airplane sleep

I was flying in today, in the airplane, huddled up in a corner, sleeping, with my face smashed endearingly against the middle seat rest. And a hunky airline steward from Sri Lankan Airlines touched me on my arm, and looked into my sleep-drugged eyes, and spoke in the softest tone, and said "can I get you something to eat? A glass of water even? You haven't had anything the whole flight" and I sleepily smiled up at him and was about to respond, when I realized it wasn't a dream and he was real and I said no thanks and went back to sleep, comforted. I slept the sleep of the safe, even if it was only for five hours and it was sweet, and bitter, and never to be had again.

on daatje

So I was googling Michael Ondaatje (as I often do, what can I say, I have OCD) and I found out that his new book (as yet untitled) is finished and due to be published NEXT YEAR!! Crikey. I'm insane with anxiety and impatience waiting for it.

I have read and re-read Anil's Ghost and the English Patient many times and I marvel at the fact that I was drawn to Ondaatje before Sri Lanka began. And now when I go back to his poetry, from The Cinnamon Peeler's Wife to Elimination Dance (below), always, the originality, the immediacy, the warmth, the passion, leaps off the page and reminds me it has nothing and everything to do with the common point of origin, the nostalgia for a Sri Lanka before....


Elimination Dance
by Michael Ondaatje

"Nothing I'd read had prepared me for a body this unfair" JOHN NEWLOVE

"Till we are roten, kan we not be rypen" GEOFFREY CHAUCER

Those who are allergic to the sea

Those who have resisted depravity

Men who shave off beards in stages, pausing to take photographs

American rock stars who wear Toronto Maple Leaf hockey sweaters

Those who (while visiting a foreign country) have lost the end of a Q tip in their ear and have been unable to explain their problem

Gentlemen who have placed a microphone beside a naked woman's stomach after lunch and later, after slowing down the sound considerably, have sold these noises on the open market as whale songs

All actors and poets who spit into the first row while they perform

Men who fear to use an electric lawn-mower feeling they could drowse off and be dragged by it into a swimming pool

Any dinner guest who has consumed the host's missing contact lens along with the dessert

Any person who has had the following dream. You are in a subway station of a major city. At the far end you see a coffee machine. You put in two coins. The Holy Grail drops down. Then blood pours into the chalice

Any person who has lost a urine sample in the mail

All those belle-lettrists who feel that should have been 'an urine sample'

Anyone who has had to step into an elevator with all of the Irish Rovers

Those who have filled in a bilingual and confidential pig survey from Statistics Canada. (Une enquete sur les porcs, strictement confidentielle)

Those who have written to the age old brotherhood of Rosicrucians for a free copy of their book The Mastery of Life in order to release the inner conciousness and to experience (in the privacy of the home) momentary flights of the soul

Those who have accidentally stapled themselves

Anyone who has been penetrated by a mountie

Any university professor who has danced with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Jean Genet

Those who have unintentionally locked themselves within a sleeping bag at a camping goods store

Any woman whose i.u.d. has set off an alarm system at the airport

Those who, after a swim, find the sensation of water dribbling out of their ears erotic

Men who have never touched a whippet

Women who gave up the accordion because of pinched breasts

Those who have pissed out of the back of moving trucks

Those who have woken to find the wet footprints of a peacock across their kitchen floor

Anyone whose knees have been ruined as a result of performing sexual acts in elevators

Those who have so much as contemplated the possibility of creeping up to one's enemy with two Bic lighters, pressing simultaneously the butane switches - one into each nostril - and so gassing him to death

Literary critics who have swum the Hellespont

Anyone who has been hired as a 'professional beater' and frightened grouse in the direction of the Queen Mother

Any lover who has gone into a flower shop on Valentine's day and asked for clitoris when he meant clematis

Those who have come across their own telephone numbers underneath terse insults or compliments in the washroom of the Bay Street Bus Terminal

Those who have used the following techniques of seduction: -small talk at a falconry convention -entering a spa town disguised as Ford Madox Ford -making erotic rotations of the pelvis, backstage, during the storm scene of King Lear -underlining suggestive phrases in the prefaces of Joseph Conrad

Anyone who has testified as a character witness for a dog in a court of law

Any writer who has been photographed for the jacket of a book in one of the following poses: sitting in the back of a 1956 Dodge with two roosters; in a tuxedo with the Sydney Opera House in the distance; study ing the vanishing point on a jar of Dutch Cleanser; against a gravestone with dramatic back lighting; with a false nose on; in the vicinity of Macchu Pichu; or sitting in a study and looking intensely at one's own book

The person who borrowed my Martin Beck thriller, read it in a sauna which melted the glue off the spine so the pages drifted to the floor, stapled them together and returned the book, thinking I wouldn't notice

Any person who has burst into tears at the Liquor Control Board

Anyone with pain

perf art

Went last night in Colombo to a 'performance art' session, where mediocre artists 'performed' mediocre poetry. It was one hour of my life that I would never get back. Needlessly theatrical, completely unsubtle, without any substance or depth, it was the kind of thing that would never make it past an audition for anything elsewhere. It was also sad because this 'represented' homegrown Sri Lankan talent. I have nothing against the people behind the production, but there is so much that is rich and original to exploit in both Sinhala and Tamil literature, and instead, this derivative, derisive free-verse bathetic performance was held up as an example of 'local' art. One can be anglicized, anglophonic even, but unlike India, Sri Lanka has very few authors writing in the English language about Sri Lanka. Sigh. One piece in particular was aggressively sexual, which again, is fine if it is meant to promote the virtues of sexual choice in a repressive society, but this was pointlessly sexual. Given the proliferation of issues in Sri Lanka today, ethnicity, religion, conflict, the tension between modernization and the nostalgia for a rural past, there was enough to be inspired by, or construct art around. Instead, this , which represents the avant-garde movement in Sri Lanka, was what we got, gibberish about midnight blue versaces and tits and adultery. Utter tripe. And yes, I am angry and not objective. I'm angry because there is enough to dramatize, to highlight, to generate social awareness about. I'm also glad because I realized again, where my identity fell, that though I was diaspora, English-educated, I could not identify with this so-called social elite that I was a part of.

groupie!

Okay. Reading the below post, it sounds as though I'm an insane political groupie. A junkie even. I am though. I've drunk the Kool-Aid and leapt onto the bandwagon. Choo choo. Let the future bring what it may. But I talked to him about the possibility of some alliance, with me personally through my years at grad school and he was likewise excited about the prospect and I'm fawning now and I should stop.

and then there are days like today

Its like being elected president, on this platform of promise and hope and coming into office with idealism and a grand vision of how one will implement change, save the world, renew, rejuvenate. And then just like getting bogged the fuck down during the presidency. Having to push through bills that are compromises, farcical pork-pie legislation. And then realising that your constituents are disaffected,unmoved. Then coming to the end of the Presidency and looking back at the legacy you've left, the successes, the failures, the compromises. Older, wiser, sadder. And then in the last 100 days, counting down. Vowing to do as much as possible to set in stone irrevocable, positive change.

That's how I feel right now. I'm in the last 100 days. The countdown begins. I had started this term of office with such energy, vision, hope. The ensuing months saw me bogged down in a haze of bureaucracy, battling against the inertia of local culture to inject dynamism, capacity-building on every single level, unable to work in the areas of most need due to legal complications and donor complications, battered on every side. Days when nothing seemed to work and my entire tenure just seemed like a long timespan of futility. And then days like today, when I knew, for a brief shining moment, that this country had entered my blood (and broken my heart time and time again) and that I never wanted to leave, and that my work here was far from over.

