The land that time should not make us forget

 

Sometime in the late seventies or maybe in the early eighties I watched with considerable fascination a film titled ‘The land that time forgot.’ This film, based on a novel of the same name in 1918 by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs is probably better known as the creator of Tarzan, a character that fed white supremacist ideologies. Burroughs’ vivid imagination gave us dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals long before Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel, did.

The book, and the film of course, are temporally located at the time of the First World War when the crews of two vessels, one British and another German, astray in Antarctic waters chance upon an island which, contrary to all known natural processes, thrives in a climate that supports all kinds of species, long thought to be extinct.

Watchable.

This is not about the films, the books, authors or story-lines, but simply the title: The land that time forgot. I was reminded of this title while thinking of Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth.’ That, and his ‘Black Skin, White Masks.’ Essential reading, so I tell my daughters, for these are basic texts that reveal the ways in which peoples in countries such as ours which have been ravaged and plundered continue to suffer the enduring effects of such processes.

Fanon, in ‘The Wretched of the Earth,’ speaks of land, hence the above preamble: ‘For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.’

Land. Key.

Land theft has been the A-Z of all invasions, colonial or otherwise. It is done at gun-point. Slaughter is at the heart of the process. Gripping, twisting and destroying minds can and do facilitate. This is why Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, ‘first we at the land and they had the book; then they said, “close your eyes, let us pray,” and when we opened our eyes, we had the book and they had the land.”’

Land of course, straight up, is territory. It is typically imagined in terms of extent, square-somethings. It yields food and dignity, Fanon was correct. Wrest it away and those on the land have no place to stand, metaphorically speaking. They are forced to beg for tenurial arrangements, they are forced into relations of production that are exploitative and moreover erode dignity and self-belief in innumerable ways. That’s what the Waste Lands Ordinance 1 of 1897 did, quite apart from straight-forward annexing of territory. The history of the world, come to think of it, is all about processes associated with land theft and resistance to imminent robbery, with fire-power or legislation.

But I am thinking of ‘land’ as a metaphor. Land as a metaphor for all things owned or are associated with entitlements of one kind of another. Culture, for example. History. Heritage. Lifestyle. Things and processes which confer meaning and value to our existence. When these are denied or, worse, when we are taught to consider such things as being of lesser or no value whatsoever and, even worse, are persuaded to consciously and actively join hands with the thief to dismiss, denigrate and even vilify it all, then and then alone are we truly dispossessed.

This process involves masks. We have black (or brown) skins, but since we are unable to replace such colours with white, it is suggested that we wear white masks. Not everyone needs such persuasion of course, They are many who wear masks for reasons of convenience if not conviction. It’s about mimicking the oppressor and indeed emulating the oppressor in the acts of oppression. Success for the oppressor, at least in this respect, arrives when the wearer of masks truly believes that the mask has replaced original skin. Doesn’t happen that way, but belief is a powerful lie that can enable the sustained development of oppression, the attendant extraction of wealth and further colonisation of minds.

Mask-wearers willingly concede territory. They are ever-ready to be consoled by crumbs yielded by negotiating the terms of oppression. They give up land. They support land-theft. Then they protect thieves and justify theft. They convince themselves that crumbs offered as compensation are actually feasts. They wear their masks with pride. They are divested of dignity and hurrah the divestiture. They are among the worst of those who can be called the wretched of the earth. Caricatures. Cartoons. Approvers of crimes against humanity. Applauders of those who would erase history, obliterate heritage and force fellow-territorials to be subjected to insults and humiliation.

Land is not just square-somethings. Land is made also of heart and mind, of knowledge and knowing, of the conscious and a conscience. That land, torn and yet beautiful, has seen the ravages of time. It carries signs that yell, ‘forget, forget, forget!’

We should not.

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

 

Read more

Hunters and 'victims' of immemorial light

‘Let’s leave something beautiful for others,’ suggested my friend Tharindu Amunugama. What that would be, we didn’t discuss. He was explaining to me a photograph he had sent me; a view from a high point in the Buddhangala Monastic Complex, located deep in the jungles around seven kilometres from Ampara.

Dawn.

He had stayed overnight at the aranyaya, having been drawn there by photographs others had posted. He had been intrigued by photos of Buddhist monks sweeping the premises in the morning. He wanted to capture it all at dawn, which is his preferred light-time, and from angles he believed would best do justice to what he calls ‘the oasis of silence.’ And he did. He didn't anticipate that he would be treated to a discourse on luminosity. He was.

The light, he says, was purely serendipitous.

Tharindu told me that the things that fire our imagination such as the stories we have heard, for example what Mayaranjan had recorded in Digamadulle Arshcharyaya (The magic of Digamadulla) way back in 1957 and that what we have seen get imprinted in our minds. 

'So in a way we are hunters looking for those elusive moments. They are timeless in the sense that they have been there for ages and seen by others as well. And yet they are fleeting.’

He reckoned that what he saw that morning would be an everyday sight for the resident hamuduruwo and that it probably lent towards a calming of the mind. Such as it must have for those who came before, dating back to the pre Christian era when the monastery was first built according to the archeological record.

That’s all in the literal domain, but Tharindu knew that it was true metaphorically as well. The light has to be captured at the right time, from the right angle and vantage also comes into play. And then it’s gone. All things are transient. The sun was always there. There have been innumerable mornings but even when they were in fact breathtakingly beautiful, each set of eyes that gazed upon that far-off horizon in the direction of what’s today called Sammanthurai may have drawn different meanings.

Those eyes are gone now. As will go the eyes that have helped capture, temporarily, the serendipity. Tomorrow, other hunters of light may also obtain insights that help unscramble eternal verities less tangible.

I haven’t been to Buddhangala, Ampara. I plan to go there one day. 

