Malinda Words

EDITORIAL

There are two processes before us. In one, a set of judges whose career advancement is tied to decisions taken by a body presided over by a particular individual, deliberates on the constitutionality of a second and simultaneous process that seeks to oust that very same individual. In the second case, a set of people also sit in judgment over the conduct of that individual. The majority of this group share membership in a political party with another set of people who have petitioned for the individual’s ouster.

It is all legal, subject of course to interpretation of relevant constitutional articles, an exercise, as pointed above is as marked by ‘interest conflict’ as the one being determined on. The political battle will be fought with both rule-sword and interpretive-sword. Other arms and ammunition cannot be discounted here, for history is replete with many examples of out-of-court settlement, so to speak, where the settlers don’t necessarily cover themselves with glory.

As things stand, though, personality, error, ego and expedience have taken center stage, where the players strut around as public-interest litigators and are egged on by cheering squads who have their own agenda.

The one thing that is clear in all this is that somewhere down the light a few characters left the stage or rather they were robbed of scripted line and pause. It is an indictment of our society that we haven’t noticed their exits, absences or silence. Ethics has left the building. Integrity has quit. Their clothes have been robbed by the other players who prance around as though they’ve got the garments, undergarments, skin, bone, flesh and organs as well, heart included!

It cannot be by accident that Justice C.G. Weeramantry in this year’s Lalith Athulathmudali Memorial Lecture chose to speak on Judicial Ethics (experts of his speech can be found elsewhere in this edition of ‘The Nation’). One of just 5 individuals to be honored with the title Sri Lankabhimanaya (Pride of Sri Lanka), he is in fact someone who deserves a global title on the same lines, few would disagree. A patriot in the finest sense of the word, Justice Weeramantry’s choice here needs to be read as a serious and tender exposition with malice to none that is acutely aware of the aforementioned processes.

It is not just about the judiciary. He speaks of all the key institutions of the state, the way they relate to one another and how and why they need to be independent of one another, subject to the irreducible non-negotiable: integrity. That’s not something you can legislate for; it is not something you can script in. It is a choice made by the particular individual.

Words (read as laws) are important and necessary but not sufficient, he reminds us: ‘strong words in a constitution regarding judicial independence can very easily be undermined in practice, unless all members of the executive and the public act in the spirit of this constitutional provision’.

This ‘independence’, he cautions, must be tempered with a conscious effort by judges ‘to rise to the highest levels of rectitude necessary to discharge the hallowed duty that rests on them of delivering justice, pure and unadulterated, to those who come before them’. That ‘rectitude’ has been observed, sadly, in the breach.

‘Observed in the breach’ is, equally sadly, not the preserve of the judiciary. The current machinations by movers and shakers in these critical spheres of the state scream for constitutional amendment. And yet, such tweaking can only take us so far.

The doors must not only be opened for the re-entry of integrity and ethics, but it should be ensured that these entities preside over everything that happens.

We are a long way from that and that is because all of us, as individuals and collectives, booted them out of the building. Easy to throw out, hard to recall.

['The Nation' Editorial, November 25, 2012]

I have never met Dhamma Dissanayake’s father. In fact I’ve known nothing about his personal life. I first met him at the end of one of those ‘Common Opposition’ May Day marches which ended at Cambell Park. The year was 1992. I was at the time associated with a small group called the Ratavesi Peramuna. Dhamma was an undergraduate at Colombo University. I didn’t speak to him to them. I only remember him offering some critical comments about the exercise, but I forget what he said.

Since then I’ve known him to be associated with the now defunct ‘X Group’. I’ve known him to take up progressive causes and have appeared with him on radio talk shows. My perception of the man, in brief, is this: intelligent, philosophical, patriotic (but not of the often obnoxious flag-waving kind), endowed with a sense of humor and pragmatic in assessing the can-be-done. He has built a considerable reputation as an excellent speaker but I have never heard him speak. Until last Monday. I heard him deliver the keynote address at an event organized to mark 50 years of social engagement by unarguably our most successful social worker and grassroots visionary, P.A. Kiriwandeniya, leader of the SANASA Movement. The topic was ‘Rural poverty, challenges for SANSASA and my vision’.

This is not a nutshell account of Dhamma’s speech, which was in Sinhala. The transcript, however, ought to be translated, published and followed by a series of articles on the subject of development and poverty, a task that I suggested that he undertake. This is about what he said about his father, admittedly a series of anecdotes that helped frame his argument.

Dhamma said that he was astounded that he, ‘a rich man’, had been asked to speak on poverty. This is what I remember him saying.

He is from Viyaluwa, i.e. ‘Viyali Uva’ (Dry Uva’). The name of the village is Karametiya or ‘Parched Clay’. That says everything. There was one bedroom in the house. That bedroom was also the varendah. It was also the living room. They had a kitchen. It was also the ‘thimbirigeya’, or ‘birthing room’. His mother had given birth to all 10 children in that kitchen. There was, no Obstetrician, no midwife.

‘It was my father who clipped the umbilical cord each time my mother bore a child. He knew a kema that helped ease out the afterbirth if necessary. All ten of us have perfect navels which are more beautiful than those displayed by the girls we see on television. My father is a rich man.’

He recounted: ‘One day my father went out of the house. He had heard that ‘drought donations’ were being collected. When he returned, he just had his loin cloth. Seeing him return without shirt and sarong, our mother called to us to go find out what had happened. She thought that there might have been some trouble. It was like that at home. One should and 5-6 boys would rush out. My father is a rich man. Anyway, he was smiling. He had nothing to give those who came to collect ‘donations’. So he had given his new shirt and sarong. My father is a rich man.’

There were other stories of course. Dhamma’s point was that ‘development’ needs ‘poverty’ much more than poverty needs development. ‘Poverty’ is a must-label for development. ‘Poor’ too. Development is a big-bucks industry and it would go under if there were no poor people. His father was rich, but had to be counted among the poor, like millions of other all over the world, none of whom are starving or complaining. Of course there are those who starve and in need of assistance, but his father and his family were rich.

Dhamma’s father is in his nineties now. He lives in Kara Metiya, Viyaluwa, with his wife. He sweeps the midula almost every day. He chops firewood. He doesn’t listen to his wife, who sometimes complains to the children about his stubbornness. Dhamma doesn’t think he’s wrong.

There are times when Dhamma’s friends visit his parents if they happen to be traveling that way. Some of them find it unthinkable that the old could live alone in that village, rich though they are (a fact they don’t notice of course). His father puts them at ease, pointing out that there’s no earthly reason for him to trouble his children and none for the children to trouble their parents.

Dhamma, a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Colombo, confessed that he is poor today. There’s a big development racket going on. It has been going on for decades. SANASA is a yes-we-can movement that has been doing we-can things for more than a hundred years before Barack Obama came with that line in 2008. We need to do something to subvert the development book. When we write our story, Dhamma said in conclusion, there will be a chapter on P.A. Kiriwandeniya, the appreciation of whose work by many who have known him for many decades was collected in a volume launched that very day, along with a website about the man, his life and times, www.kiri.com .

P.A. Kiriwandeniya is my father-in-law and so I know about him. I did not know Dhamma’s father. I still don’t know a great deal about him. What I know is what Dhamma told us that day. A rich man, certainly. A man to learn from. He won’t come to the Ministry of Economic Development or the Central Bank or the Treasury. Those institutions could visit him though. We can only hope that the relevant officials are still familiar enough with the language of their fathers and mothers to understand what Dhamma’s father has to say. Even if they didn’t they still might have eyes to look around the house and the village of Karametiya and learn something. Even if they don’t, we can. Dhamma says we must. That’s something to remember.

[Published in the FINE Section of 'The Nation', November 25, 2012]

The Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka has issued a statement regarding a brutal attack on the Editor of Uthayan, T Thevananth ‘while covering an event at the Jaffna University’. The missive, signed by Secretary Sundera Nihathamani De Mel, claims that the event was one where students were ‘commemorating those who died during the three decades long northern insurgency’.

There are claims that this was not a ‘Maaveerar (Martyr’s Day)’ event, but a Hindu festival, Karthikai Deepam where lamps are lit and it was just a coincidence that the two (the first associated with the LTTE of course) fell on the same day, generating confusion as well as making for multiple (erroneous and mischievous) interpretation.

Authorities claim that the LTTE is a banned organization and therefore LTTE-related commemorations are out of order. Commemoration, however, does not require a party tag and no law can stop grieving, never mind the fact that grief is routinely used to bolster political projects. Whatever the politics of the moment, Devananth has a right to observe and report. If, as the authorities claim, the students provoked the fracas by throwing stones and Devananth was a victim of the melee, it is unfortunate. Still, no one can argue that he should not have been there, regardless of his political affiliations, what he wishes to celebrate or lament, none of which is material to the issue at hand.

In a separate incident another ‘journalist’, Sujeewa Samarasinghe was taken for questioning on Tuesday night (November 27^th), held for several hours and released. Now Samarasinghe is not exactly a journalist; he is Sarath Fonseka’s Media Coordinator, a legitimate occupation.

Like all people, including journalists, Samarasinghe has to abide by the law. If he transgresses, the law enforcement authorities have every right to apply relevant legal procedures. If this was not done on this occasion it is less a matter of suppressing media freedom than one of treading on citizens’ rights enshrined in the constitution.

The distinction is important because people have multiple identities and one cannot pick and choose which ID to wave at which particular moment. That’s convenience and is patently devoid of integrity.

Devananth knows and Samarasinghe knows which identity-sliver was relevant. Media rights advocates, if they have integrity (and the competence) should similarly strive to distinguish what’s what. It doesn’t happen that way though.

The best example would be Sunanda Deshapriya. His political affiliations and outcome-preferences are more important than his ‘Media ID’ but those who treat him as an authority on media freedom (rightly) do not worry about such things. What is unconscionable is that such people ignore also his considerable track record as a petty thief and a fraud. This is where the name ‘Sunanda Deshapriya’ just cannot hobnob with the word ‘integrity’ and not his close association with LTTE operatives, before and after the LTTE was militarily defeated.

Integrity is important. Without integrity, media personnel are little better than petty political propagandists. Take the case of BBC World Service Journalists Chandana Keerthi Bandara and its Colombo reporter Elmo Fernando applying for Rs. 1,200,000/- each as interest free loans from state banks to purchase cars or vans. These are signatories to BBC contractual caveats pertaining to integrity, including acceptance of gifts which could compromise independence and objectivity in reporting. Bandara, moreover, is associated with the dubious outfit that calls itself Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, with quite a reputation for spinning tall tales which naturally compromises the efficacy of commentary that is based on fact.

What this does is that it makes the work of genuine advocates of media freedom (organized or otherwise) harder. When such people talk of attacks on journalists (such as Devananth), it takes away something. Both victim and advocacy are poorer for it.

For now, though, let it be clear that just as no one, including journalists, is above the law, there is absolutely no way that any infringement on rights (of journalists or others) can be condoned. There is a thing called due process. People who have legitimate occupations must have the freedom to get about their work. A cobbler has the right to mend shoes. A journalist has the right to write about anything he/she considers newsworthy or requiring commentary. He/she has the right to go where ‘news’ may be ‘happening’. He cannot be stopped. Devananth was stopped. This is wrong.