Today I had a meeting with a politician that is tipped to take over the leadership of the main opposition to the current coalition government. We are doing a large amount of work with his local NGO, through a financial intermediary. It was the first time I met him. For the record, his father was the President of Sri Lanka when he was brutally assassinated by a suicide bomber, a 12 year old Tamil boy in his own house, amongst his retinue of servants. A boy who had been with him since he was five years old. I can’t even imagine the betrayal, the sadness, the alteration of a nation’s destiny and a family’s tragedy when such a thing happens. This is what one calls the national arc of narrative. All the post-colonies have it, transition, confusion, the emergence of a broken national identity, the internecine strife in the subcontinent, the poverty, the struggle for definition. The religious turmoil, the political fundamentalists, the socialists, the conservatives, all fighting to own the national narrative. In countries like India, the Nehru dynasty captures and loses it time and time again, and that family is wedded to the concept of India no matter what, from the moment Jawaharlal Nehru said at the stroke of midnight that that was when the soul of a nation ‘finds utterance’ . The concept of Sri Lanka is just as alien, a national identity as difficult to form, and the assassination of P* is a vital moment in Sri Lankan history.

And to meet the man who was aboy when it happened, like JFK Jr in the pictures when Kennedy was shot, to have him not mind that I was Tamil. To talk equally and hopefully about development, poverty, need. To see a glimmer of hope that there were at least some politicians in the country like this, politicians that were able to transcend class perceptions, intelligent politicians that could maybe unite the country one day, or change its destiny, was extraordinary. The man had charisma too, a hard-charging, hard-working, ambitious, young, educated politician with a hope of winning both the elite urban vote and the rural vote, with a hope of bridging the segregated parts of Sri Lanka. It almost made me want to sign up for UNP and come back here next year campaigning for them. It made me realize that my work was far from over. And the way the meeting ended was funny because he was talking about Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore of all things! And how it was necessary to rule at times with an iron fist. And I countered and said, “but an iron fist in a velvet glove” and he paused and stopped and looked at me. I could see he was surprised and he said that is a good line, did thatcher say it? And I said Churchill, actually. (it turns out both of us were right)

And as I left, he said “we should get together more often”. And I turned back and said “definitely”. And we walked out, free, happy, thinking about the future and the nation and wanting to be involved. A man who can inspire such thoughts, is an extraordinary man indeed. And I thought, this is it, this is my job, this is what makes it worthwhile, to be able to work with people like this, reaching the poorest of the poor, having my destiny intertwined with Sri Lanka’s. Grandiose? Perhaps.

(a little later)

OHMYGOD he just called me. The son I mean. Personally. To talk. We talked personally for half an hour. And I offered my services. To him at any time. I mean, you know. Not that kind of services! . This has been a very strange day. I’m going to stop now.

a dead bird

It all started with a dead bird falling, plummeting out of the sky to land at her feet. From then on, everything was downhill.

Spent the day at the lawyers yesterday in a bizarre tangle. The law in this country is so fucking ridiculous. No wonder we’re still mired in the dark ages. Jurisdiction capacities are given to people who have no legal background and who adjudicate on the basis of emotion. As a result, even if one has a watertight legal case, it counts for naught (syk).

Spent the day pep-talking and rallying up morale. Leadership is bloody hard. I want to send a note to her, saying : enjoy your blood-money, bitch. But of course I will remain a professional to the very end.

Yet, there is a glimmer of hope, that we can put all this behind us, soon enough and move forward, and deal with the larger problems that is our job. I look forward to that day. I have learnt a lot in the last two days about people who talk about ethics, but in the end, come groveling for money instead. I have lost my faith in someone who I thought was above the materialistic fray.

Never-mind.

Am reading Step Across the Line by Salman Rushdie. It is surprisingly good for someone whom I have hitherto regarded as a pseudo-intellectual. There are some passages that I find quite relevant, specifically the concept of ‘respect’. Rushdie talks about how we live in such extreme political correctness, that we have to give ‘respect’ to those who preach messages of hate etc. Respect does not mean that the critical faculty cannot be exercised, that one cannot disagree, disavow, shame, tear down. He also talks about the writer as a moralist, as one of the few purveyors of truth left in a spinning world. It is the duty of the writer to a) discover and b) stand up for truth. But so few writers recognize this moral imperative, merely existing as tape-recorders, observers of trite encounters. Also talks about how few writers have the will or ability to tackle the larger topics, to write about national arcs of narratives.

change

I have decided to apply to business school as part of the concurrent degree program, which means that if I get in, then it shall mean 2 and not 3 years of study and living on the East Coast. Horrors. Let's see what that brings, but in the interim it shall mean completing at least 7 essay questions and of course, the dreaded GMAT satisfactorily which all points to the next few months of rather hard work and WHY! oh WHY can't I just disappear somewhere and take a break? And if I don't get in then I shall feel lousy. Sigh.

A naval bombing off Point Pedro (where we have 13 schools) has led to aerial carpet bombing of civilian suburbs in Kilinochchi which luckily was forewarned to some extent. Now begins the inexorable descent into perpetual no-war no-peace. Buckle up.

On a side note, the finance/admin manager went into the Immigration Department to request a resident visa for me and was asked by the clerk "what gift did he bring her". A good slap should have been the answer. Jeez-us.

girls

We had gone up into the hills recently to launch a teenage girl support program, providing materials such as shoes, uniforms, books, pens, exercise copies, bags of rice, and more importantly things like tuition, training on gender, human rights, leadership, confidence, communication, and the like. Especially to deal with parents' (both mothers and fathers) alcoholism, domestic violence and sexual abuse.

We interviewed personally about 90 girls and their families over a three day period and it was a harrowing experience to say the least. Tears welled up at least 3 times even in me, to hear their difficulties, of parents who had worked in garment factories and had life threatening diseases due to exposure to chemicals but whom factory management had compensated with 300 dollars, of fathers who had put their children's hands on burning stoves to discipline them, of children who had to work to support the family, of sexual abuse. Of children who had to walk 2 hours to school one way without shoes up hillsides and mountains. Of being cold enough and having to forage for your own firewood. And still the Hindu festivals and religious devotion burns strong, fanatical perhaps. Trade Unions are also incredibly mobilized and powerful there.

Of course i understand why everyone bootlegs their own moonshine and drinks until the cows come home. Hell, i would do that for sure! And then the children grow up, are taken out of school at year 9 and used as child labour. Murders etc and violent crimes also abound in these remote hilltop communities, which are ill-policed due to difficulties of travelling etc. Most people live without electricity and piped water (in this day and age) and studying is the most difficult option, not the easiest. God. What a nightmare! I can't even imagine. And of course the perpetual guilt of others like me, in this profession. Forgotten by the rest of the country, the situation has remained the same in the plantation community for the last 50 years.

weekend blues

It's been a long, dreary, desperate weekend where I consumed singlehandedly a bottle (yes, that's right) of arrack and at least two packs of cigarettes. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm still recovering from the arrack. My body can't take such local abuse. We seem to be inching back to the limbo of no-war, no-peace. Work is really fucked up at the moment, all I seem to be doing is frantically fire-fighting and putting up with silly requests. I have all this pent up rage that is still waiting to be expressed. I want to hurl things at someone's head. Anger and hate destroy the person who is holding it instead of the object of hate. I know that and I still can't let go. I just want to disappear somewhere. For a long while.

over

I am so over this country right now. Everything has ground inexorably to a climax and my nerves are actually shattered right now. I can't believe that this was the week where there was a suicide attempt at the General, followed by airstrikes by the GOSL and people fleeing the East. Also some relationship drama last night just makes me want to howl and to throw things and just release anger and bitterness and sadness and the stupid thing is that its' not about him at all, its about me, about my inability not to fuck things up time and time again. I'm filled with acute self-loathing. And the week ahead promises some major drama at work and by the end of this coming week, I'll be ready to just open the dammed-up reservoir of tears at this whole country, my whole year here, the people I've met and screwed (and vice versa) and then I'll blithely jet off to grad school and abandon everything.

intros

The funniest thing all week (side note: things are tense but calm here). There was a yahoo group created for new admits to my grad program and predictably everyone has felt compelled to post detailed CV summaries about themselves , ostensibly 'introducing' themselves on the group emails. . .. Here are a few classics (name and school edited out for anonymity!)

