and selective amnesia, I suppose Toner could do no better. Still, his ignorance stands out too starkly to escape comment.

Toner urges Sri Lanka to ‘take advantage of this team…take advantage of their offer.’ The fool has not been briefed and doesn’t seem to understand the importance of doing the basics in terms of getting facts straight. There is nothing on offer here, Toner and therefore nothing to ‘take advantage’ of. Quite apart from the fact that the head of the panel is a blundering jackass who hasn’t read his job description and who was part of a team of ‘experts’ who proved they were easily purchased by the pro-LTTE lobby in Colombo, Toner doesn’t understand that the panel’s mandate is to brief Ki-moon and not make a list of goodies for the people of Sri Lanka.

However, since Toner represents a powerful country with considerable arm-twisting ability, he could get Ki-moon to actually offer some goodies to Sri Lanka. Got me thinking.

Toner can tell Ki-moon that Sri Lanka could do with a lot of help. We really need a lot of disinfectant, mops, detergents, deodorizers and other equipment and accessories pertaining to clean floors, bathrooms, sinks etc., because every two weeks or so we have a bunch of idiots who can’t hold their liquor vomiting it all out all over the place.

We need to be offered some moron-testing devices that we can use to filter out idiots who are frequently sent to Sri Lanka to look around with half-closed eyes and then to talk through their what-not as though they have a clue about what’s happening, what happened and what might happen.

One more offer, please, Toner. Can you ask Obama to start moving things so that his pals can come up with a brand new award, a Nobel or an equivalent, to celebrate and honour humour? We really need a Nobel Prize for Clowning. If Obama could get a Nobel Prize for Peace for doing jack-all, then he might as well get one for being a joker, except that we have someone who is far more worthy of award, recognition and many pats on the back and slaps on the thighs. Toner, do the honours. Offer us the (comic) relief of having our friend and benefactor, Ban Ki-moon being given the Nobel Prize for Clowning. He deserves it.

The above was published in the Daily News of June 29, 2010. The following was published the next day.

THE MORNING INSPECTION

My heartfelt apologies to some lovely people I may have offended

(mannikkavum ban ki-moon)

There is a plus side to inserting an email address at the bottom of a newspaper article. One gets a lot of feedback. I like reading comments, suggestions, answering questions, clarifying when clarification is sought etc. Not all comments are in agreement of course. Some take issue with assertion, some point out flaw. All in all, it’s ‘engagement’ and therefore stimulating and welcome. There is of course the occasional stinker and these I tend to ignore because it takes all kinds after all to make the world.

I got one of these latter type emails a short while ago. The author, let me call him Roshan, was apparently ‘extremely disappointed’ and ‘quite shocked’ to read what I had written for the Daily News on Monday (The UN dishing out lunacy, idiocy and knee slapping humour). Roshan chides me for what he claims is illogical and irrational expression of criticism. He doesn’t want me to use phrases like ‘Tiger-lover’ or words like ‘idiot’. These, he says, had made him feel ashamed.

Now I don’t think I was being irrational or illogical. I do agree that it is nice if we can be nice and if niceties got things done but then again we are not talking to ‘nice’ people, are we? I mean, could we describe Ban Ki-moon, Solheim and others as intellectual giants or saints? It is not that I have not been ‘kind’ and ‘decent’ and ‘nice’ and ‘sugary’. The world is not a pretty place and sometimes when one is ‘nice’ it is taken as ‘weakness’. There is not fool-proof method of engagement. We try one thing. It doesn’t work. We try another. And sometimes we just wait and what we wish for transpires for reasons we were not able to predict. Anyway, I thought it would ‘nice’ to be ‘nice’ to Roshan, to alleviate his suffering and cure him of the shame that I’m accused of causing him. So here goes.

I address this to Ban, Eric, Navi and other honourable ladies and gentlemen.

Dearest(s),

I am amazed and utterly in awe of the great sense of responsibility and justice that touch all your actions and statements. I am amazed and am in utterly in awe of how fair you have been, how balanced in judgment and even-handed you’ve been in viewing the world. I believe that as a citizen of a member state of the United Nations, I am indeed privileged to have people like you to define for me the realities I inhabit.

I am thrilled beyond words that you have treated Sri Lanka in exactly the same manner that you have treated the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Israel. Your integrity shines so brightly that even from this corner of Planet Earth I am able to tell that you have had the eyes to view places like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and other places, especially in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, ‘Palestine’ and Pakistan and have been beyond reproach in your assessment of events that have taken place. I am given to believe that NOTHING has taken place in such places to warrant censure of any kind, the appointment of an advisory panel or commissioning of investigation.

I want to tell you that I have wronged you and a person called Roshan by saying nasty things about you a couple of days ago. I regret using words such as ‘idiot’ and implying that you were moronic and partial to terrorists and their allies. I now believe that you are utterly, utterly, absolutely blameless of any wrong-doing. I am convinced that you are not petty-minded, do not know the meaning of the term ‘double-standards’ and have never acted in a high-handed manner. Let it not be said also that any of you, especially Mr. Ki-moon, have operated outside the ambit of your job description.

Darlings, you are lovely, lovely, saintly, wondrous individuals. Indeed it is people like you who give us hope that the world can be a better place, that justice and fair play will someday triumph over malice, vindictiveness, deceit and other things that none of you will ever be found guilty of.

I am full of remorse for having engaged in name-calling. It was, believe me, done in a weak moment, in a fit of anger. I should have been more circumspect. Please, please forgive me, my dearest(s). Please, also, be assured of my undying and eternal love and affection and loyalty from now until forever and two days more thereafter (for good measure).

I am copying this to Roshan, who, dear friends, doesn’t seem to have the time to read newspapers. I am going to email to him. He is, I am sure, a darling little boy, a staunch supporter of our beloved Secy Gen Ban, well Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (Roshan might be a tad peeved for abbreviating the name and title of such a saintly personality). I urge you lovelies to consider writing to him. Email me and I will get back to you with his email address.

Roshan is convinced that the ‘invective’ of a ‘misled’ columnist (myself) has ‘reduced the respect that he thinks

Sri Lanka

has/had in the global context. I did not know I was so influential, but anyway, I trust this missive would restore

Sri Lanka

’s status to its former glory.

Dear all, I trust, now that I have showed what I believed is sufficient penitence, that you will forgive me. I am hopeful, also that you will now further honour me by reiterating your commitment to fair play and to upholding the norms and protocols pertaining to your respective offices and to continue to treat (as you always have) all member states as equals in the family of nations.

Much love. Always and forever and two days more.

Me.

United nations will flourish

2012-02-28T12:07:00.000+05:30

There are two kinds of united nations, the first is the in-your-face institution that was birthed after World War II, where rivers of blood were produced in the mad rush by some to carve the world among themselves. This ‘united nations’, or rather the ‘United Nations Organization’ has come far since it was formed. It has come far from the founding principles and has ended up as a bullying tool for bully-nations. This ‘united nations’ is a body that has spawned many bodies all in the name of seeking ‘the greater good’ and all in the end furthering the interests of the movers and shakers, effectively rubbishing the notion ‘one nation – one vote’.

Right now, in Geneva, there are moves to censure Sri Lanka over some allegations made by a group of people who are to remain anonymous for 20 years. The veiled and not-so veiled threats include but are not restricted to ‘an independent investigation’ and sanctions. Interestingly all this is being orchestrated by countries that had no sympathy whatsoever for the plight of ordinary Sri Lankan citizens when they were being terrorized on a daily basis by an outfit that makes Al Qaeda look like first graders playing cops and robbers.

They probably have very good reasons but none of them are about some compassionate love for ordinary Sri Lankans. The bottom line is that Sri Lanka refused to play ball, did its own thing in its own way and surprised everyone by achieving stated objectives albeit at great cost to security personnel and hardly any harm to civilians compared to the kinds of mass-scale killings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya conveniently labeled ‘collateral’ by the perpetrators.

If the question is, whether or not Sri Lanka has the international clout to withstand these ill-tempered maneuvers, the answer is simply ‘no’. On the other hand, if anything was learnt in the offensive against the LTTE, it is that the only way Sri Lanka can ‘do its own thing’ is to do it with the people and for the people.

That’s the other ‘united nations’. In other words nations that are united. Unity is never easily obtained given the many lines along which societies are typically divided. At the same time, nothing unites a people better than an outside threat. The LTTE was not ‘Tamil’, but as alien as any ‘outsider’ has been in terms of what it did, how it was done and the reasons behind the doing. At the critical juncture, the people stood together, barring of course a handful of spoilers who were duly made politically irrelevant.

For all that is wrong with Sri Lanka and in Sri Lanka, few would argue that foreign interference in whatever form does more harm than good. There would be even fewer takers if it was about embracing an intruder whose track record when it comes to violating human rights and committing crimes against humanity is second to none.

For all the legitimate anger at the present regime and for all the petty party-lined objections, it would be hard to find a dozen people who would come out and want the political and military leadership of this country being hanged for crimes that were not committed.

The danger, however, is that this state of affairs can be misread by the political leadership as regime-support. They are two different things. Just as an external threat can help forge unity, the sustaining of such togetherness depends on forging a sense of belonging. It depends most importantly on the citizens being confident that their citizenship has a lot more meaning than a vote at an election and a contributing digit to a national census. While it is not the case that there’s absolutely no sense of belonging to be had, insecurities still abound on account of economic hardship and disadvantaged location in structures of power and decision-making.

On top of it all, the opulence of some at the top, an accompanying brashness in bandying privilege and a palpable perception that there is robbery and indulgence of thief and theft, can push those who feel marginalized into silence and apathy if at some point it is decided to execute threat, one way or another. It robs the people of the will to fight, not the fight to defend regime but the one to defend nation.

In short, the people will stand by the government without condition if they feel the government stands by the people. It is simple. Nations and regimes fall when there is no unity and when the felling is done by an outsider, nations, regimes and the people all fall. If nations are to stand firm and remain standing, then people must stand by one another. United nations do not fall. It’s as simple as that.

[The Nation Editorial, February 26, 2012]

Ravaya: a critical ‘mark’ in the political firmament

2012-02-27T08:49:00.000+05:30

The twenty fifth anniversary of the launching of a newspaper is cause for celebration. It is also a moment for a slow, long gaze at the journey. ‘Ravaya’ is not the most popular newspaper in Sri Lanka. It doesn’t have the circulation and the readership of other weekly Sinhala newspapers. And yet, it has something that few newspapers in this country have: widespread respect.

The bottom line is that Ravaya does not cater to the bottom line, it does not write to the gallery and is not interested in catering to the lowest common denominator. The content is serious, sober, deliberately political and shows an aversion to sensationalizing. It doesn’t concern itself with the trivial and ‘surface’ is clearly not its favourite grazing ground. The Ravaya likes to delve, likes to dig deep, likes to engage with the complex, likes to analyze from angles that are not common in other weekly Sinhala papers.

This does not mean of course that other newspapers are fluffy or fascinated with the trivial. All newspapers have description and analysis, after all. What is distinctive about the Ravaya is the deliberate privileging of things ideological. It is principally for those who are interested in issues of power and consequently the structures of power, the structuring of power and the spaces for and examples of processes that engage with these things.

Whereas the content in almost all weekly papers is organized around roughly the same structure, i.e. with features, business pages, sports, sections of kids and youth, Ravaya’s thrust is the political commentary. As the paper evolved, other elements common to the newspaper industry, made their way into the Ravaya, but even then a preference for sobriety over the frivolous was maintained. ‘What happened’ was and is invariable accompanied by ‘why it happened’ and typically by ‘why it should not happen’, ‘what the corrective should be’ etc.

Now not all people are interested in power games. Not all are interested in the deeper cultural and political economical articulations and implications of things and processes. The target audience is therefore miniscule and this is why doing it for 25 years is a remarkable accomplishment in longevity.

Victor Ivan, the founding and continuing editor, some would say is the Ravaya, that the two are indistinguishable. This is not true, though. He is enough of a liberal to solicit and accommodate views contrary to those he holds close to his heart. What he does is give direction. He frames the parameters of writing, not in terms of ideological cans and cannots but argumentative quality and decency. For all that liberality, however, like-feathered birds naturally flocked together. Thus, even though the occasional ‘dissenting’ piece was accommodated, the regulars were mostly from one thin sliver of the ideological spectrum.

For those who didn’t identify with the ‘Ravaya Position’ on issues, especially those pertaining to the conflict, this was a convenience. All one had to do was to read the Ravaya to find out what the other side was thinking, fearing, strategizing etc. The arguments were coherent no doubt, but they were based on flawed premises. The conclusions, recommendation and rhetoric were therefore flawed. At the end of the day, some might say, the Ravaya got some egg on its editorial face, but one-upmanship aside neither Victor nor the Ravaya need feel any shame. They had a position, they had preferred outcomes and they stuck to their guns. They still do.

No, neither Ravaya nor Ivan have unblemished records when it comes to ethical journalistic practice, but those hiccups were rare and eminently forgivable when one considered the abysmal levels to which the media culture has descended in the matter of ethical conduct. More disturbing was a certain deliberate tweaking of the dictum ‘Facts are sacred, comment free’. The facts were screened to make sure that what appears as ‘news’ supported strongly held beliefs about how things are and how things should be. This is why the Ravaya (along with YaTV and yes, ‘The Nation’ at one time) was bracketed with eminently rubbishable outfits in the NGO sector. The Ravaya, committed to the belief that the LTTE cannot be militarily vanquished and therefore must be engaged in processes of give and give (‘take’ was tokenism, for the most part), downplayed LTTE atrocities, vilified those who thought otherwise and by and large ended up painting itself as a needlessly overzealous anti-Sinhala, anti-Buddhist rag.

Despite all this, Ravaya remains the forum where a particular political position (pro-devolution, anti-history, more or less Marxian and fundamentalist-secularist) is articulated, coherently and consistently. At one time this ‘Ravayan’ (shall we say?) position had sway, especially between 1994 and 2005, not any more though. And yet, in good times and bad, the Ravaya batted on bravely. More importantly even as it erred in political analysis of the conflict, it was consistent and spot on in the larger issues of democracy, i.e. representation, transparency, accountability and the rule of law. That, in fact, is what gave respectability to the jaundiced ideologies that came thick, fast and consistent in its pages.

Today, even though there is very little evidence of humility regarding the errors of the past, Ravaya continues to be in the forefront of the battle to win back meaning, dignity and power for the ordinary citizen as per the promise of democracy.

You won’t get it all in the Ravaya, but what you do get is something you will not find in other newspaper or, if you do, only in bits and pieces. Salutations are called for. This is mine: remain!

[published in 'The Nation', February 26, 2012]

Uncle Sam: The Mother of All War Criminals

2012-02-25T14:59:00.000+05:30

[This was first published in 'The Nation', September 20, 2009. Given the continuing criminality of the United States of America, sadly, these kinds of comments are (relatively) timeless]

Robert O. Blake, former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and currently Assistant Secretary, South and Central Asian Affairs in the Obama administration, is said to have told Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Washington, Jaliya Wickremasuriya that a report on the conduct of government forcees during the war against the LTTE would be submitted to the US Congress tomorrow (September 21).

We all know that Robert O. Blake was an ace mischief maker, the epitome of the Ugly American, during his tenure in Colombo. We know that he did everything possible to find safe passage out of Sri Lanka for the world’s most ruthless terrorist, Velupillai Prabhakaran. We know that he was one of the key players (along with Teresita Schaffer, another important figure who batted for the Eelamists) in getting down Jehan Perera and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu to brief people in Washington D.C. recently.

We know that the likes of Perera and Saravanamuttu represent that tiny sliver of public opinion that always held against the state and that has been largely compromised by rabid anti-intellectualism and a marked propensity to treat terrorism with affection. There are no prizes therefore for predicting that this report will be of the Channel 4 News type: sourced to the most despicable and corrupt political operators that ever walked this island, selective and ideologically motivated in reference and this on substantiation.

What’s all this about? Well, the short answer is: ‘more of the same’. Terms come to mind: ‘double-standards’, ‘sour grapes’, ‘revenge’. ‘Double-standards’ because the USA is by far the worst culprit in terms of violating human rights; ‘sour grapes’ because the USA did its all to give life-breath to a dying terrorist movement and failed, and ‘revenge’ because the people of Sri Lanka didn’t care a hoot for Robert O. Blake’s Viceroy-posturing and did what had to be done: make good on the widely accepted global policy called ‘Zero-tolerance on terrorism’.

Look at who is upset: Uncle Sam! I don’t know the legal standing of this report in the USA and its political and legal overall, but it occurred to me that there’s nothing to prevent the Sri Lankan parliament to constitute a committee that keeps track of war crimes world wide. I believe that such a committee could submit to Parliament a ‘note’ on what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Such a report would not make waves. The world knows that Uncle Sam has been the world’s biggest bully for the past so many decades. On the other hand, no Government has had what it takes to sock it back to Uncle Sam. Someone better do it. Sri Lanka has nothing to lose now. We have to recognize that the West hates this regime, not for its transgressions (which, compared to most nations fighting a terrorist) is hardly worth a murmur, but because Mahinda Rajapaksa for all his faults is too much of a patriot.

Here are some facts which I am sure will not be mentioned or even footnoted in this report that’s on its way to the US Congress.

The United States invaded Iraq twice and moved to impose economic sanctions on that country because a ‘friend’ (Saddam Hussein was The Friend in Uncle Sam’s battle to destabilize Iran – remember Iran-Contra?) had become ‘foe’. Over half a million Iraqi children died as a result of sanctions. Over a million Iraqis have died as a consequence of the invasion. That country was bombed into the middle ages by George W Bush’s Alliance of the Willing to Massacre Brown People (check out George Carlin’s right-on-the-money comment, ‘We like war’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoTkbwML-zU).

For what reason? Weapons of mass destruction. Key word: ALLEGED. How many did Bush’s men and women in uniform find? NONE. The horror stories authored by the US occupation forces in Iraq would fill a library. I am willing to wager that Robert O Blake would not have the tongue to utter a single reference to what the US did and continues to do in Iraq in terms of ‘human rights abuses’ (a sanitized term for ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’).