There is a school of opinion which holds that the clergy should not be involved in politics. In fact UNP MP Wijedasa Rajapaksha has called for constitutional measures prohibiting clergy from entering Parliament, which would of course see his party man Eran Wickramaratne being barred as well, a fact which neither individual has dared comment upon. The merits and demerits of such a move notwithstanding there is no escaping the fact that every single citizen has a right to opinion and the expression of the same, subject to the caveats pertaining to character assassination, libel and so on. Everyone makes choices and very few choices are apolitical.

As such, no one can complain about the Maha Nayaka Theros expressing opinions on matters of national import, including that of the present tensions between the legislature and judiciary. They can write to newspapers, make speeches and even express views privately. Whether or not such privately expressed views are thereafter published for purposes unintended is a matter they may or may not know about or care about, but that’s not the point. They have the freedom to express.

The word of the Prelates needs to be listened to by all, of this there is no argument. They may not get it right, but that’s a different matter. They have on many occasions made political choices, some of which have been detrimental to the country and the people, which too one can dismiss as decisions prompted by notions of the wellbeing of all albeit based on incomplete information and inadequacies pertaining to reading the political. Opinion is opinion, however, and as citizens they have the right to express views.

So there is nothing wrong about the Maha Nayaka of the Asgiriya Chapter the Most Venerable Udugama Sri Buddharakkita Thero chit-chatting with anyone, even with the US Ambassador Michele J Sison. The Venerable Thero has every right to talk about anything with anyone; even the US Ambassador and even about the current tensions between Parliament and Supreme Court. The Thero can pass judgment too. By the same token the Thero will also be judged, with all due respect.

Sison asked about the impeachment motion against the Chief Justice, as she is entitled to, and the Venerable Thero responded, as is his right. It was then, not just a courtesy call, but a visit to play agent provocateur as has been the not so side-role of US diplomats all over the world.

Now it would be childish to say that the Maha Nayaka Thero is part of an international conspiracy led by the USA against the Government. The question is, why even bother to discuss the subject with someone whose government cares next to nothing about justice, fair play, decency, propriety and such in domestic or international affairs. It is certainly not something one expects from those who are often referred to as the Mura Devatavo (Guardian Deities) of the nation.

The Venerable Thero perhaps out of courtesy is reported to have referred to acts of friendship. Perhaps, again out of courtesy, the Venerable Thero kept silent on unarguable acts of aggression and enmity. Perhaps out of ignorance, we could add, but let’s err on the side of compassion here. Either way, circumspect ought to have been demonstrated. It was not. Pity.

Sri Lanka is a resilient nation. The people of Sri Lanka lived through two bloody insurrections, three decades of war, and all manner of natural disasters capped by a tsunami that left hundreds of thousands homeless and over 40,000 dead. And still we smile.

When we talk of disasters, however, there is one which we routinely overlook: the 1978 Constitution. This is strange, especially since the 1978 Constitution, both in article and lacuna, veritably presides over the playing out of tensions between the executive and judicial branches of the state (which have spilled over and found expression as tensions between the judicial and legislative branches).

The bone of contention is of course the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) appointed to investigate allegations against the Chief Justice (CJ). The Supreme Court (SC) is currently in the process of hearing a petition querying the constitutionality of the PSC, a process which rebels against the principle of natural justice (where the CJ essentially is part of a process determining the legality of a course of action initiated against her). Those against this move offer that it is pregnant with selectivity and vengeance. Parliament has summoned the CJ to respond to charges and the SC seeks to summon the Speaker.

As things stand, if the contentions of lawyers petitioning the SC are upheld, we would have to conclude that the CJ is above the law. Since integrity, ethics and respect for institutions and posts such as the ‘Chief Justice’ have left the building a long time ago it is unlikely that any of the parties will back down from positions. In a post-1978 Sri Lanka where the executive, legislative and judicial arms of the state have on numerous occasions encroached on one another’s territory, acted in high handed manner, shown unconscionable parochialism, selectivity and malice, the only word to describe things is ‘unfortunate’. One should qualify thus: the only ‘generous’ word.

All this serves only to turn playing ground into happy hunting ground for forces pursuing narrow political agenda which could very well result in Sri Lanka’s sovereignty being compromised and the people’s vulnerabilities further exacerbated. The issue has been politicized from the beginning by all key players, a state of affairs which naturally provides a lot of ammunition for detractors of the regime and general Sri Lanka haters.

Much of it is beyond control of course. Sections of the Opposition, for example, sorely lacking in the proverbial straws to cling to, would naturally find in the CJ a new pretender (like it flirted with former CJ Sarath N Silva and like it leased out, in Sajith Premadasa’s now famous words, the presidential candidacy to Sarath Fonseka). Those who saw the LTTE as a convenient ally in destabilizing the country (and later the Rajapaksa regime) and who now have lost that little money-spinning toy are likewise straw-clutching. Let there be no doubt whatsoever that this issue will be taken up in Geneva in March 2013, even though there is nothing ‘unprecedented’ or horrific about a CJ being impeached.

The best that the Government can do is to resist temptation to play the politicization game.

The poster that was put up in Colombo this morning, with the legend ‘Lajjai Methiniyani’ (Shameful, Lady!), referring unabashedly to the CJ is an example of unnecessary (and distasteful!) politicization of the issue. There is constitutional provision, one can argue. If there isn’t then there is room for relevant amendment. There is a process that’s underway. The Government ought to let it run its course without frilling process and feeding those elements that would make things darker than they really are.

To get back to resilience, it is pertinent to ask whether the current ‘impasse’, so-called, has the attention of the masses that some may say it deserves. If there is ‘concern’, it seems largely hidden. As prominent lawyer and political commentator Gomin Dayasri pointed out if the CJ is not ‘hero-to-be-followed’ in the way that Sarath Fonseka was (for some at least and for some time at least), it has something to do with how the people view the judiciary and the Army respectively. The latter, people feel, they owe something to. Not the former.

What’s happening in the SC and in Parliament therefore has not prompted anything close to mass objection. Moves against the CJ is not covering anyone in glory, true, but on the other hand the CJ’s moves to turn the Judicial Services Commission into a trade union is not eliciting any cheers either. Lawyers and judges have already desecrated the courts by turning them into places where coconuts are smashed to obtain succor from deities who are supposedly amenable to vengeance extracting contracts. The Parliament is and has been home to a lot of hooliganism. If there’s more ugliness in store it wouldn’t surprise anyone. It probably will spill into Geneva in March but that won’t surprise anyone either.

Regimes thrive, become unpopular, survive unpopularity and give way. It has happened throughout history, and as President Mahinda Rajapaksa is reported to have recently told MPs of his party, no one should harbor the illusion of political immortality. Judges, likewise, have and will have their day. They too will pass.

The people remain. They have suffered much and survived much. They are resilient.

Lakshman Joseph De Saram is made of music; few who know him would contest the claim. Like most great talents, Lakshman is self-effacing and humble. We met once when we were both invited for dinner by a mutual friend. We met for coffee and conversation once. Thereafter it has been random. The last meeting was at Hansa Café, a quaint coffee shop on Fife Road where poets and poetry-lovers gather to read and listen to poetry on the first Saturday of each month.

I usually get there when things are winding up because Saturday is not just a working day but the busiest day for anyone working in a Sunday newspaper. Typically, I breeze in and breeze out, promising myself to linger longer each time. Never happens. Last Saturday I got there later than usual. The winding-down itself was almost done. There were about 5 people there, all ready to leave. Among them was Lakshman. He was talking about papaws. I don’t know at what point of his philosophical presentation I entered, but the following is what I caught.

‘A crow shits a papaw seed in our garden and we get enough and more papaw to eat. We don’t have to do a thing. It’s a blessing. But that’s what it is. We don’t have to do a thing. It’s not like that in Finland. They can’t grow anything for months so they have to bust their balls the rest of the year so they won’t starve in the winter. It’s not like that here. We are ok with things, they are not. That’s why they (I guess he was referring to the West in general and not Finland) have to go to the moon….’

‘While we are happy right here on earth…’ I completed the sentence. ‘Exactly!’ he said.

Lakshman was by no means saying Sri Lanka is Paradise on Earth. All he was saying is that we are so rich (in a way) that it is hard to put us down.

He went on to observe that it is hard to get people out to protest. They need to be paid. Well, not all, but many. And it doesn’t cost much, he said: ‘Just a bath packet and 100 rupees’. I think the protest-price is a bit higher than that, but the point is clear. One might argue that the low cost indicates levels of poverty, but it is also true that most protests are ‘good time’ affairs. There is more alcohol consumed on the streets of Colombo on May Day than on any other day, one notes.

People do protest, but sustained protests are rare. That’s not because the powers they stand up to are capable of sorting problems or else squashing protests. They do and that’s certainly part of the story. One of the things that authorities count on routinely is protest-fatigue. And then there’s Lakshman’s theory too. People can just be and be happy about just being. This is why, perhaps, those who do opt for the fire-and-scream way of doing things regularly lament ‘The masses are asses’. They don’t stop to reflect that they themselves are mart of the assy-masses, coming out and spouting slogan only on the rare occasion and doing the do-my-thing at other times.

Except when it really, really matters. Like when pinned against the wall. There was a time, recently, when they did opt to stand and stand together. That was when they had enough of Eelam mythologists and their journey-companions bullshitting the country about the LTTE’s invincibility and/or the legitimacy of attempted land-theft. They stood and prevailed. Then went back to whatever they happened to be doing, including the bickering about things not being great and doing the getting-by with smile and shrug, grin and bear. And the occasional protest, of course.

This is why when a ‘regime-weary’ bunch of people in Colombo ‘regime-weary’ called for a replication of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, there were no takers. It is not that people love this regime of course. Whatever antipathies they may have, they are probably very different to the problems that the aforementioned regime-wearies harbor. The latter are essentially upset that some people who they are not friends with are doing what they wouldn’t mind their friends to do. The former probably understand that they get the short end of the stick either way, the only difference being familiarity or otherwise with the particular stick.

Not everyone waits for crows to shit seeds of course, but then again only a very few among those one expects to be so hard pressed that they would come out and protest, camping out until Regime-Change Day, would not be benefitting from crow-shit seed.

Some might say it’s a curse. In a different context, someone like Lakshman would say ‘blessing’. I would concur.

There is water and there are water songs. All kinds of water songs. All kinds of water bodies in words and musical arrangement. That’s not unusual, considering that no poet looking for a metaphor or moved by what his or her eyes chances upon can escape water; water after all covers most of the earth’s surface. In fact we are mostly water-made. It runs in us and through us. Just like air, but unlike air we see water, we feel it and we feel its absence acutely. Air, on the other hand, even polluted air, is there (for now).

Water cleans. Water heals. Gives and gives. We know it is scarce for all its apparent abundance, and so we price it and we steal it. It is our first elemental touch and for some it is water that receives the post-death remains.

Some songs are about waters, some just descriptions and some have but a water-trace, a metaphorical dash to straighten out a crooked line or untidy thought. Each song has its merits and demerits of course, but certain water songs are unforgettable when I think of social, cultural and economic dimensions. Among them is Karunaratne Divulgane’s ‘Kala wawe nil diyawara’ (The blue waters of the Kala Wewa).

Gamata kalin hiru muluthengeta vadinaa

E hitu eliye nena mal podi pipuna
E mal suwande ada lowthuru suwa vindinaa
Kala wewe nil diyawara ape amma

It’s about the worth of a mother. She is the sun, the lyrics explain, that rises first in the kitchen long before that other sun casts its first rays on the village. It is that sunlight which gives life to little blossoms of wisdom. This mother is likened to the waters of the Kala Wewa, arguably one of the finest irrigation works in the country and in the world.

