What if there’s a law saying you should eat your own trash?

Courtesy ft.lk

Beauty is context bound, this everyone knows.  Depends on angle. Lighting.  Mood. Things like that.  It is made of particular configurations of elements.  Take one contributing factor out and that which was thought to be beautiful would appear plain.  We can of course compensate with memory and still say ‘beautiful’ but that’s a life-trick and self-delusion. 

I am thinking of what the wind does.  What happens in the air. Up in the sky.  Treetops swaying. Music of leaf. The moving poetry of cloud formation. Colours at dawn. Sunset colours. Birds. In formation. Swoop of a Kingfisher.  And a polythene bag, a silisili malla that is.  

I’ve seen, like I am sure most people have, polythene bags blowing about.  It speaks of freedom to me.  Being crazy. Out of control.  ‘Un-equationable’.  Just a flimsy piece of something floating around without definite trajectory, without destination or direction.  It gets caught in a tree, stays there or is pulled away by a gust of wind, lift suddenly, floats down as though it is landing-time and then when you expect the show to be done takes off again.  You don’t want it to stop. 

I can watch kites for hours. I could watch the polythene bag dance for hours too, if that’s how long the show is going to take.  These are windy days.  I could, I suppose, initiate a polythene bag dance. It is so random that if one bag doesn’t take off, I could toss another one with a wish and a whistle.  And another. And another. Until one of them obliges.  Should I, though?

It is one thing to enjoy the spectacle produced by the chance union of polythene bag and wind and quite another to play marriage-broker.  It’s not about the wind, but of the polythene.  The dance is beautiful to watch, but it remains chance configuration of element, one out of a million in which the polythene factor can figure whereas most other elemental soups featuring this ingredient would be indigestible. 

Go to the nearest supermarket and try this out.  There would be a mini pharmacy. Ask for a box of tablets to alleviate aches and pains (yes, I am leaving brand name out here). Chances are the person at the counter will put the box in a tiny polythene bag.  Try it in different shops, with different products of varying sizes and bulk.  Most times, the well-packed article (this is the age of packaging; that’s more than half the cost and an important element of marketing) will be ‘re-packed’ as it were in a polythene bag. Most times if you say you don’t want the bag, the person at the counter will give you a strange look. If you whisper, ‘polythene’, some would nod and smile.  Some would not. If you say one more sentence indicating the harm that polythene does to the environment, even they would understand. 

It is not a question of not having the necessary information or being ignorant.  Habit, I think.  Convenience breeds sloth.  We are lazy.  But if we ask ourselves each time we pick up something from a shop and it is tossed into a polythene bag whether we really need it, 9 times out of 10 the answer would be ‘no’.  We’ve made it too easy for ourselves.  When we do something we really should not do or could very well avoid, we still do it because there’s no pain of punishment, no moral standard or ethical imperative providing guidance.  The polythene bag can be tossed into the garbage.  It quickly becomes ‘someone else’s problem’.  Not really, because these things come around to haunt us or our children. ‘But that’s later, buddy’ is an easily available dismissal isn’t it? 

I know it is not convenient for people to go around with a wicker basket all the time, just in case you need to rush into a shop to buy some biscuits or sugar.  We could do that, however, on occasions when we go shopping.  We know, in such situations, that we will be purchasing and that whatever we buy is more than likely to be thrust into a polythene bag and given to us. Repackaged.  We have a problem in disposing the packaging but we happily add to the problem.  The reason is simple. We can’t dispose the polythene, but can displace both polythene and problem.  Temporarily.  The repercussions will come sooner or later but we can’t really trace it back to error and callousness on our part.  We will not feel guilty. 

Here’s a mechanism that might help us be more responsible. Imagine that there’s a law which says ‘deal with your own trash’. You will immediately wonder what you are going to do with the polythene.  You will have to collect and sell it to a recycling outfit.  You will most definitely ‘reduce’.  You will think about ‘recycling’.  You will ‘re-use’.   

