The suns of solidarity will cut through grief's dense darkness

Magalla Wewa, Nikaweratiya, Pic by Amali Nandasena

 

 

According to Tony Gilbert, a friend of Bob Marley, the great singer and songwriter was inspired by things around him. He remembers three canaries who would come by the windowsill at Hope Road and believes that they inspired Marley to write ‘Three little birds.’ There are other theories, but that’s not important.

Rise up this morning, smiled with the rising sun
Three little birds pitch by my doorstep
Singing sweet songs of melodies pure and true.

A simple observation of an everyday occurrence, at least at face value. And Marley extrapolates thus, ‘don’t worry about a thing / ‘cos every little thing gonna be alright.’

If only!

People buried. Homes buried. Villages buried. Bridges and roads destroyed. Homeless. Hungry. Thirsty. The helplessness is apparent, vivid and unbelievable. We are humbled. We are numb (or were).  It is easy to say things like ‘count your blessings,’ but what blessing can be attached to the loss of a child or an entire family or a lifetime’s labour and love congealed in a house and property disappearing in an instant?

Deluge. Of unimaginable proportions. Then the stories. Ceaseless rain. Terrible winds. And then, the sun.

I live in Kottawa. I’ve only seen photographs and reels of the handiwork of Cyclone Ditwah. To me, at least in appearance, just another day. Familiar foliage and familiar creatures doing familiar things. Familiar morning sounds. How insulated I am, for now!  But then again, the mind wanders. I cannot but wander.

It went far and wide to places known and places whose names are unfamiliar, people I’ve never met, landscapes seen from afar and in amazement but now disfigured and labeled ‘gone,’ and it tarried long on grief-stricken faces and eyes almost vacant but tear-welled.

I am safe. Secure. I cannot comprehend nor come to terms with what’s gone and what remains: on the one hand, lives, livelihoods, ways of being, certainties and familiarities and on the other, the boulders of misery scattered willy nilly on what was once thought to be landscapes that change but slowly and over millennia. I cannot get a grip on the massive water bodies of risk and insecurity that sun and gradient will not or cannot drain.

Words come to me in the form of lyrics and as salve. I remembered the Dire Straits song, ‘Why worry?’

There should be laughter after pain
There should be sunshine after rain
These things have always been the same
So why worry now?
Why worry now?

Again, easy words.

There’s a beautiful photograph of a weva in Nikaweratiya. I am not sure if Amali Nandasiri’s capture was at dawn or dusk. There’s water and a single boat among the reeds. The sun is shining through a cloud-ridden sky. Grey skies for the most part.  
 
One of the two epigraphs in Ernest Hemmingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ is a quote from Ecclesiastes:

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose


Apparently Hemingway had told his editor Max Perkins that the book was not so much about a generation being lost, but that ‘the earth abideth forever.’ The characters in his book are battered, but they are not lost, he had pointed out.

How did this happen? How and when will we recover? There are questions that need to be asked and answered, sooner or later. But right now, every single effort, however minute, is wrapped with empathy, generosity, determination and hope.

Three little birds. That’s a metaphor. It is because there are innumerable little things around us gently saying ‘life remains and therefore there’s hope.’ There are things to be thankful for. We are not absolutely impoverished as a nation or a people. For all the glitches and delays, every single person who has suffered knows one thing for certain — their fellow citizens have not forsaken them. They will not. That too is part of our national signature.

We are not indestructible. We are fallible, in fact. We are not impotent. There are hearts that beat. They are warm. And they spread the warmth of true citizenship and solidarity.

The sun rises. Sets. Rises again. We must rise too. As we always have. And as we always will.

 

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

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Tanques, tanks and other misconceptions

 

 

This country, Sri Lanka, is littered with tanks. Tanks? Well, that’s the common English or rather Sri Lankan English translation of the Sinhala word ‘wewa.’ The translation or rather the transliteration says a lot about conceptions, misconceptions and general ignorance. Or was it a deliberate mis-naming?  

The word ‘tank’ comes from the Portuguese ‘tanque,’ which they borrowed from the Gujarati ‘tankh’ which means ‘cistern, underground reservoir for water,’ or the Marathi word ‘taken’ or ‘tanka’ which means simply reservoir. Trace it back further and linguists would say it’s from the Sanskrit word ‘tadaga,’ which means ‘pond’ or ‘lake.’ Anyway, they all refer to a container or containment of water.