"(my) career has straddled the private and public spheres - did a few stints at Bangladesh Government/World Bank/UNDP projects as an economist, presented keynote papers at business chambers and government ministries on market access, regional cumulation, sustainable environment management, MDGs, also ran my own small international trading company engaged in the pharmaceutical and apparel industries, currently involved in consulting and political campaigning"

"My instution is the sole body for designing foreign trade policies of Turkey...since i am working in the Asia and Pacific department, I've been to many places in the region and met different people. To be more specific, my section is dealing with the trade negotiations for bilateral agreements. And I am in charge of the bilateral trade and economic relations of Turkey with the Asian and Pacific countries as well as negotiator in trade and economic cooperation agreement negotiations ..I am most confident that Harvard would be an excellent opportunity and reference for all of us during our carrier"

"After my undergrad schooling, I was commissioned as a Korean Air Force Second Lieutenant in 2003. During the past three years as a junior officer, I haved worked at the Korea-US Combined Forces Command and the Ministry of National Defense dealing with intel/ops planning, policy, and protocol"

"For the first time in a long time, I feel very shy and humbled by my future classmates. My intro will be very boring, comparatively. I am an entering MPP candidate. I am probably the youngest of the bunch, having turned 21 just four short months ago. "

"I consider myself more or less a political realist and am interested in the International Security and Development PAC, then perhaps writing (and here I betray much) for AEI, Cato, or the Heritage Foundation. On a slight side-note, is it not incredible that we will be studying at the same place Samuel Huntington teaches? Love him or hate him, it’s impossible not to be amazed, being that close to he who is, for lack of a better term, the master.
While an undergrad, I have presided over our Student Government (supervising the first overhaul to our Honor Code since its inception), edited our school newspaper, and enjoyed Kappa Sigma among other things".


Somebody please kill me now.

analysing peace

The below is a good analysis of the dynamic in Sri Lanka and was written before this week's events. It is by Dr. Jayadev Uyangoda, a leading (rational, unbiased) intellectual from the University of Colombo. I found it on another blog (full disclosure!)

Can the Peace Process be revived.


1. The peace process that began in 2002 in Sri Lanka appears to have reached an end. It has exhausted its potential to produce a settlement agreement, even an interim one, between the GOSL and the LTTE. The main tangible outcome of the 2002 peace process is the Cease-Fire Agreement between the GOSL and LTTE. The CFA has also been under great strain in a twin context of regime change in Colombo that began in October 2003 and increasing violence primarily in the northern and Eastern provinces. The emergence of a new peace process seems to be quite difficult.

2. There seems to be some fundamental dissatisfaction, on the part of the GOSL, LTTE and the Muslim community on the outcome of the 2002 peace process. The GOSL views the CFA and the peace process as having resulted in negative consequences for state sovereignty and national security. The LTTE’s assessment of the no-war no-peace situation is that it has not brought any tangible outcome to the LTTE or the Tamil people. Meanwhile, the Muslim political parties are angry that they have been excluded from the bi-lateral peace process between the government and the LTTE. They fear that even an interim agreement between the government and the LTTE would endanger their interests. The absence of a strong social support base for the 2002 peace process has been a major impediment to its success.

3. The Geneva Talks between the Rajapakse Administration have a limited agenda. It focuses on the proper implementation of the CFA. The Geneva talks are not intended to resume political negotiations between the two sides. Even with a limited agenda, the engagement between the two sides has been valuable in managing violence and protecting the CFA.

4. The CFA is facing a crisis of existence. One party to it defends it in its existing form while the other party wants to revise it. It is the pragmatic need felt by the two sides to control violence that can sustain the CFA as well as Geneva talks. Without GOSL-LTTE partnership, the CFA can survive only as a strategic condition. Sooner than later, it will become clear that without returning to political negotiations, the two sides may not be able to sustain the CFA. A post-CFA scenario can have two possibilities – all-out war or protracted low-intensity violence.

5. Concerning the future of the peace process, a maximalist trajectory of conflict resolution appears to be both unrealistic and impossible. Political conditions that exist in Sri Lanka do not provide space for a maximalist program of conflict resolution. Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim societies as well as major political actors representing these ethnic formations expect contradictory outcomes from peace. They conceptualise the idea of peace differently and expect different outcomes from peace. For example, UPFA government’s notion of ‘peace with dignity’ is conceptually and politically different from the LTTE’s notion of ‘just’ peace. The goal of peace has not yet become a shared political perspective either. The inclination among the major parties to the conflict is to view peace as an outcome with unilateral gains.

There is also a fear of a peace settlement. In all the three ethnic formations, the fear of peace emanates from the apprehension that external actors – the global state system — might impose on Sri Lanka a settlement conceived externally. A peace settlement is certain to have its gainers as well as losers, but the fear of a settlement is a state of collective mind. It is concerned with the anxiety that an externally conceived peace agreement might favor one group over all the others. Then, there is the deep-seated suspicion of a peace settlement itself. Sinhalse nationalists fear that a settlement with regional autonomy would be a stepping -stone for secession. Tamil nationalists, particularly the LTTE, do not believe that the Sinhalese political class, even after signing a peace agreement, will implement it. They want to maintain their military structures and war preparedness in order to ensure that the terms of a settlement agreement will be implemented fully and comprehensively. Meanwhile, Muslim nationalists fear that a peace settlement between the GOSL and the LTTE would reduce the Muslim community to the status of a permanently disempowered minority. Finally, the Sinhalese political class, which controls the Sri Lankan state at present, does not seem to be ready for a political settlement acceptable to the LTTE. It is extremely difficult to conceive an early peace agreement signed and implemented in Sri Lanka.

6. What, then, is the path to peace in Sri Lanka? In my assessment, there is no direct, or straight, road to ethnic conflict resolution and restoration of peace in Sri Lanka. It is a crooked path with many zigzags, turns and blockades. Sri Lanka’s protracted conflict requires a protracted process of transformation, reconciliation and settlement. The first breakthrough in the peace deadlock in Sri Lanka will have to be a conceptual one. I suggest that the realization of the protracted, contingent and recurrently unstable nature of the peace process constitutes that conceptual breakthrough. No sensible observer of Sri Lanka’s politics can think of any other breakthrough in the peace process, except opportunistic and pragmatic ‘deals’ between the President and the LTTE leader.

7. A protracted period of no-war with no formal peace agreement without the GOSL and the LTTE relapsing to all-out war, seems to be the best available option for peace through conflict transformation in Sri Lanka. The maintenance of no-war no-peace is predicated on the willingness of the GOSL and the LTTE to honour, strength and amend the CFA. At the moment, the two sides appear to have a rather narrow approach to the CFA. The government thinks that the CFA violated the constitution and the law of the country. It has committed to properly implement the CFA purely as a pragmatic necessity. The LTTE, on the other hand, does not see any need or political space to revise the CFA. Both these are narrow and partisan approaches to the CFA. To maintain the present no-war no-peace situation further, it is crucial that the two sides agree to strengthen the CFA by amending it at least in one crucial area. It concerns the capacity of the SLMM to monitor, enforce and ensure compliance on the proper implementation of the CFA. If the SLMM cannot perform these crucial functions, there should be an international body with powers to monitor and investigate violations and ensure compliance with the decisions of the monitoring body.

8. A protracted period of no-war will not be able to sustain itself without addressing humanitarian issues of the people living in the North and East. In this regard, the government and the LTTE need to build up a partnership. Such partnership will be based on the realization that addressing humanitarian issues should be linked to a rapid economic development process covering entire Sri Lanka. External assistance for a humanitarian agenda needs to be seen only as a short-term measure. Rapid economic development in the North and East requires the assistance of the Sri Lankan state and linking the North-East economy with the economy of the rest of the island. Similarly, rapid economic development in one region will enhance the economic development in the other. Realization of inter-dependence and mutuality of outcomes in economic development can ideally be an incentive for the government and the LTTE to work out a framework of partnership.