Afghanistan. Robert O. Blake probably will not wet his pants if someone mentioned that country and that’s only because he is the Ugly American Personified and has a mind that blocks out anything negative about the USA. To hunt down a single terrorist, the USA turned half a million people into IDPs, destabilized a region and killed close to 40,000 people. US jets bomb civilian targets at will and do not feel obliged to say ‘sorry’.

I am sure that Robert O. Blake will not read F. William Engdahl’s ‘Colour revolutions; old and new’, where the author explains a new form of US covert warfare, first played out in Belgrade, Serbia in 2000. It was not the spontaneous and genuine political movement that people believed it was, Engdhal argues; it was the product of techniques developed in the USA over several decades. The Clinton administration orchestrated Slobodan Milosevic’s removal. A $ 41 million campaign was launched from US Ambassador Richard Miles’ office, according to Engdhal.

Blake will know but not acknowledge the mechanics of Georgia’s bloodless ‘Rose Revolution’ that replaced Edouard Shevardnadze with Mikhail Saskashvili, and Ukrain’s ‘Orange Revolution’ that brought Yushchenko to power in January 2005.

The ‘Washington-hand’ in the on-going ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran is also well documented. It is said that if the ‘Green Revolution’ in Teheran fails, then ‘hardline regime change must be worked from the outside’. In a June 12 Wall Street Journal editorial, John Bolton called for Israeli air strikes whatever the outcome - to "put an end to (Iran's) nuclear threat," despite no evidence one exists.

The operation in Sri Lanka suffered the fate of the attempted ‘Saffron Revolution; in Myanmar. Well, Robert O Blake could not do a ‘Richard Miles’ in Colombo. Perhaps this is why he is trying it out in Washington.

On July 11, 2008, Jason Leopold headlined his Countercurrents.org article, "State Department's Iran Democracy Fund Shrouded in Secrecy" and stated: "Since 2006, Congress has poured tens of millions of dollars into a (secret) State Department (Democracy Fund) program aimed at promoting regime change in Iran."

Yet Shirin Abadi, Iran's 2003 Nobel Peace prize laureate, said "no truly nationalist and democratic group will accept" US funding for this purpose. In a May 30, 2007 International Herald Tribune column, she wrote: "Iranian reformers believe that democracy can't be imported. It must be indigenous. They believe that the best Washington can do for democracy in Iran is to leave them alone."

What is the truth about Sri Lanka? Well, Robert O Blake has been parroting claims churned out by the LTTE propaganda machine for a long time now. Much of the claims have been adequately refuted and retractions articulated by some of the accusers themselves.

Were there ‘excesses’ perpetrated by the security forces during the war. It would be silly to say ‘no’. Wars are not tea-parties. But there has to be a sense of proportion in claim, objection and the processes of blaming and uncovering truth.

Here are some facts (which should be compared with the facts from Iraq and Afghanistan):

Sri Lanka

fought and defeated the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization which had spread its wings outside the island and linked with other terrorist outfits, some of which the Obama administration is at war with.

Sri Lanka

lost thousands of fighting men whose lives were put at extra risk because the Government wanted to minimize civilian casualties. Had the government been dismissive of cost to civilians, the war would have been over in January 2009 and not May.

During the conflict, the Government ensured that everything possible was done to provide food and medicine to people being held hostage by the LTTE.

Throughout the conflict, the Government did not cut back on free education and free healthcare services. Today, post-war, the bulk of the money is going for rehabilitation and rebuilding efforts in the North and East. Compare this with what the US has done to the people whose lands were stolen (the Native Americans) and the people who built that nation with their labour (the African Americans), and to the victims of Katrina. And get this: the vast majority of the people backed the President to the hilt and continue to back him in the reconstruction efforts.

How about torture? There is no evidence of any kind of systemic torture being perpetrated by the Sri Lankan security forces. Robert O Blake and the Obama administration, if they bring up torture, will be dismissed by mentioning a double-barreled torture chamber: Guantanamo Bay. Well there is also Abu Ghraib and other such unhappy places associated with the gruesome.

Enough. The Mother of All War Criminals does not have a leg to stand on and these Washington maneuvers stink. It is what made some people say ‘You deserve it punk’ to Uncle Sam when that unconscionable attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon took place on September 9, 2001. The world was willing to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt because he positioned himself as the political opposite of the Ugly American. Looks like the man is no different from his predecessors. The proof of the pudding is in the substance, not the colouring, Barack. Tastes horrible, brother.

The White House preference: ‘Talking for the sake of talking’

2012-02-24T19:42:00.000+05:30

The more I listen to Barack Obama the more I get disillusioned about the man. In the run up to the US Presidential Election informal polls of people from all over the world found him to be way ahead in popularity over his rivals, first Hillary Clinton and then John McCain. Almost one year into his term, the man sounds more and more like his predecessors. He is redefining his identity and sounds nothing more nothing less than a common thug.

“Our patience is not unlimited,” Obama told Iran recently, alluding to tougher economic sanctions if Iran does not take the necessary steps. “The United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely, and we are prepared to move towards increased pressure,” he thundered, reiterating the strong arm foreign policy preference that has made the USA one of the most hated nations in the world. He was referring to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Acting quite the school principal, Obama has put Iran ‘on notice’. He charges Iran of ‘breaking rules that all nations must follow’. The learned President of the USA cannot be ignorant of how his country has broken all rules and norms of decency throughout the long 20^th Century and continues to do so in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he doesn’t say a word about all this; instead he says ‘we’re committed to serious and meaningful engagement, but not interested in talking for the sake of taking’.

To me, the bottom line is this: the whole discourse of non-proliferation is wrong. Obama says that Iran should understand that developing nuclear weapons does not enhance that country’s security but undermines it. Look who’s ‘talking for the sake of talking’! No country that has nuclear weapons has a moral right to complain about other countries developing similar capacities. Obama should cut the crap and say it as it is: ‘We are not interested in the idea of a global community, we are only interested in securing resources and markets; we are a selfish people and even as we talk the talk of humanity, community, democracy etc., we do so only insofar as it serves our purposes.’

His predecessor, George W Bush invaded Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction. What was that? Certainly not ‘talking for the sake of talking’. That was ‘talking for the sake of safeguarding oil interests’. Is Obama any different? No. If he was, he would have pulled out from Iraq the day he became President.

‘Talking for the sake of talking’ quite in contrast to Obama’s claim is in fact the A-Z of US Foreign Policy. I am thinking right now of Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State and one time opponent of Barack Obama who famously charged the latter of proposing ‘change (one) could Xerox’. Obama retorted, ‘this is when we enter the season of silliness’. All that is now in the past. Clinton does a lot of Xeroxing and Obama is living it up in an unending season of silliness.

Clinton, a few days ago, as President of the UN Security Council, made some utterly tendentious remarks on the subject of ‘Women, peace and security’. This woman, who lied to the US voter about having got off a plane in Baghdad ‘under a hail of bullets’ and is blind to the crimes against humanity that her country has committed and continues to do so, flippantly said, ‘Rape has been used as a tactic of war in Sri Lanka’ (she named a couple of other countries too).

‘Tactic of war’ did she say? Well, the lady is accusing the Government of Sri Lanka of having adopted and implemented a deliberate defence policy of systematically raping people as a key component of its strategy to defeat the LTTE. Hillary is not saying that the Sri Lankan security forces stole some guavas from a garden in Puthukudiarippu. He used the word ‘rape’. That’s a serious charge and one which demands elaboration and substantiation. No one should be allowed to get away with that kind of frivolous charge, least of all a known liar from a country that has brought death and destruction to dozens of countries and is even now displacing innocent civilians by the hundreds on a daily basis and has set in motion processes that cause untold misery to hundreds of thousands of people, in particular women, children, elderly and the sick.

Who raped whom, Clinton must tell us. When did it happen? Why was that charge not made earlier? Why now? What kind of evidence has surfaced now to warrant this charge? What is the ‘systematic’ in the alleged incidents that justify the charge, ‘rape as a tactic of war’?

Patricia Butenis, the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka in a poverty-stricken damage-control exercise, offered that Clinton did not name any person but made a general comment.

Well, what would Butenis say to a ‘general comment’ about rape and deliberate actions of sexual humiliation committed by US military personnel in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and who knows where else? Would she let it pass, if for example, Sri Lanka’s permanent representative to the UN talked of war crimes and inter alia mentioned the United States of America among other ‘rogue states’?

It’s all talking for the sake of talking, isn’t it? We are yet to hear the United States of America doing something about having broken and continuing to break rules that most nations follow. Obama doesn’t want to see photographic evidence of torture and rape perpetrated by his troops. Hillary might want us to believe that the US Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan to dig wells, clean drains and construct toilets. Butenis will not respond to questions that make her uncomfortable. None of the three are willing to admit that the Global Thug days of the

USA

are coming to an end.

Obama, Clinton and Butenis need to understand that talking the talk but not walking the walk does not win any admirers. It is even worse to get others to walk one’s talk while one twiddles thumbs and passes judgment.

Just after 9/11 happened, most Sri Lankans I spoke to expressed shock and sympathy for the victims. Most of them after doing so, paused for a while, and mouthed the invariable ‘but’, followed by ‘the USA deserved it’. I am fairly certain that such sentiments were not limited to Sri Lankans. There is a reason for this and the Obama administration is not doing anything to change the mindset that utters such sentiments. Indeed people like Robert O Blake have only hardened the genera anti-US sentiment among a lot of people. Hillary is not helping either and as for Patricia, a willing approver (by designation), there’s very little she can do.

Few liked George W. Bush. Obama was supposed to be different. He is doing his best to prove that he is not. I feel for all those citizens of the USA who believed in his ‘change’ message. The truth is, friends, ‘he can’t’. Sorry, it’s not about ‘yes we can’ any more; it is about ‘no we won’t’ (change).

That’s of course something the people in that country will have to think about. As for us, in Sri Lanka, we need answers from Hillary. She won’t give any. We will have to ask her representative in Sri Lanka. Ms. Patricia Butenis, we need another, more elaborate statement from you. If you choose silence then we will have no option but to conclude: ‘guilty as charged!’ Sorry. It’s just us, doing something more than ‘talking for the sake of talking’, I am sure you will understand.

[first published in 'The Nation', October 3, 2009]

The Ranjan Madugalle Column

2012-02-22T21:34:00.000+05:30

Ranjan Madugalle remembers Jagath Fernando’s classic 160 not out in the 1971 Royal-Thomian. I remember being at that match and I remember savouring the scorecard of that match in the 1972 Royal souvenir which had just one dampener, Gajan Pathmanathan being out at 97. Ranjan remembers Gajan getting out.

I remember Ranjan walking back after a poor show in the middle in the Big Match of 1975. He was just 15 then. Tiny. I remember reading about his exploits in Pakistan the following year when as a 16 year old he took 8 wickets to help Sri Lanka’s Under 19 team annex the Ali Bhutto trophy. I can’t remember remembering this fact more acutely than when Mahinda Halangoda and Chandi Richards denied Royal a win in the Centenary Match (1979). I wished Ranjan, who captained Royal in that match, had brought himself on.

I was just 11 years old then and the controversy surrounding his selection for the Ali Bhutto Trophy game went over my head. I remember thinking, years later, when the issue was brought up, ‘yes, maybe it was unfair, but he was given an opportunity and seized it with both hands’. The fact is, Ranjan was a phenomenal talent.

Cricket captains were held in awe by schoolboys. Ranjan Madugalle captained twice and was such a performer that he walked or was thought to walk a few inches off the ground unlike other cricket captains. The fact is, he was always grounded.

He was very fond of my mother, who was his teacher and who claimed she had carried him as a baby. I was known, therefore. I remember Ranjan once catching me on the corridor. Our class (7F) was next to the prefects’ room and Ranjan was the Head Prefect. He asked me a question and not having heard what he said I said (in a questioning tone) ’….aaah?’ He said that there was no such word and that if I didn’t hear, I must say so. A few weeks later he caught me on the corridor. He mumbled something. I started with the habitual ‘aaah?’ and quickly changed to ‘what?’ He smiled and said ‘that’s better!’

I remember Ranjan and Arjuna Ranatunga saving Sri Lanka’s blushes in the first innings of the first ever test (1982, P.Sara Stadium against England). I remember listening to the commentary when he scored his maiden hundred (against India) and how the commentator observed that he had got out ‘to a shot by a tired man’. I remember listening to the commentary during the classic partnership he put together for NCC with Sridharan Jeganathan. I went for the first test but the other two incidents were random – I hardly ever listened to the radio.

I remember Ranjan losing his cool only once, when he was hitting the Australian attack to all corners of the field and got into a war of words with Rodney Hogg. I think Hogg bounced him and it annoyed Ranjan. I think Hogg got his wicket and had choice things to say to Ranjan as he walked away. I remember Ranjan stopping in his tracks to (presumably) exchange ‘pleasantries’ with Rodney. I can’t remember if we won or lost but I think either Ranjan won it for us or else brought us close.

I met Ranjan a couple of days ago when I went to meet my oldest friend, Rajitha Dhanapala. He said he was at the Royal-Thurstan match. When we were chatting he had seen Ranjan. I hadn’t seen him since my mother’s funeral a little over two years ago, so we strolled to the other end of the ground passing the J.R.Jayewardena pavilion to where he was sitting with several other old Royalists, cricketers all, among them Jagath Fernando, Jehan Mubarak and Zulki Hameed.

He recognized both of us, got up and greeted us. He greeted me as ‘Mister Editor’. So we talked about ‘The Nation’ and I asked him to write a column. He said that Sa’adi Thawfeek, our Sports Editor had made the same request many times but that he was constrained by contractual agreement (with the ICC). He added, ‘I asked Sa’adi what had happened to you since I didn’t see your articles and he said “we told him to stick to one paper instead of writing to all the newspapers like a prostitute”.’ We had a good laugh over it, and I told him that these days the first article to get the chop for lack of space is mine.

Getting back to ‘columns’, he said that I could write his obituary notice (for free). I laughed and said I will write an appreciation. We don’t know when death comes, so I don’t know if I would be around to do either, so I thought I would write this now.

A year ago, almost, I wrote an article for the ‘Daily News’ titled ‘On Ranjan Madugalle’s ‘lesson’ in 1982’. It was something he said when invited by the then Principal of Royal College, L.D.H. Peiris to be a guest speaker at the school assembly. This is what he said:

‘Whenever I am out of form, getting out cheaply or to poor shots, I revert to the fundamentals. I go back to the nets. I check my stance. I check the back-lift. Things like that. Invariably, I start performing better. That is a life lesson. Whenever we go wrong, it is good to ask yourself if you’ve got the fundamentals wrong. Basic things like discipline. Like values. You will always find that that’s where the problem lies. That is what needs to be corrected.’

Ranjan Madugalle is not a columnist. He is not allowed to write or speak to the media. He spoke to me about the things that people who have known each other for more than 30 years talk about. Light banter.

He’s written his ‘column’ in the middle of the ground and outside the boundary line. He was a technically sound batsman. He was sound. He is sound. Day in and day out. And that, my friends, counts for a daily column running continuously for over thirty years.

Let’s all observe 2 minutes of silence today…

2012-02-22T13:51:00.000+05:30

Twenty four years ago, i.e. February 22, 1987, around 3.00 pm, I got a call from a batchmate at Peradeniya. Prabath Sahabandu, now the Editor of The Island newspaper, mentioned a name and followed it with two words: ‘Rohana gange giya’ (Rohana went down the river, meaning that he had drowned).

Rohana Kalyanaratne was my roommate. For thirteen years since that sorrowful day, I sent my thoughts back to that time, that moment and that beautiful man. Then came February 22, 2001 and finally I was unburdened of that lingering sense of loss. The weight of that death was erased by the lightness of a life, my daughter Mithsandi. She’ll be 10 as you read this and for 10 years I’ve remembered Rohana, not with sadness but with a smile. I can’t help it and I am not apologetic about it either. Life is like that.

The 22^nd of February was then about death and later about life. But life is cunning. It gives, it takes. For 6 years, i.e. from 2002 to 2007 a certain blackness cut through birthday cake and candles, voices singing ‘Happy birthday’ and the toy-joy time of a little girl. I don’t know if others noticed, but this other darkness denied me the privilege of full celebration. That blackness was initialed. CFA. ‘Ceasefire Agreement’ between the then Government of Sri Lanka and the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization, the LTTE.

There were some who cheered, some who feared. Among those who cheered, some genuinely believed that a respite from the fighting would be good (no dispute there of course) and moreover it would create a platform for discussions on core issues. Such people were clearly myopic. The wording of the CFA showed intellectual sloth and complicity in the LTTE’s designs with respect to the Sri Lankan state.

It also indicated a manifest naiveté about the LTTE. That organization always looked at negotiations and ceasefires through a strictly military lens and anyone who had even the most basic familiarity with their history would have known from Day One that the Ceasefire Agreement was doomed. And yet the CFA was treated like some holy cow issued from some kind of immaculate conception, so sacred that journalists and commentators were asked not to touch the precious little angel and those who dared desecrate with comment or objection were called ‘war mongers’ and ‘racists’ (usually with the tag ‘Sinhala-Buddhist’).

February 22, 2002 was a landmark in that it implied that the Sri Lankan Government had acknowledged the following: a) the LTTE is the sole-representative of the Tamil people, b) the LTTE deserved and got parity of status vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan Government, c) the conceding of territories seized, d) violence is a legitimate means of securing political gains and e) a willingness to let a pro-LTTE entity (Norway) to stand as Chief Arbiter in processes related to the CFA.

The inevitable happened. The LTTE used the CFA to a) re-arm, b) recuperate from the heavy losses suffered at the hands of the Army’s ‘deep penetration’ units, c) recruit (thousands of children were forcibly recruited during the time the CFA was in operation), d) eliminate political irritants, e) assassinate key members of the Army’s intelligence units, f) expand operations to areas hitherto inaccessible.

The Government, not enjoying the privileges that a law-unto-themselves terrorist outfit could benefit from, was essentially hand-tied during this time. Happily so, one might add, given the kind of statements we heard from Ranil Wickremesinghe and his principal confidantes/advisors at the time.

