Malinda Words: Notes for a Rebel

Showing posts with label Notes for a Rebel. Show all posts

11 July 2016

08:53

By Malinda Words

In: Notes for a Rebel

Whatever happens, hold on to your heart*

Tough fights, the really tough ones, can cost you. If you take on the beast, comrades, then you’ve got to run the risk of being bitten or worse. Take it as a given – when the enemy is desperate, the enemy can get really nasty. Tear gas and baton charges are on the cards. Abductions and torture. Count these as probable rather than possible. There’s a lot that can happen this side of assassination or, as we came to call it in the terrible years towards the end of the eighties, ‘disappearance’. Incarceration, for example.

Scared? Don’t be. Maybe you didn’t think through this rebelling business. Maybe you thought and still think ‘It will not happen to me’. Anyway, the most important thing is that you’ve decided to rebel, decided to say ‘no’, decided to say ‘enough’ to something or the other. It could be a small battle or a big one. If it’s a small battle, defeat won’t faze you. If it is big, then you’ve got to think a bit more. It’s the big battles we are talking about here.

So let’s assume you’ve been arrested. Rest assured there would be laws that allow your enemy to hold you indefinitely in some miserable cell in some remote corner of the country. Most likely such laws are part of the reason why you decided to rebel in the first place. Anyway, let’s say you’ve been arrested. The food would be horrible. For a bed you might have to make do with a hard, cold, uneven cement floor. It would probably be stinking. You might have to share the cell with some despicable people and not ‘comrades’. Sometimes being alone might seem a better proposition.

Sometimes being alone is worse. Either way, the worst thing could be that you don’t get to see daylight and that could be more terrible than not being able to see your loved ones. You might want that tiny piece of sky that you once saw through a half-open window or that shimmer of moonlight on rain-wetted leaves. Things like that. Small things like that. It’s tough, even for the toughest rebels.

Now there are no guidebooks written about how to deal with such situations. We do have notes that people who’ve had to spend dozens of years in prison have written. Prison notebooks, so to say. Some of these have been written by highly articulated people who have had to spend time ‘inside’ for ‘rebelling’. Their words might give you a clue. Take for example the words of Nazim Hikmet, the Turkish poet who spend more than half his life either in prisons or in exile.

Nazim says, ‘keep your heart’ (at all costs), whichever prison you happen to inhabit:

‘Read and write without rest,

and I also advise weaving

and making mirrors.

I mean, it’s not that you can’t pass

ten or fifteen years inside

and more –

you can,

as long as the jewel

on the left side of your chest doesn’t lose its luster!’

There’s something there. Sure, you have to keep your wits about you if not for anything to exploit the half chance your detractors give you out of negligence, complacency or simply arrogance and over-confidence. The proposal here is not to dump mind and keep heart. It’s about keeping the heart, regardless.

You have to believe. You have to continue to love. You have to keep your faith in people. You have to believe that there’s something beautiful in all human beings, including the jailor who locked you up, the judge who sentenced you and the comrade who may have betrayed you to the enemy. It’s all about love. It’s about the heart. And sometimes it is all about learning a simple lesson written by a beautiful man who wrote in a language you’ve never heard and fought battles you are unaware of.

It’s the heart. It is precious. Keep it.

*When I was working at 'The Nation' I wrote a column for the FREE section of the paper which was dedicated to youth. The title of the column was 'Notes for a Rebel'. I wrote a total of 52 articles in this series. I have resumed by 'Notes for a Rebel', this time writing for the website www.nightowls.lk. Scroll down for the other articles in this series on rebels and rebellion.

Other articles in this series

Sequence matters!

Make sure you don't miss the bus!

Revolution is a game, really

Little things to matter
Combine the energies!