9. The question of political democracy will invariably emerge in a long period of no-war. This will pose a major challenge to the LTTE. The LTTE needs to realize that without democracy and plurality in representation, its agenda of representing the Tamil nation will face a serious crisis. The goal of peace needs to be conceived not as prior to democracy. In the politics of ‘national emancipation’ peace, justice and democracy should be simultaneous processes.

language

"We are in a state of readiness and are awaiting for the instruction from our leadership to respond with a force that will be catastrophically disabling and devastating to the enemy," said Mr.S.Elilan, Trincomalee district political head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam commenting on the current situation in Muttur east, sources said"- source Tamilnet.com

This is the kind of language flying around Sri Lanka these days. With over 40,000 Tamils fleeing Trincomalee district, with both sides upping the rhetoric and literally teetering on the brink of war, with nearly all INGOs pulling out of the Trincomalee district, this kind of language ensures that the stove is always set to burn.

sad

Everything feels so sad right now. Everything I've spent the last year killing myself for, all the back-breaking toil, seems to have evaporated in smoke. The shelling continues in the Northeast. Apparently orphanages, offices, even a primary school has been hit in the 'crossfire'. The deliberately provocative statement by the LTTE in attempting to assassinate Sarath Fonseka has almost probably started a cycle of war. The future looks grim. If we slide back into war (like the 90s), it could be another ten years until another resolution comes. We simply cannot continue like this. All these lives snuffed out. Why? Why is violence always the only answer between nations? Our schools will be used as bomb-shelters, maybe as refugee camps. The next five years will see us working with not the poorest-of-the-poor. Everything that I paused my life for, it has all become meaningless. I can't even think straight and I am totally defeated.

obits

I found this on a blog today and it matches my mood perfectly and I hope I shall be able to say the same when my time comes.

I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the course,
I have kept the faith

2 Timothy 4:7

more

The ceasefire agreement is dead in the water. If I was a political commentator I could make my bones on this conflict, but since I am only an NGO activist, all I can say is that there is an inexorable, irreversible slide back into war.

The army hasn't stopped bombing LTTE-controlled areas in the East. We have had to pull out completely out of Trincomalee and all our existing projects in the East will go unmonitored for another year. This escalation was not anticipated until June/July. If this is reality, I'm ready to check out. It is enormously stressful wondering when the next bomb will detonate and who will be caught in it. I wish I knew what to do. My father, in a rare intervention actually asked me whether I thought I should stay and whether I should come back. (They're the most laissez-faire parents ever- when I proposed going to Iran my father wanted to come along for the adventure too, and when my friend proposed to her dad about going to Iran, he confiscated her passport at the age of 23!).

bombs

This is how it begins

Had a lunch meeting with a partner at Slave Island. After lunch, one of our staff members gets a call to say that there has been a bomb blast in Fort (ten minutes away from where we are).
We frantically try to call staff/friends who are known to be in the area. No response as all the networks are frozen and only high-priority military communication can get through (so as to also not incite immediate communal violence)
.
We get into a car and put on the radio and the news filters through: General Sarath Fonseka, the new military commander under the new administration is dead after a bomb blast inside the high-security army headquarters.

Silence inside the car. This marks the beginning. We had all expected it to start soon, but probably in July and certainly after the Geneva peace talks had finished their second round. Such a deliberate and successful suicide bombing is provocative. It will result in increased army clampdowns and brutality in the Northeast which will in turn provoke a violent response by the LTTE. It means escalation and immediate escalation at that.

As we drive back the calls and messages start flooding in. Everyone is safe. I get back to the office and make sure we have emergency contact details for everyone. The other news filters in slowly: a female suicide bomber, almost certainly from the LTTE, blew up the General's 5 bodyguards and herself. The General himself looks like he will survive. The attack it turns out was not successful. But then these politicians have always had nine lives.

It also means that Colombo is not going to be immune to attacks and as someone said, every day when we go to work now, we do not know whether we will come back. It is this culture of fear and uncertainty that is most difficult to live with. And even that I could live with. What I fear is the day that communal violence will begin and even the most pacifist amongst us will be turned into raging bloodthirsty mobs, hunting down Tamils and Sinhalese to kill. Like in July 1983.

crap-

I'm in a really crappy mood and I hope it passes.
Some oddbits- Kaavya Viswanathan, author of "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" has been accused of plagiarism and vows it was unintentional.

I've also become vegetarian for the next three months, at the end of which I will re-evaluate. Primarily because I think it's the morally correct thing to be.

I've also been asked to emcee at someone's engagement in a sari.

I'm also trying not to succumb and go crawling back to an ex, grovelling for affection.

I'm just in a crappy mood and I hope it passes. I miss everyone and I want to go home.

in the off-ing

Organized an offsite off a beach resort in Beruwala during which many topics including program implementation calendars were discussed. The evening saw a water polo match and a lot of drinking, including a session by the beach with all of us dancing and singing baila and assorted tamil songs. Then it was a session with the 'cool' clique (every office has one) where cigarettes and more alcohol were passed around while 'love failure' was discussed in great depth drawing on the personal experiences shared.

Then I met 'Amden'. Amden was the name of a German warship which eluded Allied capture during World War 11 and managed to sneak through Allied defences. It has become the nickname for those who are basically clever, manipulative and capable of achieving their own ends. (Ranil Wickremasinghe, ex-presidential contender was nicknamed Amden). Anyway Amden also is the name of a cartoon character, and there are thousands of stories spun in the collective national consciousness about Amden. (Amden stories are told at funeral gatherings, when according to Buddhist rituals, the body has to be accompanied for four days prior to the funeral and for all 4 days there is to be no sleep, to watch over the body. So to pass the time, and keep awake, Amden stories are told and exchanged.).

I suppose they lose the flavour, and the humour when not told in ribald Sinhala, but here are some anyway.

Amden is coming out of his mother's womb. Being the naughty fellow that he is, he wants to come out feet first, and not head first. So he keeps pushing his feet out and back in, playing a game with the doctor and nearly killing his mother. So then the doctor takes a cigarette butt and singes his feet the next time he shoves his feet out. Then Amden leaps back, puzzled and sticks his head out to see what was up and the doctor hauls him out with both hands.

Amden is at school and asks his teacher a question: Why are fish so flat? Nobody else knows the answer and Amden puts up his hand to answer the same question. Frustrated the teacher asks why? And he says because the whales sat on it!

Amden asks another question: Why do the eyes of prawns bulge out so?Nobody else knows the answer and the teacher, increasingly frustrated asks him why? And he says that the prawns were watching the whales who sat on the fish!!!

Last one for today: Amden is a great graffiti artist and adorns the school walls with three dimensional pictures. His teacher calls his father and says: his art is really fantastic but he can’t keep drawing them on school walls. The father said: Better he draws them here than at home: At home he drew a 3D picture of a naked female and so realistic it was that the father tried to… you-know-what and in the end ended up getting his you-know-what twisted!

Then the weekend was spent morosely moping around the place for no substantive reason really other than the mood struck me and I was annoyed with and at everything so I stayed at home and watched eight episodes of the second season of the O.C. which didn’t work it’s magic and then I fell asleep reading the Economist, which by the way, rocks. Girls and boys, we have a new editor in da house and boy, is the difference marked and noticeable. There is poetry in every article. And I love it. Here’s to good writing!

and back.

And so, I'm back in the muck again. Just two days ago, life was all about having crepes for lunch and choosing what kind of earrings to buy and here choices revolve around having to withdraw aid completely from the northeast in the light of recent increased violence, thus setting back our implementation agenda by at least four months. Or endangering staff and project assets instead. And those decisions lie with someone phenomenally inexperienced and incapable of having to make those decisions.

So predictably, I went home and shared a bottle of wine with a colleague in town and we talked about aid, about our NGO, about the developing world, about education, about film and it was the kind of conversation that I had missed in Sri Lanka all this while. While I was on the plane coming over, all I could think about was how much I missed my friends and family despite the relatively short-haul in front of me. But a day of being back in the office and it feels right, and the sun is shining and it feels as though i had never left.

Someone mailed me some music composed and I was thinking that it was an incredibly personal thing to do for when I hear that music, I think of him which surely isn't right?