It was doomed to end with a bang and this is exactly what happened. The LTTE upped the ante as expected and when it felt confident to unleash another round of violence. That ill-conceived and poorly worded piece of paper quickly lost relevance except for LTTE-friendly sections of the international community to wave at the Sri Lankan Government like a yellow or red card. On January 8, 2008, it was proclaimed dead. I remember helping author a book on the CFA around that time, titled ‘It is customary to bury the dead’. This is the 4^th February 22^nd since the CFA was abrogated. Much violence and dispossession could have been avoided if successive governments were not hoodwinked into believing the tall tales of rabidly anti-Sinhala, anti-Buddhist and guardedly pro-LTTE elements masquerading as academics, political analysts and sundry pundits and instead listened to the likes of Dr. Nalin De Silva, who argued that the LTTE needed to be militarily engaged and that victory was not impossible. ‘It is customary to bury the dead’ contains useful information relevant to the CFA, how it came about, its principal backers, the assumptions it was based on and how it gradually slipped into full scale arms-clash courtesy the LTTE.

The CFA must be remembered for it is a classic example of how not to deal with intransigent thugs.

On February 22, 1988 I wrote a few lines for my friend. This was as the country was quickly moving towards the UNP-JVY bheeshanaya (period of terror).

One more victorious year

stamped on the pages of their history,

turbulent rivers flow through ours….

….[with] this era at an end,

there is little to tell.

just the subdued rain on fallen leaves

and silent beads of sweat,

and hope buried in the past.

Twenty three years later I would tell him that the skies are not exactly blue all day and full of stars at night. I would say that there are clouds but they are not all dark and foreboding. I would tell him that part of the reason is something beautiful that came into my life exactly 14 years after her exited it. I would say ‘that’s not the only reason, brother.’ And I would say all this with a smile that does not indicate absence of sorrow. Life is never clear-cut and neither is death.

I will spend two minutes in complete silence. That’s personal. I will remain silent for two additional minutes. That’s collective. You can join if you like.

[First published exactly one year ago in the Daily News, i.e. February 22, 2011]

In search of nation in flag-waving, anthem-singing times

2012-02-21T22:22:00.000+05:30

A nation need symbols. Flags and anthems for example. They are supposed to capture things that are unmistakably ‘national’. Things that make a particular polity in a particular geography unique. They must, therefore, reflect not just the surface that is ‘today’, but the depths that are contained in the ‘yesterday’ that brought this ‘today’ and hopefully point to a realistic tomorrow.

The current debate about language pertaining to the national anthem, to my mind, is useful only in terms of seeing it as an invitation to return to the debate on who we are; a debate that includes the following questions: Who were we? Where did we come from? Who were our ancestors? What did they do? What philosophical traditions were the most prominent in persuading the unfolding of event and creating of artifact, physical and otherwise, in particular ways? Where do we want to go? Reducing the issue to a ‘today’ and pandering to the misleading and indeed obfuscating rhetoric flowing from that nonsensical notion, ‘one-ethnicity = one vote’ flowing from the once again misleading and un-nuanced phrase ‘mult-ethnic, multi-religious’ is nothing more than playing power politics.

One must never go overboard with anything, particularly representation. That would require us to make sure a) that all groups (religious, ethnic, gender, age etc) represented in appropriate percentages and b) periodically alter the relevant pie charts in accordance to changing demographic data. It is no easy task of course. All the more reason to remind ourselves that what is more important is not symbol but what it is supposed to represent. A nation with national flag and national anthem but sans a national ethos is patently hollow.

This is not to say that we are not a people with no national sense of course. If that were the case, we would be still fighting the war against terrorism. Still, it is not incorrect to say that nationalism is more latent than apparent. If our nationalism is limited to safeguarding the dimensions of a map we are poor indeed, especially in a global context where national boundaries are porous when it comes to things economic and indeed cultural.

I believe we should inhabit the national flag and anthem just as much as these things ought to inhabit us. What does ‘nation’ mean if we do not acknowledge the existence of one another, if we do not celebrate the triumphs of our fellow-citizen and commiserate in his/her sorrow? What would our nationalism mean if we cannot stand by our fellow citizen in his distress even when he/she is in error and deserving of admonishment? What would our nationalism mean if we choose not to criticize his error?

We are lesser nationalists if we cannot celebrate the fact that a Sri Lankan Catholic priest was made a Cardinal, clearly a personal honour to him and his flock. We are lesser nationalists if we fail to note that he was in error when he pandered to Eelamist myths when making submissions to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission and that he fudged with respect to the role of the Catholic Church vis-à-vis the Eelam Project. We are lesser nationalists if we choose to look the other way when a place of religious worship is desecrated and lesser nationalists when we do not acknowledge the deliberate attempts to downplay the role of particular philosophies and attendant religious traditions in the making of a civilization and indeed a nation. There is no nationalism in avowing a multi-ethnic, multi-religious Sri Lanka while at the same time ignoring the fact that those who belonged to a particular ethnicity and subscribing to a particular set of religious practices perished in greater numbers and suffered more depravations and desecration in the 500 years under colonial rule and even thereafter so that we have the national flag and national anthem we quarrel over today.

What is our nationalism if we do not see neighbour, if we do not see community, if we do not respect his/her religious convictions, if we confer ‘heathenism’ and seek to purchase emancipation? What is our nationalism if we do not understand that certain structures and processes favour a few and trip the rest? What is our nationalism if we do nothing to correct structures but instead seek to people them with our friends (if we ourselves cannot occupy the high seats within)? What is our nationalism if we are fixated with ‘demand’ and ‘right’ and have dragged ‘responsibility’ to the trashcan and emptied it thereafter?

We are not a nation if we cannot see our warts. We are not a nation if we see only the warts. We are not a nation if we see flag and anthem and not the nation they are supposed to be symbols of. We can do without flag and anthem, but we would not be nation if we are not nationalists in the most comprehensive and most embracing understandings of the term.

We are not a nation worthy of that name if we object to one enemy but not another. We are not a nation if we pick the easy fight. We are not a nation if we cannot see that not all the nation’s enemies have foreign passports. We cannot be the nation that we can legitimately aspire to be given the strong philosophical and civilizational foundations laid down by our ancestors if we do not consciously and frequently engage in self-reflection and self-criticism.

There are questions we need to ask ourselves. What kind of nation are we? What kind of nation do we want to be? Ignoring these and indulging in the easy business of quarreling over flag and anthem is being crassly political. Not something to be proud of. The nation does not reside in flag or anthem, in identity card or birth certificate. It exists outside of all these things and, one can argue, in spite of them. It does not come shouting and that’s a good thing, for if that were the case it is more than likely that it would either be destroyed or purchased. That’s the nation we must seek, I believe, as individuals and as a colourful collective, warts and all.

[first published in 'The Nation', December 2010]

NAADRO: harvesting the rhythms of the sun

2012-02-20T17:25:00.002+05:30

In the classic sculptured posture where Lord Shiva is depicted as Nataraj or Lord of the Dance, that which symbolizes life (according to some interpretations) is the drum (‘fire’, held in another of the four hands depicting ‘death’). It does not take mythology or faith to tell us that rhythm is basic, however.

We begin with heartbeat after all. It is said that the most reassuring thing for an infant is the mother’s heartbeat. From then, until death, our lives pulsate with beat in innumerable forms. This is perhaps why we involuntarily tap our feet to music, even music that is totally foreign to our ears. We may not know the lyrics or understand the logic of melody, but we recognise and identify with the beat. Our lives are made of and surrounded by percussion, although we don’t necessarily think of it like that.

Drums are basic, in other words or rather ‘drumming’ is fundamental to the human condition. It comes patterned in so many things we don’t automatically label as ‘music’. In the play of hammer and anvil, that of fingertip on keyboard, the working of a press, the work of mortar and pestle, the swish-swish of winnowing fan, or the incessant right-click-refresh of a nervous IT trouble-shooter, we remain a ‘percussioned’ species.

Percussion is universal and is made of rhythmic commonalities that cuts across time and space, region and continent, language and dialect, faith and myth, politics and ideology. It is timeless. It is specific. Right now.

Specific because its universality is articulated, absorbed and celebrated by singular embodiment of the genre, Naadro.

Naadro. The name was coined by the incomparable Arisen Ahubudu and means hiruge naadaya ada gannaa or that which draws the sound of the sun, which as we know is giver of all, especially energy. Naadro consists of an eclectic mix of young and mature talent and is a highly trained, meticulously professional group of young men united in their common love for and pursuit of supreme proficiency in percussion from the Sri Lankan, Indian, African, Mediterranean and Latin idioms.

It all began in 2007 when six young undergrads studying the Performing Arts at the University of Colombo were brought together by their common passion for percussion. Led by Rakitha Wickramaratne whose percussionist talent was identified at a very young age, the group included Gayan Manokumara, Nalinda Dilupama, Ranga Nuwantha, Nupathi Nilambara and Uthpala Iroshan, all artists who were trained by those considered to be doyens of percussion in Sri Lanka such as Piyasara Shilpadhipathi and Ravi Bandu Vidyapathi. The team has since been strengthened by

Chaturanga Chitrajit, Gayrika Weerasinghe, Nuwan Liyanage, Lahiru and Tharindu.

They are all ideologically committed to the kind of cross-cultural sharing and learning that rhythmic universality makes for and this is evidenced in its preoccupation with fusion music, where they’ve drawn from many sources, from many cultures and musical traditions.

Naadro began its long and yet unfinished and necessarily unending journey across the global musical firmament as a percussion band, starting off with some rudimentary percussion instruments, some of which were popular across the world. Within a short period of time they not only obtained instruments from a wide range of cultures but through sheer dedication, practice and love for music became proficient at using them to expand the horizons of their percussionist passions. In this way Naadro made a mark among the few globally recognized percussion bands.

Learning does not end and Naadro constantly explores the potential of employing the traditional percussion instruments from India, Japan, Latin America and Africa along with traditional Sri Lanka drums to create new percussion music. Perhaps this is why they have attracted a large and growing following across the world.

One of the key and unique features of Naadro is the deliberate effort to go beyond percussion instruments and to incorporate anything and everything that can produce sound as appropriate for the particular creative exercise in order to mould a signature style of percussion. This includes at times a kitchen utensil, at times vehicle spare parts or even the implements used by a mason.

It is perhaps indicative of the freshness and creative uniqueness of Naadro that many advertisers have recognized in them an immense communicative potential in introducing products and services. Naadro quickly emerged as a ‘must have’ element in corporate events and have received many invitations to provide background music for movies and songs. Perhaps the ‘coming of age’ of the group is best indicated by the kinds of global brands they endorse. The Latin Percussion Company (drums), Gibraltar (hardware), Sabian (symbols), Vicfarth (sticks) and Remo (drumheads) have all found Naadro to be effective brand ambassadors.

Rhythm is common and that which is common cross-fertilizes and is made for experiencing and sharing. Naadro has sought, shared with and learned from the most accomplished exponents from all parts of the world. They have performed in the USA, South Africa, Australia (Para Masala Festival, Sydney), India and Singapore and are set to tour the UK, Norway and New Zealand shortly, along with revisits to Australia and the USA. They’ve shared stage with the likes of Shakira, Shaggy and Linkin Park at the Singapore Ground Prix and yet remain utterly young and full of energy and humility.

Most encouragingly, Naadro is committed to popularizing percussion among the younger generation. They have devoted the entire first quarter of the year 2012 to conduct various programmes for school children.

Drums are about rhythm. Rhythm is common to all cultures across time and space. It is a phenomenon that everyone can relate to, can identify with, can own, share and celebrate. Naadro believes that this particular genre of music is ideally suited to setting up ‘common ground’ for communities separated by geographical realities, political processes, histories of mistrust and fracture to come together in non-threatening and non-confrontational manner and thereby facilitate dialogues pertaining to peace, mutual respect, healing and co-existence.

It is then not just about the freeing, intoxicating and indescribable thing called passion, but a responsible engagement which includes deeper reflection of the human condition as well as the social reality that surrounds them. Maybe that’s what drums are all about. Maybe that’s what the timeless sculpture of Nataraja is all about. Maybe it is impossible to say in words but eminently articulated in rhythm. Maybe it is time to stop and listen.

[published in 'The Nation', February 19, 2012]

Stop scripting insurrection

2012-02-19T22:27:00.000+05:30

Poverty is not oozing out of the city seams, but this doesn’t mean people are free of anxiety. Although less than 9% are said to be below the poverty line, around 20% of the population remain undernourished while close to half the population don’t meet the minimum recommended dietary energy consumption levels.

Those who complain of difficulty are silent on subsidies they enjoy, from pre-birth (courtesy midwives) through childhood and youth (education and health) and throughout life (food, fuel and other subsidies). In short human beings are perennial and happy victims of the Oliver Twist syndrome: asking for and wanting more is almost part of our DNA.

But if it is all about perception and self-interest then those who are less well-off will always take note of differences in consumption levels and in particular be very alert to conspicuous flouting of wealth, over-consumption and in-your-face arrogance. When all benefits enjoyed are taken for granted, perceived as birth right and these perceptions are affirmed by politicians for expedient purposes, then any ‘taking away’ naturally provokes anger. That anger is made to be harnessed politically by those out of power.

We live in times of stress and strain courtesy global events (the war-mongering West thirsting for Iranian blood), rampant viceroy-like angst suffered by major international actors about a regime that refuses to play ball (all the time) and the persisting trade imbalances and other factors which keep Sri Lanka ‘underdeveloping’. In such circumstances, anxieties do spill out into the streets.

When real incomes decline, lifestyles get crumpled. Consumption patterns change and decline. When you can’t take to sea (in the case of fishermen trumped by fuel price hikes), you take to the streets. The street does not have a sign saying ‘only for the truly aggrieved’. Among the street-takers are those hungry to obtain some deaths, for coffin-carrying makes for more photo-ops, image-enhancement and a boosting of political relevance. The streets, moreover and as was seen in the Fort on Friday, are also fair game for petty thieves and looters.

No grievance however serious is big enough to justify vandalism, especially of public property. We saw a lot of it over the past few weeks including Friday evening when armed mobs hoofed innocent citizens out of buses. That said, the right to object is fundamental to a healthy democracy. The possibility of grievance being hijacked or abused by malicious elements is a reality that society and the state must live with.

Minister Maithripala Sirisena, on behalf of the ruling party and the government, has expressed regret over the killing of a protesting fisherman in Chilaw. Regretting after the fact is easy. The Government should understand that unless radical steps are taken with respect to general policy on crowd control, unpopular decisions (whether they are necessary or not) will continue to generate protests, enhance fertility for situation-abuse by the opposition, fuel vandalism and cause more deaths.

If agitating citizens get unruly to the point that property and lives are threatened, there is certainly justification for effective response, but shooting has always got to be a last resort and ‘shoot to kill’ never an option. The man who died was shot in the head. This is unpardonable.

It is easy to blame the man who pulled the trigger or the officer who gave the order, but the fact remains that the conditions that provoked agitation and street-battle were not created by either agitator or trigger-puller. When unpopular steps are taken, they should be preceded by honest articulation of necessity, open debate and effective communication. Where people see opulence at the top end of a social pyramid and squalor all the way down to the base with no sign of things changing for the better, protest is inevitable. And where politics is not about right but about making capital, the democratic right to protest degenerates into a free-for-all where democracy itself cedes ground to anarchy.

Quite apart from the fact that such a situation would be positively orgasmic for outside forces who are salivating for regime change, what is most worrying is the possible cost for the citizens of this country. Another bloody insurrection that leaves tens of thousands dead and systems of theft, abuse and poor governance intact is not something to be cheered.

Responsibility is what all this calls for; from the government, the opposition and most of all by the aggrieved, for the last is the intended beneficiary and, as history has shown, the first to be sacrificed.

['The Nation' editorial of February, 19, 2012]

What of Obama now that he lost his word-suit?

2012-02-18T14:32:00.000+05:30

[This was written more than a year ago. Dayan Jayatilleka (quoted here) himself has since lost some of his wide-eyedness about the West, happily. Unhappily, however, the world has not changed much and hence this re-post]

About a year ago, Dayan Jayatilleka, in an interview with the tv station DERANA, waxed eloquent about Barack Obama. He insisted that Obama was not George W Bush. He said that Obama was respected the world over and had established friendly relations with China, Russia and India. He said (and this is not surprising) that even Fidel Castro said nice things about the

President.

If there was optimism about Obama being a different kind of US President during his election campaign and in his first days in office, it all evaporated during the sessions of the UN General Assembly in New York last week. Barack Obama demonstrated that there is only one difference between himself and his predecessor when it comes to US foreign policy: words. Obama has words, Bush did not; Obama is articulate, Bush was incoherent; Obama could cover his nudity with word-cloth, Bush didn’t have a thread to hang himself with.

Obama chided Iran about being obstinately secretive about its nuclear programme. The very next moment, the USA team was lobbying nations to stymie an Arab initiative censuring Israel’s continued secrecy about her nuclear programme. Obama said he was open to discussions but the moment Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the Iranian President uttered some home truths, called for a zero tolerance of nuclear energy for military purposes, Obama’s team turned heel and left the building.

When Obama appeared on the US political firmament, he seemed fresh and quite un-Washington like. This is perhaps why Castro said nice things about him (which sentiments Dayan has to echo, naturally). Time has passed. The man was given a Man of the Match before coin-toss and he quickly proved that the people who administer the Nobel were indeed in an indecent hurry when they gave him the Peace Prize. Some people make a lot about his ‘withdrawal’ from Iraq, but say nothing of the fact that he’s run out of options and anyway has essentially endorsed his predecessor’s policy of securing access to oil resources and effected control over that country’s economic and political affairs. You can’t make a virtue out of necessity anyway.

Obama’s policy regarding the excesses of US troops, incidence of torture and covering up of evidence not to mention complete and scandalous silence about the court decision effectively sanctioning the ‘off-shoring’ of torture, has seriously compromised his image as a different face of the USA.