Mothers are priceless and therefore the assessment of a mother’s worth is necessarily an exercise of approximation. The sun cannot be priced and to a Sri Lankan with even the remotest sensitivity to root and genealogy the Kala Wewa too is priceless.

The sentiments are echoed in other songs, perhaps few as eloquent as one from a different time, sung by Nanda Malini:

Kala weven gath diya dothak se

Vatee vatee oba matame vatee

It is not about ‘mother’. It is about love, nevertheless; the romantic kind, another of those ‘priceless’ things that human beings encounter. Again the reference is to the Kala Wewa. The ‘love’ or rather the worth of love, is likened to a handful of water taken from the Kala Wewa.

If Sri Lanka is a corporeal entity of a kind its blood is blue in color. And that’s not because a map showing the rivers of the country looks like a host of blue threads from a geographically central mountainous heart and draws along all directions to the surrounding seas. It is also dotted by innumerable blues, from tiny ponds (polkatu wevas) to kulu weva, gam wewa, wewa,maha wewa and the biggest body of them all, the sea. If blue is one color, green is the other. We are and have been an agricultural people dating back to several centuries before that ace rascal Vijaya set foot in Thammannar. When we are done with our industrial adventure, when the oceans have risen, and the rain that was once transparent, but now red, turns into other colors, when the finger-pointing over carbon emissions has run its course, we will once again look to the earth for the answers we erased from our handbooks of life and which our ancestors didn’t write down but knew and lived.

We will look for water.

A friend told me a few days ago about his childhood. He had been born with a diyasuliya or one of those peculiar twirls atop the head read by the credulous as death-by-water. As a child he would be perched on a tree, watching the waters of the Gin Ganga. He would watch the rafts coming downstream from Baddegama. He saw red flowers floating along not knowing where the currents would take them. Years later Bandula Nanayakkarawasam, one of our foremost Sinhala lyricists, found many ways of working all these things into his songs. Years later he would write a column which was part biographical where he described all these things. And he would suffer the ignominy of having his nieces and nephews reading them, calling him a barefaced liar. The Gin Ganga at that point was a mere trickle. Time and development had done all that.

We are losing are water and what we haven’t lost is being purchased directly or indirectly by multinationals peopled by and serving faraway lands and communities who wouldn’t care one bit if we lived or died.

The world will one day finish fighting over oil. Then the world will fight over water.

I remember a dry time in one of the driest pocket in the Dry Zone, a cluster of villages off the Ella-Anuradhapura road, about 3 kilometers north of Galgamuwa. Each village had a wewa. I spent a couple of months on a project to rehabilitate these wewas. It was basically an exercise in repairing the bunds and the sluices. One day it rained. Hard. The rain swallowed up the radiating cracks on the dust bowls these wewas had been turned into. That ‘dry’ was nothing like the ‘dry’ of other parts of the world. Our ‘Dry Zone’ is quite ‘wet’, in comparison to places labeled ‘dry’ by climatologists. There was enough green in the shrub jungles and home gardens. The rain re-painted it all in a deeper green all the more enhanced by a fresh bursting of light green leaves.

Water changes the faces of people who understand it. It rains and they break into smiles that are beyond description. Asoka Handagama has captured it all, i.e. both the physical and social agency, transformation and determinant that is water in his teledrama ‘Diyaketapahana’, telecast about fifteen years ago.

We curse the drought. We curse the end of drought when it is followed by unceasing rains. We don’t curse ourselves. Even if we didn’t curse ourselves we still don’t do the can-do things, the little-drops of the ditty that talks about how the mighty oceans are made. We just leave the tap running while we brush our teeth, we leave un-fixed the faucet that leaks, we water gardens to add a shade of green when the dew would look after that ‘fixing’. And we cut down trees. And we say nothing when they are cut in the name of city-beautification or development for we can’t wait to go from A to B in half the time we used to. We are too lazy to plant a tree.

Mothers carry us not just for the length of womb-time but all our lives. They give. There comes a time when they are too frail and we are powerless to give them back the strength they lost. The earth is like that. The Kala Wewa is our mother. Dunhina is our mother. The Mahaweli is our mother. The drop of water that was not noticed…that too is our mother.

Our mother is blue in color. She is beautiful. She is not immortal.

There is a thing called matricide. There is a word called matricidal. These refer to the murder of one’s mother. We cannot have enough of ‘Mother’. We can look at her forever. We can take pictures. We can write poetry about her. We take refuge in her. She takes care of us. Not forever. All things are born, they decay and they perish. These waters too and so too the air we breathe. That inevitability does not necessarily mean that our life’s goal is to hasten it.

We are a young planet that might also die young. At the rate we are polluting our fresh water that young-death might be sooner than we believe. ‘Sooner’ here means within the lifetime of our children.

The happiest days of my life are those spent watching water. All the wewas I’ve been to and bathed in have cooled and healed. Rivers and rivulets too. Irrigation canals and drains around the house have been ready carriers of paper boats and tossed leaves. The rain, whatever the size of drop or rate of fall, has always blue-blooded my streams of consciousness. The sea has dwarfed me many times, thankfully.

Water is a song. Water is for singing. Dirge, though, is also a song. We should not get to that kind of singing, but we might.

[Pics by Hiranya Malwatta]

There was a time when the SLBC program titled ‘Subharathi’ was dishing out the Eelamist line (in federalist terms of course). Time passes and that kind of politicking was hoofed out. What we have now is a different ‘Subharathi’ (except for the theme music at the beginning and end of each program). It is, for the most part, like programs in all state media, a forum for the government line. Nothing unusual about it. The guests are considered ‘safe’ I suppose, in that even if they are not necessarily comfy about regime they would not be necessarily comfy with regime-haters either.

This morning (December 3, 2012) the topic was ‘conspiracy’, i.e. against Sri Lanka. The discussion invariably slid to the ‘hot topic’ of the impeachment move against the Chief Justice. I’ve written enough of on the matter, so I won’t go over it all over again.

A caller made an interesting comment. He spoke about the economic system, the disparities and other depravations that remain unaddressed. Shamindra Ferdinando, one of my oldest journalist friends, responded.

‘What that gentlemen said is true. There is a lot of talk about economic growth and prosperity, but the fact of the matter is that when it’s said that our Per Capita Income is US $ 4000, the number is derived by taking Harry Jayawardena’s income and dividing it up.’

What gets divided on paper does not get divided and dished out.

Sure, it’s just an indicator and no one thinks that he or she has some legal right to 4000 US dollars every year. This is the division fallacy which also provides politicians with bragging rights and boosts the ‘national’ feel-good factor, but fools no one, least of all the non-recipient of national prosperity.

There is no national ‘common wealth’, if you want to put it that way. A Beetle Bailey cartoon in the eighties put it well: ‘nothing trickles down except pain’. Of course, we are not a starving nation, but at the same time few would say these are amazing times, economically.

It may be because we are not at starvation point that the vast majority of the people are not taking to the streets, a non-action that could and does lull the powerful into thinking that all is well. It is strange however that the cries of ‘shame’ and ‘out of order’ and ‘unjust’ raised with respect to the impeachment procedure that’s underway, there is very little that these self-righteous objectors have to say about the structures injustices of both institutions and economic system. You do see regular lip-service being paid to old left sentiments on the subject, but that’s limited to May Day carnivals, occasional trade union action and JVP uttering around budget time. These injustice-fighters forget these issues when they bed with the aforementioned self-righteous hordes. Then it’s about politics, in particular regime-change efforts.

Even the calls for system overhaul, interestingly enough, focus on getting the institutional arrangement right but let’s Mr. Economic get off scot free, wiping the grime of surplus extraction off his invisible hands.

In the meantime, there’s this figure of 4000 whose original is a secret and whose residences are mysterious. There are questions that are not being asked.

Whose labor congealed and got printed into the relevant number of currency notes? How much of that labor, in money equivalent, came from those who get to horde an innumerable amount of 4000 dollar ‘pieces’? Is there a justice issue here?

Years ago, when I worked at Upali Newspapers, I met Prof Carlo Fonseka, who had come to hand over one of his books to the then Deputy Editor, my friend, colleague and batch-mate from Peradeniya University, Prabath Sahabandu. As he is wont to do Prof Fonseka could not resist taking a verbal jab at me, all in good humor. I distinctly remember something I told him that day.

‘Sir, all you “Left” people call me names such as Sinhala Buddhist extremist, chauvinist, racist etc., but the Left has conveniently stopped talking about capitalism, stopped criticizing capitalist; I still do.’

‘I know and I appreciate,’ he said. He was not joking.

A decade later, those who like to be thought of as ‘Left’ have let their words follow the dictates of the donor dollar market. They talk of ‘peace’ now and now of ‘reconciliation’; they’ve hopped from tree-hugging to the climate-change bandwagon, while trading occasionally hot commodities like good governance, human rights and election-monitoring.

There are no NGOs to talk about corporate crime, none to take on capitalism; no bucks for these. But they serve, nevertheless. They get paid (whether they like it or not and whether or not they are conscious of the fact) to help people forget Mr. Economy (that lovely pseudonym preferred by Mr. Capital) and all the harm he does to the earth and its creatures (including – and especially -- human beings), all the human rights he violates and the significant role he plays in rendering good governance untenable. I am pretty sure that the movers and shakers among this bunch get more than 4000 US dollars a year. Heck, some probably make that amount in a month.

Shamindra pointed out something else which actually speaks to this 4000 dollar business: ‘It is not about “conspiracy” and “politics”; it goes beyond all that. It is about money.’ Jehan Perera, a well-known and frequently quoted NGO operator once confessed that if the donor bucks dried up he wouldn’t be able to get anyone to join him on a protest. Shamindra is right, therefore.

So we get back to Harry Jayawardena’s annual buck-cake being cut into little slices each worth 4000 dollars. Well, not just Harry but let us say a few hundred of like-minded and like-doing individuals. Between that operation and the number crunching that gives us a per capita income, in figure and not currency notes, there’s a huge lie. A huge racket. And we are buying it, wholesale! Now that, ladies and gentlemen points to THE CONSPIRACY of our times.

The fate of the Chief Justice is now officially in the hands of the Parliament and thereafter the President, in the event that Parliament recommends removal from office. The fate of the dignity of her post, parliamentary procedures, impeachment processes and the nature of power separation between the executive, judicial and legislative arms of the state will remain a matter for constitutional amendment, interpretation and the extent to which the primacy of public will and public trust congeal within these institutions and processes.

Time will tell.

For the last several weeks the rhetoricians have ruled. The law and due process have been overshadowed by a preference for emotional outburst. The nation Is used to parliamentarians behaving like hooligans, so their outbursts don’t surprise any more. However, when lawyers (individuals who are supposed to ponder words spelled out in black and white) resort to smashing coconuts and appealing to astral entities whose existence is fictional, only those motivated by narrow political objectives can cheer.

All things in this world are subject to the timeless truths of birth, decay and death. People come and go. Institutions are more resilient but are themselves subject to alteration. Individuals can resign or be sacked, but the posts they hold survive them. One can impeach a Chief Justice or a President, but one cannot retire the post of Chief Justice or sack the Presidency without risking anarchy unless alternative structures of justice-determination and executive authority, respectively, are legislated.