Right now, seated in a coffee shop in Philadelphia, I can still relate to what Tharindu said. Sometimes the dawn is as the word describes. Light is light, so to speak. Buddhangala is in Ampara. And yet I find that a few words uttered by a kindred spirit have unlocked a fissure in the time continuum, rendered distance meaningless, unscrambled a photograph, diffused captured light and re-integrated metaphorical strands. Enlightenment comes in layers of unequal width, sometimes so intertwined that it resists unraveling, but sometimes making us stop and think of dawn, light, meditation, capture, share and immutability in ways we hadn’t thought possible.

There are hunters among us. Some travel far and don’t care about things such as accommodation; they just want to be there when light arrives. Light does arrive or, put another way, light there always is. Dawn makes it feel more real because we know that it emerges from night and therefore lends to the notion of there being an ‘elusive moment,’ that which wasn’t there before and will be gone almost immediately. That light can be captured. That light, thus captured, can fire someone’s imagination enough to prompt a hunt for similar light, similarly elusive moments.

Then there’s light that’s always there, yes, before our very eyes, in the darkest moments, in the heart’s unbearable solitude, in the helplessness of circumstances, the landscapes rubbled by relentless bludgeoning, the euphoria of victory, the abyss of defeat, the first tear conceived by love, a smile that had never materialised before, the almost chance hello that led to a conversation so long that you wonder if it is just a continuation from a different lifetime or of someone else’s thoughts and so, in these and other ways, we create or recognise our own ‘Buddhangala at Dawn.’

What is the beauty we can leave behind, I ask myself. We can hunt and capture elusive moments. We can trap light. We can be pursued by moments which we may never notice because they come camouflaged in everyday clutter and the tyranny of routine. We can be surrounded by light and yet swear by darkness.

The Buddha, in the Pabhassara Sutta or the discourse on luminosity offers some light:

‘Luminous, monks, is the mind. And it is defiled by incoming defilements. The uninstructed run-of-the-mill person doesn't discern that as it actually is present, which is why I tell you that — for the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person — there is no development of the mind. Luminous, monks, is the mind. And it is freed from incoming defilements. The well-instructed disciple of the noble ones discerns that as it actually is present, which is why I tell you that — for the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones — there is development of the mind.’ (Anguttara Nikaya)

I don't know what beautiful thing(s) I will leave behind. I don’t know if I can either. But some light fell at a particular time, at a particular angle and was captured in a particular frame from a particular vantage by a particular hunter inspired by something beautiful that some other person or persons had scribbled on his mind. I am a recipient.

We all are. And can be. 

['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 the 272nd article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

malindadocs@gmail.com

Other articles in this series: 

The unbearable lightness of pause

Magic carpet to Dutuwewa

Gauze, blood-stained and torn

Seasons bookeneded by leaves on park benches

Writers' blocs and dead lines  

Stop Press!

The world shall not be emptied of poetry

Reclaiming the everyday with solidarities of tender fury

An Aussie broke a SLan heart in Ind for Afg

Writing magical pieces about something beautiful when time permits

The scattered archives of art and protest

Friendship that keep friends permanently at 16

Amherst: silent, rural, poetic and serendipitous 

The virtues of unemployability

A breathless hush at the close

Ahmed Issa, fearless and audacious in Gaza

Let us take a deep breath now...

How Grolier Poetry writes 'Harvard Square'

Let us write beautiful poetry

Following children and their smiles

Let's plant words in cracks and craters

Re-weaving lives and love

When the earth closes upon us...

Let us now march to the battleground of words

The most pernicious human shield

Who bombed Frankfurter Buchmesse

The truly besieged 

Love's austere and lonely offices

The mysteriously enjoined in the middle of nowhere

Serendipity now!

Reflections on the unimaginable 

Jackson Anthony is a book and will be read 

A village called Narberth Bookshop

Gateway drugs to A-B-C

'Irvin' and other one-word poems

Earth pieces Kerala and Sri Lanka

Obligation as bomb and ocean

In the land of insomnial poets

In and out of shadows

Over to Eve

When you don't need an invitation, it's home

When the Canadian House of Commons applauded a Nazi...

Touching the touch-me-nots

The importance of not skipping steps

No free passes to the Land of Integrity

Hector Kobbekaduwa is not a building, statue, street or stamp

Rajagala and the Parable of the Panner

Let's show love to Starbucks employees!

You've got mail?

Octavio Paz and Arthur C Clarke in the stratosphere 

Enduring solidarities 

Coco 'Quotes' Gauff!

9/11 and the calm metal instrument of Salvador Allende's voice 

What a memory-keeper foregoes 

Whitman, Neruda and things that wait in all things

Thilina Kaluthotage's eyes keep watch

Those made of love will fly

Profit: the peragamankaru of major wars

Helplessness and innocence

The parameters of entirety

In loving memory of Carrie Lee (1956-2020)

Mobsters on and off the screen

Transfixing and freeing dawns

We're here because we're here because we're here

Life signatures

Sha'Carri Richardson versus and with Sha'Carri Richardson  

A canvas for a mind-brush

Sybil Wettasinghe's shoes

Love is...

A stroll with Pragg and Arjun along a boulevard in Baku

Meditation on tree-art

Daya Sahabandu ran out of partners but must have smiled to the end

Gentle intrusions 

Sleeping well

The unleashing of inspiration

Write, for Pete's sake

Autumn Leaves Safeness

 Sapan and voices that erase borders

Problem elephants and problem humans

Songs from the vaekanda

The 'inhuman' elephant in a human zoo

Ivan Art: Ivanthi Fernando's efforts to align meaning

Arwa Turra, heart-stitcher

Let's help Jagana Krishnakumar rebuild our ancestral home

True national anthems

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

 

Read more