You can’t toss them into the wind with love and prayer really because sooner or later your neighbour is going to get upset.  And if you are a decent human being, you yourself will be upset.  There are other things to wrap with love and send off with prayer. Not polythene. 

msenevira@gmail.com

*First published in the Daily News, August 5, 2010

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Stephen Harper and necessary commiseration

Does Canada deserve this embarrassment?

Politicians must continuously shape and reshape word to fit exigency.  They often don’t realize that when the expedient door is opened those outside get to see some of their insides.  Most often there are no half-way measures.  The door has to be fully opened or kept shut. Open it and it’s like dropping your pants.  It’s not always a beautiful sight.  I am thinking of poor Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. 

Harper is reported to be campaigning aggressively ‘to pressure Sri Lanka on human rights and political reconciliation’.  He’s stated that he will boycott the 2013 Commonwealth Summit in Sri Lanka if Sri Lanka’s government ‘does not show accountability for human rights abuses and take steps to reconcile with the Tamil minority’ and has wanted others to follow suit.  His Foreign Minister, John Baird, has complained (!) that ‘Sri Lanka barred UN investigators, showed a lack of accountability and used heavy-handed tactics since the war’.  He wants to see ‘action’, his spokesman, Chris Day, has said. 

These are times where mouth-shooting is the order of the day.  There is no necessity, especially after George W Bush’s WMD-related lies justifying monumental crimes against the people of Iraq, for anyone to support contention with evidence.  All that is required, Bush and Blair showed (and Obama, Brown, Sarkozy and their minions such as Susan Rice, Robert O Blake and Hillary Clinton as well as ‘tag-alongers’ like Navi Pillai and Louis Arbour have affirmed), is to have big mouths, big bucks and big guns. 

Just to put the record straight, though, let’s state the facts.  Sri Lanka never barred UN investigators.  The issue of accountability is adequately addressed and anyway the parameters of such exercises should not be determined by some meddling and ill-informed foreigner fed by terrorist proxies.  Most importantly, while the international community (with all its many flaws and crimes of myopia and selective vilification) has the moral right to call out nations with respect to rights abuse and other transgressions, such umbrage should be founded on hard evidence and not conjecture.  If this were not the case, the UN would have nothing else to do than investigating each and every member state because some ill-intentioned members level charges, using the correct language of indignation.

As for reconciliation with the Tamil community, let Harper be informed that the Sri Lankan security forces rescued close to 300,000 Tamils held hostage by the LTTE.  Now that’s a big favour (if indeed saving lives of fellow citizens is not responsibility but favour on the part of the state) he would agree. Of some 11,000 LTTE cadres captured or surrendered, more than 8000 have been reintegrated with society, something that Harper might find impossible to imagine if it happened to be Al Qaeda fighters held in torture chambers, sorry ‘detention centres’ by the USA and its NATO allies.  More than 98% of those displaced have been resettled, and not just in landmine-ridden plots of land but areas where important infrastructure has been restored with all complementary facilities to make for normalcy provided.   If he’s upset about ‘political solutions’, then let’s hear the man enumerate the grievances, especially since his heart bleeds so profusely for the Tamils. 

Enough of ‘record’.  Let’s move to pots and kettles and the colour black, and the assessment of blackness in the relevant utensils. 

First the righteousness. Harper outlined Canadian values: ‘freedom, democracy and human rights’.  For good measure, Harper said that those who do not share these values are considered a threat.  Nice words, but when it comes to application, all I know is that a few weeks after Harper said he will have no truck with dictators, he was making deals with a man who carried out a coup.  Makes me wonder what he means by ‘democracy’.

Freedom.  Harper’s government is trying to push through a new set of electronic surveillance laws that will make privacy history in Canada.  Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada sums it all up: ‘Read together, the provisions of [these bills] would substantially diminish the privacy rights of Canadians. They do so by enhancing the capacity of the state to conduct surveillance and access private information while reducing the frequency and vigour of judicial scrutiny. In essence, they make it easier for the state to subject more individuals to surveillance and scrutiny.’