While political circles have been busy pontificating on the legality of process, pointing fingers about vindictiveness and high-handedness, the manufacture of guilt and so on, there’s been a conspicuous silence about the genesis of the current tension between executive and judiciary, which has translated into a legislative-judiciary battle.

The Constitution provides for appointment and removal. The current debate focuses on ‘removal’. The point is that ‘removal’ is consequent to appointment. The public service does have recognized and established procedures of appointment. Over the years, these rules have been bent for reasons of political convenience. On certain occasions even laws have been changed to facilitate appointment and promotion of favorites and the politically and administratively pliant.

If the CJ is found to have been out of order, then the question that needs to be asked is ‘was she not properly screened?’ It goes for other ‘high posts’ too, including diplomatic postings. Whatever the confusion regarding propriety of impeachment process may be, there is absolutely no doubt that this country woefully lacks a process of screening candidates to important positions in the administrative service and of course the senior most position in the judicial system.

For all its many flaws, the system in the USA is far more stringent when it comes to screening candidates. There are congressional and senate committees where candidates are grilled not just on track record, but decisions made and all manner of affiliation, official, semi-official and private. In Sri Lanka, the notices for submission of public query come late, in small print and are largely ignored. The signature of the process, if there be one, is rubber-stamping.

In the case of CJ-appointments, especially since 1978, we have seen ‘friends’ being favored over seniority and competence. This has led to an erosion of trust in both appointer and appointee. The current tensions make for an ideal situation to revisit the appointing-moment and correct the obvious flaws which have at least in part snowballed into what some have called a constitutional crisis or worse a crisis of the state.

Individuals come and go; systems are more sustainable. Flaw in system naturally lead to error in selection and exacerbate the ill effects of a flawed appointee. The entire script then has to be revised. From scratch. ‘Scratch’ here would be ‘appointment moment’.

If one positive is to emerge from what has turned out to be a bitter and invective-filled process that is unhealthy to society as a whole, then it is a firm decision by all concerned to correct the relevant statutes on selection. If we get it right at the proverbial ‘Square One’, future generations will be spared the hooliganism from all quarters as such we are witnessing today.

['The Nation' Editorial, December 9, 2012]

පින් කේත හෙළ රන් දෙරණේ යලි උපදින්නට හේතු වාසනා වේවා

Pundit W.D. Amaradeva [Pic by Sandra Mack]

There are differences in playing to a full and captive audience in a magnificent theatre, engaging in a light rehearsal at home with table and hand-pumped harmonium or a full rehearsal with an entire orchestra and sophisticated sound system, and in responding to a simple request by an admirer. The place, moment, ambience, sense of occasion and size and character of the audience naturally make for difference in setting and context. For Pundit W.D. Amaradeva however what matters is music and its appreciation, the opportunity to do what he knows and loves best, to experience and make for appreciation.

‘Amaradeva: yesterday, today and tomorrow’ was a show held at the Nelum Pokuna Mahinda Rajapaksa Performing Arts Theater. It was a grand 85^th birthday party for the maestro and his wife who shares his birthday, even though the latter as she always has been was in his shadow. Before the show, there were rehearsals, light and heavy both. Years before, I had the honor of interviewing him, once for the Sunday Island and once for the ‘P.O. Box’ a magazine published by Phoenix-Ogilvy Advertising. On both occasions, he kindly and readily obliged when I requested that he sing.

Pundit Amaradeva does not require request or invitation. One talks with him and as he explains or describes he would break into song. Indeed, his mastery of Sinhala and English, as well as his long and deep association with the classics, was such that his words pour out like music, not one note out of place, not one missing.

His son, Ranjana, observed during a short break at a light rehearsal at his father’s house, ‘this is what makes him happy; to sing, to have people around him who he can sing to.’ At home, like on stage, in practice as in performance, Amaradeva indulges in a heady narrative mix of song and commentary. That night, a few days before the performance, he was explaining how he composed the melody for what is known as ‘The Unofficial National Anthem,’ Ratnadeepa Janmabhoomi:

‘When Sekara (that’s Mahagama Sekera his friend and principal lyricist referred to as the ‘Gee potha’ or ‘Book of Songs/Verse’ to which he, Amaradeva, was ‘Mee Vitha’or wine, following the song-title ‘Gee pothai mee vithai’ or ‘The book of verse and the [glass of] wine’) sent me the lines, I was teaching a raga to some students. It was perfect.’

He mentioned the name of the raag but not being a student of music it did not register. He was at that point surrounded by family and students, both young and old. Ranjana played the table, Subhani, his daughter, was by his side prompting him if he missed a line or word. Sunil Edirisinghe, Rohona Bulegoda and Krishantha Eranda were there to pick him up when necessary. He didn’t stop smiling.

It was the same a couple of days before that when he practices with a full orchestra under the gentle direction of that perfectionist, Rohana Weerasinghe. That was the first practice session in years. Age takes things away. There were lines that were missed and verses that got jumbled. The voice faded on the lower notes. The nuance of melody, however, was a life-twin and the other beat of a heartbeat. He had not been abandoned.

The ‘big day’, therefore, was just another day, just another show, but as always a moment to be happy, to experience fully the exercise of singing and in singing to entertain. To those in the audience, though, it was not just another show, another day. This was moment for renewal and rediscovery, not with and of Amaradeva alone, but with being, with history and heritage, forgotten yesterdays and inhabitable tomorrows.

It was nothing like the ‘Amara Gee Sara’ shows of a different era. No one expected it to be. When the curtain was raised, the artist seemed older than I could remember, even though I had seen him just two days before. When he sang the Sarasvathi AbhinandanaGeethaya his age showed. And yet, imperceptibly, song by song, minute by minute, he warmed to the task, reveling in the moment, each prefaced by Jackson Anthony, at times laboriously and at times with wit and commentary that was less insufferable.

It was not the typical Amaradeva show, as I said. It was a national commendation of sorts, the kind reserved for the best teachers and the most exalted of citizens. He put it best, alluding to the analogy of the fish and water. He was in his elemental liquid, his rasika kela, the admiring listeners. He had his students, the best of them in fact, around him, accompanying him now as chorus and paying tribute with voice and word.

He once said ‘one sings not with vocal chords but with heart’ and said that of all the voices he’s heard, only Nanda Malini’s was heart-made. She demonstrated, both with Udangu Liyan (Proud Women) and with Galana Gangaki Jeevithe (with Amaradeva). In all the duets, the younger voices were stronger, naturally, but when it came to ‘feeling’, Amaradeva was without doubt supreme.

Sanath Nandasiri located the Master in the musical firmament: ‘geyuma meyai’ (this is what singing is), he said, was what Amaradeva taught. True. He set the standard and he set it high, so high that few reached it even on occasion, so high that aspiring to reach it made everyone better.

Apart from Nanda Malini and Sanath Nandasiri, there was Victor Ratnayake, whose rendering of ‘Obe Namin Saeya Bandimi’ was probably the most exquisite piece of the evening. There was also Sunil Edirisinghe, Edward Jayakody, Neela Wickramasinghe, Latha Walpola, Nimal Mendis and Nalin and the Marians, and of course the less visible but as enthusiastic, capable and devoted chorus. They all spoke of teacher and teaching and he responded with anecdote, affection and humility.

The father-son and father-daughter items were not usual. Ranajan, self-effacing, modest and consciously out-of-shadow, did a wonderful rendition of Aradhana, letting the father seal the song with last-line signature. Subhani’s duet was Chando Ma Bilinde, a lullaby that was apt. She had the stronger voice-presence that night.

There were two men missing from the show, one alive and one, sadly, no more. The first, Bandula Nanayakkarawasam ought to have scripted the program, but the script that played contained a clip of the Master done by ITN. It was a 4-5 capture-all that he had written.

Gama amathaka veeda…ohugen vimasanna

Nagaraya maha herunida…ohu soyaa yanna
Rata amathaka veeda…ohu ethi bava adahanna
Gaha-kola, ira-handa, ela-dola, samudura, kurulu-gee
Aee neka diya dam aruma nopenee no-asee giyeda
Ohu esi disi maanaye raendenna…
Me punchi kodevve, ape mau derane
Me siyallama ohuya

‘If you’ve forgotten the village, ask him

If you are lost in a city, go find him
If you forgot the nation, believe that he lives
The trees, the sun and moon, the ocean, bird song…
These and other enchanting things……..should you not see them, should you not hear
Go stand before him, stay within the circle of his gaze.
In this tiny island, in our motherland
He alone is all these things. ‘

Amaradeva, then, is not just marker of singing standard. He personifies for many reasons and many ways who we are as Sri Lankans, what in this country gives pride, where we stand; he defines the horizons we can aspire to travel to and tells us the geographies we cannot leave behind.

This is why, quite early in the program, Amaradeva not just sang Sasara Vasana Thuru but affirmed and underlined his personal wish to be re-born again and again in this land, a wish that Jackson correctly pointed out is the quintessential Jathika Pethuma or National Wish of all Sri Lankans who have any root that has sought and obtained nourishment from the deepest and most fertile of the country’s cultural and historical soil.

The other ‘absentee’ was of course Mahagama Sekara. He was referred to many times, by many people. Amaradeva, as he often does, referred to him as the gee potha and himself as the companion, mee vitha, deftly dodging Jackson’s attempt to establish that the reverse was also true. Sekara was the Book of Verse, Amaradeva the (glass of) wine.

With song, accompaniment, the forgetfulness at times, with lucidity too and of course anecdote, he would have drawn many a tear to many an eye that night. It was not a ‘finale’, and perhaps nothing demonstrated this than his forceful interruption or rather voice-add to a Marians’ rendition of Shantha Me Rae Yaame. He said, without saying it, ‘geyuma meyai!’ To his credit, Nalin acknowledged and expressed regret that they hadn’t met Amaradeva earlier, for had that happened their path may have been different, he said. But he wished him long life, as did everyone else, who in the gratitude of adoration expressed the hope that their own years be added to what’s left of his.

At one point he sang the up-tempo Bindu Bindu Ran which ended with the line pirivara soyaa maa thanikara yanna epaa (Don’t abandon me as you go looking for an entourage). That pirivara never left him, perhaps most of all because he did not leave them, even though he never held them in a vice-like grip. He had, after all, only a voice, but that sufficed, for his is a voice that enters hearts and stays there, a voice that contain the echo of our past and the distinct score of our future, a voice that is undoubtedly the incomparable voice of our nation.

Bandula ended the script to that short docu-film with the lines from one of Amaradeva’s best loved songs, Nim him sevva maa sasare, favorite of lovers and those seeking love or waiting for love’s ‘someday’ return. It could be also about the ties and longings of lyricist and singer to listener/fan (and one another) and also to land.

Nim him sevva maa sasare

Hamuvee, yugayen baendi yugaye
Lanvee venvee varin vare
Oba ha maa ran huyakini baendune

I’ve searched the limits of this sansaara
We’ve met in lifetimes gone
We’ve embraced and parted again and again
(but) you and I are bound together by a single, golden thread.

There is no beginning and no end to timeless things. Like the voice of W.D. Amaradeva. We don’t know where it was born and which territories it has and will enrich. We can but wish this national icon, this incomparable Voice of our Nation, good health and long life. Chirang Jayathu….