Also reading the Israel Lobby (from the London review of books, read if you have a chance) an academic paper from the Kennedy School of Government detailing the extraordinary and inexplicable power of the Israel lobby in American politics.

on currency

In the past year, I have used
The Great British Pound
The Euro
The Singapore Dollar
The Malaysian Ringgit
The Cambodian Riel
The Sri Lankan Rupee
The Indian Rupee
The Australian Dollar
The New Zealand Dollar
The U.S. Dollar
The Vietnam Dong
The Thai Baht

Cities I have been in the last year in chronological order since leaving MS: London, Paris, London, Singapore, Siem Reap, Singapore, Colombo, New Delhi, Colombo, Singapore, Langkawi, Singapore, Sydney, Christchurch, Auckland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, London, Singapore, Colombo, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh, Singapore, Colombo, Singapore, Phuket, Singapore, Colombo, Singapore, Colombo, Singapore and back to Colombo now.

I need a new passport. But it takes 17 days to get one in Singapore and I don't want to get it in Sri Lanka since I don't want me turning up in Karachi with a beard and being 52 years old running an arms cargo.

trinco violence

Jesus Christ. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with this country and why they are so intent on ripping each other's brains out, for twenty fucking years and obviously there is no real peace process but neither is there any real intent or incentive on either side to create the conditions for peace. Finally the reason for war is war. A bomb blast on Wednesday in Trinco in which 16 were killed while shopping for the upcoming New Year, and 50 wounded. Followed by 'an ethnic cleansing' rampage by a Sinhalese mob (although the bomb was most likely set off by the Tigers) in which 7 Tamils were cut, chopped and killed. Police finally intervened the next day by declaring a curfew when Manmohan Singh was leaned upon to call the Sri Lankan president to ask for an intervention for the civilians. This is so FUCKING ROTTEN. This will also mean an end to all our work done so far as we were concentrating in Trinco. I am so tired of this. No matter what anyone does, it's just bloody holding a finger in a dyke.

grey's anatomy

Oh! I have discovered a new reason to live. I have seen the future and it is Grey's Anatomy!. I love this show. I know I sound like a deranged fan and mainly I'm crushing madly on Patrick Dempsey who is actually, like seriously, really, just hot.

And Ellen Pompeo who is a cross between Renee Zellwegger and Joey Lauren Adams from Mallrats and Clerks (?) and the Kevin Smith films. And of course Sandra Oh who actually just rocks. The first season only had 9 episodes filmed and it became a totally amazing hit and now Season 2 is airing on Channel 5 and for the first time ever I wish I lived in Singapore so I could WATCH it. DVD Season 1 here I come.

elephants

ali kapu

From the Safavid period; the Ali Qapu Palace in Isfahan, Iran

read

From the "What is a Classic?" lecture by J.M. Coetzee collected in Stranger Shores, a collection of his essays on literature.

"In Bach nothing is obscure, no single step is so miraculous as to surpass imitation. Yet when the chain of sounds is realized in time, the building process ceases at a certain moment to be the mere linking of units; the units cohere as a higher-order object in a way that I can only describe by analogy as the incarnation of ideas of exposition, conplication, and resolution that are more general than music. Bach thinks in music. Music thinks itself in Bach."

And in counterpoint, I also read "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life". It's not bad or at least not the utter tripe I was expecting. There are even words like 'asphyxiated' and 'aspartame' in it.

and paris

iran

and when I went to Iran.

cambodia

Am back home right now. amazing the enthusiastic reception this time around compared to before when I was barely tolerated. Too late to change some people I guess.

I wanted to post all these photos while I still had them. To commemorate perhaps an increasingly distant past when I felt like I still had energy, optimism, an open mind.

This is angkor wat.

yarlpanam

Essentially a day-trip up to Jaffna completed for a high-end donor visit (the grand-daughter of an ex-US president and the president of a large charity organization in her own right and really rather sweet if a tad scatty) and a flight out tonight leaves me exhausted. As the plane whirled away from the tarmac, I saw all-too-briefly the shorelines with waters green and blue, deserted as it is in the high-security zone and therefore populated with army bases. It would have been high-end hotels if the land were free. I saw tobacco leaves, plucked and being dried on the eaves of houses, turning into cheroots under the burning sun. Tobacco is a cash crop, but detrimental to long term agricultural cultivation. I saw too for the first time, in those zones, from high up in the sky, houses with their ceilings bombed out of them, gaping helplessly up at the sky, forlorn structures of cement and stone. Somewhere among those houses was the house that my father grew up in, where I should have been born. There is so much political angst to write about, but it would be misinterpreted and it is yet unformed, and all I recognize are the wisps of rage and anger and confusion meshed together.

Cry, beloved country.

seafood

So went to a seafood/fine dining restaurant in Mount (no prizes for guessing which one). It was my first time back there since the manager had asked me out (and I had respectfully declined- due to at that time being in a relationship of sorts and also because of a complete lack of interest otherwise). Anyway this time I took my mother as armour and also ostensibly to celebrate more recent news. We feasted on crumbed Brie, lobster neuburg (marinated in champagne I believe) rock lobster stuffed with crab served with bak choy, champagne sorbet, cabernet sauvignon and some exotic fruit pavlova. Sated, and stuffed, we are ready to sleep.

I don't really think I'm prepared for this you know? Like, I mean what if I don't end up saving the world or anything? Does that mean I'm a waste of space/money? what if I don't innovate a solution to end poverty and disease in the Third World? Does that mean my education was wasted? What if I choose to be a taitai? (Can sri lankan women be taitais?)

I also found out I was related to the activist below. Most of the time I am sick of all of my relatives, but this time, I'm a little awed.

no more tears sister

There is a rather new documentary film about the family-tragedy of Tamils in Sri Lanka during the 1980s and is specifically about the life and times of a Tamil human rights activist, called Rajani Thiranagama who was assassinated allegedly about the Tigers. It is one of few artpieces that do not needlessly romanticize the conflict or the Tigers as pure freedom fighters, but instead depicts them as intolerant of political dissent or alternative voice as the Sinhalese government. Oh, what a world Sri Lanka? The narration is done by Michael Ondaatje.

dev industry

Seamus Heaney has a new collection out: District and Circle which I must beg borrow or steal for I can't find it here in Sri Lanka. The itch to write again is overtaking me. I watched Sheltering Sky yesterday: I don't know why Bertolucci is so obsessed with that shifting space of sexual relationships. A friend is getting married and I am to be the bridesmaid (good god). Must define research interests soon enough. Oh yes, I remember now what I wanted to say: i discovered a true intellectual and how often can you say that. The only wonder is that it took me this long. The below are full excerpts from pieces of her work. She is a leading intellectual in Sri Lanka, focusing on the development-conflict-peace nexus.

"In this context, the question may be raised as to why the GoSL and the LTTE have chosen or been impelled to chose the World Bank to be the custodian of the post/conflict fund? And on what basis? Historically, the United Nations is the international organization charged with and experienced in dealing with post/conflict reconstruction (East Timor being a recent example). Moreover the UN agencies despite numerous critics have a relatively open attitude to human security, local voices, priorities and knowledge systems, than has the World Bank since it is not so closely allied to international finance and corporate interests, and in the grip of what Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize winning economist and ex-Vice President of the World Bank, terms ‘market fundamentalism’ in his book Globalization and its Discontents. Is the World Bank then a more or less neutral actor or will it ensure that the peace is structured to suit the agendas of international finance and corporate capital while making Sri Lanka vulnerable to fluctuating global financial markets as the world economy goes into recession (as occurred in Argentina)? As conflict, security and development are increasingly linked will it disburse funds to projects that have a less capital friendly and more social justice focus?"