Human rights.  My fellow Yaka has a comment.  Well, more than one.

‘Tell me the basis on which Harper or any Canadian derives claim to discuss human rights with anyone or anything other than their off-pink navels!  Can they tell us how to take the asbestos they exported to us from our roof and out of our lungs, knowing well that it causes the worst and most painful carcinomas?  And how can we resolve his concern for humanity when an original aka aboriginal aka red indian aka first nations aka native person’s average mortality is 27 years?  Yes, now, in 2011.  Where is he speaking from? Windstruck in Prairie Winnipeg? Mounted on a war horse overlooking the Beaufort Sea? Under the Queen of England’s Hanoverian underwear?’ 

I would be less harsh, but we can’t get around the fact that my Yak friend makes: ‘Canada is NOT as it claims a parliamentary democracy but a constitutional monarchy!’  In fact Harper’s proposals have been backed by the UK, Australian and New Zealand.  ‘Who,’ asks me friend, ‘are these countries?’ and proceeds to answer: ‘Constitutional monarchies! Settler states!’  He puts it well, so I will continue with quote: ‘New Zealand? Give me a fokkin break…..let’s speak directly to the Maoris and the originals!’  Canada recently changed her colonial department from Indian Affairs to Aboriginal Affairs.  Now is that ‘reconciliation’ with the ‘originals’, forget minorities in Sri Lanka who have it better than Canadian minorities have and moreover has no evidence to buttress claims to territory? 

Finally, myopia.  If democracy, human rights and freedom is what count and if these things are what help distinguish friends from enemies as per Harper’s conceptualization, should he not immediately break off all diplomatic ties with his neighbor, the United States of America which led NATO’s massive gun-burst on democracy, human right and freedom in Libya (and of course Iraq and Afghanistan before, where their work is yet to end!)?   The attack on Libya, just like the invasion of Iraq was based on well-crafted lies and the process mimic, tragically, the very transgressions (purported of course) that was used to legitimate the invasion.

More myopia and unpardonable religious fanaticism.  Harper claimed ‘Canada is safer than when al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. (the jury is still out on the architects of that attack, just for the record), but that the major threat is still Islamicism.  ‘Islamic radicals’ are the biggest threat, in other words.  I don’t know.  All I know is that if we were to go by the claimed faith of those who have killed, sanctioned killing, applauded killing and are killing as we speak then Harper would have to conclude that the biggest threat to the world’s pace is ‘Chritianism’.  I personally think that it is corporate greed, but if Harper wants to be religious about it, this is where we have to go.  Only shows the man’s really got something twisted and I am not sure my friend was altogether wrong about Hanoverian underwear. 

There are Canadians and Canadians, fortunately.  Lovely people, at least those I know, have dined with, shared stories with.  Both in Canada and Sri Lanka.  I don’t know Bruce Levy, the Canadian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka.  If I do meet him someday (unlikely of course), I will ask him to convey my best wishes to Canadian citizens, especially those whose lands were stolen and now can expect only to live up to the age of 27.  I will ask him to convey my sympathies to Stephen Harper. 

[an edited version of this article appeared in the Daily Mirror, October 6, 2011]

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Why lament when we can still laugh?

There are moves in Geneva, we hear.  Documents authored by politically compromised and intellectually inept people who lack integrity and have horrendous writing skills have been tabled for discussion in forums chaired by people who have axes to grind and suffer from partial myopia.  Al Jazeera interviewed me a short while ago, asking me for my thoughts.  My response could be summarized as ‘not surprised!’

The commissioning of a panel, appointment of those appointed, scandalous refusal to recognize the malice and incompetence evidenced in the report, and acceptance of tall tales manufactured by politically motivated individuals and organizations who have been as thick as thieves with terrorists all add up to one thing: witch-hunt.  It was not for purposes of securing entertaining toilet-read, clearly. 