[Published in 'The Nation' (FINE Section), December 9, 2012, pics and page layout by Sandra Mack]

When Barack Obama was named winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace, I laughed. I likened the decision to offering a ‘Man of the Match’ before the toss of coin in a cricket match. When Liu Xiaobo was named as winner the following year I was amused. It was "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". I was amused because no North American or European Union writer with ten times Xiaobo’s skill writing extensively on the horrendous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the governments on these continents would ever get a Nobel Prize.

This year they gave it to the European Union and I laughed and laughed and laughed. The EU is on the verge of bankruptcy and its global role has been reduced to one of raising hand to whatever the USA proposes and defending verbally or with silence when silence is a crime all manner of terrorist acts authored by Washington and executed by its potent massacre-squads. The EU is complicit in crimes against humanity and genocide in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention the orchestrated violence in Arab, which Washington spin doctors had the audacity to call ‘a spring’! Rev. Jesse Jackson said ‘Those who own the drones are guilty (of crimes against humanity)’; the cheering squads are guilty too.

‘Just another of those things,’ I told myself and duly forgot about it.

I had forgotten about the Nobel Prize until last week, when I received an invitation from Bernard Savage, Ambassador, Head of Delegation of the EU to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, no less. It was for a cocktail reception. And the occasion….(hold your breath now!)….’To celebrate the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize 2012 to the European Union’. No, I didn’t puke. I guffawed. Uncontrollably.

‘Just another of those things,’ I told myself and duly forgot about it.

They didn’t let me forget. Two days later I get a ‘gift pack’ from the same office; a card holder, a desk calendar, a t-shirt and a pen drive (see pics). I stopped laughing at this point.

Why on earth should I wear a t-shirt with an EU logo? I am not a citizen of an EU country and moreover people like me (brown skinned, born in Asia, Africa and Latin America) are not just discouraged from applying for citizenship but are obstructed, legally. The racism in Europe against non-white is matched only in North America. So this was not a come-hither, do-this, now-wear-the-t-shirt kind of invitation. It’s more like some nosey-parker coming here, doing ‘that’, getting the t-shirt and saving the story in a pen drive, except that the EU Mission in Colombo wants me to be brand ambassador of sorts.

The desk calendar had beautiful pictures, all drawn by a Sri Lankan child from Mawanella, all ‘signatured’ with the EU logo and ‘European Union’ in large font (English) and smaller fonts in Sinhala and Tamil. It’s not that the child or those depicted in the drawings have anything common with Europe or that they are on the same footing with children in that part of the world. The EU has graphically ‘owned’ these people and got an innocent Sri Lankan child to endorse the fact!

It is not one of those things. It is no laughing matter.

It didn’t end there. The EU Mission then sends me a greeting card. ‘Seasons Greetings,’ it said. What season, I wondered. Perhaps they believe this is the season for humiliation and plunder, the season for taking me for a fool and the season for getting me to inhabit their version of my reality.

I thought this was it. I thought wrong. On Thursday I get a ‘Media Pack’ from the EU about the Nobel Prize, replete with a ‘fact sheet’. It detailed ‘how the EU works’, the policies and activities of the EU, and how the EU ‘spreads peace and democracy’. It took the cake. A sunshine story if ever there was one! Nothing of its considerable track record in plunder and genocide, the unwashable blood of all the continents on its hands, the policy of supporting tyrants and endorsing genocidal action in the name of democracy, in the name of peace, and the rampant racism and Christian fundamentalism that defines these countries.

To cap it all, the ‘media pack’ had a beautifully done cover of a white boy and a Sri Lankan girl placing ‘EU stars’ on a Sri Lankan beach.

I had long since stopped laughing. It was tough not to puke.

[Published in 'The Nation', December 9, 2012]

My friend Munza Mushtaq posted a beautiful John W. Gardner quote recently on Facebook: ‘Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.’ It’s a perfection-line which prompted me to reflect on its underside. And so I thought of Thomas Alva Edison who had some pithy observations on failure.

He once said, ‘I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.’ Speaking of those who did not succeed, Edison observed, ‘Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.’ As for the kind of perfectionist genius capable of a Gardner-drawing, Edison said, ‘Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.’

Gardner’s line cannot be about doing things exactly right, without any error whatsoever. Only an arahat would be endowed with a kind of awareness and wisdom to chart an error-free path. It is probably about moving on’, not having regrets even if decisions and execution were error-driven and erroneous. It’s like treating as an article of faith the dictum ‘failures are the pillars of success’. So that which came before and all the pathways chosen, with full knowledge or ignorance, can be looked upon as contributors to a state of happy ‘life-drawing’.

In a practical sense, regret doesn’t make sense. We can’t turn back the clock. Crying over spilt milk won’t return it to the glass in a drinkable state. Best to be mindful of moment and look ahead than indulge in waiting for clock-hand to stop and go the other way. Best to mop the floor so you won’t slip and break your neck.

The line made me think about drawing and erasers. My initial response was ‘Bliss is the art of drawing with eraser’. Sounds silly, I know. Drawing adds, erasure subtracts, after all. But then again, just as white is color, and just as ‘linelessness’ and colorlessness can enhance depth, breathing space, meaning and eye-relief, the eraser can also be an active, positive and productive instrument.

We do it all the time. We use the delete button often. ‘Backspace’ too. We constantly edit, refine and tighten the text. We pick and choose words all the time. We choose to be silent. We try to make our drawings say more by saying less. We use volume control. That too is an erasing device; there are times when the soft word is louder than the loud.

Last weekend I was in Polonnaruwa. I was visiting the Gal Viharaya after more than thirty years. More ‘peopled’ this time, but still, the wordless language of craftsmanship where what’s taken away is as important as what is allowed to remain spoke of history, heritage and more than all that invited a perusal of eternal verities that was as emphatic as any treatise on the Dhamma, any koan inviting reflection. There must have been an eraser at work there, in sketch and etch, which marked a journey from rock to sculpture, brief to delivery, resulting in a work of art which rebels against the Gardner quote.

But there are other eraser-drawings that go beyond sculpture and eye-please, paintings that neither use the hard-eraser of emphasis nor the soft one of rejection but instead draw light on all things encountered, a grazing if you will, a middle-path touch that is simultaneously non-touch. There is eraser-work that is about un-layering frill, skinning illusion, removing the opaque film that distorts vision. ‘Bliss’ is a value-laden term. But that other way of eraser-life…who can tell if it’s less worthy of a shot than the un-erased ways Gardner recommends?

I didn’t have the eyes. Had I the eyes I would have, I believe, seen the reclining stature of the Enlightened One, and seen rock too. I would have seen craftsmanship and craftsman. I would have, if my vision was even better, ceased to see rock and also seen the entire universe.

Instead, in the poverty of my kleshas, I was able to conclude simply, in my simpleton way, that ink can be white and eraser is as potent a life-drawing instrument as is pen.

Sakvithi Ranasinghe, accused of swindling clients of millions of rupees, is reported to have undressed himself in court on Friday to protest procedure. Not everyone undresses in public in a literary sense, but many do so metaphorically. These are days of accusation and conjecture, selective references to rules and regulations and shrill protests and counter-protests. These are days of appearances. These are days of undressing, unwitting for the most part.

C.A. Chandraprema, columnist for The Island and well known political analyst recently stated that the accusations of vindictiveness against the government to the effect that proceedings against the Chief Justice do appear to have some logic. To paraphrase, he said, ‘Charges are leveled against a person and thereafter his wide, who is the Chief Justice (CJ), determines that the signature development project of the Government is unconstitutional, a determination followed by impeachment proceedings; “vindictiveness” can be construed.’

The Government has, by omission certainly and possibly by commission, politicized the process, adding credence to the vindictive-accusation. This has led to a situation where the veracity of evidence is being question and charges are being leveled on counts of fabrication. What is indisputable, though, is the fact the CJ’s own documents compromise her to the point of impeachment. Her documents impeach her and moves to frill the process and turn it into a circus only robs sobriety from it and impeaches the Government on true intent.

On the other hand, if the Government wanted a circus, it seems that those who oppose the impeachment have agreed to provide the clowns. It has come to a point where political acrobats are being upstaged by politico-legal clowns. Let’s talk more about appearances.

People have short memories. The first to raise objection to Shiranee Bandaranayake was the Opposition. This was long before the Divi Neguma Bill came up. The shrill objectors included NGO personalities with sad, clownish and pernicious track records. Today they attend demonstrations supporting the CJ, appearing as though they’ve burnt to cinders their ‘good governance’ handbooks. They could, if they believe they are honest (which they are not) fault the Government for what appears to be a witch-hunt but raise queries about issue of propriety in the CJ’s behavior with respect to her many bank accounts, strange deposit-withdrawal records and interest-conflict in handling the Ceylinco case. Instead, they appear to be playing moment-politics spurred by regime-hatred. That’s self-stripping of a kind.

Then we have the lawyers playing kattadiya and turning the Supreme Court into a thovil-maduwa, a circus in its own right. If the Government is finger-poking and thereby desecrating those hallowed chambers of justice, these ladies and gentlemen are but playing accessories-after-the-fact or worse, besting the Government in some strange game to turn the judiciary into a laughing stock in the public eye. They have played political-entourage to the CJ’s manifest assumption of a political persona. They’ve cheered the CJ and the CJ has acknowledged with tacit if not open encouragement.

The independence of the judiciary and especially the Supreme Court, then, in this instance at least, has been damaged not by the executive or legislative but by the lawyers and judges themselves. Self-immolation, one might call it. It can also be called self-stripping. How this impacts the CJ’s ability to hear cases where clients are represented by what might be called (members of) her cheering squad does not require elaboration.

Then there are those special lawyers, those who have been retained to represent the CJ’s interest directly and those, like Wijayadasa Rajapaksa, who are batting for her outside the impeachment process. It is strange that some of these very people have and are representing Ceylinco against the depositors who were robbed of millions and millions of rupees. Strange, also, because of a) the CJ’s decision to) take over the case, b) the manifest leniency on the accused and foot-dragging in concluding the case in contradiction of assurances given to depositors, and c) the involvement in purchasing a Ceylinco property. Nothing illegal about it of course but it is still hard to digest.

Politicians strip themselves often enough. That’s not news. Here, though, we are seeing a new set of strippers, who don’t want to acknowledge stripping and would have us believe they are fully clothed.

At the end of the day, Sakvithi Ranasinghe looks more clothed than this lot. More honest. And that, ladies and gentlemen is not something to laugh about.

[Published in 'The Nation', December 16, 2012]

The Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) adopted three resolutions yesterday relating to the impeachment of the Chief Justice. In essence, the BASL requests that the President re-consider the impeachment, called for ‘the enactment of procedural laws in relation to the removal of judges of the Superior Courts while ensuring a fair trial by adhering to principles of natural justice’ before proceeding if the first request is turned down, and if the CJ is removed without such enactment and fair-trial guarantees to ‘not welcome’ the CJ’s successor.

The second and third resolutions clearly assume that the first (request) would be turned down. The BASL implies in the second resolution that there is a constitutional flaw. Calling for law-change in mid-process could open a legal and constitutional (if not ethical) can of worms. Constitutions are not cast in stone, which is why there are provisions for amendment. What stands has stood, for better or worse, for close to three decades without a murmur of concern being raised by the BASL or anyone else. This raises the question, ‘Was the BASL ignorant of relevant articles in the Constitution all this time?’ There was politics then and there is politics now, this much is clear. If the rules can’t keep politics out, then they need to be changed. Not in the mid-process, not least of all for the bad precedent it sets.