Dayan paints himself as a ‘realist’ and advocates tip-toe language when criticizing powerful nations and personalities. He thinks that if India is cautious we ought to be too. I guess he has the right to define his brand of radicalism in ways he thinks are appropriate. I think it is a bit much to look the other way when a thug wants to be seen as benefactor of victim even as he bludgeons the poor unarmed sot with a club. Then again, Dayan is a person with some experience in diplomatic circles (beginning with his well-known flirtation with the Indians before, during and after the Indo-Lanka Accord fiasco) and I am not. Dayan is a kiss-the-hand-you-can’t-bite type and so Obama is hook-off as far as he’s concerned. Let me for a moment shut up and let someone else speak, someone who has more than Obamaesque credentials (meaning, the Nobel Prize – after the toss and after the match!): Harold Pinter.

This was in 2005 and it is still very valid and if Obama objects he could at least, in the name of decency acknowledge (or refute) Pinter’s claims. Pinter, accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature said a lot about the USA. Here are some choice words.

“As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.”

What does Barack Obama have to say to this and what Patricia Butenis?

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don’t quite know how they got there but they are there all right. The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

What does Barack Obama have to say to this and what Patricia Butenis?

Pinter states that in countries the USA has ‘helped’ out of the alleged goodness of heart, hundreds of thousands died (this is excluding Iraq and Afghanistan by the way). Pinter has some questions:

“Did they (the deaths) take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Pinter was right. The

was word-smart. That was in 2005. This is 2010. We are post-‘Wikileaks’ and finger-doing in Afghanistan, flip-flopping on Guantanamo Bay, shielding tortures and sanctioning torture not mention bailing out crooks back home in the USA.

Obama wears a word-suit. Wore. Past tense. Not a pretty sight.

There are republics I would die for

2012-02-17T09:41:00.000+05:30

I got an email yesterday from a friend who calls himself ‘Yakkho’. It referred to an interview given by the exiled Chinese poet, Liu Hongbing to Lucie Kalvachova in Prague in October 2004. The title of the write-up was ‘The Republic of Poetry’. Hongbing says, ‘This city of Prague has always been on the map of my heart. So much history has been created here!’

My friend is a cynic but so informed that I sometimes feel that the well-informed cannot be anything but cynical. This is what he had to say about Hongbing: ‘Hey i think this guy Hongbing (red soldier!) stole this from my fren in Beijing the pilipino musician Ato Mariano who set up his "Republic of Feeling" there..he was part of our "Detour" poetry circle in Bj, 2007-2009....then again, this is a 2004 screed, i just noticed...’

A few hours later, Yakkho sends another email. It’s a poem. ‘The Republic of Poetry’ is title poem of the eighth poetry collection by Martin Espada, editor, translator, creative writing teacher and award-wining poet. I give below a couple of stanzas:

In the Republic of Poetry,

poets rent a helicopter

to bombard the national palace

with poems on bookmarks,

and everyone in the courtyard

rushes to grab a poem

fluttering from the sky,

blinded by weeping.

In the Republic of Poetry,

the guard at the airport

will not allow you to leave the country

until you declaim a poem for her

and she says Ah! Beautiful.

The book came out in 2008 so I am not sure if the title and idea were borrowed from Hongbing who, in that interview says, ‘In the world of poetry, there are no national boundaries. You don’t have to have a national passport to travel in poetry from one country to another – you can call it the Republic of Poetry, if you like.’ Yakkho the Cynic doesn’t think much of Hongbing and rubbishes his statement about Prague: ‘Where has "much history" not been created?....maybe London where he's now ensconced…’

Who said what first and where are not that important except for those who have an unholy and perniciously anti-poetic fascination with copyrights. What is important is the sentiment, IF it makes us understand ourselves better, and understand each other better, in a manner so nuanced that we become gentler, more tolerant and humble.

I like to think of a world or a nation or a community that inhabits a feeling-entity. If we felt more and thought less, if we were made more of emotion and less of strategy, if there were more poets and less mathematicians (‘mathematics’ as metaphor of course), I like to think the world would be a better, more wholesome, less destructive and far more musical place to live in. Would Poetry be a province in Feeling, or vice versa, I wonder. It doesn’t matter. Such polities would be included in one another, independent AND dependent of/on one another. Now if only countries, communities, continents, regional blocs, ideological blocs, religious and ethnic blocs could be divested of boundaries in similar manner!

Life doesn’t resolve or dissolve that easily. There are no Republics of Feeling or Poetry. But there is enough poetry. There are enough words. There are helicopters powered by the music lovers make as they whisper silences, there are pilots birthed by love that is thicker than hatred, paper made of petals and inked by tears, and hope hidden in raindrop and moonbeam descending, descending and alighting on heart and sensibility.

I think Yakkho is absolutely correct; history has always been birthed, in being born and will be reborn again and again on every square inch of our earth. All births are not recorded and not all deaths noted. This is also true. It doesn’t mean that people don’t do things, twist fate by its tail, restore mortality to the so-called divine and elevate man to god for being a giant and for being an ant, in the required dimensionality of moment.

We don’t have eyes. Not all of us are sighted. Not all are blind, for this too is sometimes pre-requisite for ‘seeing’. We are not deaf enough, and sometimes are too hard of hearing; both conditions that stop music at the Gate of Consciousness. Our tongues lack certain taste buds and have too much of others. We can’t distinguish flavour from flavour or mis-taste at the wrong moment. We don’t know words. We don’t understand silences. We mis-read and over-say, fracture communication and end up muttering the incomprehensible.

We are human. Therefore we are divine. If we can imagine a Republic of Feeling and a Republic of Poetry, we can also imagine a Republic of Hope, one of Smile, another of Fragrance, a Republic of Sharing, Giving and Humility. Such republics transcend ‘national’ boundaries, the lines that separate human from human, child from child; prevent adult from acknowledging and indulging the child within that never died. They make impossible love possible. That alone is enough.

[first published in the Daily News, June 10, 2010]

Last night I took a walk with Rabindranath Tagore

2012-02-16T08:33:00.001+05:30

There’s one poem from Rabindranath Tagore’s "Geethanjali" to which I return every now and then. Actually it often comes looking for me, and, as seems to be the case in these things, when a re-reading is long overdue. Tonight this poem arrived again, looking for me when I ought to have been looking for it. A beautiful girl with the softest eyes, seeing my gaze fall on the volume and my hand just about to reach for it, said, "this is not for you, because you are not in it". According to her I am too " to deserve such spiritually uplifting concoctions. I told her, "let me show you my favourite" and turned to the seventy ninth poem. Her eyes widened as she responded, "You can’t choose that. I just chose it!"

Perhaps it was Tagore. Perhaps the Geethanjali. Or perhaps it was something simple. Like two people who despite their constant arguments, being on the same wave length at one particular moment. "Wave length" might sound too clinical for my friend’s enlightened taste. Perhaps I should call it "spiritual platform". Or the mundane soil of human sorrow.

In this poem of four verses, there is one that I am particularly fond of.

"When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting, when I spread my bed low in the dust, let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me. Let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours."

The other verses carried the same message, same tone and were decorated in the same philosophical colours, but they more readily referenced divinity; too readily for me anyway. The last verse, for example, goes like this: "When my rooms have been decked and the flute sound and the laughter there is loud, let me ever feel that I have not invited thee to my house. Let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours." But then again, "god" or "truth"or whatever it is that one seeks, is always one’s own creation and I tend to think that for this reason alone it is in the final analysis a self-examination.

But Tagore is exquisite here, is he not? I had a friend, a young man from Brazil, who was doing a Masters degree in Production Engineering. Not surprisingly, his conversations were full of metaphors borrowed from his field. This man hungered for women like someone in a desert thirsts for water. His success rate was, he admitted, zero. One day he blurted out to all his friends: "Tell me how to optimise! How is it done? Tell me, tutor me, and I will pay you. In dollars." I offered, "Don’t try to ‘optimise’. Think ‘zero’ and then every little thing, every smile, every glance, even every rejection, will be positive." And added, "in these things, like in the case of making revolutions, there is no ready made text book; what works for me, may not work for you."

Zero. We never move. Our exertions bring us back to things we run away from. The ‘long journey’ is never done simply because it is a road that takes you nowhere. Someone once said, "you travel the world in search of the truth and return home to find it".

An argument for inaction? For lethargy? Perhaps not. Searching for self is not an exercise in self-indulgence. "Self" is the most complex and the most pertinent of all elements that a human being has to deal with. It is that which demands most attentive investigation and that which is most stubbornly ignored. "Self" is, I believe, a room with the widest windows that open to the most breathtaking landscapes. It is a room we never want to peep into because we fear its darkness, not realising that our eyes can pierce even the most dense darkness. I believe that it is in that deep penetration into "self" that one discovers the "us" that lives within. I think this is the "long journey" that Tagore talks about.

There was a time, a time of youthfulness, a time when, as The Eagles’ put it, "we thought we could change this world with words like love and freedom", a time when the heart was full of love for all and the mind was intent on doing things on the basis of "all for love". A time when I would respond to my mother’s occasional ticking off about me not coming home or making a home of the houses of my friends with this: "all mothers are mothers to me, all children brothers and sisters". Today, years later, I could say "all children are my children". Instead, I remain silent. I know that only my child is mine. Have I strayed off the street called "One Love"? Have I banished "community" to a country I do not wish to visit? I believe I have not.

Being a father, today, I understand other fathers. Watching my daughter with her mother, I think I understand motherhood better. I understand my father and mother better. My empathies are grounded, to put it in sociological-speak. Real. The long journey, I know now, I do not walk alone. The destination is not mine alone. The pangs of life’s sorrows do not make up too heavy a burden to carry, when there are companions on this journey. The trick, I tend to believe, is to resist "building community" and to concentrate on discovering it within oneself. It is thus that life yields "community" to an individual. Am I right Rabindranath?

The young girl believes I don’t have an ounce of spirituality in me. I don’t want to dispute her and this is not out of compassion. I don’t know anything about the spiritual. My journey’s direction I hope brings me closer to who I am. And there are moments when, during this expedition, I am tired and panting; there are times when I lay my bed low in the dust. At such times, I tell myself, "let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me". Somehow the pangs of my sorrow do not bite as viciously as they usually do.

This girl will walk her path, at her own pace, in her own way. Neither of us are running a race, and certainly not one against one another. We will meet again, I know. There will be no need for words, for argument. A smile, perhaps. Probably laughter. Especially if we have truly discovered that it is ourselves that we refuse to invite to share in the festivities.

[First published in 'The Island', April 27, 2003]

The Iron Lady of Rambodawatte

2012-02-15T09:50:00.000+05:30

In comparative terms it was a sprawling estate. Sixty acres is a lot, especially if you live in Colombo. Nandana, who runs a retail shop in Maradana and doubles up as a driver when he hires out his van, put things in context: ‘Some people can’t manage 6 perches, but this lady manages a vegetable garden of 60 acres.’

Ease of management is of course not related to territory-size, but running that farm in a remote corner of the Nuwara Eliya district is certainly no picnic, even though Rambodawatte is located just 3 km off Labukele on the Kandy-Nuwara Eliya Road. Perhaps a snap shot of difficulty might illuminate.

At the far end of the farm, which is tucked against a forest covered mountain that is home to plot-wrecking wild boar as well as other relatively harmless creatures, there was a sizable section planted with radish. Ready for harvesting, but destined to be composted.

‘The price has come down to 2 rupees per kilo. It costs us 5 rupees (per kilo) to transport it to the main road.’

That simple answer came from a simple, friendly woman who is iron-like in her determination and work ethic. Shyamali Wickramasinghe works hard. From dawn to dusk.

Sixty acres is a lot of land and prices are not always so bad that you have to let your crop rot. A simplistic calculation would make it easy to see Shyamali as someone who rakes in millions. Counted out of the equation, however, is the investment. Labourers have to paid and this costs close to one hundred thousand rupees every week; needless to say carrots, beetroot, leeks, radish, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, cabbage etc are not harvested and sold every week. Seeds and other inputs cost. Shyamali has to borrow from banks. She is constantly threatened by crop failure and price fluctuation.

If it were only that, then it would only require judicious management of finances and options with some form of insurance. She doesn’t rule the skies though. She didn’t design the landscape either. It is a cold district and one frequently covered with mist, but it is often nothing more than a cold desert. Water has to be conserved. Water has to be distributed. Rainfall and the natural pressure offered by gradient help, but pipes burst, taps break and one has to keep constant watch on sprinklers in order to make sure the vegetable beds are watered just right.

The wars of the 21^st Century will be over water, they say, but land still matters. Shyamali, who hails from a family of vegetable farmers who live in and around Kudaoya, is supported in her enterprise by her husband Kapila, but there are many occasions when she spends the night alone in the temporary shack they’ve constructed on the farm. There have been numerous occasions when she has had to deal with shady characters who stake claim to her property on the basis of dubious documents. They drag her to court and as if that weren’t enough, they pump labourers with alcohol and set them on her.

They come at her with money, political backing and at times in numbers made brave with drink, knife and mammoty. She takes them on in courthouse and on the good earth, depending for the most part on the power of righteousness and singular determination not to budge an inch. And of course the steadfast loyalty of some of her staff, many of whom have problems of their own such as alcohol abuse and/or abusive husbands.

It is beautiful this place and utterly peaceful too, to both occasional visitor and to resident. Shyamali loves the place. And yet, loving involves walking many kilometers every day, checking on the work, making sure everything is alright etc. Her transportation costs would be considerably lowered if only a small bridge was constructed on the narrow but motorable path she has to take in order to transport her vegetables to the main road. What she hasn’t she has to learn to do without, though. As of now, vegetables are transported using quite a circuitous route.

Uncertainty rules Rambodawatta, but Shyamali is not one to be deterred by such things: ‘This is what I know, what I like and what I will continue to do.’

From the shack, as evening falls, the lights of vehicles plying the Kandy – Nuwara Eliya road take the appearance of a ring of fire. It rained that evening and Shyamali and Kapila were happy. When the rain began, they said ‘not enough’, and as it rained and rained Kapila said ‘it will be so beautiful tomorrow morning.’ It was. It is an unyielding landscape though and it takes a special kind of courage, skill and resolve to harvest anything that in volume (at least) is bountiful. Shyamali does exactly that. She is made of iron, recognizable in the work and so unrecognized in the smile, good heartedness, cheer and hospitality.

There’s no electricity from the grid, but when there’s been enough rain, a small turbine offers some light. It’s mostly hurricane lanterns and candles after dusk.

[First published in 'The Nation', FINE Section, February 12, 2012}

On the inclusivity-clause of historiography

2012-02-13T20:40:00.000+05:30

Udaya Meddegama once wrote a poem about the Mahawamsa, clearly the most comprehensive account of what happened in this island. Those who vilify it cannot counter it with any other account written with scholarly rigor that can match it and flounder in a sad process of myth modeling, extensive cross-quoting and other cheap propaganda devices wrapped as historical account.

They claim it was written by ‘racist Buddhist monks’. The breadth and depth of the tract is such that it would warrant an entire Department or even School (like those in India dedicated to the study of the Mahabharatha and Ramayana), but Sri Lanka lacks historians and people with academic vision. Vilification is easier. Such people would be humbled if they read the meticulously researched commentaries of Kuliyapitiye Prananda.

Meddegama observes: the ‘Sinhala’ race was fathered by the ruffian son of a patricidal and incestuous father whose mother’s sexual fascination was bestiality. Some start to a ‘racist’ account written by a chauvinist. The Mahawamsa, then, is an unforgiving narrative.

History’s players are never one dimensional; the chronicler should not be swayed by great deed to footnote or erase blemish; not in hero and not in usurper. If history is indeed written by the winners for the glorification of winners, then the Mahawamsa is quite a poor account.

The above preamble was provoked by the second anniversary of former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka’s arrest and talk of updating the chronicle to include that which came after and especially the struggle to free the nation from terrorism. History will remember and forget and the particular mix of the two is never predictable. Key facts, however, can and must be recorded.

Fonseka played an historic role. Fonseka, thereafter, lost it. He was hero, undoubtedly, and he was villain too. Undoubtedly. The villainy dilutes heroism but rigorous chronicling is unmoved by such things.

The man’s ambition, inflated self-worth, political naiveté etc., and a now proven inability to operate in unfamiliar terrain cost him dearly. His mean-spiritedness, treacherous and irresponsible ways don’t exactly make him paintable in heroic colours alone.

He did not win it all single-handedly, but he was key enough to warrant special mention, as much as the Navy and Air Force Commanders, the Defence Secretary, the political leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and those who stoutly resisted all efforts to derail the drive on the diplomatic front did. Perhaps less, all things considered, but certainly not more.

He has immense spoiler-potential as I have argued: ‘He has been flip-flopping so much about the white-flags story that no government tasked with safeguarding a nation’s sovereignty can afford to risk mouth-shooting from Fonseka; not because truth should be suppressed, but because he cannot be trusted to be honest. He can lie in order to exact revenge for perceived wrongs and has proved he is not above putting vengeance above nation. And he’s not Private Fonseka, he’s the former Army Commander. Even a lie from a mouth that big can have disastrous consequence for nation and citizen.’ (Daily Mirror, October 20, 2010).

I also stated the following: ‘All this is irrelevant when placed in the context of the overall framework of the law. Laws should not be broken or twisted and principles should not be selectively applied even in the best interest of the country because it creates bad precedent. Regardless of the ‘necessity’ element, there is clear ill-will in the execution of proceedings against Fonseka and it does not matter whether the man intended to slaughter the Rajapaksas and their friends within 24 hours of being elected President (if that had happened of course).’

We are talking history here though, not law. There were many others who erred and in far more serious ways. Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan aka ‘Colonel Karuna’ for example. There is a time to fight and a time to forgive, forget and move on, but even these things are irrelevant to the spirit of the law. ‘Karuna’ is officially a ‘good boy’ now; Fonseka is officially a ‘bad boy’. But history, when it is recorded, must mention both good and bad. Either way, both warrant mention, for happy and unhappy reasons. Write them out, or write them partially, and the error will amount to misinforming generations yet unborn. It may not matter, but it could. That is the danger.