Around the same time, the prime minister of a western monarchy called for a boycott of the Commonwealth heads’ confab in Sri Lanka.  Let’s leave aside the fact that there was never a commonwealth but just a common-thief interested only in passing around a common-welt.  The same premier once claimed he had no truck with dictators (re-claimed, I should say) but not too long afterwards was making deals with the man who carried out a military coup against a democratically elected leader in a Latin American country. 

This self-righteous premier stated ‘the kind of values [he and his country] have in the world: freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law’ and added, “those societies that promote those values tend to share our interests, and those that do not tend to, on occasion, if not frequently, become threats to us.”

My friend, who sent me these tidbits observed wryly: ‘I wonder why we get excited about this kinda news…as if we expect something different...as if they can do anything different considering their way of life.’

That’s what I had to tell Al Jazeera. 

So what do we do in this land called ‘damned if we do, damned if we don’t’ that we are living in?  Weep? Submit? I don’t know.  I just laugh. 

I can’t remember where I heard this first, but after some horrendous right-wing crime, there was a slogan some radical had coined that stayed with me: ‘don’t lament; organize!’ 

In the end, we need to be pragmatic.  We need to have a decent assessment of relative strengths.  We need to factor in friend and enemy, their relative strengths and the possible shifts in degrees of support.  I returned again and again to words penned by my father 27 years ago in a boy scout souvenir: ‘…So, if it is not prudent to stand ramrod straight in the face of storms beyond your strength, you must let them pass over you.  Stand firm if you can, retreat if you must; above all, never panic!’ 

There is no need to lament.  No need to get emotional.  What is required is sobriety.  What is required is assessment of strength, correction of flaw, enhancing overall abilities on all fronts, respecting the enemy, treating things with equanimity, figuring out the correct compassion-wisdom mix and doing the best we can without compromising integrity. Our foundation is strong and even if bombardment takes away the walls, rebuilding will not be impossible. 

Time is longer than life.  Empires are born, thrive, decay and die.  The flame burns brightest before it goes out.  I see a bright western flame and I come to conclusions.  It is darkest before the dawn.  I see darkness and I anticipate light. 

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 15, 2011]

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Ocean transcripts speak to me...

Over twenty years ago, one night in August, my friend Mahendra ‘Patta’ Silva and I took a walk by the sea.  I think it was from Bambalapitiya to Wellawatte, along the railway track.  He told me that the sea always calms and explained why.  He said that each human being is calmed by a particular combination of sounds, tones if you will.  The sea contains the entire range, he said, and therefore is able to pick that particular node of sensitivity to the extent necessary for subduing all agitation. 

I like sea-sounds.  In fact I like all sea-things: boats, waves, spray, sand, lines written in the sand by wave-end, shells, colour variation, sea-sky lines and the poetry of colour-agitation at sunset, curve of bay and the stories swept before nostril and sensibility by the wind.  Passing Galle Face Green towards the Continental Hotel in a speeding three-wheeler, the brine heavy breeze told of things ancient and new, kindling memories of places and people marked by encounters  that rolled into life’s footnotes and forgotten transcripts of being. 

I remembered Mahendra and his theory on my way back, again in a 3 wheeler, passing Galle Face Green, not ten minutes later.  I had just been abused in raw filth by a security guard because I hadn’t seen a ‘squad car’ as I crossed the street.   He was followed by a less abusive but equally agitated police officer who insisted that I go far away if I wanted to make a call (I was texting the person I was going to meet). 

About turn. 

I hammered out a few agitated text messages to my friend who wanted me to identify the abuser explaining to him that it’s the bosses who are to blame; that it was my fault was coming in a 3 wheeler (which the security guards might not have noticed anyway), wearing sandals and with shirt hanging out; that abuse is what people who look like me get, have got and will get in the future; and that those who ‘belong’ are probably uncouth, ill-bred thugs who come in flashy vehicles wearing tie and coat. 