"The information lacuna in turn perpetuated a number of myths that sustained the conflict, both at the level of policy as well as in popular discourse. As the conflict escalated in the nineties, the notion that ‘growth with war’ is possible appeared to be the operative fiction in policy circles. Meanwhile the conflict generated a war economy with military service becoming the leading income generation project for young men from rural areas even as it generated new forms of social and economic inequality and marginalization (eg. Muslim-Tamil conflicts in the east coast). That Sri Lanka, the South Asian leader in social indicators may be slipping in health and education, and mortgaging its future as the numbers of disabled increased, and the economy structured into a war economy, with the rural sector increasingly dependent on soldiers wages was not mentioned."

"Finally, the question remains: will humanitarian and post/conflict aid effectively subsidize SAPs and country's adjustment to Global Capital (ism)? As the various MPs tour Switzerland, Canada etc for constitutional models they may as well read Stiglitz and visit Third World Latin American countries in conflict and post/conflict situations that have a far closer profile and learn from economic debate and debacles in that region not to mention Africa. What informed critical debate in those countries may suggest is that After almost two decades of armed violence in Sri Lanka building a sustainable peace would entail political and economic reform aimed at achieving substantive rather than ritual or procedural democracy and the need for re-distributive justice. By substantive democracy is meant here, economic and social as well as civil and political aspects of democratic practice. "

water

I'm a day late and a dollar short. Graduate school looms ahead of me and I am not sure that I want to buy into it.

Anyhow. I watched Water last night. (As you can tell, this stationary lull in Colombo means catching up as much as I can with film).

To put it briefly, the film is about the state of widows in India, about how they are forced into prostitution for survival, exiled by their families, unable to create a life by themselves, all weighted down by the yoke of tradition and religion which venerates the most glaring of injustice at times. The film is set during the period of Gandhi's rise and has a last, lovely shot of him speaking on a railway platform about how he thought initially that God was truth, but realized that truth was god and exhorted his followers to follow their conscience.

I don't know what it feels like to have a conscience anymore. I don't know what it feels like to have a valid viewpoint. In this state of doubt, it is dangerous to go to graduate school where they fill absorptive minds with ideologies instead of skills, and fill graduates with pre-programmed visions of the world. It is the latter, Big Brother that I am so afraid of. Especially in the United States.

Anyhow. At this moment it does not feel particularly that I will amount to much. The way of mediocrity and the private sector shines bright and overpoweringly.

But then this, the epitaph on Raphael's tomb says too, that men are capable of transcending this world, of creating a bar against which all those that come after them will be judged too.

"This is Raphael's tomb, while he lived he made Mother Nature fear to be vanquished by him and, as he died, to die too".

spore

So another classic from Woody Allen whom I normally don't like but said 80% of life is just showing up which I reckon is quite true.

This is an ode to Singapore (since someone reminded me of old childhood days of being in RGS etc.). I have to say that my friends from Singapore are true-blue kick-ass, salt-of-the-earth, liberal-conservative rockstars. Which sort of really reflects on me. I mean, you know, they're like... caring and shit! and who the hell is caring in the modern world? Of course they're also deeply conflicted with lots of thwarted, burning ambition, but that just adds to their sex-appeal really. And they're really funny, in this weird, localized way, in a cola-snorting (not coke please) way and of course they're as wholesome as motherhood and apple pie too which makes me feel safe and secure that they're not going to leave me once they become like Ministers and shit.

Okay this was a really weird post. i'll stop now.

DVDs I bought yesterday: Sheltering Sky (the old one of the Paul Bowles novel with Debra Winger and John Malkovich! I can't believe that someone would pirate this and that there is Sri Lankan demand for this! Rock on Sri Lanka!), Nine Lives, Amores Perros (because I'm the loser who still hasn't seen it yet), Bunty aur Babli (because Abhishek Bachchan is hot), Just Friends, Duplex, Munich, Water (with John Abraham, the last in the Deepa Mehta trilogy must still see Earth with Aamir Khan and Nandita Das who I adore), Memoirs of a Geisha, and some more...

marr-ed

Got a really a rather lovely email from an old old friend. Old IS gold. Although that makes us sound rather ancient and maybe at the ripe old age of 25 we are on our way to the grave... sigh. Those memories of RGS. I remember once when we were in tuition class, and then the tuition teacher gave us some coke (at precisely 4pm he would wheel out the coke which predictably was the only thing we had been looking forward to in the whole class and of course there was never more than one glass precisely per person) and then she told us a joke and I started laughing and then coke snorted out of my nose and she cupped her hands to receive it! (So it wouldn't flow out and make a gigantic mess and earn the wrath of the tuition master) My sister was also in the same class and she was aghast at my antics, and said that Blood is NOT thicker than water and she would never do that to save my ass! That is true friendship peeps. A defining moment in my early childhood. Anyway it was awesome to hear she's doing really well!

So had an interesting conversation with my father last night which started out innocently enough discussing graduate school and whether I had filed acceptances or not (there's this old chestnut in my family of how once my sister accepted a University of Michigan offer a day late and the University refused her admission and therefore changed her whole life, which in retrospect it really didnt) ... and then came the rather forced casual stunner: So what am I to say when i get marriage proposals for you?

(WHATTT!!! I screeched. I am NOT interested in getting married. blah blah blah)

"There are people here who are more educated than you and know more than you and can see further down the line. Don't think you know everything. Marriage is important etc."/

" Just tell them I am not interested in getting married"

"You're not young anymore. You're an adult and you have certain responsibilities. It's time to fulfil them. I'm going to tell them that you are studying right now, but after you graduate this will NO longer be a joke"

I put the phone down, grumpily and suddenly feeling rather frightened.

woody

As Woody Allen said
The only thing standing between greatness and me, is me.

mfh

talking to a colleague about Milosevic and how he had a horribly abusive childhood which led to some pathology and the inability to realize the import of his crimes against humanity. About how in one telling incident, he organized a specially blackened helicopter to fly him to some opening ceremony (because in Serb mythology from two thousand years ago, the gods descended from out of the sky in a black chariot). Then moved onto various leaders' divine mandates from heaven and the cult of personality that they actively fostered.

talked also about opening a film studio which more and more is my dream. I now only have to find financing, learn how to handle sound and lighting (i can operate DV fine and edit too), get some grips and oh yeah some actors too and a worthwhile script and then I'll be on my way. In the meantime, I might go to school though and stick to the day job.

am pushing paper at the moment during an unusual hiatus in Colombo. I want to get out in the field again.

arrrr

Been obsessively googling rang de basanti. What would it take I wonder, to break into Bollywood big-time? I remember when I was in high school, making a bet with my best friend that I would pay her five dollars (or vice versa) if by the time I was 28, I didn't get married to my favourite actor, who was incidentally called Arjun (but in reality had some brahmin-assed name like Seenu or something pattikadu like that!).

Feeling lost in life. What would I like to do with my life? And do I have to keep walking a via dolorosa to get there? And what would make me happy? And would that be transient? arrgh. Must. Stop. Blathering. Like. A. Emotional. Junkie who's on a plateau right now because the latest fix of drama is still lagging. SIGH.

I want to meet Captain Jack Sparrow. Or Michael Corleone. Or Robert Redford in Spy Game. Or Ralph Fiennes in the English Patient. Or. Randolph Ash from Possession. Or the butler from Remains of the Day. Or Velu Nayakar. Or Arvind Samy from Thalapathy. Or Tony Leung from In the Mood for Love. Or Kevin Kline from French Kiss. Or of course.... Aamir Khan from Rang de Basanti.

rang de basanti

Just watched a really different Hindi film with an ensemble cast (which in itself is anathema to most Bollywood veterans), called Rang de Basanti, starring Aamir Khan, Alice Patten (daughter of Chris Patten), Siddharth, Soha Ali Khan (sister of Saif Ali Khan, graduate of Balliol and the venerable London School of Economics (M.Sc. in International Relations, natch) and really rather lovely), Atul Kulkarni, and Madhavan in a lovely cameo role. The film explores college boys encountering the darker side of Indian politics and the events that transpire after a certain precipitous moment. Filmmaking is lovely too, with real, washed colours coming onto the screen (and not the fake-o airbrushed usual Bollywood effect) and some lovely sepia flashes of the past. And it's the first Indian film I've seen with a British actress who seems even remotely plausible in her role (not even in Lagaan did that lady manage to pull it off). A genuinely emotional, provocative, deep meaning, good hearted film with an excellent, modern soundtrack. Love it!

monk-eying

An anecdote from the Anuradhapura monk who's a bit of a rockstar amongst people here. All sorts of politicians and leaders visit him, ostensibly to get his blessings but really for the positive media, fawning coverage that accompanies them on such visits as they prostrate themselves before the monk. Anyway he was telling our team about drug use in the area and the various locally-mixed chemical confections that produce certain hallucinations, sharpness of mind etc. all for a fraction of the price of Western drugs.