A story is not story enough when key incident and key player are written out. It must include the soldier who laid down life for country, the LTTE cadre who marked the earth and memory with his or her heroism, the errant combatants, the suicide bomber, the criminals against humanity and those who marshaled forces to win back a nation, civilization and a tomorrow for our children. In all their colours, with all the good and bad, the unforgettable and forgettable.

[First published in 'The Nation', February 12, 2012]

‘Democracy’ at gun-point!*

2012-02-12T08:30:00.000+05:30

It’s a strange word-twist and hence the need for quotes. Democracy in recent times have turned definition on its head. It has provided much grist for the lampoonist’s mill. ‘Be nice to us or else we will bring democracy to your country,’ screamed Uncle Sam, fully armed and standing in-your-face among the carnage that has been the collateral of ‘democratization’ in recent months. A blogger (NoealamInSL) gives the gist in a post titled ‘Regime change strategy and action plan’:

First provide arms to a selected rebel group. Wait until civilian killings take place. Give media coverage on civilian casualties. Pass a UN resolution calling for the protection of civilians. Freeze financial assets (advance payment for war or investment) and impose sanctions (more business for coalition partners and commissions for bringing in business). Destroy cities from air (to avoid own casualties) to 'protect civilians' (killing even more civilians). Transfer money for cost of war. A better solution to western credit crisis!’

It didn’t happen that way in the Maldives, though (or in Grenada or Haiti). Mohamed Nasheed won an election in 2008. He didn’t put his corrupt and authoritarian predecessor Maumoon Abdul Gayoom through the mill. He didn’t go on a hunting expedition. He set about correcting systemic flaws, knowing well that ‘dictatorships don’t die when dictators leave office’.

Nasheed’s observations on the matter are telling: ‘The wave of revolutions that toppled autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen last year was certainly cause for hope. But the people of those countries should be aware that, long after the revolutions, powerful networks of regime loyalists can remain behind and can attempt to strangle their nascent democracies.’

Gayoom was ousted but Gayoomism survived, along with ‘a looted treasury, a ballooning budget deficit and a rotten judiciary’. Nasheed sorted certain things out but proved to be (inevitably?) too slow in getting the cronies out. He was surrounded first by those accused of corruption, embezzlement and human rights violations, then by the mobs they deployed, some in uniform.

But it also had a judiciary handpicked by the former president, which was now hiding behind a democratic constitution. These powerful judges provided protection for the former president, his family members and political allies, many of whom are accused of corruption, embezzlement and human rights crimes. He gave them free speech and that freedom was abused to fan the flames of intolerance, culminating in his eviction and the wanton destruction of invaluable artifacts representative of the island nation’s rich cultural heritage, including its long association with Buddhism.

Nasheed was hoofed out of office. At gun point. It was a relatively bloodless coup d'état, but a vile act nevertheless. Worrisome as these developments are, worse is the unholy and shameless hurry by the United States of America to officially recognize the new government. ‘What now, “democracy”?’ is the question that the US State Department is probably not going to answer.

Nasheed, as S.H. Moulana has claimed in a pithy comment, is neither an Assad (Syria) or a Gaddafi (Libya). He liberated Maldivians from the humiliation of depending on the crumbs the rich left on their tables, introduced free medical services, improved public transport and provided better housing for the poor. He was putting a system in place, an institutional arrangement that had the potential of making ‘democracy’ meaningful. He was tossed out and the tossing out is being cheered by the Grandmasters of Democracy-Speak, no less. Should we not call it humbuggery?

Gayoom’s only claim to fame is his contribution to the debate on global warming, prompted by the real threat of the Maldives disappearing from the face of the earth in the not too distant future. It is indeed ironical that Gayoomism has found a new lease of life and been endorsed by the most pernicious contributor to global warming.

The Maldives have taken a big hit. Vandalism and cronyism have got a boost. The civilized thing would be to condemn and lament. Democracy at gun-point is ‘something else’. Dictionary compilers may have to rewrite a definition for that word; children encountering it for the first time could get confused.

*Editorial, The Nation, February 12, 2012

Try flipping direction, road and memory

2012-02-11T16:20:00.000+05:30

About a week ago I wondered if people see the trees that stood on the roads that tke them from here to there, to somewhere and nowhere. Renton de Alwis had a thought-provoking response.

‘Have you walked the same road in the opposite direction? You will be surprised how different it feels and looks. I mean what is around and how we perceive it. It is a pity that in life, most of us do not get that opportunity.’

Take ‘road’ as metaphor and it offers us all kinds of maps to pour over. Take it literally and it still makes for fascinating journeys. It made me think of a little trick we used to do now and then as children. Bend down with legs slightly apart and look at the world from other side, i.e. from between the legs. It is an upside down world we get, but it is not exactly like what you get when you turn a photograph 180 degrees. I tried this after a long time and was, as always, amazed. I took a lesson: change point of viewing, lens or frame and the same place yields a different universe.

Human beings like predictability. They do like to play the odds now and then, being creatures of hope, but by and large they operate best in known circumstances even if the known-picture is not to their liking. Fracture the picture a little and it jars the senses but we all do our best to adapt to changed circumstances.

Practically speaking this is not such a bad thing, i.e. this inherently conservative strain in the human genetic make-up. On the other hand, it is because some people chose to fracture frame and continue to play with edge and line that we moved from one technological age to another, one philosophical era to another. Someone, somewhere, must have at some time seen a circular form and been inspired to invent the wheel, for example. It doesn’t harm to flip things around now and then.

Leonardo DiCaprio, about ten years ago, did a number on the paparazzi that made me laugh my guts out when I read about it. He turned around and gave chase. I am not sure if he was carrying a camera himself, but if he did it would have been really funny. He observed that the paparazzi were taken aback and were totally confused: ‘I flipped the script on them!’

‘The grape is made of wine,’ Eduardo Galeano tells us. Years after reading that line, in an apartment in New York City, I was questioning the mother of an old friend, Ayca Cubukcu about the ‘Turkish breakfast’ she had fixed for us. ‘What are these leaves?’ I asked, pointing to some delicacy whose name I cannot remember. She thought for a while. She was not fluent in English. She said after a moment, ‘wine leaves’. Meaning, ‘grape’. The grape is made of wine, she was essentially reiterating. And orange made of Fanta, I should add, for one day I saw an orange seller in Kandy doing the rounds on the buses parked in the main stand, ‘fanta wage, fanta wage’ (like Fanta). Disturbing, yes, but still so very true.

I walked back, as Renton suggested. On real roads, i.e. roads that are marked on one-inch maps. On other avenues. Those of recollection for example. Books and continents that reside within me, some happily and some against their better judgment. People too. Those who walked through me, those I walked through and those who were travel mates for a few kilometers, a few dreams and songs. I walked with and without them, back to a different time, a time no less innocent, no less vile but which the dictates of nostalgia require us to describe as being somehow more quaint.

1973. Grade 3. The morning trek from gate to class took me on a particular route, for an entire year. The route took me past the Milk Bar and then to building beyond which was the tennis court. I had two options. Skirt the building on the left or the right. I always took the left because it felt shorter. Then there was the post 1.30 pm walk/run back to the gate. I had to get past the aforementioned building. I always took the other route, from that end again the left. Felt ‘shorter’. I never could figure out why things happened this way.

Walking back gives us trees in new shape and colour, even if the time of return is the same as time of departure. It is like standing on one’s head under a tree and looking at the leaves of a tree, I like to think. Or simply rolling out a mat, stretching out on it and looking at the sky. It gives a 360 degree span that standing or sitting will not deliver. I walked to Horton Plains, December 1987. Tents by a stream. Good friends. Determined not to sight-see, we just lazed around. Lying on the grass, the sky seemed huge. Bigger than before. At dawn, mid afternoon and night. Poya day. Well, Poya ‘night’. Clear sky. Shooting star and constellation, dirty jokes and contentment. Perspective is what I got. How small we are. How insignificant.

Walking back to a different time, different decades, different loves, different pregnancies of dream and conviction, ideological non-negotiable that is now remembered with smile and indulgence when encountered in others, I am not sure if I have come far, stayed where I always was or if I’ve only gone back (which is not necessarily ‘bad’ by the way). The pebbles I am seeing now were of different colour and shape from what they were when I passed them going in the opposite direction years ago.

I met several people called Malinda Seneviratne. Some I remembered and even liked, some I just can’t stand and they, in fact, appeared disgusted seeing me, and some were quite unrecognizable and looked at me as though I was a complete stranger.

It is good to walk. And roads are good too, regardless of what direction we go. The piece on roads and trees prompted other responses too. This, apart from Renton’s, also made me pause. A poem, authored by my father Gamini Seneviratne , appearing in the Navasilu years and years ago.

Roads

People down the road

go to and fro

carrying things. Roads take them

places, that they do.

The way they fetch

their grain, carry their sick,

make the roads. Highways grow,

and rivers bend, to all the land they work.

In the old days the roads went

only to places where

people must go or perish

Now travel is

an industry, they must keep

moving or it will sicken, people cease

to come cease to go and on the rocks

the tar will loose its hold, once more the grass

will thicken of its own

free will and fill up the cavities so

that roads can grow,

Yes, the grass was slow,

travel takes us now much faster

than we need to go from here

to the hereafter

missing signposts all the way.

Where the buck stops ends

the road.

Not easy, this matter of getting to a point when one realizes that the buck, the road and the stopping are all resident within; that anywhere is nowhere and vice versa. Walking is good exercise, though. For legs. For eyes. For heart. Happy journeys!

*first published in the Daily News in July 2010

A note on a ‘labyrinthed’ man*

2012-02-10T15:53:00.000+05:30

In February 2010, not too long after Mahinda Rajapaksa was re-elected President, I pointed out in an article titled ‘Observations on the “labyrinthing” of Sarath Fonseka’ that men and women who have the potential to be great leaders suffer great falls because they lack omniscient eye, are humanly frail, are often blinded by ambition and sometimes too complacent on account of inflated sense of self-importance. Humpty, I noted, cannot be put together again regardless of the best efforts of all the king’s horses and men.

Today we have Fonseka literally in a labyrinth. Quite apart from the fact that the relevant horses and man cannot pull him out, it is doubly tragic that they are not even interested in getting him out. Oh yes, they make the noises, put up posters, organizer poorly attended picketing campaigns and pass around a petition for signatures, but two things stand out: a clear lack of enthusiasm and political skill.

From Day 1, i.e. when Fonseka declared that he would contest it was clear he would lose. Only the politically naïve and mathematically challenged of the pundits attempting prediction could conclude otherwise. It is one thing to be confident of victory and quite another to believe one’s own frilled propaganda. Of his key allies, the JVP stood to gain by being part of a visible campaign. Had they put forward a candidate the true strength of the party would have been revealed. Tagging on to Fonseka in the Parliamentary Elections saved some blushes but only just. Ranil had to pull out of an election he knew he would lose. Fonseka’s ambition proved to be a convenience.

That was then. What now? The JVP has a slogan. The UNP too. Consider a different scenario. Imagine a Fonseka sans litigation headaches. Who would need tons of panadol? Some might think ‘Mahinda Rajapaksa’ and I have no doubt that the President would feel a few degrees more insecure than he does right now. Fonseka, though, would be a bigger headache to the JVP and to Ranil Wickremesinghe. A free Fonseka would dwarf the likes of Tilvin Silva and Anura Kumara Dissanayake into specks of dust. A free Fonseka might even cause disgruntled elements in the UNP to salivate if they were to envision him as party leader. Fonseka, if he played his cards correct, might have even taken over that party, not because he is a better democrat than Ranil but precisely because he is not and this fact is appreciated by the party’s rank and file (regardless of rhetoric to the contrary).

Today, the JVP and Ranil have some tidbits to munch on while Fonseka has to put up with rice and pol sambola. Rajapaksa has the cake so to speak. And of course the icing.

Back in February I wrote that Fonseka was a victim of the labyrinth that he willingly and naively got people like Mangala Samaraweera to build for him. He’ll note that the cheer-leaders are not sharing the hard cement of prison with him. He’ll note that the option-less JVP got a slogan and that they got an extra seat courtesy their hero’s incarceration. No qualms about that, Fonseka will note.

Fonseka, given ambition, inflated self-worth, political naiveté, political developments beyond his control, the play of political interest by other stakeholders etc., finds himself in a labyrinth today. He cuts a sorry figure, not because of his plight, but the fact that he’s as much to blame as is the vindictiveness perhaps of his detractors. It is time that he realizes that he has no friends, and certainly not in the JPV and UNP.

It is easy to blame Fonseka and brush it all off as ‘serves him right’. Indeed, a strong case can be made for such a position. While granting that a hands-tied Fonseka cannot make Mahinda Rajapaksa too unhappy, it is important to understand that the regime has to factor in Fonseka’s mean-spirited, utterly treacherous and patently irresponsible ways. He has been flipflopping so much about the white-flags story that no government tasked with safeguarding a nation’s sovereignty could do anything less than ensuring he be kept quiet. No, not because they want the truth suppressed, but because they cannot trust him to be honest. He can lie in order to exact revenge for perceived wrongs and has proved he is not above putting vengeance above nation. And he’s not Private Fonseka, he’s the former Army Commander. Even a lie from a mouth that big can have disastrous consequence for nation and citizen.

All this is irrelevant though when placed in the context of the overall framework of the law. Laws should not be broken or twisted and principles should not be selectively applied even in the best interest of the country because it creates bad precedent. Regardless of the ‘necessity’ element, there is clear ill-will in the execution of proceedings against Fonseka and it does not matter whether the man intended to slaughter the Rajapaksas and their friends within 24 hours of being elected President (if that had happened of course).

Fonseka, in his labyrinth, doesn’t have many friends or options. Assuming the hard-to-believe ‘innocence’ of the man, Fonseka does have one friend. Himself. He has one option: trusting no one and transforming himself into a prisoner of conscience and wisdom. It will be hard. There might be little or no return, certainly not in a politically meaningful sense. As of now he has some sympathy but given his ways this is not the kind of pity that translates into votes. The identities and track records of his comrades-at-arms (former) do not help either. He has to recover self. Somehow. He has to meditate on his errors. Courage and tenacity he has and this is good. Wisdom, penitence and humility; these he will have to acquire.

*This was first published in October, 2010 in the Daily Mirror. Re-posting, to mark Sarath Fonseka completing two years behind bars.

Have you seen the trees that stood on the road that takes you to bliss?

2012-02-09T10:47:00.001+05:30

There are moments when we have eyes and moments when we are blind. There are things we pass everyday on our way to school or work but we don’t notice. There are books that stare us in the face from bookshelf and yesterday but we don’t notice their names. There are people who walk in and out of our lives whose names we do not know, and people through whose lives, hearts, minds and blood streams we travel without ever asking where they live, who they are or even if they mind.

It is random. All so very random. There is someone who saw me 19 years ago and remembered my face. I didn’t see her. I didn’t know that she had seen me so many years ago or that she had remembered face and moment when I saw her about 4 years ago. On that occasion, she did not see me. And then a year ago, a flash, a moment, a click and an intersection. All random, All so very random. We say, though, ‘inevitable’. I am not sure it is, although it is romantic to think that way, but that doesn’t matter at all.

Flip it a bit and the reverse of the embroidery is as fascinating. We pass loveliness all the time and we don’t see flaw, partly because we like to indulge the notion of perfection or are terrified to think acknowledge blemish. But like how auspicious intersections of time, space, thought and human social intercourse reveals to us magic that we passed by day in and day out through moment and century without noticing, so too these flaws break out and raise their hands, announcing presence: ‘I am here, now what?’

Life can never be the same again once this happens. Until the next flaw rises to the occasion, the next perfection, the magical something that we missed everyday until that one day when we got one minute late or arrived one minute early or was at the wrong place and the wrong time. It is not just about human relationships, encounters, intersections, convergences, fractures etc., it can be about anything. A neglected garden. A tree that you didn’t see until it shed all its leaves or when the first leaves pop out in the most tender green after the long drought ends. A school wall that got a new coat of paint.

It can take the form of absence too. The tree you didn’t notice until it was cut so that space could be obtained to put up a hoarding (outside the Dutch Burgher Union, for example). The smile of a person who is not longer here to smile. The tear that didn’t move you in the eye that is forever closed. The child whose request you ignored but you cannot attend to now because she is no longer child. Such things appear from nowhere. At the strangest places and at the most unexpected of times.

Last night, that’s the night of July 7, 2010, I was on the land-side of Galle Road, between the Savoy and the Wellawatte Junction, waiting for my friend Jayanath Bodahandi, who had run across to the bank to withdraw some money. Two things happened. First, I remembered being sent to banks to cash cheques written by my mother and sometimes by my father. Tokens. Waiting. Two hour chores that take just a few minutes now. We forget the inconveniences that conveniences replace. Like the long queues of the ration-days of the 70s. Like the every-moment anxieties before the LTTE was defeated.

We forget, I realized, waiting for Bodhi, the trees we cut so that we can build a road that gets us from here to there and to nowhere and everywhere faster so that we can do something or everything, anything or nothing. We don’t see the trees that stood on the roads we walk. We don’t see the teachers who gave us words and thoughts and skills and ways of engaging. We don’t see our parents when we look at ourselves in the mirror and we don’t see ourselves in our children or vice versa. We have seeing moments that are myopic and ‘blindnesses’ that illuminate.

I was waiting for Bodhi for a long time. I noticed a man seated on the pavement, his back against a wall. ‘Mendicant’ I read. I saw immediately all the beggars who’ve been mysteriously murdered over the past few months. I saw this middle-aged, emaciated man, scratching his matted hair, one leg raised and shaking uncontrollably. I remembered amputees and how they are said to suffer terribly from the itch from the limb-part that’ gone forever. I remembered that I have two feet.

I remembered a line from Simon Navagaththegama’s ‘Sansaara aaranyaye dadayakkaraya (The Hunter in the Wilderness of Sansara). Simon was describing place. The Mullegama Gal Kanda and the jungle that surrounded it. It was jungle, he wrote. Then the jungle was ‘covered’ he said by civilization. Then, yet again, civilization was re-covered by the forest. Time passes. Things immortal get obliterated. We all pass on although we are all convinced that passing-on moment is not going to arrive today.