The allusion to ‘natural justice’ is interesting. Many BASL movers and shakers are also vociferous supporters of a query currently in the Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the impeachment process, essentially asking the CJ to offer determination on a case whose outcome may be detrimental to her interests. That ‘violation of natural justice’ has not warranted BASL comment. Neither has the BASL thought fit to observe that if current strictures are inadequate, illegal or violate principles of natural justice it follows that a CJ is unimpeachable, a sorry state of affair which rebels against the fundamental principal of equality before the law.

The third resolution is a threat, unadulterated. It appears that the BASL, the governing body of lawyers, has erred on at least 3 counts here.

Firstly, Sec 41 (1) of the Judicature Act gives an Attorney-at-Law an unimpaired and unhindered right to appear before any court or tribunal set up for the administration of justice. Resolution 3 takes away this statutory right. Secondly, If the CJ is impeached it would have been done both constitutionally and legally (never mind the morality of intent) and therefore the BASL has to recognize it. Thirdly there is a Constitutional requirement for the President to appoint a new CJ and a new CJ would be appointed constitutionally and legally; therefore there is no ground for the BASL to not recognize a new CJ and to prevent lawyers from appearing before him/her.

Now the wording can be interpreted to mean that what the BASL meant was not to welcome her officially, but lawyers are lawyers and interpretation as per convenience is their bread and butter. One cannot but note that when Dr. Bandaranayake was appointed, she did not have an official function to ‘present herself before the legal professionals’, perhaps fearing a snub of the kind threatened by this resolution.

Quite apart from all this, we have a situation where the BASL appears not to know the meaning of ‘unanimous’. The Vice President of the BASL in fact resigned after objecting to the entire process which she claims was undemocratic. Worse, Dr. Bandaranayake’s lawyers, Neelakanthan and Neelakanthan, operating almost like a Public Relations firm as opposed to a company of lawyers, issues a statement ‘on behalf of client’ to tell the public that Dr. Bandaranayake is grateful that the BASL ‘was unanimous’ in supporting her. A lot of ‘interpretation’ there of course, but more than that a clear indication that client and/or legal representative have no clue about the meaning of the word ‘unanimous’.

The BASL has every right to engage in politics. Responsibility and dignity cannot be demanded but only observed in word and deed and indeed breach of the same. The BASL was political when its members, with or without the blessings of the body, turned the Supreme Court into a kattadiya’s carnival, and unknowingly or unknowingly gravely compromised the dignity of the post of Chief Justice by taking the politicization of the impeachment to a higher level. How their high minded notions of ‘natural justice’ and ‘impartiality’ are served by appearing before a judge who they cheered and whose ‘nod’ they received, they have the intelligence to deduce. The CJ is grateful to the lawyers, by admission. Will ‘gratitude’ not play in deliberations, one can ask. The person and the post both appear compromised and the BASL can no longer claim innocence in the outcome.

It is easy to take refuge in the notion that if everything is out of order it’s perfectly alright to be out of order ourselves. BASL moves, despite all this, appears to be symptomatic of constitutional flaw no less pronounced than other articulations of the same errors. It calls not for constitutional tweaking, but comprehensive constitution-review with a view to develop a fresh document, a 3rd Republican Constitution.

Sometime in the mid 1980s, the students of Peradeniya University put up a statue, a memorial of sorts. It was of a young man, book in hand and his foot on a gun. I am not sure if the statue resembled him in any way, but it meant to commemorate a Medical Faculty student, Padmasiri, who was shot dead on June 19, 1998 in the course of an altercation between officers manning the Police Station that was at the time located on campus and some medical students returning to Marcus Fernando Hall after celebrating the end of examinations.

The ‘memorial’ was a crude construct and lacked the sobriety and aesthetic elegance evident in an older monument in memory of another student who was shot dead, Weerasooriya, in 1976. Other undergraduates who were unceremoniously and in secret killed during the 1971 were not commemorated in like manner. The comrades’ who died in the 1988-89 insurgency were not similarly honored in Peradeniya, although I believe both the University of Sri Jayawardenapura and University of Moratuwa ‘monumentalized’ of a fashion.

The ‘Padmasiri Statue’ disappeared during the bheeshanaya. ‘Weerasooriya’ was left intact, perhaps because he was shot dead during a different regime. I believe the other monuments mentioned above were vandalized recently.

Way back in 2006, ‘The Nation’ devoted the center-spread of a section then called ‘Eye’ for a feature on heroes and commemoration. It contained photographs of memorials for the war dead. Included on the page was a photograph of an LTTE cemetery, accompanied by the following caption: ‘These birthday-less stones represent citizens of this country who too fought and died, misguided and tragic and yet no different from other children elsewhere. They deserve to be mourned’. That cemetery was bulldozed immediately after the LTTE was vanquished, possible following a logic that objected to ‘trace of terrorism’s glorification’. A blank square was also scripted into the layout. It was for the JVP dead, from 1971 and also 1988-89. This was the caption: ‘The white space represents the unhonoured and unsung, the 60,000 plus who died between 1988 and 1990. Many were JVPers who, perhaps misguided and foolhardy, nevertheless fought for a land, a way of life. Heroes in their own right. ’

The dead are remembered by loved ones. Some corpses, however, are useful as political exhibits Weerasooriya’s being one of the early examples. Shed of all the spirituality of the moment, prophesy claimed and so on, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ also made for politicking of a kind. In Weerasooriya’s case, the United National Party, then in the Opposition, carried that corpse, so to speak, to every electorate. Vijaya Kumaratunga had a politicized funeral , not surprisingly since it was a political assassination, largely believed to have been ‘authorized’ and ‘ordered’ by the late JVP leader, Rohana Wijeweera. When Wijeweera himself was killed (a summary execution that not surprisingly did not disturb the sleep of any human rights advocate, here or elsewhere) the time had passed for a politicized funeral.

The dead are not remembered by only the loved ones. The collective dead, especially, can be used to market this or that political position or organization, more often than not without the consent of the individually dead. That’s politics. Hardly anyone among those who shed tears at these political funerals and subsequent memorial services of one kind or another can claim to have known the dead personally or if they did actually cared deeply enough to deserve the tag ‘loved ones’.

There is, then, a thing called the politics of commemoration which unfolds within structures of power that determine what is allowed and what is not. A political street-drawing commemorating the war dead (without distinction) in Colombo was, for example, tarred over unceremoniously. The ‘artists’ were of course not value-neutral; the movers and shakers of this ‘remembrance’ did take sides during the war.

Does this mean that the political logic of commemorating permissibility is something we have to live with? Does it mean that power decides and these decisions should go uncommented on, forget the fact that the selectivity and erasure could be detrimental to the political objectives of the selector and eraser?

There was an incident in the Jaffna University recently. A ‘happy coincidence’ of the infamous ‘Maaveerar Day’ announced and commemorated by the LTTE before that organization was militarily vanquished and a religious ceremony naturally made for multiple (mis)interpretation as well as mischief-making. The authorities intervened. There was violence. There were protests. There were arrests.

This was followed by howls of protests by political groups, NGO operators and some commentators, including the Inter University Student Federation. I have little sympathy for objectors who are primarily motivated by regime-hatred and petty political ambition. The Inter University Student Federation, a known but unofficial affiliate of the JVP has a considerable track record of intolerance which has often involved thuggery in the universities.

As for other objectors, there are among them those who bent over backwards to confer parity of status to the LTTE vis-à-vis the Government and operated according to the principle, ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’ throughout the first decade of the millennium. It is typical for such objectors, after all, to drag in other miseries, real and imagined, to frill objection. Many who talk of what the Tamils suffered, let us not forget, find it embarrassing to state that their suffering was largely an outcome of choices made by the so-called Tamil representatives and indeed the direct harassment by the LTTE. They would find it difficult to whisper the fact that the LTTE terrorized without distinction, that they killed Tamils in their thousands and held some 300,000 Tamils hostage.

But does this mean the objection itself is illegal or wrong? Is commemoration wrong, politically motivated or otherwise? The question was asked, ‘If the JVP can commemorate those who died during an armed insurrection, what is wrong with commemorating others who died in another armed insurrection?’ A related question: ‘If the JVP commemoration is allowed and this is not, assuming of course it was an LTTE-remembering event, does it mean that the authorities don’t mind terrorists being remembered as long as they are Sinhala?’

When someone decides to lament, only a clairvoyant can even pretend to claim what or who it is all about. Even a terrorist’s death can be lamented for reasons that have nothing to do with the choices that the particular terrorist made. Prabhakaran’s death, for example, could have been lamented by his parents because he was their son and not because they identified with his political, military and whatever other pernicious designs and practices associated with him. Even if they identified with his larger politico-military-terrorist persona, no one can tell if the tears shed were on that account and not the blood-relationship.

Terrorism is illegal. Grief is neither illegal nor amenable to prohibition through legal writ. Prabhakaran was a terrorist. The LTTE was a terrorist organization. This does not mean that those who identified with the cause and/or the methodology employed were terrorists. They are complicit in some way, but this does not mean that they should be shot or even tried. Authorities in a country that has suffered for three decades at the hands of terrorists cannot be blamed for being alert to resurrection moves and erring on the side of caution. On the other hand, being circumspect does not give right to put out a lamp lit for a dead person. It is not only illegal, but also uncivilized and moreover rebels against the culture of the land, a way of life and living heavily influenced by Buddhism, almost to the exclusion of other religions and philosophies.

Prabhakaran was no Elara, let us be clear on that. King Dutugemunu issued a directive to the effect that Elara should be accorded the highest respect, requiring those passing to descend from chariot or horse and the observation of silence. Elara was a usurper, a land-grabber, true, but he was recognized as a wise and just ruler. Prabhakaran was a land-grabber of sorts, but he was no Elara. He is dead though. One respects the dead. That’s cultural. There can be a security concern in someone showing loyalty to a terrorist. There can be none in expressing grief over a dead terrorist. Indeed, one cannot legislate to prohibit emotion. One cannot make it illegal not to agree with the Government or anyone else when someone or some organization is called ‘Terrorist’.

Space for commemoration by anyone of anyone is part of reconciliation. The political objectives and the strategic choices of the dead are irrelevant here. The Sinhalese hold that whatever differences one may have with someone else, in times of celebration and lamentation, one puts them aside. It is possible to recognize the need to grieve without having to agree with the politics of the person or organization whose demise is being grieved over or the politics of the grieving. That’s where humanity is tested. And it is in the affirmation of that humanity that Governments stand taller, commonalities are recognized and communities are forged. Erasure wrecks all that.

Last night I searched for an article I had written a long time ago and found it in the archives of the 'Daily News', to which newspaper I contributed a daily column under the title 'The Morning Inspection'. On a whim I checked out what I had written the next day and came across the following, as pertinent then, I believe, as it is today.

The most enchanting thing about Buddhism for me is that even the simplest sutra is made for multiple application in multiple situations, for untying straightforward knot or unravelling the complexities of being to reveal (at least those who have slain appropriate volumes of the kleshas) the pathway out of sorrow.

I was introduced to the Kula Sutta (on families) a short while ago. ‘Can you see if the Kula Sutra is on the internet?’ was the question. I googled it. Found it. A simple observation. Here is the first part.