Think of roots and wings

Crawl into the enemy's brain

T is for Trivial

There are nights in the middle of the day

Don't hold back when you groom

The sun will never set
When the enemy expands consider inflation
When you are the last one standing
Targets visible and targets unidentified
When you have to vote
So when are you planning to graduate?
The belly of the beast is addictive
When you meet pomposity, flip the script
When did you last speak with an old man?
Dear Rebel, please keep it short
Get ready for those setbacks
The rebel must calculate or perish
Are you ready to deceive?
Dear Rebel, 'P' is also for 'Proportion'
Dear Rebel, have you got the e-factor out of the way?
Have you carefully considered the f-word?
It is so easy to name the enemy, right?
The p-word cuts both ways
Cards get reflected in eyes, did you know?
It's all about timing
Heroes and heroism are great, but...
Recruiting for a rebellion
The R, L and H of 'Rebellion'
Pack in 'Humor' when you gather rebellion-essentials
When the enemy is your best friend
The MSM Principle of Engagement
Dear Rebel, get some creature-tips!
Dear Rebel, get through your universities first
Read the enemies' Bibles
Poetry, love and revolution
Are you ready to shut down your petrol shed
The details, the details!
Know your comrades
Good to meditate on impermanence.
Time is long, really long
Learn from the termites
Be warned: the first victory is also the first defeat
Prediction is asking for trouble
Visualize, strategize and innovate
How important is authority?
Don't forget to say 'Hello!'
It's not over until you clean up!
Have you met 'PB' of Alutwela?
Are you sure about those selfies?
Power and principles
'Few does not mean 'weak'

01 July 2016

07:21

By Malinda Words

In: Notes for a Rebel

No comments

The voice of sanity is often drowned*

The next time you are on a crowded street at the busiest time of the day, close your eyes and listen. What do you hear? A lot. You hear so much that it’s like you are not hearing anything. Sometimes you can’t hear the person right next to you. Sometimes you can hear yourself. And yet, every single sound you hear has a meaning. Each sound could be important. Each one could be unimportant. Perhaps what is important to one person could be ridiculous to another. The problem is simple: we can’t find out if anything is important or unimportant unless we hear it in the first place.

Words have weights. They get the weight of voice. The louder the word is spoken the better chance of it being heard. Then it is not the intrinsic value of the word that counts but the volume with which it is spoken. Words are weighted by the speaker. When an ‘important’ person says a word it means much more than if a ‘lesser’ person said it. Personalities can therefore make trivial things sound important and by the same token some nondescript individual can devalue something that could be of crucial importance by the mere fact that it is he/she that articulates it. That’s about prejudices. We all have them and it’s hard to shed them.

When the ‘leader’ for example talks nonsense, we listen, believing that maybe there’s something we don’t understand and that this is why we think it is drivel. When a new recruit says something we don’t hear him/her and even if we did we think it can’t be that important because…well….he/she is new (“what does he/she know?” we ask ourselves and each other!).

Listening is a problem because hearing is tough. It becomes even tougher because sometimes things are said without words and in the rush of voices and expressions you can miss the nuances of expression. They say when the boss makes a joke you have to laugh. It’s like that. When those who are supposed to know a lot make mistakes you are supposed to act as though it is not a mistake. You are not supposed to challenge the boss.

A good leader, though, will listen. A good leader will hear each and every word. A good leader is better able to assess the true worth of a word. A good leader will not let the volume with which something is said influence his or her judgment. A good leader will understand that even the most experienced rebel can err and that even the newest recruit might have an insight that has escaped everyone else. A good leader will listen for silences and read them. A good leader will read faces. A good leader will more often than not draw out the voice of sanity. A good leader will more often than not obtain the dispassionate but rational proposal from a hundred ideas that a hundred people scream into his or her ear.

Developing hearing skills is not easy but it is something that can make a big difference when decisions are made by a group of people, especially a group of passionate, intense and committed rebels. The nice thing about it is that you can develop such skills anywhere and anytime. It doesn’t have to be at political meetings. You can start teasing out different sounds from a street corner or a market place. You can do it at school or in an office, a coffee shop or a dance floor. There’s always noise. And once you can draw out the individual sound or voice you will discover that you are obtaining a lot more information than you used to. Information can be crucial but that’s another essay altogether.

Here’s a trick to improve listening. Be silent. It helps.

Other articles in this series

Sequence matters!

Make sure you don't miss the bus!

Revolution is a game, really

Little things to matter
Combine the energies!