What is the name of the book that helped shape notions of good and bad and distinguishing lines? No, not religious books. Story book. I remembered Lassana Vasilissa (Vasilissa the Beautiful). I remembered the chess game that I was winning but lost and all the lessons I’ve learnt from things that didn’t arrive, couldn’t arrive and were pushed aside in my ignorance and arrogance.

I asked if I should look more carefully at what’s around me. I realized this is silly. Things have a logic of their own and sometimes will not visit just because we send invitation. We have ‘eyes’ at particular times, not a moment before and not a moment after. We could, theoretically obtain something on account of striving, but there will always be something else that we will forego as a result.

Right now I am drinking a cup of tea. I am seeing tea leaf and bead of sweat. I am seeing a forest that existed and is not gone and the forest that will someday recover its traditional homeland or else the desert that will arrive to punish us for our greed and arrogance.

Moments. Interesting things. They make us see things. Even when our eyes are closed.

A note on smart-ass devolutionists

2012-02-08T08:46:00.000+05:30

When they called it ‘separatism’ is sounded like a cuss-word. Separatists took time to get smart. Perhaps it would be more correct to say it took them a long time to recover smartness. S.J.V. Chelvanayakam hit the correct idea when he said it was possible to extract anything from the Sinhalese as long as it is done slowly, an idea he captured in the pithy ‘A little now, more later’.

Leaving aside the notion that whoever did the ‘taking’ would be taking from all Sri Lankans and not just the Sinhalese, the slogan only pushed separatism to embrace terrorism while it rubbed the Sinhalese majority quite the wrong way. Had Chelva thought but not said, separatism may have benefitted, but chauvinists and land-thieves often trip over themselves. G.G. Ponnambalam’s ‘Fifty-fifty’ for a little lover 10% of the population may have been the product of greed gone crazy but it also framed the dimensions of aspirations for more than half a century. By 1976, Chelva himself lost his way, the Vadukoddai Resolution being nothing less than a go-for-broke adventure that wanted it all; not power-sharing but land and coast grabbing. Blood-letting was the unscripted inevitable. Close to a hundred thousand lives were lost.

When the LTTE was in fully cry Tamil moderates (so-called) either out of fear or awe or outright salutation went gear-down on devolution. The statements of the ‘moderates’, both individuals and parties (in coalition and isolation) make for a symptomatic reading on this aspect. The TNA’s election manifestoes of 2001, 2004 and 2010 would do in fact. Post-LTTE, devolution has been resurrected out of consolation-need more than anything else, one might argue, if not for Chelva’s Action Plan of incremental construction of Eelam.

The 13^th Amendment’s most important contribution to the Eelam cause has been its utility as reference point. India fostered terrorism in Sri Lanka. India gave refuge, armed, trained and funded terrorism. India took some sparks poured gallons and gallons of fuel, whipped up a roaring fire and then brought fire-size down (for a while) and now insists that where the fire is now is foundation-point for resolution. No mention now of what it is that is sought to be resolved. No talk either of the fact that foundation-point is still a fire that anyone including India, Tamil Nadu, Tamil and Sinhala chauvinism included can add fuel to.

Today’s Prescriber is undoubtedly India. Today’s prescription-approvers are the Chelva-Tamils and wooly-headed Marxist-Leninists who are in a permanent state of denial about all that being passé. Other approvers include anti-Buddhist heirs of the Colonial encounter who are smarter than their 16^th-20^th Century ideological and political forefathers. Their logic seems to be based on the notion that if you rob from the Sinhalese it is the Buddhists who lose the most due to the sheer numbers. They are smart, because they are not running around burning temples in the way the Portuguese did or extracting conversion through the carrot of privilege and the skewing of institution and process against Buddhists. If you have any doubts about this, just check who the most vociferous approvers are, their ethnic identities, their ideological preferences and their faiths.

The smartest of course are those who say without saying. There are, for example, those who take ethnic identity and religious faith out of the equation and talk ‘development’. They know that the Indian Thesis crumbles in the fact of history, geography and demography. The history that is relevant to the discourse has always been that associated with the claims pertaining to traditional-homelands. Those who are devolution-smart talk therefore about a history of relative self-sufficiency and administrative decentralization which they conveniently argue indicate that power-devolution was always with us and indeed made us.

Anyone who has studied the extensive and intricate hydraulic system of this land as well as laws about resource exploitation and allocation would understand that while there were times of division, invasion and even anarchy, for the most part there was centralized control and decision-making. Had it been otherwise, there wouldn’t have been an anicut built in Minipe. We wouldn’t have the Yoda Ela or the Jaya Ganga. Kings would not have employed large quantities of resources to build large irrigation structures, temples or places of learning in places far away from the capital. Rivers would not have been diverted through a series of anicuts. Such schemes were not built subsequent isolated communities conferring with neighbours about how best to use the water flowing down a river.

True, there is a vast mismatch of resource-allocation today. Certain things don’t get done. The devolution-smart say triumphantly that in a devolved polity things would get done. A decentralized administrative structure would suffice in most instances, but they don’t want to admit this. Neither do they acknowledge the fact that devolution would not have given resource-poor areas the kind of access to education that centralized decision-making has. There is also remarkable silence about the bridges, reservoirs, hospitals and other infrastructural facilities and services that would have remained distant dreams had it not been for centralized decision-making if not for anything the sheer lack of resources and other necessary capacities. Nothing is said either of the fact that populations are not static, that they move, that we’ve moved a fair distance from (relatively) self-sufficient village-units, or that aspirations have spilled out of the idyllic ‘village’ and perhaps will never be containable in those territorial dimensions again.

What is needed is an overhauling of the entire governance structure and a streamlining of institutional mechanisms and processes to encourage enlightened decision-making. That this is an uphill task is used as logic for devolution. That’s being lazy and indeed irresponsible for there are no short cuts to peace and wholesome citizenship. In this case, any kind of devolution that takes current provincial boundaries as given (never mind their artificiality and pernicious association with homeland-claim – a convenient exaggeration of existing demographic patterns) will etch in such hard lines the Eelamist positions on the Sri Lankan political landscape that it would in effect transform into irreversible fact.

We can do better. We must.

[first published in the Daily Mirror, July 5, 2011]

Here’s some loooooooong copy Krishna

2012-02-07T10:55:00.002+05:30

In April 2004, having quit my job at the Sunday Island, I began working as a part time copywriter at Phoenix Advertising. That’s how I met Krishna Iyer.

Krishna, a Creative Director, was from India, knowing that I used to work in newspapers, gave me an assignment one day. He said ‘You like to write so here’s something you can do. I want you to write long copy’. I didn’t know what ‘long copy’ was, at least not in advertising terms. It was for Singer sewing machines. I remember writing ‘long copy’ and Krishna telling me ‘what is this?’ in a half-annoyed tone. My copy was flowery and contained very little information. Krishna taught me how to write long copy.

Krishna left Phoenix a few months later and returned a few months ago as the Executive Creative Director. He explained, ‘I love Phoenix man, so when boss called me I jumped at the opportunity’. ‘Why did you leave?’ I asked and he said ‘IDD calls were too expensive man!’

Then I remembered. Krishna got married not long before he left Phoenix. I distinctly remember him designing the wedding invitation card. It was a simple and elegant. Two names: Krishna and Radha. The reference was of course to the God and his consort. The twist was what made it memorable. ‘Radha’ was crossed off and above it was inscribed the name of ‘The Beloved’, Gayathri.

Krishna gave me a lift a few months ago. That was when I told him that I got a regular job, i.e. as Editor of ‘The Nation’. ‘Lovely man! Let me know if you need any help with photography; I studied photography in London’. I told him that I would be reserving an entire page for photography and invited him to contribute a photo essay. He was thrilled. I also told him that I planned to redesign the paper. ‘Please…please let me do it. It’s a dream. I studied design and always wanted to design a newspaper.’ And here we are today with a redesigned newspaper (along with a photo essay by Krishna)!

Krishna worked long hours with typefaces and spaces, colours and colour combinations, shapes and lines, without once neglecting his work at Phoenix. It was not difficult to understand the strain, but what amazed me throughout the process was the dedication of the man, the meticulous attention to detail and the passion that drove him to ‘get it right’. Trying to get it perfect even as we did our best to meet deadlines was tough and at times frustrating. It was all new in many ways. Krishna not only broke the design mould but broke the moulds of familiarity, custom and comfort. We are still learning. ‘Teething’, if you will. We are not exactly bawling, but there were certainly many wtf moments for some of us. And for Krishna too, I am sure, although he’s patient and understanding and does a decent job of hiding his frustrations.

Anyway, it is all out now; a work in progress, perhaps, but certainly showing both ‘work’ and ‘progress’. And at this moment when we are almost ‘all done’, I remembered something from a long time ago.

I would come early to Phoenix, often before anyone else. Krishna walked in, went to his desk and sat down. Then he brought his hands together and worshipped the computer. I doubt he considered an Apple machine to be some kind of deity, but the act was no different to a farmer showing veneration to his implements, especially the mammoty. There is humility in the act. There is acknowledgment of dependency. I believe it comes from a decision to interact with the world in its biotic and abiotic entirety in a particular way and moreover helps shape the ways in which one communicates with one’s fellow creatures.

There’s a thing called work ethic and then there is passion. Together they are potent. Add humility and skill and we get something special. Today, that ‘something special’ is actually a ‘special someone’. Krishna Iyer. Deserving better ‘long copy’ than this certainly but a victim of his own guidelines regarding length. On the other hand, maybe if I made this longer, it would take away value. Maybe it is ‘just right’ and if that is the case, then Krishna himself is the man who should be thanked.

Got to stop now. Reaching word limit. Thank you man.

[Published in 'The Nation', February 4, 2012]

‘Get lost’ around the corner for the TNA

2012-02-05T05:02:00.000+05:30

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is making demands from the Government. Seeking betterment is legitimate in a democracy. There’s nothing wrong in wanting the moon. Proposal must match grievance, however, aspirations should be reasonable and practical realities cannot be wished away.

First of all, there is the issue of territory and relevant boundaries. Arbitrarily drawn, the provincial boundaries make for claims that are ill-supported by history and demography. Tamil Chauvinism has always been thin on fact, thick on myth and fidgety when it comes to substantiation and in drawing a solid line between grievance and proposal. More than half the Tamils live outside the North and East. Vast swathes of land in the East happen to be traditional Sinhala villages and this is discounting ‘colonization’. The TNA’s one time lord and master, Velupillai Prabhakaran ethnically cleansed the Jaffna Peninsula of Sinhalese and Muslims. The archaeological evidence rebels against exclusive homeland claims while place names and their Tamil corruption further compromise the Tamil chauvinistic narrative.

And yet the TNA insists that the Government must give into its demands before that party agrees to submit names to the Parliamentary Select Committee set up to hammer out a lasting solution to ‘the problem’. The TNA first demanded the devolution of land and police powers and now wants fiscal powers to be added to the equation.

The TNA is not negotiating with the Government but with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the major partner in the ruling UPFA coalition. There’s nothing wrong in two political parties to come to agreement on any issue, but the SLFP cannot promise on behalf of the UPFA or the Government.

The TNA polled 233,190 votes at the last General Election (2.9%). The UPFA obtained 4,846,388 (60.33%). With less than 3% representational power, the TNA is essentially asking for racist control of one third the land mass and more than half the coastline. Indeed, even if one were to put aside the myth-mongering with respect to the North and East, what this less-than-three-percent bunch is determined to chart the political future of the entire country. Nothing wrong in wanting, but there is thing called sense of proportion.

What is most galling about the TNA’s chauvinistic posturing is the utter lack of logic in the demand. The TNA proposes ‘solution’ as a non-negotiable precondition to sitting in the PSC. Now let’s assume the SLFP agrees. That’s a two-party agreement. If they do agree, and since the SLFP is the major party in the coalition, then why bother wasting time with a PSC? In effect the TNA, even as it says that it has not rejected the option of thrashing things out in the PSC, it has rejected the idea.

Here are some more numbers that tell a story. The UPFA secured 144 out of the 225 seats (64%) and has since won over enough MPs to have a two-thirds majority in Parliament. The TNA has 14 seats (6.2%). The composition of the PSC gives the UPFA only a little more than a 50% share of representational voice.

This country doesn’t belong to the SLFP or the TNA. If any changes in the institutional arrangement are required, such proposals have to be debated in and approved by the Parliament. Proposals hammered out at a PSC made of all political parties has far greater chance of translating into a legislated reality than agreements between two political parties.

The TNA needs to understand where cart and horse should be, relative to one another. Today, the TNA is using the same pernicious ruse adopted by pro-LTTE operators pretending to be peace-makers. Having determined that federalism (if not secession) is the non-negotiable and only ‘solution’, they proposed dialogue to negotiate ‘settlement’. Dialogue must include consideration of all claims pertaining to grievances and all aspirations (located within realistic frames). Positing end-point as starting point smacks of political brinkmanship.

There’s only one thing that the TNA needs to understand: what Prabhakaran could not secure in 30 years of terrorism, his yes-boys will not get on a silver platter. The TNA’s insistence of walking the chauvinist path is likely to test the patience of Sinhalese who have had enough of myth-mongering and wails whose volume is not consistent with nature of wound.

The TNA can walk the world and state their lie as loud as it wants. Sooner or later it will meet a person called ‘The Vast Majorty’ and that will be on Sri Lankan soil. I won’t be surprised if that individual will look the TNA in the eye and say ‘Enough!’ ‘Get lost’ is around the corner, the TNA should take note.

[Published in 'The Nation' of February 4, 2012]

The future is ours

2012-02-04T15:04:00.004+05:30

The nation celebrates 64 years of independence today. That’s a long time compared with the life expectancy of a citizen, but still quite short when viewed against almost 5 centuries of colonial rule. It is but a ‘moment’ compared with over 2500 years of written history and more than double this length if one takes into account narrative of event embedded in folk literature.

‘Independence’ though, was never new, but in fact was a renewal of and reverting to a condition enjoyed in one form or another by our ancestors for millennia subject of course to the limitations of the particular system of government prevalent at the particular time.

That’s history and it would be folly to treat it as buried and done with, for present is founded on past and only an understanding of what came before allows for an appreciation of what is. This is what makes for sensible charting of futures.

We are not less or more independent today than we were yesterday and it is unlikely that the degree of freedom will change significantly in either direction tomorrow. On the other hand, landmark days such as ‘Independency Day’ make for reflection on how things are, how things could be and what we could do to get from here to a better place.

Sri Lanka was held back by a 30 year war. We have had close to 3 years of ‘picking ourselves up’. That’s ‘short’ compared to the ‘long’ of terrorism and yet pretty long given human tendency to be impatient. We have admittedly turned the proverbial corner and in some respects pushed forward quite a distance. Where there was fear and foreboding there is now hope and initiative. That’s a big leap indeed.

Post-war is naturally euphoric. Euphoria is followed by sobriety and also the inevitable surfacing of things swept under the political carpet by conflict. Sri Lanka’s post-war is further complicated by the dogged determination of elements to fan doubts, insecurities and suspicions to an inferno that could very well obliterate goodwill, reconciliation, reconstruction and nation-rebuilding. This is how we get to ‘trying times’ and that’s where we find ourselves today.

Meeting challenges requires wisdom, compassion and vision. In terms of strategy, what served us during the struggle to eliminate the terrorist threat can be depended on to see us through other obstacles as well: unity, sense of purpose, sacrifice, cogent strategy and the ability to separate friend from enemy. In all things, though, the principles which made a civilization and empowered it to take numerous hits, fall at times and yet stand up, fight and overcome, will prove to be the difference between surrender and triumph.

We must therefore return to the principles of equity, co-existence, the aparihani dharma (the principles of invincibility), the dasa raja dharma (the ten principles of governance) and reflect long on the fact that priority should not be given to artillery power but to civil power by deferring to wisdom and the dhamma.

It is all there in the Grade 9 text book for Buddhism (pages 79-81). If politicians, officials, professionals, business persons and others tested their lives against these principles, error would not only be discovered but acknowledged and corrected. Relevant elements of the considerable canon of Hindu, Islamic and Christian discourse would no doubt articulate similar recommendations.

We have a fairly good idea where we came from, although we don’t really know enough of our past. We live our present and therefore know something about it. Our tomorrow calls for a return to foundational principles that make for more wholesome being and mutually profitable engagement with our fellow creatures.

One hopes that our leaders would have the required maturity. The citizens, however, cannot afford to wait on leaders; they must themselves empower themselves with necessary skills, discipline, a decent work ethic, critical faculties and humility.

The future is always ours, but its shape will be determined by our action and inaction. We can make it shine. We can make it dull. That’s something to think about on this ‘Independence Day’.

['The Nation' Editorial, February 4, 2012]

It is time for civil society to recover its lost/robbed identity card

2012-02-03T18:07:00.000+05:30

Not too long ago,while interviewing Rajpal Abeynayaka and me on City FM, the presenter, Indika Jayaratne came up with a splendid proposal. ‘Sivil samaajaya jana sathu kala yuthuda?’ he asked. Should ‘civil society’ be nationalized or vested with the people was his question. On the face of it this seems a meaningless idea. It’s like asking ‘should cricket be cricket?’ Well, it is not football and it cannot be rugger, except of course in a metaphorical sense. The validity of the question arises from the ground reality of the broad category ‘civil society’ and the identity, politics and other operations of those who consider themselves as representatives of ‘civil society’.

First let’s get the definitions out of the way. ‘Civil society’ is a catch-all term taken to refer to all organizations which are not public or for-profit institutions. Thus any voluntary civic or social organization or institution outside of the structures of the state and commercial entities can be called a ‘civil society organization’. A Dayaka Sabhava associated with a Buddhist temple, a maranaadhara samithiya (funeral donation society), or a community based organization such as the hundreds set up by Sarvodaya or the thousands by SANASA could be contained within the parameters of this definition.