“In every case where a family cannot hold onto its great wealth for long, it is for one or another of these four reasons. Which four? They don’t look for things that are lost. They don’t repair things that have gotten old.

They are immoderate in consuming food and drink. They place a woman or man of no virtue or principles in the position of authority. In every case where a family cannot hold onto its great wealth for long, it is for one or another of these four reasons.” All kinds of applications of the above observation are possible, all kinds of extrapolations too.

I was thinking ‘nation’. I took ‘nation’ as family, or to put it another way, Sri Lanka as household and Sri Lankans as family.

We are currently classed as a middle-income nation but have often been thrust into the low-income bracket, described as ‘poor’ or condescendingly called ‘developing’ instead of the more apt ‘underdeveloping’ (S.B. de Silva’s doctoral work is essential reading on the subject: ‘The political economy of underdevelopment’). We were not always like that though. We must have been a wealthy nation to earn a name such as ‘Granary of the East’.

We could not, it is clear, hold on to our wealth and if one went back to personality and event the reasons for debacle could easily be slotted into one of the four mentioned in the Sutra. Our ancestors were not exactly wasteful. Thrift is something they knew. Sustainability, long before it became a development buzz word, was second nature to them.

They were never in a hurry, and that’s not because they were lazy, but just that their unit-time reference was not lifetime, but lifetimes or of sansaric proportions. Still, they were industrious. They looked for lost things, found them, and reverted back to life as it always was: the seasons, seasonality, doing the right thing at the right time in the proper manner and treating the vicissitudes of life with as much equanimity as they could muster.

Today people are urged to reuse, recycle and reduce. Back then there were no I/NGOs or state agencies running media campaigns on such themes. Our ancestors did not subscribe to a use-and-throw ethic; they may have not heard the term value-addition, but they both recognized value and added to it. They knew how to repair. They repaired. And when things wore out beyond the point of resurrection, they transformed them into other things that had other uses.

And yet, we squandered it all, not so much to forces of superior strength but on account of immoderation in consumption on the part of leaders and also their scant regard for virtue and principle.

Greed is a strange thing. I believe that societies are tinder boxes and people matchsticks and consequently am constantly thankful that bonfires are a rarity. Greed is a flame and all it takes is for one madman or madwoman with the power to decree flaming to sink a civilization for decades and even centuries. Yes, we are that fragile!

The Sutra has a second part, one that pertains to recovery, resurrection and preservation. It is the reverse, naturally, of the first part.

“In every case where a family can hold onto its great wealth for long, it is for one or another of these four reasons. Which four? They look for things that are lost. They repair things that have gotten old. They are moderate in consuming food and drink. They place a virtuous, principled woman or man in the position of authority. In every case where a family can hold onto its great wealth for long, it is for one or another of these four reasons.”

In the year 2010, as we ponder the long and arduous journey to recover that which was best in our past and embrace that which is best in the world while divesting ourselves from the nonsensical baggage that history often burdens us with and as such we ourselves acquire out of ignorance and arrogance, we won’t lose anything by reflecting on these wise words of arguably the greatest intellectual that walked this earth, Siddhartha Gauthama.

We have to look for things that we lost, we have to recover that which was robbed from us by way of the colonial project and this refers also to the vandalism of land, labour and cultural artifact and the humiliation of our people and their belief systems.

We have to un-learn the largely Western ethic of use-and-throw and re-learn how to re-make the things we break or things that break or are broken by others. This includes all our traditions, all customs, all technologies and belief systems that were denigrated by a project that was violent, arrogant and in the final instance self-destructive.

We have to re-learn moderation. In all things. We have to understand that the middle-path is not just something between ‘left’ and ‘right’ (‘straight’ is not a bad idea compared with ‘straying’) but one that chooses ‘caress’ over ‘tight grip’ and ‘callous rejection’. We have to strive to deal better with the upadanas (attachments) that we as pruthagjanas (unenlightened beings) tend to fall prey to. And finally, have to learn to be virtuous and principled before we demand virtue and principle from our leaders.

And our leaders? They could refer to the dasa raja dharma, but that’s another article. For now, I suggest that we, as citizens, reflect on the kula sutra.

msenevira@gmail.com

This was written almost 3 years ago. Feet, though, are timeless. Journeys seldom end and seldom in ways anticipated. 'Feet' almost all of us have. We use them but don't seem to appreciate them. Others have them, but our eyes don't stray down to feet as often as they graze on eye, for example. This is a 'feet story'. An old one. Perhaps that's why it remains 'new'.

Interesting, isn’t it? We talk of journeys, we talk of footprints, but who ever thinks of or writes about feet? Until about four years ago I didn’t know there was a word called pedicure, didn’t know about foot massages or Podiatry.

I find it strange. We all have teeth and we all know about dentists. We all have eyes and at some time in our lives we check them out. We never go to a podiatrist, though. What is it with feet? Lesser organs? Too far away from eyes, ears, tongue and nose to get noticed, unless a toe is stubbed? Is it because feet are too close to the earth, that they get dirtied faster?

I was introduced to feet, so to speak, by my friend Kanishka Gunawardena. This was in the year 1995. Ithaca, New York. He wanted me to watch Bernardo Bertolucci’s film The Little Buddha with him. He said he had seen it before with Geoffrey Waiter, a member of his PhD committee and a professor in the Department of German Studies at Cornell University. Geoff was a film buff.

He was a great teacher. He could see films frame-by-frame and made a point to note detail and comment. It was obviously an exercise that fractured the entertainment; one had to first watch the movie as though in a theatre, that is, without a remote control and later watch it on video and try to harvest the richness of detail.

That’s another story. My story is about feet. Kaniya (as we called him) told me how important ‘feet’ were in that movie. There were many ‘feet-moments’ that I would have completely missed had he not pointed them to me (Geoff had alerter him to them, he said). There were so many shots that focused on feet that it is possible to read the entire movie as a narrative of feet or to understand the story through the conversation of feet.

I have, since then, paid more attention to feet than I have before. I came to understand that feet are marked by the journey’s they’ve taken, the paths they’ve walked. I came to understand that just as feet leave footprints, so too do journeys leave their print on their feet-companions. On Saturday, I was to be on a panel at the Galle Literary Festival. I wasn’t adequately ‘wardrobed’.

The trousers didn’t match the shirt and I had only a pair of rubber slippers. My sister ironed the shirt and said ‘if you are shaved and your shirt is clean and ironed, no one notices anything else’. I remembered something that Voltaire is supposed to have said, ‘Give me five minutes to talk away my face and I will bed the Queen of England’. I felt ok after I digested these two statements, and not because I was interested in bedding anyone.

I thought of what my sister said and the feet-issue came to mind. Why don’t people care about feet, I wondered, not least of all because I had heard a ‘feet-story’ that very morning.

That morning I had run into Rohan Edirisinghe, who was a participant in a session with Gillian Slovo, a South Arica born novelist. He had to interview her and moderate a discussion. He was focusing on her biography, ‘Every secret thing: my family, my country’.

I had attended a panel discussion on Friday where Gillian spoke about writing and until Rohan told me I didn’t know that she was the daughter of Joe Slovo (leader of the South African Communist Party).

Rohan spoke briefly about the session and mentioned how her mother Ruth First, as much a political activist as her husband, had been killed in a parcel bomb blast in Mozambique.

‘She was blown to pieces; the only thing they found of her were her feet,’’ he said. Maybe I was imagining things or inscribing on his face something I felt in my heart, but I thought his eyes got a bit red and teary.

I’ve spent a lot of time since then, thinking of feet. I remembered that one of the common methods of torture during the terrible days at the end of the eighties was hanging people by their feet. I had heard that torturers took special pleasure in hitting the victims’ soles with an s-lon pipe. I’ve heard that every point in a person’s sole is linked in some way to some important organ and that this was the ‘logic’ of foot-massages. I have wondered what organ was got twisted around, punched, squeezed etc. when pipe met sole.

Since watching The Little Buddha I’ve noticed feel-things. I learn to read class, work, leisure, pleasure, tenderness and love in a person’s feet. I learnt that feet are like faces; time carves the signatures of its passing on both. There are beautiful women wearing beautiful clothes that we see everywhere we go, but the depth or shallowness of beauty is easily and quickly ascertained if we spent a few seconds looking at the person’s feet, I have noticed.

My father, like most fathers, has feet. My father has corns which I am periodically required to carry out surgery on. It’s a delicate operation. I have to shave off the dead skin with a blade, clean up the wound, put some medication and bandage it all up. He has a hereditary foot disease which has twisted all his toes. It is not easy for him. Attending to his feet is a thanksgiving as well as worship.

My mother had feet. She never asked for much, for she was a giving person, but she liked having her feet massaged. We used to do this, myself, my brother and sister, taking turns as kids and as adults whenever we were around. Thanksgiving. Worship. I noticed during those few minutes of hand-foot encounter how much she has walked and worked. The next day I would quarrel with her, but still I could never forget her feet.

Here’s the final foot story and I hope it will make you think a little differently about feet. My mother passed away a few months ago. I had to attend to the initial rituals pertaining to death such as getting a death certificate, contacting an undertaker, informing friends and relatives and making funeral arrangements. One of the ‘musts’ was to get her body released from the hospital mortuary.

A hospital official took me in, along with two men from the funeral parlous. She was kept in one of those long drawers. I had to identify her body and sign papers. As they brought her out, the first thing I noticed were her feet, her toes tied together with a strip of cloth. Cold. Dead. Her entire life story was written in those feet and I read it all in a matter of seconds.

I am thinking of her now. And I am thinking of Ruth First. I am thinking of feet.

msenevira@gmail.com

IN THESE DAYS OF JUDGES AND JUDGEMENT...

All human beings have questions. Some have questions that may sound strange to others and indeed may be quite unanswerable. I have hundreds and that probably indicates that my sansaric journey is long. Among the ‘strange’ and perhaps ‘unanswerable’ questions that I have is the following: What kind of prison notebooks do goldfish write and with what compassion do they eye our incarceration?

Prison notebooks? Well, the reference is to Antonio Gramsci’s political writings during the time he was imprisoned (1929-1935). Gramsci was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini. He was a highly original thinker in the Marxist tradition and is credited for the introduction of the concept ‘cultural hegemony as a means of exercising political control. He was not the only one who has suffered imprisonment and not the only prisoner who kept notes. One must acknowledge also that not everyone who has things to say have the language, the eloquence or the material necessary to articulate. Like goldfish.

I am thinking of a hot morning in Panadura. Court was in session. The judge had arrived. All stood and bowed. I was in a cell from where I could see the judge and the proceedings. With me were 15 others charged with conspiring to overthrow the Government through illegal means. Of the 16, 14 were arrested which having a discussion in a temple. The 15th was the chief incumbent of the temple and the last was an ex-bikkhu who was a student at Jayawardenapura University, who, unfortunately, had visited the temple a day after we were arrested and was picked up by overzealous policemen. Among our temporary cellmates were a couple and like all prisoners had a story to tell.

The woman had been working as a domestic aid, or housemaid, in Colombo. One day the man of the house had solicited sexual favours from her and upon being spurned, had attempted to rape her. It so happened that the woman’s husband had arrived right then. A rush of blood. A ‘crime’ of passion and the ‘master’ was dead. Charged with murder. The woman? Accessory after the fact of murder.