Think of roots and wings

Crawl into the enemy's brain

T is for Trivial

There are nights in the middle of the day

Don't hold back when you groom

20 June 2016

07:49

By Malinda Words

In: Notes for a Rebel, www.nightowls.lk

No comments

Sequence matters, dear rebel

When I was working at 'The Nation' I wrote a column for the FREE section of the paper which was dedicated to youth. The title of the column was 'Notes for a Rebel'. I wrote a total of 52 articles in this series. I have resumed by 'Notes for a Rebel', this time writing for the website www.nightowls.lk. Scroll down for the other articles in this series on rebels and rebellion.

Let’s say Kumar Sangakkara is facing Dale Steyn. There are motions that he has to go through. If he was Sanath Jayasuriya there’s a whole lot of ‘musts’ that he would do which have nothing to do with facing a good delivery from a skilful bowler apart from helping calm your nerves (or whatever). Sanath had a long process of tapping and adjusting his gear before facing up to each and every delivery. We are talking about the process that begins after that.

Consider a situation like the following: Kumar Sangakkara executes a lovely cover drive, checks his stance, then takes his guard, shuffles his feet to rattle the bowler and then gets his back-lift done to perfection. There’s a problem. The ball is yet to leave Steyn’s hand!

You’ve heard the dictum about putting the cart before the horse. It simply doesn’t move, doesn’t work and doesn’t take you anywhere. It’s all about getting things in the right order or the right sequence. Think of cooking. There’s a sequence. If you want the food to come out a particular way then you have to toss in the ingredients in a particular order. Mess the sequence and you’ll still be able to eat, but it won’t taste as good.

Revolutions are like that.

It is true that many roads can get you to a single destination, but if each journey requires a particular number of steps, you have to understand that the steps are in a sequence. There is no way around it. This is why they say ‘first things first’. Seems easy, but in the case of revolutions it’s tough to know which should be done first and which later.

Think of it this way.

It’s like capturing a police station and then asking yourself ‘what next?’ Of course those who have decided to say ‘no’ to some injustice or say ‘yes’ to a different order of things won’t be that silly. It’s a way-out example, offered just to illustrate the point.

Meaningful social change cannot be obtained overnight. Typically it involves long struggles. The envisaged end cannot be seen – it is so far away. There will be rivers to cross and mountains to climb. You’ll fall into traps and struggle to get out of them. You’ll lose your way and spend a lot of trying either retracing your steps or finding a path that puts you back on track.

So it is not easy. The trick is not to make it more difficult for yourself than necessary.

Perhaps you want to secure a big advantage through an ambush somewhere down the line. However, you won’t gain any advantage if the timing is wrong or if either you or the enemy doesn’t get to the particular location. You’ll have to push things in the preferred direction and you’ll have to get there yourself.

Chess players would know something about this. If you’ve planned a series of moves that allows you to capture a piece and secure a decisive advantage, you have to get the move order right. A check on the opponent’s king one move early or late might kill the entire attack. This is perhaps easily understood if you go through the famous game between Gary Kasparov and Vaselin Topalov in 1999 ('Kasparov's Immortal').

Sequence matters also because typically you will have lesser resources than does the enemy. Sequence-errors on your part can cost a lot and sometimes too much whereas the enemy can err and still recover.

What are the steps? Well, you would know that. It depends on the objective, the resources at hand, the preferred methodology and so on. That’s up to you to figure out, but while figuring out, you have to get the order right.

Sangakkara would know. Sometimes it is about spacing the innings. If the RRR (Required Run Rate) is, say, 8.3 runs per over, he wouldn’t aim to score 9 an over or more. He would think of a few overs where you take stock of the wicket, he would resolve to be happy scoring 4 or 5 off the opposing team’s best bowler and 12-15 off by targeting the less potent bowlers. That’s also factoring sequence.

Sometimes you take a hit. Sometimes you suffer an insult. There’s a time to be silent and a time to shout. A time to keep moving and a time to stay perfectly still.

Sequence. Think about it.

Other articles in this series

Make sure you don't miss the bus!

Revolution is a game, really

Little things to matter
Combine the energies!