Today is could mean a closed container for liquids or gases, an open container for storing water or other liquids, a cage for fish and corals, a pond, a pool, a small lake that is natural or artificial, an armoured fighting vehicle, a large reservoir built to irrigate land or generate hydropower, and even a prison cell!

The key element in all this is containment. And that is not the ‘whew.’ Not according to Peter Wise. When I met this irrepressible resident of the regions surrounding Thanamalwila more than twenty years ago, I was told that a wewa is not a tank or a reservoir for those terms don’t capture the true social, cultural and ecological weight of this particular kind of water-body.

People in Sri Lanka know what a wewa is. Children learn about the great bodies of water built by their ancestors, the Kala Wewa, the Tisa Wewa, the Nuwara Wewa, Minneriya, Giritale, Parakrama Samudra and so on. But theen there are the innumerable ‘lesser’ wew (wewas?) sometimes crafted into entire cascade systems. They are ingeniously designed water conservation mechanisms where at the top end you get the polkatu weva, then the kulu weva, then the gam weva associated with a particular village, followed by the maha weva and then of course the mighty ocean. They have certain common features. There are the sluice gates, a spill and canals leading into tracts of paddy fields of sizes corresponding to the capacities of the particular wewa.

But they are people. They are elements of a social order that is acutely aware of ecological factors and more so the related dependencies. The cascade systems traced by the names mentioned above are very much in evidence even today. There’s a lot of scholarship on how things were and how things are today which question the ‘logic’ of dominant development paradigms and points towards alternatives which take into account catchments and their conservation, soil types, water tables, the intersections of human activity and foraging preferences of other creatures, raising of water tables and indeed, in today’s context, sustainable climate resilient agriculture.  

The point is that water can be caught, trapped and released, but ‘tank’ makes people and the environment invisible. When key elements cannot be seen (or aren’t shown), everything is reducible to simple arithmetic. It greatly enhances the probability of error and possibility of engendering disasters unimagined.  

A wewa is about the past, present and future. A wewa is about a social as well as ecological system. A wewa is about collective well being. A wewa is not a stand-alone liquid island. It is a part of, feeds off and feeds other ‘islands,’ some of which are not stagnant but move laterally and vertically.  Some are made of water and others are not. There are keywords here: whole and wholesome, in particular.

The ancients knew. They got it. Others in more recent times probably suspected. Very few understood. Speaking strictly for myself, I do not. Nevertheless, I am fascinated. This is why, reading Udula Bandara Avsadahamy’s ‘Wewa’ which he dubs, ‘a study on the social, economic, environmental and technological antecedents of the “wewa,”’ I am compelled to read further and more importantly walk as much of the vast territories of which the ‘tanque’ is a prominent but not self-contained feature as I can in the time I have left. This is why I desire even more than before to talk to those who have walked, observed, studied and figured out the secrets of that which is sacred associated with the ‘wewa.’ And this is what inspired the following which can be read as the reader will.

The Portuguese saw contained water
and they called it tanque
and so we have tanks
but a 'weva' is no ‘tankiya’
and is not water contained and nothing else
for water is caught, it flows, conserved and released
and does so much more
for the above and below
of earthly things — creatures and vegetation
but we see water,
contained,
still but for a ripple or two,
We are water bodies
and are seen as such
we remain unseen, you and I,
offer thanks to nomenclature
the chronic idiocy of eyes
the humour of wisdom,
and return to the sacred
which must remain a secret.

There are tanks. There is a ‘wewa.’ We would do well not to confuse them. We would do much better, in fact, not to treat them as coterminous. 

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

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Landscapes are stories

 

Landscapes have their own moods, feelings and expressions, says Kasun De Silva. He attributed this insight to the photography of Nihal Fernando. He added, ‘landscapes are not just sceneries, but stories.’ It was a comment on one of Fernando’s photos posted on Facebook by Studio Times which Kasun had re-posted on his wall. The original post had the following caption: ‘Nihal Fernando: He never tired of photographing trees …’

True. Also true of many other things that captured his imagination and persuaded him to explore with his incomparable lens. They all had moods, feelings and expressions, come to think of it. But these are not attributes one easily associates with landscapes. People, yes, but landscapes?