Their case was taken up before ours. They had a Court appointed lawyer. He was totally unprepared and said so. The judge was annoyed. He re-scheduled the hearing. Postponed by six months. I am not faulting the judge for I don’t know the intricacies of judicial process, the statutes and courtesies, what’s ‘normal’ and what’s not, but I remember being amazed and quite perturbed at how two people could be robbed of six months just like that.

The power to take away astounded me. They didn’t say anything. Neither of them had a name like Antonio Gramsci. Or Fyodor Dostoyevski. Or Nazim Hikmet. Or Faiz Ahmed Faiz. I don’t know what happened next, but I have not forgotten the expression in their eyes when the judge made his determination. Blank. Like goldfish. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about goldfish.

They are not like zoo animals. One feels for zoo animals, one sees their situation as ‘imprisonment’ because zoos are full of prison-trappings: cages, bars, containment etc. Goldfish are cute creatures and seem so, well, ‘contained’, I mean, ‘self-contained’. They are not like monkeys clinging to the bars of a cage as though they long to be outside. They just swim around, eat what’s given them, swim some more, eat, swim, eat, swim etc. They don’t maintain notebooks and don’t appear to have thoughts. They’ve committed no crime. They have not been charged in Court.

I like to flip scripts and see what happens. And sometimes I wonder if I am but playing a reverse-role in a flipped script. I wonder if the truly incarcerated is the goldfish or the person that ‘bowled’ the goldfish. I wonder if it is the judge or the accuse that pronounces determination, if it is really the accused who stands charged or if it is the judge. And I find wonderment sometimes in the numerous ways of incarceration, some by others and some by self. I realize for example that time is a trap, that we are incarcerated by calendars, week-planners, diaries and schedules. We are imprisoned by expectations, those of our parents, children, spouses, lovers, friends, associates as well as those we set ourselves. We are the prisoners of paper: we are trapped by certificates and contracts, jobs and relationships, responsibilities and the hard labour and tenderness of love. We are burdened by position, by skill-endowment and by our various poverties. We are prisoners of moment and timelessness and don’t have pen, paper or word to write the poetry of our incarcerations.

There is this difference between us and goldfish, between those who are ‘free’ and those behind bars. The latter category is made of visible, tangible boundaries. I am not sure this little detail makes a difference, though. I thought perhaps that we need to re-think the dimensions of infinity and the finite. This is what I came up with:

To the fish in the net

a single drop of water,
to the incarcerated
a sliver of sky,
to the guitarist
whose hands were cut off
a pick,
and
lip-red
to the heart that said ‘no’
to a love that will not return.

But what of ‘incarceration’, as experience and act, as experienced and unknowingly inhabited, I wondered. And so, naturally, subjected to the dimensionalities of language, the trap that is word and its unhappy limitation, I scribbled the following:

And of prisons it was thus decreed
some would be bar-made and some unbarred
some to separate the free from the incarcerated
and some with lines erased,
yes so erased
that ‘free’ comes with query mark
and imprisonment is the worst kept secret
in the metropolis.
And of the former kind,
there are those who are bowled,
and those less picture-perfect.
The goldfish looks with compassion
and knows the futility of keeping notes
but we,
we eye one another with pity
and even empathy
keep notes;
we might as well collect mirrors
while we wait the clock-guard
to interrupt the monotony of delusion

if nothing else.

I am tormented by questions this morning. When we gaze on the prisoner with compassion do we bend the bars of the cage or make them stronger, I wonder. Will we ever understand that the barbed wire that contains someone is simultaneously a fishbowl that turns us into goldfish?

msenevira@gmail.com

I have often been disturbed by the expansionist posturing of some people in the USA. It’s all there in the language and it is so ‘goes without saying’ that I am convinced it ‘came without saying’ too. Their baseball final match up is called ‘The World Series’.

They have a thing called ‘American League’ and the ‘National League’, implying that these are not just two categories but are not coterminous. In other words, ‘America’ does not mean ‘Nation’ or vice versa, as far as those who conjured up these terms and categories and those who use them uncritically are concerned.

It all hit me in Cambridge, Massachusettes in the winter of 1990/91 when I saw some people protesting a visit by the then President of El Salvador, Alfredo Christiani whose brutal response to an assault on the State by the FMLN included attacks on poor neighbourhoods and the execution-style murder of six prominent critics of the regime.

There were no calls for ‘truth and reconciliation’ then (or now) and certainly no investigation on crimes against humanity, perhaps because Christiani belonged to a party that was founded by a man who was trained in the infamous ‘School of the Americas’ (whose graduates went on to become some of the worst violators of human rights that hemisphere has ever known). What hit me was this sign held by a woman: ‘50 percent Mexican, 50 percent Salvadorian, 100 percent American’.

Barack Obama is not the President of ‘America’; he’s President of the United States of America. ‘America’ refers to all of North America, Central America and Latin America. That ‘America’ did not belong to white people, it was in fact stolen by white people from the 500 nations that peopled the landmass and built largely by the labour of men and women forcibly brought from Africa as slaves.

Today it is peopled mostly by immigrants, those who fled plague and persecution, poverty and depression. The USA is a nation of immigrants, for the most part. This is why US immigration laws fascinate me, especially when proposed and enacted legislation impacts people who are ‘originally’ from Mexico.

Whenever I meet a Mexican, I say ‘I lived in Mexico for a year’. This would elicit a response of the following kind: ‘Really? Where?’ I smile and say ‘Los Angeles’. Some look at me quizzically, some remain quizzical and some break into a smile while others laugh out loud. I have to clarify at times, I admit: ‘Los Angeles, part of Occupied Mexico’. California, like Texas and large sections of the today’s Southwest of the USA used to belong to Mexico 150 years ago.

In 1994 for example, in an initiative titled ‘Save Our State’ (Proposition 187) was put to the vote, it was sought to prohibit ‘illegal immigrants’ from using health care, public education and other social services.

What was sick about this initiative was the fact that Californians would have had to pay ten times what they paid for vegetables if not for the labour of illegal immigrants. California voted in favour but it was later found to be unconstitutional.

However, just a few weeks ago, Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a tough bill on illegal immigration aimed at identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants.

The law which, clearly the broadest and strictest immigration measure in decades, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the Police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have called it an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics regardless of their citizenship status.

What if the natives of that continent had enacted such laws when a man called Christopher Columbus mis-navigated his ship and landed in the Bahamas in 1492? Would he have crossed the border or would he have been run over by it?

President Barack Obama doesn’t like it. Naturally. Today, he’s calling for a federal overhaul of immigration laws, once again affirming that despite the ‘federal’ appearance, the USA is a centralizing state, one that is in reality unitary more than anything else.

Countries have borders. Citizens and their political representatives have the right to design policies pertaining to inclusion and exclusion, regardless of the moral rights to do so or the absence of such rights. But what kind of personal and/or national and/or legal criteria do we cite when we slam the door on someone or else choose to embrace him/her?

In the case of the Mexicans, they are basically returning to the land that was robbed from their ancestors. Sure, the ancestors of many Mexicans robbed this land from the true native-sons and native-daughters, but if this is the case other land-robbers can’t really complain, can they? I was told that half the population in New York City was made of illegal immigrants and that if they were all deported the city would grind to a halt because they did all the necessary but lousy and ill-paid jobs.

There’s a border that we can choose to cross or have it cross us. It is called prejudice. No, it is not about the law, about having borders and protecting them, but about the thinking that precedes law-proposal, canvassing support and enacting rules and regulations. There is a difference between migration and invasion.

A difference between setting out in a boat to conquer a nation and setting out in a boat to escape poverty, war, famine, disease and persecution. Those who have known war, known poverty, famine and persecution cannot morally justify the closing of a door. And even those who have not, cannot look the other way because that amounts to drawing a line, building a wall or creating a border.

Someone is hitting a Mexican with a border and a border sign, as I write. And as I write, a million other borders are being drawn and redrawn, smudged and erased. Someone is getting hit with a border this very moment.

Someone is hitting him/herself with a border. It is about language and language politics of course. But it is larger than that, this ‘border’ problem, is it not? Perhaps I am talking about myself. Or about you.

msenevira@gmail.com

[First published in the Daily News in May 2010]

So this is Christmas...and what have you done?

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loosen the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Isaiah 58:6-7;10

It is Christmas time; the time for good cheer, merriment and fun. That’s what the signs say. Christmas is ‘Christian’, officially. In reality though, it can be argued that it belongs to business. This says something about its appropriation by profit-seekers.

In another reality, Christmas, in Sri Lanka, belongs to all Sri Lankans, regardless of faith. Children of all faiths eagerly await the arrival of Santa Claus. This says a lot about the meaning of Christmas. In Sri Lanka, Christians (of all denominations) are just 7% of the population, making them the 4^thlargest religious group. The embrace of Christmas, then, says a lot of the tolerance and accommodation of other faiths, especially Buddhists.

What is most important however is not compositions and cultural predilection spawned by philosophical preferences and upbringing, but message. Christmas is about Jesus Christ, the celebration of his birth. Given the significance to the fundamentals of the faith, Easter is more important to Christians spiritually, but this does not mean that Jesus Christ, what he said, what he did and the relevant lessons should be forgotten. It is a celebration, sure, but it can also be a time for sharing, giving and reflection.

When one thinks back on Christmases of the past, no Christmas time comes close to affirming the endearing qualities of Jesus (which indeed constitute the bedrock of the faith, some might claim) than the year 2004. Although the giving and sharing, the sympathy and empathy, following the Tsunami did not come decked in red and green of holly leaves and berries, or dusted with something to indicate snowflake, the effort can be described as embodying what Christmas ought to be.

That monumental ‘giving’ sits well with many biblical passages contained in the Book of Deuteronomy, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and Micah in the Old Testament, as well as the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the Letters of Paul in the New Testament. It doesn’t matter if Buddhists were urged by the teachings of the Buddha and Muslims by those of the Prophet or Hindus by the words sacred to them. For all this, there was an affirmation of Christmas in ways not seen before or since.

Today, in 2012, we are not in a post-Tsunami moment, but are nevertheless in the midst of a natural calamity where hundreds of thousands of people have been rendered homeless, dozens of lives lost and untold damage caused to livelihoods. Today we remember and salute the thousands of public servants who have gone beyond the call of duty to bring relief to the distressed and note with dismay that some have deliberately failed to respond as per their contractual obligations. Today, we celebrate those citizens who individually and collectively reached out to help. Today we ask ourselves, ‘have we done enough?’

This is Christmas time. It is a time when goodwill and cheer come in buckets. It is, right now, a time when the heavens have opened and the floodgates of misery have burst. There are many ways to celebrate Christmas, which as was observed above, belongs to all. We can choose. We can choose poorly. We must not.

Floundering without integrity and ethics

Dhamma’s father, the rich man of Karametiya, Viyaluva

Factoring ‘integrity’ into media freedom

Aney Haamuduruwane!

A note on resilience

Crow-shit blessings

Rhapsody of blueness

True conspiracies

The original sin of selection

AMARADEVA: THE VOICE OF OUR NATION

The European Union made me laugh (for a while)

On the art of drawing with eraser

Impeachment moves into Sakvithi-Mode

BASL Resolutions and implications

The politics of commemoration

Nation-building and the lessons of the Kula Sutra

Journey-prints are found in feet, did you know?

Of goldfish, ‘bowling’ and the incarcerations of our times

Did you cross border or did border cross you?

And so this is Christmas!