It was wonderful to get the elemental backing of things associated with the sea at that point.  I found myself transported to that time of sea-theory and the sharing of stories, of a terrible time to live in and the bliss of love-encounter that ‘irrelevanced’ all terror.  Un-agitated.  I remembered beach histories, from childhood to parenthood; sandcastles and sand temples re-crafted into sand mounds which were dissolved by wave-lap into nothing, by and by.  And how these timeless tales of wave and sand were interrupted by a roar that robbed a child’s smile and left a soaked soft toy clothed in sand granule.

When writing time came around, I was surfing sea-ridden memories.  And like a child digging deep into wet sand, my heart fingers excavated from another August a transcript that makes no sense now but said it all a long time ago.

August dimensionality

The time: after sunset.

Place: nondescript beach on the Western Coast.

There are lights on the sea,

Christmas Islands

somewhere where black sea meets black sky

and on this August night

the Indian Ocean looked so small

and the sky

just big enough for a scorpion

and a hunter:

Small, all things considered.

And far away in this same land without sorrow

serendipity, I learnt,

has been legislated out,

forbidden.

No, no….not forbidden,

Irrelevanced.

the universe of love

stands at the gate,

detained on account of an illegal passport,

expired. 

And when the dimensions of propriety

fall from an exquisite sky

as garland and noose,

when child is made knife

to stab again and again

when the allowed breath

is a poisonous gas

designed to suffocate,

when hands outstretched in innocence

are cut forthwith,

there is little to be said,

for it is after sunset now

and there’s a say-it-all sign

on a nondescript beach on the Western Coast;

it was planted by a midget sea, I am told:

BE SILENT.

The sea has a way of taking care of her many children.  With a wave and a soft swish of wind, turning tear heavy eye into wonderment birthing smile. To this day I have not tested Mahendra’s oceanic theory.  Neither have I heard anyone else echo what could be one of the most precious texts pertaining to the sacred.  Maybe we are blessed to live in an island.  Speaking strictly for myself, I am grateful that the sea works for me. 

[Courtesy, Daily News, August 31, 2011]

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A small-minded big brother out of control

In 1986, Asiaweek ran a story about Sri Lanka.  The piece was dressed with a photograph of Lalith Athulathmudali getting off a helicopter and being helped to the ground by a foreign pilot.  The picture complemented the story.  Not long afterwards, an Indian newspaper called ‘The Hindu’ carried a front page article based on the photograph, screaming that Sri Lanka was employing foreign merceneries to kill innocent Tamil civilians. 

Twenty five years later, small-minded, pea-brained, big brother is still out of control, it seems to me.   On August 16, 2011, this same paper too pot shots with its editorial pea-shooter at Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary. Gotabaya Rajapaksa.  The title was a scream: ‘A brother out of control’. 

‘Two years after defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and eliminating it as a military entity, Sri Lanka is still struggling to emerge from the woods on some important fronts,’ the Hindu tells us somberly.  Sixty years after India became a nation courtesy the invader, unable to unshackle itself from the invader-given name, India is struggling to acquire the basic intelligence to even acknowledge the trees in the thick woods of impoverishment, illiteracy, inhumanity towards and ill-treatment of it numerous subaltern communities, racism, religious fundamentalism etc.  It still doesn’t know whether it is coming or going on Kashmir.  That’s fine.  Ignorance is not a crime.  Arrogance, however is a bit thick.   

India, The Hindu says, is ‘concerned’ that only ‘nominal steps’ have been taken ‘to put in place a progressive political framework to address Tamil grievances’, and this concern, horror of horrors (!), should be noted, it is implied, because India (supposedly a friend of Sri Lanka) ‘stood by the military effort against the LTTE.  Now had The Hindu mentioned how India gave refuge to, offered logistical support, armed and trained terrorists and intervened to save the LTTE from certain defeat in 1987, thereby prolonging the conflict and facilitating unnecessary deaths to the tune of tens of thousands, these sentiments might not sound as hollow.

The Hindu then salutes the mischievous and indeed immoral posturing of rogue televisions stations such as Channel 4, with no mention whatsoever of the bunkum they dish out and of course nothing on the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Indian military in Kashmir, Punjab and elsewhere which are not allegations made by dubious sources with absolutely no substantiation, but established fact.