Broadly, however, the term is used by way of self-definition by a prominent set of NGOs principally operating in political spheres, self-mandated in particular to advocate transparency, accountability, good governance, democratic practices and so on. Not only have these organizations assumed the mantle of ‘Spokespersons for civil society’, they carefully exclude around over 95% of all organizations that fulfill criteria pertaining to the definition. It could be said, safely, that for all the democratic strutting around that the we-war-civil-society screamers engage in, they are at best a cartel, arrogant and presumptuous to the extreme and considering the fact that the clubs they form are limited to the near and dear (politically and otherwise), hardly possess the moral authority to talk about things democratic.

For a long time it has been common knowledge that such organizations and in particular their key personnel have a) received enormous amounts of money from foreign sources with questionable standing and dubious agenda, b) operated as fronts for the LTTE, c) shown suspicious reluctance to disclose who have them money, for what and why and of course who benefited and in what ways, and d) advocated policies that are divisive and compromising of the nation’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

For decades, these organizations had a free hand. They made use of systemic loopholes to operate freely to the detriment of the national interest and this is an indictment of system, controlling mechanism and relevant authorities and personalities. It looks like someone is trying to set things right and this has alarmed these individuals to the point of tears.

Feizal Samath, reports for the IPS that NGOs are facing funding gap and government scrutiny. The body of the story focuses on the plight of the NGO cartel referred to above and not ‘civil society’ as a whole. The quotes included in the story are from such persons.

A ‘veteran aid worker’ is reported to have stated that ‘any NGO involved in governance, post-conflict peace or post-war trauma related work will have a problem with the authorities’. This person laments that authorities not only track the work of such NGOs but also visit their offices. What’s wrong with this, though? Is he/she saying that NGOs should not be monitored? What he/she leaves out of the story is the well-known complicity of these organizations in operations that have had serious consequences for national security. The authorities are not tracking the other 95% of ‘civil society organizations’, are they? While I believe that no organization, big or small, should operate with blanket impunity from scrutiny, there has to be a reason why these particular NGOs have come under investigation.

They offer that organizations involved in governance, peace building, conflict-resolution and post-war trauma counseling are targeted because ‘anything that is considered political or empowering people to establish their rights is anathema to the establishment’. That’s opinion and nothing more. Good for project proposals and what not. What is left unsaid is what these organizations have done so far. Under cover of these sweet-sounding democracy-buzzwords, they have worked closely with terrorist organizations and engaged in activities that are not necessarily of a nature congruent with the civil-society definition above.

The National Peace Council and the Centre for Policy Alternatives are made of mutual-backscratchers who occasionally reward each other and frequently sing each other’s praises. These two organizations and Transparency International have received over Rs. 600 million from foreign sources over the past 3 years. They are the king-pins among those who wave the civil-society flag. They are hardly representative of anyone except the rabidly anti-Sinhala, anti-Buddhist, Colombo-based, English-educated sections of the population which constitute less than 0.0001 per cent of the citizenry.

The claim to be ‘empowering people’ is laughable for many of these organizations were virtually operating as the mouth-pieces and brand-managers of the LTTE, an organization that not only disempowered people, but actually butchered them in the thousands.

If the government is cagey about such NGOs, as claimed in the news report, it is something that I would welcome and applaud, not because issues of governance, transparency and accountability are of no relevance (they certainly are) but that these operators need to be investigated thoroughly. It is something that is demanded by their long and dubious history of operating as agents of destabilization.

J. Weliamuna, the former director of Transparency International’s Colombo office, has said ‘The government sees everybody as a challenge and has a phobia against NGOs’. This is rubbish, unless he believes that the CPA, NPC and TI have the authority to speak for the entirety that is called ‘civil society’. Certain outfits are being scrutinized, yes. It is something that should have been done a long time ago. Weliamuna says, ‘the government views civil society (again that catch-all term!) its only challenge since the opposition is weak’. That’s self-image. The truth is that Weliamuna and his friends cannot get 100 people for a demonstration on any issue.

It is high time that ‘civil society’ stepped forward and demand that the likes of Weliamuna hand back the term. They do not have the right to use it. They’ve abused it and this is because ‘civil society’ in the main had not known it could be called ‘civil society’ and for this reasons a bunch of self-seeking rogues grabbed it and along with it the ‘rights’ to represent.

Yes, I am all for ‘peoplizing’ the term ‘civil society’. In the interest of democracy and true representation.

On flooring the detractor with a thumbs-up sign

2012-02-02T18:13:00.002+05:30

Everyone has road stories. Some are really funny and some are embarrassing. Some are tragic and the papers are usually full of such stories. My friend and one time student, Jayendra De Silva, along with 3 other friends, all students and chess players, had an embarrassing but funny road-encounter, the story of which I’ve passed around now and then.

They had turned into Galle Road from one of the side lanes (this was before it was turned into one-way sections) without looking and had almost knocked down a trishaw taxi. No apologies. They knew they were wrong and counted on superior horse power to put enough distance between car and trishaw to be spared what was believed to be the inevitable earful.

Circumstances can be cruel. Not too far down the road they were halted by the unforgiving red of traffic lights. A quick glance backwards showed a speeding trishaw. A quick decision was taken. They would not suffer any invective and figured that 4 voices could drown out one. They were ready. They expected, naturally, an earful and that’s exactly what they got.

The trishaw driver pulled up right beside the car. He was close enough to be heard loud and clear. The man turned slowly. He smiled. He said softly, ‘Nice driving’ and gave a thumbs-up sign. Dead silence from the four friends. They said, later, that they had never felt so embarrassed. I doubt if any of them ever turned into a main road without looking out for oncoming vehicles thereafter.

There’s a lot that softness can achieve in this world and especially on the roads when there is traffic congestion. There is the inevitable person in a mighty hurry, tweaking road etiquette or even boldly violating the law. It’s all about gaining every inch possible and saving every possible second. And then there are those who are neither in a hurry nor in the mood to break laws but nevertheless err. Such people can cause accidents and those who are put off balance and have to make an extra effort to avoid a tragedy are naturally angered.

Typically, they ‘tell off’. Even if they don’t, they mutter their annoyance loud enough for their travel companions to hear or in the very least think the thoughts they are not ready to voice. There are countless times when the aggrieved glare at the cause of irritation. Few would smile. Fewer still would give a ‘thumbs-up’ sign.

And what if you were the offender? What do you do? If you know that you have erred, you can apologise, but you can also look the other way (or get ready for a shouting match, like Jayendra and his friends) just because you really don’t want to be yelled at in filth or receive kill-you looks. It is easier, I have found, to nod head or raise hand or offer some apologizing signal. It might not stop the flow of invective and might not replace scowl with smile, but it could probably chip away some of the emotion. When that happens the particular driver would be less prone to committing error and more likely to drop the issue and move on, literally and metaphorically.

Humility works. Both ways. It’s a soft skill thing. It can do what more impressive tools cannot in the matter of bringing down walls. There’s only one condition. It must come from heart and not mind. This requires a little delving into the conditions of life, the eternal verities, acknowledgment of impermanence and the powerful and twin-bladed instruments that cut through all negatives: wisdom and compassion.

I think the trishaw driver had it all figured. I think Jayendra and others picked up an ace that they could keep. I did too, listening to that story, laughing about it and then thinking about it. I see that trishaw driver on all our roads and in all my encounters. He does give the thumbs-up sign all the time, but I know he has it. I do too.

In celebration of un-walling

2012-02-01T16:42:00.003+05:30

I grew up in Colombo. We lived in a lane that went nowhere and as such provided an excellent cricket pitch with wickets placed at the far end. Sixers and fours were possible only through straight drives. One couldn’t take runs if the ball was struck into a neighbour’s gardens. The players were frequently required to scramble on to sun-shades and roofs to retrieve balls injudiciously or perhaps unintentionally hit.

There were two other striking features about that dead-end road. First, it was as multi-ethnic, multi-religious as it could get. There were Sinhalese, Tamils (Sri Lankan and Indian), Burghers and Muslims; Buddhists, Christians, Catholics, Hindus and Muslims. Everyone was bilingual and some were trilingual. The composition survived ‘July 1983’, although people left, as people often do. Common sense and common humanity prevailed over the occasional disagreement or dispute. No one was abandoned at time-of-need.

The second interesting thing about that nameless lane that was home, village and playground was that it was lined with hedges. All the houses on the right side as you walked up the lane were identical, while those on the left were designed as pairs, facing each other as mirror images. They all belonged to Francis Gomes but in the seventies they were taken as ‘excess houses’ by the state and ‘Gompa’, a lovable and genial man, retained just the house at the top of the lane from where he watched the cricket and when his wife, Aunty Carmen, was not around offer refreshments and guavas from his garden. Each house was distinct courtesy hedge-type. Some preferred multi-coloured hedges, others were more staid and single-minded. We had an ‘Andara Weta’.

It all changed after July 1983. A lot of things changed and not just down that lane. One by one each household chose to put up walls. All illegal of course since the street-line regulation was violated. Two families, ours and our mirror-image neighbours, remained ‘hedged’ although the mirror was fractured by architectural innovation and a wall that came up in place of where the mirror-line was upon my father’s insistence.

July 1983 sparked a walling that was of national proportion. There was passionate wall-building all over the country, especially in urban areas. There were walls made of brick and mortar and walls made of suspicion, anger, revenge-intent and fear. In the rush we quite unintentionally participated in caging ourselves and shrinking our respective worlds.

Almost 27 years later, the walls are coming down. Literally. Today we can see the Kurunduwatte Police Station and for this reason the Police somehow seems more accessible than before, when it appeared that it was an entity that stood in opposition to the general public and one that gave the impression of being terrified of encountering citizen. There were, no doubt, legitimate reasons for walling. In a words, the LTTE. That’s all gone now and it is wonderful to see the quaint colonial building that was turned into a police station years ago.

The un-walling has made both city and citizen breathe, I feel. I knew there was a cricket ground at the corner where the Bauddhaloka Mawatha was made to turn towards Colombo University for security reasons, but I had never seen it. It is nice to see open spaces. Colombo University has a fence around the grounds but still, it is ‘open space’ enough that pleases eye and subdues a turbulent mind. Royal College used to have a parapet wall but it was raised. In the seventies, someone in a bus traveling on Reid Avenue could see the score if there was a match being played at the time. Or at least watch a delivery and perhaps an elegant stroke or butchery that produced six or four. There is no reason not to revert to ‘parapet’.

I know that the Defense Ministry has taken over the Urban Development Authority and while I believe that this is a bad precedent and even if this were not the case that it should be considered a temporary (very temporary) move, it is clear that the views of people who know about city planning and landscape architecture are being solicited. It means also that the government is taking the lead in demonstrating that anxiety should be slowly but surely retired or put into semi-retirement. The citizens, hopefully, will follow suit.

Walls stop the breeze. They separate people from people, institutions from the public and in the process fracture both individual as well as organization. Walls made sense at a particularly violent and fear-filled period in our history. It seems to be that recovering normalcy requires a gradually un-walling, literally and metaphorically. The latter takes time. It will require mechanisms and processes that facilitate eye-contact, trade, recognition of commonality and so on. The physical un-walling is quicker and can help.

If ‘hedging’ is seen to be less secure and securing than a wall, you can sent a barbed wire fence through it or rather have it grow through such a fence. Hedges are hard to maintain, I agree. You have to trim hedges regularly whereas walls stay put with hardly any attention required except for a new coat of paint every few years. Still!

We were never a walling nation. Our lives, bodies, homes and minds rebelled against all kinds of walling, all kinds of restrictions. We are a people who are heirs to a civilization that promoted free thinking and free inquiry. That’s among the greatest gifts that Buddhism gave our ancestors; a gift that is indelible in our cultural ethos and civlizational make-up, regardless of professed faith.

I like this un-walling that is happened around the city of Colombo. Makes one think. Frees one’s mind to think, rather.

On the voice cuts that make us lose our tongues and the instruments of recovery

2012-01-31T11:04:00.001+05:30

Before compact discs, there were cassettes. They seemed magical when they first hit Sri Lanka, these little things containing neatly rolled brown-coloured tape. Before cassettes and their micro versions we had larger spools that smelled strange and were played on what seem now to have been gigantic machines.

Then there were records. I found them pretty and pretty amazing too. It was magical, back in the seventies, to watch my uncle Upali Seneviratne place one of those large black discs on his large record playing station (it had a compartment to store the music and I believe another section to store liquor), gently place a needle and have the voice of that man who seemed to be never happy unless he was sad, Jim Reeves, coming out of machine and floating around the living room, telling us how he was accused, convicted and condemned by someone who was judge and jury all in one.

I’ve seen many records since then and listened to quite a few too, but the one thing I remember most about them is the logo and the brand name: a dog sitting in front of a record player and peering into a trumpet like contraption which probably amplified the sound and the words ‘His Master’s Voice’.

Back then it was a pretty picture which by and by got layered with notions about ‘man’s best friend’, loyalty, affection and so on. The image still makes for nostalgic re-visitation but the line has other connotations which of course others have played with when talking about lackeys of the powerful.

My brother, Arjuna, stopped me once when I started saying something, beginning with the words ‘in my opinion’. ‘Are you sure this is your opinion?’ he asked looking me squarely in the eye. It tattled me for a moment. I said ‘yes’ quite confidently. Then he gave me a lecture about how opinions are formed. He would have been about 15 at the time and it was a remarkably lucid and insightful set of observations that he shared with me for one so young.

We are made of everything we encounter. That which we label ‘I’ and use name to refer to is essentially constituted of things that are in movement. They are in us and make us now and the next moment they get scattered into other bodies, other people who also say ‘I’ and have names. It is the same with thought. Same with words. We think they are ours and in a sense we are not incorrect but at the end of the day we are but part owners and then only in a very transient sense.

Most times we are not even conscious that what we assert in the manner of idea-creator was born elsewhere, nurtured somewhere else and coupled with other things from other sources as it enters our minds and sensibilities. What’s worse, however, is that there are times when we are conscious slaves committed to regurgitating things that others utter. This is that other side of ‘the master’s voice’ that I talked about. Parroting, some would call it. It is an exercise one can engage in only after internalizing, willingly or unwillingly the conditions of slavery. One has to retire the question mark, the ability to be critical, and all analytical capacities and persuasions before one can aspire to someone’s voice, especially the voice of the powerful.

It is like playing a part in a play. There’s script and there’s rendering of script. The margin for deviation is limited to what gesture, facial expression, stage presence, voice projection, inflection and modulation adds to portrayal. The good actor could stretch the particular lines in ways that the audience obtains several layers of meaning, but he/she would still be constrained by the script. This is all good for theatre, but in life and politics when you decide to be player you automatically choose slavery to script and therefore script writer.

There are times I look around and what I hear (including what I myself say) makes me wonder if we are all in a gigantic studio where multiple masters and mistresses get us to speak in their voices, vomit out words well-rehearsed under their direction. I wonder how many times we all had to say this or that before it was decided that we ‘got it right’. Life is a studio and articulation about someone thrusting a script and you having to read it out ‘right’ and do it over and over again until some minimal standard line is crossed. I know, I know, it’s not a one-way street and we are not slaves at all times and in all contexts, but still, I find we are reluctant to admit that there are times when we are pretty servile.

I asked the following question seven years ago: ‘After how many voice-cuts do you lose your tongue forever, and how many fraudulent elections before you win your franchise?’ There was a question I didn’t think of asking back them and maybe I am asking it now because other voices have crept into my sensibilities and because I’ve become slave to their masters, knowingly or unknowingly. I am not sure if ‘slave’ is coterminous with ‘adherent’, for example whether a follower of the Buddha Vachana is ‘fettered’ or if the follower of Jesus Christ is a prisoner of the Bible. What is pertinent to me is the Buddha’s compassionate suggestion that we could benefit from a closer examination of who we are, what ‘I’ is, so to say.

At some point in this larger incarceration that is of greater magnitude than the fetters employed by political realities and ideological fascination, I believe we need to recover our tongues. This has nothing to do with elections, fraudulent or otherwise, but a conscious decisions to embark on a journey that could begin with reflection on the notion ‘His master’s voice’ or even, as my brother pointed out, ‘where did your opinions come from?’ We might be surprised by the number of voice cuts that cut our voices to size and we might surprise ourselves by the potentials of recoverability.

The pots and kettles of accountability

2012-01-30T12:11:00.000+05:30

A friend of mind on Facebook asked an interesting question. It is a question and comment and too interesting to truncate.

‘Why does Malinda Seneviratne’s learned friend Dr Paikiayasothy (Saravanamutu) urge attention to certain matters (missing parts and disappointments) after the LLRC report is released and NOT before when he had the opportunity (to make representations to the LLRC)? He says "because he had some reservations about mandate and composition of LLRC commission’ (and he had NO RESERVATIONS about mandate and composition of UN Ban Ki-Moon's panel). If he truly wanted justice, he would have gone any commission. He wanted to boycott LLRC and prepare grounds for an international war crimes tribunal for Sri Lanka. He is disappointed about the success of the LLRC and fears that there would be no international investigations if (the) international community was satisfied with the LLRC report and rejected (the idea of) an international investigation. Frankly said, these NGOs and human rights organizations must be held accountable for civilian casualties (in any conflict). They encouraged LTTE terrorists to use civilians as human shields to avoid a defeat of LTTE (lose two state option). They never asked the LTTE to lay down arms or surrender in order to avoid casualties. These HR orgs are like maggots, they live in carnages. They are like foxes sniffing for conflicts and dead bodies. Their cash inflows increase when dead bodies pile up.’

Indeed!

The going word then is ‘disingenuous’. Saravanamuttu talks accountability, but fails to account for his considerable contribution to the myth that the LTTE was invincible, which of course laid an argumentative platform for all kinds of accommodation proposals. He has not accounted for rupees and cents (or dollars and euros) issues where the integrity of his outfit, the Centre for Policy Alternatives, has been severely compromised. You can’t demand accountability from anyone if you are not ready to answer accountability queries.

It is the same with the other NGO personality who urged the Government and the people of Sri Lanka to play into the hands of the LTTE, Jehan Perera. He has commended a statement issued by a prominent group of Tamil civil society leaders who argued that with the end of the war, it has become important for all ethnic communities of Sri Lanka to re-examine and re-evaluate their actions, in particular the complicity in the horrendous crimes of the LTTE. While endorsing this, he does not feel any compulsion to come clean himself.