Nihal Fernando was a patient photographer. He had the eyes to cut into rectangular shape a given subject. He could also anticipate the ways in which what was before him could transform or, as the case may be, be transformed by moving to test different angles and decide which would best capture the personality of what would become ‘the photograph.’

Angle was just one factor. There was also temperature, light, shade and movement spurred by wind. Elements are not static; as they change so too do the landscapes they make. Trees, included.

 

The particular photograph was a ‘black and white’ capture of a solitary tree, bent by time perhaps and possibly by wind. My guess is that it was somewhere in or around Horton Plains. The tree reached out to other trees on an adjacent hillock. There was dappled sunlight playing around the trunks of those other trees. There was sunlight causing a shimmer on the grass around the subject-tree. A story, then. Or stories, rather, for there are always multiple narratives; as many as there are readers. We read and in reading we re-write.

Not too long after sharing the Studio Times post, Kasun posted one of his own photographs. It was of a sunset and titled ‘A painted evening.’ Somewhere close to Habarana, he said. The first thought that crossed my mind was, ‘there can be no landscape painter more accomplished and skilled than the elements.’

In the foreground, a fence that ended at the backend of a small weva. Leaf-bereft trees on either side of the frame, a tree-line a few hundred meters beyond, and then, sky of swirling clouds brushed in shades of blue, orange, gold, red and purple.

It would have stopped me. I, who knows nothing of colour, line and space. For Kasun, it was probably a book-shelf of stories. It was a landscape of many moods, feelings and expressions, obviously. Not ‘scenery,’ but stories. He would have seen the narratives unfold over the next few minutes or hour and even later when the detailed subject blurred, turned to silhouette and disappeared into the nocturnal narratives. He gave us a moment and that was still quite a collection of stories.

And reflecting on landscapes and stories, following Kasun’s observation, it occurred to me that we are surrounded by libraries and galleries; the one housing splendid stories, heroic and tragic, hilarious and sober, brief and lengthy, and the other on whose walls hang paintings that cannot be bought or sold, stolen or defaced.

Of course there’s that added allure in things spared human touch. This is perhaps why some people like to travel, to hike, to explore places that cannot be reached by vehicle, not even a bicycle. Kasun, like Nihal, has offered us glimpses of such libraries and galleries. Then again, there are ‘peopled’ landscapes that are in stark contrast to a wind-sculpted tree in a tropical montane forest. Cityscapes, in a word.

Less ‘peopled,’ but certainly carrying human signature, would be paddy fields, terraced and un-terraced. Wevas. Faraway temples. Even a set of windmills. Or proud posts carrying electricity. One could theoretically conjure any number of images. Landscapes or rather ‘scapes,’ one and all. Each with a mood, a feeling, and expression or multiples of the same. Each, a personality.

Question: do we notice these personalities that have stories to tell? If we do notice, do we stop to read? Don’t we have enough time? Is it that we can’t quickly draw an arrow from ‘the possibility of a story’ through ‘reading’ to some tangible benefit?

Nihal Fernando read. Kasun reads. Nihal Fernando shared his stories as does Kasun. We are enriched, certainly, but we can also enrich ourselves, perhaps in some smaller way. We are, after all, surrounded by moods, feelings and expression.

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

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On 'true' national anthems

Way back in the late eighties, a group of students silenced politically on account of holding views that were at odds with those of the ‘Action Committee’ of the University of Peradeniya, ventured into theatre. The intention was probably not one of finding a different platform to express themselves, but that invariably happened.

The late Gamini Haththotuwegama, known variously as GK, Haththa and Hatha, widely accepted as ‘The Father of Street Theatre in Sri Lanka,’ who was at the time a visiting lecturer attached to the English Department of the Faculty of Arts, organised a ‘drama workshop.’ Haththa casted the  ‘outcasts’ into various roles over the course of several months.

‘Sarasavi Kurutu Gee’ or ‘Campus Graffiti’ was episodic. It was a collage of skits that commented on the condition of ‘studentship’ of those tense times which the students themselves didn’t really know would quickly move into a theatre of abduction, proxy arrests, torture and mass slaughter (there’s no other word for what happened in 1988-89).