The Editor of The Hindu, in his/her arrogance inserts a UN stamp to a largely cock-and-bull story put together by an ignorant, arrogant, politically compromised panel lacking in integrity.  The report mentioned was NOT an UN report, as The Hindu claims, but a hodge-podge of rubbish compiled by some people appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to advise him on Sri Lanka.  As the Defence Secretary recently pointed out, the ‘very reliable sources’ referred to in the report didn’t even know his name.  It is indeed pitiful that The Hindu should give respectability to such sloth and ignorance, but then again, being slothful and ignorant him/herself, the sophomoric tendencies of the Editor of The Hindu is understandable.

The Hindu is upset by what is taken as ‘intemperate remarks against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha’ allegedly made by the Defence Secretary.  Gotabhaya had merely stated that if the lady really loves Sri Lankan Tamils as she claims she does (and The Hindu ought to do a piece about how Sri Lankan Tamil IDPs are treated in Tamil Nadu – it is certainly not with love, kindness, fraternal embrace and such), then she should make sure that Indian fishermen don’t encroach on Sri Lankan waters and thereby deny Sri Lankan Tamil fishermen from engaging in their livelihood, an exercise that the LTTE (thanks largely to India) had denied them by launching a debilitating war. 

That’s not vituperation; it’s common sense!  The Hindu seems to think that Jayalalith is some kind of apolitical human rights activists.  Perhaps The Hindu really has no clue about politics, politicians and political culture and is ignorant of Jayalalitha’s chauvinistic and anti-Sri Lankan posturing.  Sri Lanka does not owe Jayalalitha any favours apart from conferring common courtesies.  We are not required to salute her when she talks rubbish.

The Hindu is upset that Gotabhaya had rubbished the 13^th Amendment.  Yes, the Sri Lankan Government was ‘involved’ in the drafting of the 13^th Amendment.  Those who surrender have to sign the terms of surrender and in this sense is party to the surrender agreement.  Sri Lanaka wasn’t ‘involved’ in India arming and training terrorists, or in violating national airspace to drop goodies to the LTTE.  The Hindu knows all this.

The ‘sensitivity’ or otherwise of political solutions is serious stuff for The Hindu.  Well, it’s our business Mr/Ms Editor.  For the record, your country has not been at all sensitive to agreements made on Kashmir, has it? 

The Hindu finds it ‘outrageous’ that Gotabhaya had wryly commented that the British woman who claimed that soldiers had raped women, was herself not raped.  I find it outrageous that The Hindu didn’t do a background check (and it’s all on the internet by the way, video-footage and all) on the lady, who was not just fronting for the LTTE in Britain and in other parts of Europe, but in fact had undergone weapons training in the Wanni. 

Let’s get back to the 13^th Amendment and constitutional reform.  It’s our business, first and foremost. The 13^th was illegal, it was imposed by Rajiv Gandhi arm-twisting the then president, J.R.Jayewardena and accompanied by a brag by this Indian thug who was later assassinated by the very people his mother fed, armed and trained: ‘what we will see is the Bhutanization of Sri Lanka’.  And India is a ‘friendly nation’, did the Editor say? 

The Hindu wants the President to take to task his brother for statements made.  Well, someone should take The Hindu to task for 5^th grade journalism.  Will someone do it?  Nah!  Arrogance and ignorance seem to be the occupational diseases of the Indian political leadership, diplomatic corps and mainstream media.  Pea-brains and small-mindedness seem to be necessary qualifications for those who make the numbers in the relevant institutions.    ‘Out of control’, finally and sadly, seems to be ‘business as usual’. 

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You can only be a nationalist if you are green

‘Green’ is a political colour in Sri Lanka and has been for many decades.  It got perverted by the modernist intervention in agriculture which gave us mono crop cultures, high value crops, chemical inputs and in these and other ways poisoned our soils, crippled diversity and enslaved an entire sector of the economy to the whims and fancies of poison peddlers and machinery manufacturers. 