Then there is the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). TNA MP M.A. Sumanthiran has stated that the LLRC Report ‘has failed to address the accountability issue’. Now if no one can produce any credible evidence of systemic violation, then the LLRC cannot be faulted for omitting the non-existent. The LLRC was not mandated to transcribe an LTTE rant and if Sumanthiran thought this was what the LLRC was about it says more about him than about the LLRC. One can say, for example, that Sumanthiran is impotent because he is yet to hatch eggs. That would be a silly statement, but that’s Sumanthiran-talk.

More importantly, Sumanthiran (and the TNA) fail to understand that the moment the accountability query is raised, the complicity echo is also heard. Crimes were committed. Some known and some unknown. Some systemic and some not. In terms of the ‘known’ and the ‘systemic’, there is one party that Sumanthiran refuses to mention: the LTTE. The TNA was the LTTE’s proxy. The TNA knew what the LTTE was doing. The TNA was silent on all that but as loud as ever in its praise and endorsement of the LTTE. The TNA’s manifesto (2004) clearly indicated that it was an adjunct of the LTTE. Sumanthiran cannot claim ignorance. He cannot (just as Saravanamuttu and Perera cannot) ask for accountability from the Government without applying the same logic to the LTTE, which is alive and kicking in the form of various ‘Tamil’ outfits in various parts of the world.

The LLRC clearly states that the humanitarian operation that rescued some 300,000 hostages was not without its moments of shame. It is incumbent on the Government to investigate each and every incident where in spirit and deed its own ‘Zero Civilian Casualties’ policy was violated. That is more important that ranting about the composition, reliability and unprofessionalism of the panel of ‘experts’ appointed by the US Secretary General to advise him on Sri Lanka. It is only after this is done that the Government’s right to scoff at the half-tongued utterances of the likes of Saravanamuttu, Perera and Sumanthiran.

On the other hand, if these individuals insist on being ‘partially-memoried’ they will only further antagonize the necessary and necessarily major (due to sheer weight of numbers) partner in a peaceful future, the Sinhalese. What all these individuals and organizations fail to understand is that they cannot expect the Sinhala people to take them seriously unless they account for their acts of omission and commission, and also state clearly and without caveat what they believe the LTTE did and did not do. The longer they are silent, the more entrenched the following kind of position will be:

‘Sinhalese in their thousands died to save hundreds of thousands of their Tamil brethren who had been held hostage by the LTTE. If Tamil politicians refuse to acknowledge this fact it means that their love for the LTTE must be great indeed. If this is how they are, then they cannot be interested in peace and reconciliation. ‘

The kind of politicking and brinkmanship that the TNA is playing belongs to 30 years ago when rabble-rousing and provoking rapturous cheers by espousing aspirations that are unlikely to materialize brought in votes and took out lives. Asking for ‘third party mediation’ in the aftermath of several such attempts that only irked the Sinhalese and didn’t yield any tangible results will only help hardliners across the political divide.

It is time for the TNA to get serious if it really wants to better the lives of Tamil people. The way it’s operating will only push a critical mass into extreme positions on either side. It could end up in a return to a gunfight which will end in a new Nandikadal and nowhere else in all likelihood. That’s not re-inventing the wheel, it is re-digging a rut.

The Government must call the TNA’s bluff and implement the LLRC recommendation to the full. It must go ahead with the PSC with whoever wants to come. Those who deliberately want to be footnoted can scream all they like, but defaulters don’t win brownie points.

As for Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu and Jehan Perera, this much can be said: ‘it’s sad, really.’

The need for a mirror-check

2012-01-29T09:43:00.000+05:30

It is perhaps a sign of a certain lack in political maturity that makes the Opposition indistinguishable from Doomsday Prophets. The prophesies are mouthed with such regularity that they end up amounting to little more than rant and gripe. After a while no one takes notice.

The economy has been ‘on the verge of collapsing’ for such a long time, according to some, that one can’t help wondering if the predictors have any understanding about ‘verge’ and ‘collapse’. A similar term that did the rounds was ‘failed state’. Failed states don’t execute wars against ruthless terrorists and live to tell the tale, and certainly not while continuing to heavily subsidize health, education, food and fuel.

The problem with Doomsday ‘Propheteering’ is that it devalues valid criticism. Moreover it gives license to the critiqued to pooh-pooh critics by lumping them along with ‘those jokers who keep saying the world is going to end tomorrow’. It feeds regime-arrogance and when things actually go bad it is too late to prevent breakdowns that cost nation and citizen dearly.

The past few weeks have seen a wave of protests. The Government has been quick to denounce these agitations as the work of sinister elements intent on causing instability (and even reversing the victories registered in the battlefield). While there could be some truth in the claim, it would be foolish to think that these grievances articulated are not felt or valid. The challenge is to deal with the mischief-makers as appropriate, perhaps by exposing their funding sources and shady financial dealings without ignoring the issues that require urgent attention.

The Government would do well to identify the potential threat to national security and political stability posed by mismanagement and wild-ass unionism in key institutions such as the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) and the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC). These institutions must not only provide uninterrupted service but they need to be efficient and corruption-free.

It is high time that the Government recognizes that cronyism and petty political games will inevitably backfire and feed exactly those rogue elements it accuses of being cat’s paws of foreign governments attempting destabilization. People of unquestioned integrity and proven competence have to be appointed so that unions will be dealt with firmly and humanely. At the same time, the day-to-day running of affairs has to be put in the hands of those who have the requisite knowledge. Career-minded bureaucrats who are a disgrace to the Administrative Service must not be allowed to run things by proxy and reduce key positions into seats for figureheads.

Indeed, that kind of thinking would serve all institutions. Public health, for example, had its best days in the last 30 years during the brief period Ranasinghe Premadasa was President and that’s because his main advisor was a committed leftist and a man of integrity who put country before self and party. It is to President Premadasa’s credit that for all his many errors and preferences for strong-arm tactics, he had the wisdom (at times) to put the right person in the right place.

Sycophants and cheerleaders are competent misleaders adept at painting bright colours to hide the ugly. When decisions are made based on fairy tales, nightmares result. If the right people are placed in these institutions and a hands-off policy is maintained, not only will things get done but the political rewards will accrue to the appointers, in this case the President.

Loyalty to regime is not important; loyalty to nation imperative. Politicians of whatever hue who understand and appreciate this are men and women of stature and recognized as such by the people.

What is being suggested here is not necessarily a mechanism to stem a perceptible rot, but a general principle of operation in the broad sphere of governance. Implied in the recommendation, though, is the lamentable fact that Sri Lanka lacks an institutional arrangement that consistently fills posts with competence due to the sheer power of procedural robustness. That function has by default become dependent on the wisdom of appointers and therefore constrained by inevitable deficiencies.

Ranters and ranting there will always be but grievance, in whatever colours in may come clothed, always has the potential to be exploited by errant politicians looking for shortcuts to power. The kind of force that is most effective in mitigating such threat is to that made of wisdom and compassion, the pragna and maithriya advocated by the Buddha Siddhartha Gauthama. Right now, we are not seeing much wisdom and hardly any compassion.

If the going is going to get tough, the tough-going needs to be recognized and tough action taken. In designing action, however, reason should prevail over emotion, competency privileged over loyalty, and all things should be underlined by humility.

This country is not on the verge of collapse. Nothing is about to implode. There will always be enemies, within and without, but the least that a government mandated to lead the people and transform a nation can do is to recognize that at times it can be its greatest enemy. Until this is recognized regimes will continue to confuse friend and foe and keep shooting themselves in the proverbial political foot.

*'The Nation' Editorial, January 29, 2012

How about a leeeetle bit of integrity, people?

2012-01-28T09:17:00.000+05:30

Gamini Gunawardane, Retired Senior DIG, wrote an excellent article in The Island of November 12, 2009: ‘How men of integrity saved Sri Lanka’. He was paying tribute to all the individuals whose contributions, especially their commitment and integrity, paved the way for the nation’s most glorious post-Independence moment, the historic victory over terrorism that few believed was possible.

In this excellent exposition of the term ‘integrity’ in terms of this overall effort of utmost national interest, the following paragraph caught my attention and provoked deep reflection.

“Rather than eulogizing personalities, the purpose, is to illustrate how even a few people could make a huge difference with a modicum of integrity in a fleeting situation despite flourishing corruption, which could produce such astonishing achievements for a nation.’

He hopes that such fleeting moments be more frequent and that there will be more people of such courage. That’s a wish that many would share, I believe. We know that there are serious flaws in our institutional arrangement and there’s a woeful lack of integrity all around, not just among politicians and public servants, but in the private sector, the informal sector, religious orders of all faiths and also the general public.

Last evening I went to see Rajitha Dissanayake’s award-winning play, ‘Veeraya Merila’ (the hero is dead). Rajitha explores, with characteristic wit, humour and amazing insight, the issue of integrity in the media, its political economy and in the process enumerates the numerous booby traps that make for easy purchase of well-intentioned journalists.

Having been in this field for almost a decade, I have enough reason to endorse what the late Ajith Samaranayake once said: ‘when you read newspapers you might think journalists are people with a strong sense of justice and that they embody the virtue of integrity, but we who work in newspaper officers know this is not true’. Rajitha elaborates extremely well and does it with theatrical finesse for the most part. The fact that he can provoke more than a few laughs indicates that the public is not unaware. Indeed he has shown a lot of courage in saying out loud that which people in the media industry pretend does not exist or that it is an affliction someone else suffers.

The truth, however, is that we all have a price. Some go cheap, some are expensive. Some cannot be purchased and they are killed or die, metaphorically and sometimes even literally. The truth is that all journalists have to operate within more or less clearly defined frameworks. The truth is that in most cases, journalists operate at a considerable distance from these limiting lines. The truth is that in most cases, journalists fight shy of stating bias, trying to show the world that they are ‘neutral’ and somehow ‘objective’, both untenable propositions when you come to think of it. And sometimes, there is ‘virtue’ in the written word but in life it is absent and this is probably what Ajith alluded to.

On the other hand, one never gets integrity in a nation-wide sense and even in an individual it is a ‘now and then’ thing, predicated on issue, moment, location etc. What Gunawardena points out is that this reality does not rule out the intersection of integrities at key moment/situations and that when this happens, it is not an issue of whether there is majority-integrity, so to say, but that there is critical-integrity. The coming together of key personalities with shared vision, commitment and unrelenting purpose can produce wonders and compensates in a way for decades of compromise and servility.

Integrity, it must be understood, is not something that one calls upon only in terms of crisis, although at such moments its absence or presence will produce tragedy and triumph respectively. I believe that it is in the ‘micro’ that integrity is possible and also lacking. I am thinking of trade union action in particular. Someone referring to the current work-to-rule campaign launched by some unions, made this witty observation yesterday: ‘productivity levels might have gone up because it means they are actually working!’

What is he saying? He is saying that in the general we have a labour force that does not do justice to contractual agreement. This is why the public views unions in unfavourable terms and even curse them for the inconveniences they cause. On the other hand, this ‘public’ also works. The public is made of a millions of working people, all with some form of contract with employer. Do they ask themselves if they have the moral authority to question the absence of a decent work ethic in a striking worker? Do they possess that modicum of integrity Gunawardena speaks of to have the write to point fingers at those who lack integrity? Aren’t these questions we need to ask ourselves? Can those who show a gap between rhetoric and practice find fault with others who are similarly ‘gapped’?

Rajitha’s play reminded me of that telling exchange between Galileo and his student Andrea Sarti in Brecht’s play. Galileo, having recanted the truths he had discovered under pressure from the Vatican which included the threat of torture, is taunted by his student: ‘unhappy is the land that has no hero’. Galileo’s reply is a classic: ‘no Andrea, unhappy is that land that needs a hero’.

The truth is everyone can be a hero, not necessarily in ways that are nationally recognized, but in the everyday. Having integrity, in these time and circumstances, one can argue therefore is heroic. There is heroism then in being honest to job contract, in practicing that which one preaches, in making such that one doesn’t find fault with someone for doing or not doing something that one does or does not do as the case may be.

We have moved from the ‘mega’ to the ‘micro’. The world has rebelled against ‘big’ and brought it down to size. These then are ‘micro’ days. We have microfinance as the new mantra of development and poverty alleviation. There’s talk of ‘micro justice’. ‘Micro integrity’, then, is perhaps a remedy for the ills of our times.

Kumarigama, Ampara: 1988 and 2010

2012-01-27T09:39:00.000+05:30

A revisitation

The year was 1988. September, if I remember right. I was on a private bus, going from Kandy to Ampara. Uhana, actually. Kumarigama to be precise. One of the villages that sprung up thanks to the Gal Oya Project. I was with a university batchmate, Premasiri, who was from Kumarigama. This was ‘LTTE time’. This was a time of unexpected attacks at night and even during the day. LTTE ‘freedom fighters’ setting up booby traps, stopping buses, shooting passengers, storming into villages murdering children, pregnant women, the sick and the elderly in cold blood. It was a time of butchery.

I was at the back of the bus. We were approaching Arantalawa, where the LTTE had killed some 30 odd Buddhist bikkhus traveling in a bus. A fellow passenger, a student from the University of Sri Jayawardenapura, seated at the left end of the back seat of the bus, i.e. next to me, told me (in jest): ‘This is a dangerous stretch; the LTTE can come out from the shrub jungles over there (pointing towards the East) and shoot. We are used to it. We have our palms to protects us (he lifted his left hand, finger outstretched and together, indicating that this was how a bullet that might otherwise hit the head would be stopped).’ I saw the humour but couldn’t really laugh. Humour. That’s all they had.

That night, seated outside his house, Premasiri told me how the LTTE had attacked a village close to his: ‘They came in the night. Everyone was asleep. Before anyone could do anything, they had killed dozens of people.’

‘The following night, some young men from the next village retaliated; they stormed into a Tamil village, the closest one, and killed innocent people. I saw the dead. The Sinhalese who died and also the Tamils. They all looked the same. All poor. The same kind of impoverishment. The same bellies carrying the same amount of rice. Not much.’

Today, August 5, 2010, I came down the same road. There were no jokes about LTTE attacks, stopping bullets like Baron Munchausen. There were some bunkers here and there, but not every 50 m or so. There was one check point at Maha Oya. I remembered a different time.

I remembered getting down from the bus on several occasions, walking through check points. Having bags checked. Having soldiers running their hands all over me. Necessary inconveniences. Happily suffered. That was a different time, a different country.

Twenty two years ago, almost, I spent a night in Kumarigama. I remember thinking that there was no one who could guarantee that there wouldn’t be an LTTE attack that night. I remember thinking that there was nothing that anyone could do. Life was a lottery. It was to become a different kind of lottery not too long afterwards when the JVP and UNP thought it would be fun to see who could wring the necks of the ordinary citizenry more effectively, but that night fear had a name: LTTE.

Right now, I am in Kumarigama. Same house. I didn’t come with Premasiri. Premasiri’s father, one of the first ‘settlers’ is no more. His brother, Weerasinghe, ‘Loku Aiya’ to all of us, is now the principal of the ‘village school’, Kumarigama Maha Vidyalaya. His other brothers, Oliver and Kumara are out in the fields, harvesting paddy. Loku Aiya’s son, Isuru, at the time a mischievous little baby, is now repeating his A/L exam. He took my 9 year old daughter, along with his 12 year old cousin Samadhi and her brother, 9 year old Nipun to watch their uncles at work. This is post-LTTE Sri Lanka. It’s a post-war Sri Lanka.

I don’t know the name of those villagers who were slaughtered in those terrible days. If that was alleviating grievance or countering terrorism, I’d much rather live with grievance and terrorism. I know we are not living in a perfect world, but this imperfection is good. Premasiri’s mother, M.D. Babynona, now 69, seems not to have aged. Same affection. Same warmth. Same simple loveliness of being. There is electricity now. There’s harvesting. Life is good.

I am not living in a Perfect Sri Lanka. This is however a New Sri Lanka. In a way a consolation prize and nothing more, yes. Looked at from another angle, this is good enough, one could say.

Thank you Dilshan!

2012-01-26T14:31:00.000+05:30

When Tillakeratne Dilshan was conferred the captaincy of the Sri Lankan cricket team, Kumar Sangakkara the outgoing captain said that his successor will probably come up with some surprising decisions and noted that Dilshan had a way of ‘making things happen’. This is true. Some of his decisions surprised, yes, and he did make things happen at time.

Dilshan had his work cut out for him. The poor record he has to show since he took over can certainly be attributed in part to skill-lack in skippering, but one must take into account the fact that he took the job without the two men who were instrumental in Sri Lanka’s success over the past 15 years, Vaas and Murali. For all the great batsmen that we’ve had, winning text matches involves bowling out the opposition twice. What Vaas and Murali have done in ODIs and Tests is a major part of our success story. Dilshan began without both.

Leadership, however, is about getting the best out of the human resources one has. For all his enthusiasm and flamboyance, Dilshan cannot be said to have squeezed the best out of his team. In hindsight it might have been better to appoint Angelo Matthews instead, but for reasons best known to the then selectors, Dilshan was given the job. Looking back it is easy to say that he was never captaincy material. Perhaps he himself didn’t know he was not, but he did back himself and did things his way. It didn’t work and maybe it could never work anyway. What’s important is that Dilshan took on the challenge.

Dilshan never said ‘no’. When it was thought he fitted best in the middle order, he went in and did his best. When asked to open, he opened. When asked to keep wickets, he did that. When asked to bowl, he broke partnerships. He entertained. He contributed to the team and the game. One doesn’t have to elaborate on the ‘Dilscoop’. He made things happen. He was not his brilliant best, but he was no more erratic than he was before 2009, his watershed year when he scored 11 international hundred and won the World Twenty20 Player of the Series prize.

Now, as just another team player and unburned of captaincy, we might see him flourish once again. A Test average of 40.89 (at a 65.94 strike rate) for a player of his caliber is nothing short of wonderful. With close to 6000 runs in the ODI format at a strike rate of 87.03, the man has a lot of runs still in him, it is clear.

He didn’t do a great job as captain and that’s not only due to lack of personnel. He was and is still a great player. Let us thank for taking on a thankless job at a thankless time. Let us wish him well.