This was pre-bheeshanaya, but the ominous clouds hovering over the entire island did not spare the universities either. So they ‘played’ the conditions of not just studentship but citizenship. At least one of the players, a student from the Medical Faculty named Atapattu, would be ‘disappeared’ not too long afterwards. Most of the boys had to endure untold hardships just to survive.

Typical of Haththa’s productions, ‘Sarasavi Kurutu Gee’ was full of political commentary, but laced with humour, song, clever turn of phrase and theatrical innovation, throwing light on what was as well as what was likely to be. All of these were evident in one particular piece or episode.

There were three chairs on stage. Three players were stretched out on their stomachs behind the chairs, their heads protruding through them. The audience therefore could see just their faces. They were supposed to be television presenters of news. So they ‘read’ the news. At one point another player walked on to the stage, which was by the way the Sarachchandra ‘Wala’ or the Open Air Theatre. He recited a few lines from Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth.’

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
      — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
      Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 
      Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
      And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

If I remember correctly, it was just the first four lines or maybe just the first two. Sinhala and Tamil versions were also recited. Then there was silence.

Then one of the presenters blurted out, ‘ගැහුවා නේද වැරදි ඇන්තම් එක! ගහන්නයි කිව්වේ හරි ඇන්තම් එක! (Essentially, ‘That was the wrong anthem, now you’d better sing the correct anthem!)’ And so the all the players, huddled at that point on one side of the stage, broke into song.


Jana Gana Mana Adhinaayak Jaya Hey,
Bhaarat Bhaagya Vidhaataa
Panjaab Sindhu Gujarat Maraatha,
Draavid Utkal Banga……Sri Lanka….

Vindhya Himaachal Yamuna Ganga…..Kadinam Mahaweli Ganga

‘Sri Lanka’ as just another state of India, following the Indian invasion a year before. The Mahaweli not just another ‘Indian’ river but an ‘accelerated’ one; the reference being to the Accelerated Mahaweli Development Project of the then government.

Funny. Political. Creative. Nicely executed as well — the full audience appreciated.

And today, with all the noise about the national anthem, it’s alleged butchery and its alleged meaninglessness, I wonder which country’s national anthem would we sing (with a few twists) if 'Sarasavi Kurutu' Gee was played again with adjustments for time, personality and event. The Indian, Chinese or the American?

Come to think of it, we could have played with the lyrics of the Sri Lankan national anthem too (the tune after all is the same as ‘Olu pipila vila lela denava,’ and there’s nothing sacrosanct about music, lyrics and even nation and nationality).

People have a right to criticise. People have a right to ridicule. People have a right to scoff, innovate and critique. They will hurt feelings and they will in focus, target and brashness reveal who they are, where their loyalties lie and which flags they would love to have flying over land and citizenry.  

Meanwhile, there’s a country that bears the full weight of leaders’ sins, citizen-complicity and machinations of enemies, within and without.

This is not a time to sing the national anthem, I feel, unless one feels it is useful to whip up courage and resolve. This is the time to do what is necessary to make it possible to sing all the songs that resonate nation and citizen, history and heritage, vision and moment, in whatever language we like.  

The players went to their hostels after the show. The time for song and laughter came to a halt. They scattered to places of refuge not too long afterwards. Blood was shed. No one talked of flag and anthem. A nation survived.  

malindadocs@gmail.com

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is 187th article in the new series but it was not published perhaps because it was seen to be controversial. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below] 

Other articles in this series: 

Do you have a friend in Pennsylvania (or anywhere?)

A gateway to illumination in West Virginia

Through strange fissures into magical orchards

There's sea glass love few will see 

Re-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha

Poisoning poets and shredding books of verse

The responsible will not be broken

Home worlds

Ownership and tenuriality of the Wissahickon

Did you notice the 'tiny, tiny wayside flowers'?

Gifts, gifting and their rubbishing

History is new(s)

Journalism inadvertently learned

Reflections on the young poetic heart

Wordaholic, trynasty and other portmanteaus

The 'Loku Aiya' of all 'Paththara Mallis'

Subverting the indecency of the mind

Character theft and the perennial question 'who am I?'