The modernist ‘moment’ is indeed a moment, when you consider the wide span of known history.  Resident in this moment is a kind of destruction that surpasses in magnitude the total errors of the long millennia that came before.  It is a moment defined by the word ‘over’; over-exploitation, over-reaction, over-consumption and other ‘overs’ that have sent not only over-zealous but everyone and everything overboard.  Almost. 

And now the experts on development are telling us, ‘hey, it’s all wrong, THIS and THAT are what you should be doing!’ where the THIS and THAT were what we were once told is unscientific, inefficient and keeps us underdeveloped.  That which we were coerced into abandoning is now being recycled back to us as some new found formula by the same peddlers of misinformation batting for big time buck-makers.  Now we are told to go green, in a different sense. 

If there’s any lesson in any of these processes, it is to exercise intellect and vigilance and complement such circumspection with unrelenting collective engagement with the pundits and their backers.  In this case, it is time that we went green on our terms, by drawing from the vast wealth of knowledge bequeathed to us in word, artifact and example by our ancestors and resident in treatise, cultural sensibility and custom. 

These are days of nationalism.  Chest-beating, we-vanquished-terrorism, kind of nationalism.  A proud nationalism that is ready to defy the world’s big-name thugs in order to protect the victory secured at great cost and after 30 long years of being held to ransom by terrorism.  Nationalism, however, is not only about meeting external threat.  One cannot be nationalist in part.  There is an internal and internalized enemy, far more pernicious and resilient than the pussy cat in tiger skin that was effectively eliminated in the battle field.  It is about acquired bad habits in all things, especially in how we engage with things pertaining to the earth, her creatures and resources. 

We’ve been quite treacherous as a people and a nation to these things, consciously or unconsciously.  Part of it can be attributed to the inevitable slave-mentality that is produced by five centuries of colonial rule and continuing subjugation in indirect form since independence.  There are things we cannot control, but there are things we can.  It is in this sense that greening, or determining to be more aware of the world around us, what we do to it and how our engagements can become wholesome, less destructive and directed towards correcting flaw that we can be more meaningful in our patriotism.

There are flag waving, anthem singing, satyagrahee patriots.  And there are those who in their every act resist the lies pertaining to appropriate understanding of earth.  Karl Polyani named ‘land’ as one of three ‘fictitious commodities’ (the others being labour and money), but the fiction lay not only in the fact that it is not a ‘discrete product’ due to inherent and sovereign dynamic but in the relation that the human being has to it.  This is the fiction that the true nationalist recognized and rebels again, in thought, word and deed. 

It is in this context that I salute the Central Environmental Authority for instituting a mechanism to reward such green patriots on the occasion of its 30^th anniversary.  At a time when it is imperative that the world factors in environmental costs, it is important that those enterprises marked by conscious, sustained and effective initiatives in this respect are rewarded. 

The ‘National Green Awards’, I am told, seeks to recognize industries, local government authorities, public and private institutions and schools that are ‘green’ in thinking, practice and in outcomes produced.  This initiative, I hope, will help create a consciousness among consumer and producer regarding the importance of ‘being green’ with a view to making ‘greenness’ a sought-after brand attribute.  We must move consciously towards a future where the green value of a brand defines the potential of a brand to survive in a competitive environment. 

We’ve spat on the earth and in doing so, desecrated the work of our ancestors.  This is the time for remorse and a conscious effort to redeem ourselves.  Sadly, it comes not as a choice but an imperative.  Not just for our ancestors, but ourselves and the generations we spawn collectively.  And for the butterfly whose flight path enchants, the call of the koha, the well that was never meant to go dry, earth-turning at ploughing and then again at threshing time, calamities that are natural and not precipitated by greed, arrogance and ignorance, a bird call at twilight and freedom from the fear of contracting yet unnamed diseases. 

There’s a question that every chest-beating nationalist should first answer: are you green or are you not?  A ‘green’ response necessitates a particular kind of being and becoming.  A negative response calls for giving the chest a break. 

[Courtesy Daily News, August 18, 2011]

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