Everyone takes note. Some keep notes. Some in diaries and journals. Some in their minds and hears. Some of these are shared via email or on Facebook or blog; some are not. Among these people are Kolombians, people from Colombo who know much -- so much that they are wont to think that others don't know and can't think. This is the third in a series published in 'The Nation' under the title 'Notes of an Unrepentant Kolombian'.
Don’t get me wrong. I prefer the ‘Nelum Pokuna’ to what it replaced. After all that place was an eye-sore in the heard of Kolumbian Country. It used to be nice when the Nomads played cricket there, but that was such a long time ago. It’s pretty. Pretty impressive. It’s good to have something like that in my town.
My problem is not with the facility. True, they show a lot of yakko stuff there. Sinhala plays, of all things! But we get to hear some good western classical music live now and then and that’s something to appreciate. Anyway, who really cares about what’s going on inside? It looks good and that matters.
My problem is with the name. Why call it ‘Nelum Pokuna’? I can accept the architectural value of using a cultural motif but they could have called it ‘Lotus Pond’ surely? I know that’s incongruous because it’s not really a pond -- it’s a theater for god’s sake! But the thing is that even something incongruous sounds poetic in English. Lotus Pond. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue as easily as, say, ‘bed of roses’ but that’s probably due to a tongue-bias to things Kolombian which, as we all know, is English-derived for the most part. It’s still better than ‘Nelum Pokuna,’ though.
What really gets my goat in this naming business is tagging the president’s name to the theater. We didn’t vote for the man and we don’t like him. Sure, he’s the President, but he’s gone overboard with this in-your-face stuff. Not in the heart of Kolombian Country, no way! I get a sick feeling in the stomach each time I pass the place. It’s the most impressive structure in the top residential area of the city and it has HIS name, damn it!
Someone told me sadly that the road name had also been changed. It’s positively sacrilegious. Ok, let me be honest, I didn’t know who Anandam Cumrasarmy was until I googled his name, but you won’t find us Kolombians effacing the name of such a personality ever. That’s Mahinda through and through. No sense of history. No sense of decency. Someone told me that people of my tribe, the great Kolombians, have sworn to safeguard the names of ‘common thugs and mass murderers’ from England who ruled this country, but I think he’s suffering from an overdose of nationalism. Those guys did us a great service. We don’t thank them enough. Anyway, we did get Anandan Cumrasarmy on a sign by a road, didn’t we? If Mahinda is really a nationalist, he would have kept the man up there in the corner of the Alexandra Roundabout.
Mahinda is our president. I’ve been taught to respect authority. I am a democrat and I respect the will of the people. People talk about rigging elections. I am sure there was some shady stuff during the election, but nothing that could have tilted the result the other way. He won. I respect that. I don’t mind him bragging about it. I would do the same if I were in his shoes. I don’t mind him putting face and name to every project launched, every bathroom built, every road constructed during his tenure. I just don’t want him to ‘sign-off’ in the fair territories of Kolombian Country.
He does not belong here, alright? I am not against outsiders, don’t get me wrong. We get a lot of foreigners here in the city. Ok, sure, there are less white people now than before and we are seeing too many from East Asia, especially China and that does irk me a bit now and then, but by and large we are a foreigner-friendly community, us Kolombians. The problem with Mahinda the Outsider is that he’s not from these parts. He doesn’t belong and yet he struts around as though he owns the place and worse, that he always owned the place. And he insulted that Anandan Cumraswarmy chat too. That’s just not cricket!
Look, it’s ok. The president can have his name in every street corner, in and out of a ‘cut-out’. He can give his name to everything, calling it Mahinda Rajapaksa This or Mahinda Rajapaksa That. Can he just leave our tiny little so-many-square miles of land in Cinnamon Gardens Mahinda-free?
As things stand us Kolombians can’t move around without the man looking down at us. We don’t mind someone like John Rankin looking down at us, but Mahinda? No. It’s too much to take. Way too much to take. It makes me nostalgic for the Nomads.