Think of roots and wings

Crawl into the enemy's brain

T is for Trivial

There are nights in the middle of the day

Don't hold back when you groom

09 June 2016

07:53

By Malinda Words

In: Notes for a Rebel

No comments

Make sure you don’t miss the bus!

In September 1988 a bus was set on fire. It was not the first bus set on fire during that terrible time and it was not to be the last. It happened at about 8.00 pm. It was a Kandy-Nawalapitiya bus. Some undergraduates from the university boarded the bus at Peradeniya. There weren’t many passengers and none of them (except of course the undergraduates) knew what was about to happen. The bus came to a halt a little past the bridge over the railway track. Someone shouted and ordered everyone to get out of the bus. Everyone did. The next moment everyone saw a bright blaze. The next day the university was shut down.

Here’s the context. Almost all universities had been shut down, one by one, that week. The student leaders were either arrested or were being hunted down. Those at Peradeniya wanted the university closed for two reasons. First, a closed university meant the leaders need not be on campus; they could flee. Secondly, in the context of political unrest, a lengthy closure meant that frustrated students could be recruited for the insurgency. In this sense the decision was logical. The fact that the insurgency was bloody, resulted in over 60,000 youth being killed and ended in disaster was not something they would have envisaged, but the ‘small battle’ was won that night. Theoretically there could have been other ways of getting the university closed, but the decision-makers probably thought this was best way.

Now, what if the insurgency had succeeded? What if a revolutionary government was established? What if a new, democratic constitution was written and a system put in place to consecrate truth, justice, equality and all the other regents that revolutions want to produce?

At some point, people have to eat. At some point things like a productivity, industry and food security have to be addressed. At some point someone will realize that something is missing. And someone else will realize what it is that is missing. A bus.

It would probably be more than a bus of course. If a ‘revolution’ requires the burning of a bus to get a university closed, following the same logic other ‘battles’ would naturally call for acts of destruction of far greater magnitude. Fleets of buses, for example, would have to be set on fire. Buildings, transformers, bridges, vehicles and roads would have to be destroyed. Experts on all manner of subjects (who, ‘unforgivably,’ were on the wrong side of the revolution) would have to be killed.

[For the record, all this happened. There was no revolution, but the ‘winners’ and those who succeeded them that to run a country whose infrastructure had taken a massive hit and whose human resources had considerably depleted (not everyone killed was a rebel and not all rebels were idiots).]

So, on Day One post-revolution, when the victors set about righting the many wrongs that compelled them to fight in the first place, they would realize that they have power but they are severely lacking in the assets department.

The issue is simple. Revolution is not about destroying everything and building afresh. If that were the case, the first problem that the new revolutionary government would have to resolve is starvation. However bloody the battle is, once it is won, the victors still need roads, bridges, railways, electricity, schools, hospitals, teachers, scientists, administrative officers, tractors, earth-moving machinery, livestock, etc. And buses.

Each time you burn a bus (or carry out any act of destruction), you are depleting the asset base that you will be forced to work with once the revolution is done.

The problem is that what is thus destroyed is seldom easily replaced. It takes a single matchstick to burn a bus. It takes a lot of money to buy or build a new bus. You kill a senior plant pathologist because he or she didn’t follow an order, but it will take you decades to replace that kind of expertise.

Rebels must think about the Post-Revolution Reality (but not get carried away by it of course) and must therefore make sure that they aren’t going to miss any buses once the ‘war’ is won.

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

Other articles in this series

Revolution is a game, really

Little things to matter
Combine the energies!

Think of roots and wings

Crawl into the enemy's brain

T is for Trivial

There are nights in the middle of the day

Don't hold back when you groom

On the ‘this side’ of that rarified land called Happily Ever After which is the least populated place on earth, there is a community of insane people who are fluent in the ways of the heart. The clarity of their love is of a transparency that they can walk across the national boundaries that separate the sane and insane, without visa, without detection. They do not transgress for their universes are unbounded. They do not break rule for a heart that is ruled is not heart but mind. - Journalist | Political Commentator | Chess Enthusiast | Sri Lanka | malindasenevi@gmail.com