And then he was telling our team how a Minister (Boghalande who attended the Geneva peace talks) came to visit him and he was telling the Minister about Room to Read, who turn up in a broken down van (when we went to visit him, our van had sprung a leak, and our seat was broken: what can I say; cost efficiency) but do really good work unlike other NGOs who turn up in Pajeros that are fresh off the boat (literally) and hem and haw and don't do adequate needs assessments and the like... haha). Then he spoke about women and dieting and how he was counselling a woman over the phone and she collapsed and he rushed over and she told him the doctor had told her to lose one inch and so she had started not eating and then had collapsed and the monk had told her: at the point of collapse, what is the point of being one inch more or less thin or fat?? And then he was talking about being in London, on a bus, in front of a couple that was busy engaging in the 'industry of love' and that no one else was concerned, but he, being Sri Lankan and therefore possessed of an innate desire to interfere in other people's business kept turning back and then surreptitiously viewing the couple through the bus' rearview mirror! Hilarious! LOVE IT. Buddhist monks rock.

The manifesto of 12

THE MANIFESTO OF 12:

Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism.

We -- writers, journalists and public intellectuals -- call for resistance to religious totalitarianism.

Instead, we call for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values worldwide.
The necessity of these universal values has been revealed by events since the publication of the Muhammad drawings in European newspapers. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the arena of ideas. What we are witnessing is not a clash of civilizations, nor an antagonism of West versus East, but a global struggle between democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The preachers of hate bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a world of inequality. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred.

Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of greater power imbalances: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all others.

To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed people. For that reason, we reject “cultural relativism,” which consists of accepting that Muslim men and women should be deprived of their right to equality and freedom in the name of their cultural traditions.
We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia,” an unfortunate concept that confuses criticism of Islamic practices with the stigmatization of Muslims themselves.

We plead for the universality of free expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on every continent, against every abuse and dogma.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

Signed,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq , Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji , Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq

beyond here there be dragons.

Centuries ago men made maps of the oceans and whenever the sea extended beyond the reach of their knowledge they would draw a dragon and write here: beyond here there be dragons.

Well I feel like that now. The line segregating the known world and the unknown world must be crossed and I am screwing my courage to the sticking place to cross it, but still, there is this faint foreboding of apprehension, that beyond here, quite simply, there be dragons.

prolongue

Some very interesting news articles of late that I can't help but talk about. Normally I think that the state of newsprint globally is a dire one, but there are some exceptional articles of reporting that redeem the reporter and give credence and honour to the term 'newspaperman'. Unfortunately recently, it has been the English and American newspapers. I still think that the Economist, the FT, the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post stand at the very vanguard of publishing. Some examples are today's article on UN reform by an ex-British Ambassador to the UN in the FT (on expanding the scope of secretary-general selection with a list of particularly commonsense reform action points), an article on Chief Justice Roberts' first dissenting opinion (and the remarkably candid antagonistic opinions from the majority), an article in yesterday's FT on the rise of China (titled Shock and Ore), talking about the very real consequences of Chinese outsourcing and growth in demand, and some articles on wine and food in the New York Times and the headlining article on Salon on the Hillary Juggernaut (with a very clever and intelligent advice letter to potential Democratic challengers) And also the astrologer's column in the Washington Post although I suspect I would get far more accurate readings from the Hindu newspapers locally).

There seems to be such a surfeit of things to do and possibilities. Wherever I go, I can't help but feel that I am never doing enough, never taking full advantage of the vast resources afforded to me, never reading as much as I should or writing as much as I should, never learning new languages, or keeping up with the old enough, never learning new musical talents (like carnatic music) or old dance traditions (bharatha natyam, roadkill when moving to Singapore), never learning how to cook wonderful, exotic dishes in keeping with sri lankan culinary traditions, never in touch enough with old friends and old passions, never being active in politics etc.etc.etc. The list is endless and very dispiriting if pondered upon long enough.

On watching a movie, as I had written to a friend and which brought back long ago memories...

My favourite form of escapism. That moment sitting in the darkness in the old Cathay cinemas having bunked school and wearing a t-shirt over the RGS pinafore, that moment just before the curtains opened and the screen glowed, seemed to me the moment most pregnant with possibilities, a moment where the best of life was about to happen, where expectations and reality coincided, where the past was forgotten and only new marvels languished in the wings, waiting to fly onto screen and become discovered, become corporeal.

on being

So I don't have dengue. What I do have is an intestinal bug but I am suitably drugged up right now and feeling incredibly drowsy and all I want to do is sleep which is NOT good. Went out last night to Shanmuga's with a friend from undergraduate days and chomped on masala dosais and channa masala which I haven't had in a long time and which was rather surprisingly good. What was even better was that it stayed in my stomach. Friend is involved in managing and sourcing energy projects in Sri Lanka and it was interesting to talk about what I had covered in MS a long time ago...Hydro it seems is the way forward. Also we talked about importing the 118 118 guys from Britain into Sri Lanka. I swear what Sri Lanka needs is some good advertizing and any brand can take off. The population is prone to jokes and jingoism so if anyone can come up with a catchy slogan, some decent quality product (like detergent: please can someone import Fairy liquid here?) then the market is yours for the taking.

From cary tennis at salon on picking an option amongst many at 23

"People who say, "Relax, just pick one, you've got plenty of time," may not remember 23 -- may not remember just how important the world is at 23, how limitless is the horizon, how fresh is the air, how ready the mind, how spirited the walk, how eager one is to begin. At 23 I rode the hippie bus from Manhattan to San Francisco and ended up in a falling-down Victorian on Fulton and Baker one floor up from a deadhead with bad teeth named Sunshine.
I thought I had it made."

ill bill

So woke up this morning to more paroxysms of retching violently and then hauled my sorry ass on the advice of a neighbour to a Muslim doctor in the far wilds of Pepiliyana. I was nearly faint with weakness having gone to the bathroom 12 times in the space of an hour. The hosue was calm and inviting; an oasis. It was not a practice as he was a private doctor and I was spared having to wait in line with raucous babies or with other similarly ill patients. Instead I sat in a walled garden where butterflies flitted among pink lilies and I waited. A bearded Muslim man came out, speaking full English and with all the uptodate tools and took the relevant measurements. Also practising in the ancient arts of ayurvedic medicine which uses traditional organic herbs and the like (that have been human-tested) to cure different diseases. He promises he can do something permanent about my asthma too. Turns out I have a nasty stomach virus and he was also concerned about dengue so I had to go to Durdans to get a blood test all the way in Colpetty. Durdans is a large, monolithic, luxurious (for Sri Lanka) private hospital. This is important because when I am sick, I do not want to use public health systems and I know that's horrible and I don't care. A nurse injected me, I didn't faint and I'm going back in a few hours to get the report. Am completely exhausted. But his touch was kind and gentle, just the way a doctor's should be.

the Bobester

Well this is to post a big thank you to the Bobester, my faithful stalwart, my Gibraltar. Who finally copped to it and realized it was my birthday and sent flowers and chocolate from London to Sri Lanka (see pics) with all the appropriate wordage. Dude, you can buy my love anytime! Without getting too soppy about it, though there are oceans and oceans and separate lives now, we'll always be friends. Cheers!