Innocence

A degree in people

Faces dripping with time

Saji Coomaraswamy and rewards that matter

Revolutionary unburdening

Seeing, unseeing and seeing again

Alex Carey and the (small) matter of legacy

The Edelweiss of Mirissa 

The insomnial dreams of Kapila Kumara Kalinga 

The clothes we wear and the clothes that wear us (down) 

Every mountain, every rock, is sacred 

Manufacturing passivity and obedience 

Precept and practice 

Sanjeew Lonliyes: rawness unplugged, unlimited 

In praise of courage, determination and insanity 

The relative values of life and death 

Feet that walk 

Sarinda's eyes 

Poetry and poets will not be buried 

Sunny Dayananda 

Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990) 

What makes Oxygen breathable?  

Sorrowing and delighting the world 

The greatest fallacy  

Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi 

Beyond praise and blame 

Letters that cut and heal the heart 

Vanished and vanishing trails 

Blue-blueness 

A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya 

The soft rain of neighbourliness  

The Gold Medals of being 

Jaya Sri Ratna Sri 

All those we've loved before 

Reflections on waves and markings 

A chorus of National Anthems 

Saying what and how 

'Say when' 

Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra 

The loves of our lives 

The right time, the right person 

The silent equivalent of a thousand words 

Crazy cousins are besties for life 

Unities, free and endearing 

Free verse and the return key

"Sorry, Earth!" 

The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis 

The revolution is the song 

Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins 

The day I won a Pulitzer 

Ko? 

Ella Deloria's silences 

Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness 

Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable  

Thursday! 

Deveni: a priceless one-word koan 

Enlightening geometries 

Let's meet at 'The Commons' 

It all begins with a dot 

Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation 

'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone 

On sweeping close to one's feet 

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

To be an island like the Roberts... 

Debts that can never be repaid in full

An island which no flood can overwhelm 

Who really wrote 'Mother'? 

A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing 

Heart dances that cannot be choreographed 

Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember 

On loving, always 

Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal 

When you turn 80... 

It is good to be conscious of nudities  

Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday  

There's a one in a million and a one in ten 

Gunadasa Kapuge is calling 

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California 

Hemantha Gunawardena's signature 

Pathways missed 

Architectures of the demolished 

The exotic lunacy of parting gifts 

Who the heck do you think I am? 

Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha' 

The Mangala Sabhava 

So how are things in Sri Lanka? 

The most beautiful father 

Palmam qui meruit ferat 

The sweetest three-letter poem 

Buddhangala Kamatahan 

An Irish and Sri Lankan Hello 

Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership 

The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked 

Pure-Rathna, a class act 

Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna 

Awaiting arrivals unlike any other 

Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles 

Matters of honor and dignity 

Yet another Mother's Day 

A cockroach named 'Don't' 

Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth 

The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara 

Sweeping the clutter away 

Some play music, others listen 

Completing unfinished texts 

Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn 

I am at Jaga Food, where are you? 

On separating the missing from the disappeared 

Moments without tenses 

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

The world is made of waves 

'Sentinelity' 

The circuitous logic of Tony Muller 

Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya' 

Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist 

Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses 

Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced 

Some stories are written on the covers themselves 

A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature 

Landcapes of gone-time and going-time  

The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie 

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

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

The books of disquiet 

A song of terraced paddy fields 

Of ants, bridges and possibilities 

From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva  

World's End 

Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse 

Street corner stories 

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

The book of layering 

If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain 

The world is made for re-colouring 

The gift and yoke of bastardy 

The 'English Smile' 

No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5 

Visual cartographers and cartography 

Ithaca from a long ago and right now 

Lessons written in invisible ink 

The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness' 

A tea-maker story seldom told 

On academic activism 

The interchangeability of light and darkness 

Back to TRADITIONAL rice 

Sisterhood: moments, just moments 

Chess is my life and perhaps your too

Reflections on ownership and belonging 

The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha 

Signatures in the seasons of love

To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows 

Sirith, like pirith, persist 

Fragrances that will not be bottled  

Colours and textures of living heritage 

Countries of the past, present and future 

A degree in creative excuses

Books launched and not-yet-launched 

The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains 

The ways of the lotus 

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

The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville 

Live and tell the tale as you will 

Between struggle and cooperation 

Of love and other intangibles 

Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions 

The universe of smallness 

Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers 

Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills 

Serendipitous amber rules the world 

Continents of the heart

  

The allegory of the slow road  

 

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