Well I couldn't sleep last night and was hit by severe stomach disorders which meant that I was retching alone into my bathroom at 3am. The worst thing about being sick is when it happens when you're alone and no one's there to soothe your forehead or make you tea. I remember my sister allus used to cry when she upchucked, not knowing why. But hey. Am feeling somewhat better now after lobster fettucine and jaggery ice-cream and lime juice from the Gallery Cafe so let's hope it stays down now....

partay

So I had like a PARTY last night but it was more like a small gathering of 7 people with food ordered and endless alcohol (and the good stuff, I’m talking Tanqueray and Black Label and some decent Cabs). Between five drinkers, we finished one entire bottle of Black Label whisky, 2 bottles of red wine and half a bottle of Tanqueray- staying true to Sri Lankan alcoholic statistics. Needless to say, there were dramatic side-effects for some of the recipients. However we had a guitar and the drums and we caused merry hell till 4am after which everyone fell asleep on the floor. Thank god I have decent neighbours. I had warned them before. And I hardly ever throw bashes at my house so it was good. I remember thinking in my state of inebriation: even when I wake up tomorrow, in the morning, the news shall still be true.

On competitiveness. I reckon I’m not competitive, well at least not particularly so, (I know some people who will howl with disbelief at that statement) but I think is that what I want is to be placed somewhere comfortably near the top. I do not have the drive or motivation to be first, but just good enough only and I could never tolerate being the bottom of the class, as I have been on occasion in my past (think J1).

francais

The French have got the answers, at least some of them, when it comes to aid intervention. Most French agencies believe in the real concepts of solidarity and humanitarian assistance as the foremost principles of aid intervention. The Americans and the British look on humanitarian assistance as secondary with all sorts of other motivations in mind, monetary and political. The French, to put it succintly, operate without AGENDA.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) remains as one of the foremost emergency medical aid agencies reaching high-intensity conflict zones and working in some of the most dangerous areas of the globes. If I was a doctor, that is the kind of doctor I would be. Or at least hope to be.

I'm at a crossroads of self-definition. The real heroes are these unsung aid workers, that work in remote countries, without the help of common languages or cultures, that work day and night to provide life-saving procedures, that are constantly exhausted in both body and spirit. Like as my CEO said, when someone in Rwanda falls unconscious into a coma and thinks he's about to die and wakes up alive to see a French doctor smiling at him, that is the stuff that heroes are made of. And it happens every day, all around us, as the rest of us continue with our humdrum lives.

I'd like to dedicate this to those aid workers, who have given up everything that is faithful and familiar, to exert themselves, to push the boundaries of what is their comfort zone, who give their life's work in the service of humanity, who exhaust themselves without end and without expectation of reward, who persevere despite seeing more in one the day than most of us would see in a lifetime, above all for believing in the best of mankind and not the worst. They are the truest heroes of the contemporary world.

dorothy

"England is the heart of a rabbit in the body of a lion" and that is why I love it so.

But I think that the Sayers passage I love most, the one that pays homage to an England of yore and not of today, the one that understands what kin, country, and order means is below

Harriet … smiled at the vicar. Whatever fantastic pictures she had from time to time conjured up of married life with Peter, none of them had ever included attendance at village concerts. But of course they would go. She understood now why it was that with all his masquing attitudes, all his cosmopolitan self-adaptations, all his odd spiritual reticence and escapes, he yet carried about with him that permanent atmosphere of security. He belonged to an ordered society, and this was it. More than any of the friends of her own world, he spoke the familiar language of her childhood. In London, anybody, at any moment, might do or become anything. But in a village - no matter what village - they were all immutably themselves; parson, organist, sweep, Duke's son and doctor's daughter, moving like chessmen upon their allotted squares. She was curiously excited. She thought, "I've married England."

I want to marry Sri Lanka.

bs

L'Oreal bought the Body Shop! I can't believe it? Even the Body Shop's faux-environmentalism is not proof against an enticing offer where each share was marked up by roughly 20%! What is the world coming to? Where have all the cowboys gone?

I was going to type something witty and urbane here like I usually do but my mind has drawn a blank. It is the end of a long and eventful week and today topped it off by a surprise cake entrance that was ordered by my sister at the other end of the world to celebrate recent news and the entire office and I demolished it within 15 minutes flat. Then a quick architect meeting who had worked with Geoffrey Bawa in his last days before he died and offered to give me a private tour of Bawa House and maybe one day Lunnungu as well (swear to myself that I shall see these before I go!).

I am still recovering from recent news. Other people may take it as a given when things like this happen to them, but I originate from humble beginnings. I couldn't sleep till 3 am yesterday and in a fit of madness I called the office responsible across the globe to check that INDEED IT WAS SO and it was.

I was thinking of my father's comments on each (to me and my sadly uneventful life) of the things that happened to me...
On calling him from the RJC hall the day I got my A level results: "Holy Shit".
On calling him from the bathroom at the workplace where I was before I got my internship confirmation: "How do you know its true? Are you sure you want to accept it?"
On calling him from home when he was driving when I got my first job: "What? What? aaah. Well you better go back and study, you're going to fail your final exams with the way you've been studying
On calling him recently on admission to graduate school: What? That's excellent! Sputtering ensues. How did you find out? ohhh by email. How do you know it's genuine?

Sigh. Lankans. Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em.

leave

So I am tired of moving around, constantly watching the conveyor belt at airports go round, round round, endlessly round. Everywhere I stay, I leave a piece of my heart behind. London took a big chunk, debilitating and I didn't think I would recover. Even Singapore has managed to carve a sliver for itself (things I like about Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew, public transport and RJC Literature S Paper). But this, this, leaving this, I fear may be the death blow. I am thinking of leaving and its 2:30am and I can't sleep because I don't know how to leave this country. It has claimed too large a piece of my heart, and try as I might, I can't seem to wrest it back.

go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion,
but not with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen - your final pleasure - to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

because i'm a geek

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) today are losing sight of their raison d’etre of humanitarian assistance. Captive to the donor community and to the global media that shapes public perception of their success, charities are driven by a set of targets that include the necessary but unfortunately insufficient condition of victim relief. Their intervention, if irresponsible, can dramatically alter the developmental trajectory of the recipient community, with grave implications. This essay will analyze the damaging effects of relief efforts by INGOs in humanitarian crises on host communities and propose recommendations. The focus is on the Sri Lankan post-tsunami environment.

The tsunami of Dec 26th, 2004 generated a torrent of global aid unprecedented in its size, heterogeneity and global media coverage received. Overnight INGOs grew to twice or thrice their previous magnitude. Expansion plans were drawn up in a week, staff hired the next week, and flown out to the disaster area the week after. The ensuing contingent of INGOs that invaded Sri Lanka was frequently inexperienced, subject to an extraordinary proliferation of mandates and under the spotlight of the attention-deficit driven Western media.

In addition, the political situation was tenuous. Prior to the tsunami, the country was teetering on the brink of a total breakdown of the ceasefire agreement. The relief agenda soon became hostage to election-year rhetoric and exploitation of the recovery efforts for political and monetary gain was rampant. Moreover, institutionalized corruption inherent in the government, its partisan approach to aid distribution and the lack of political will to create a viable independent institution with appropriate jurisdiction to oversee the recovery meant that public confidence in the government inexorably declined while ethnic tensions, already high, festered.

In such anarchic circumstances, instituting rapid high-profile action without the attendant political analysis, meaningful engagement of local capacities or refined understanding of the local culture is hazardous. Yet this is precisely what happened. Rigid budget schedules, initial media spotlights, and competition amongst INGOs prompted a rushed intervention on the basis of isolated diagnoses. Decision-making was entrusted to expatriate staff flown in with a superficial understanding of local politics and with a standard blueprint for relief and development. Massive construction was assumed hastily; schools, hospitals, housing and roads were commissioned without an accurate identification of beneficiaries and duplication was rife. More importantly, the political ramifications of the economic disparities caused by capitalizing certain ethnic communities at the expense of others was not acknowledged or ameliorated, causing further ethnic tensions manifested in violent assassinations and riots in the Northern and Eastern provinces.

The consequences were tragic but avoidable. The absence of a clear framework for recovery, the lack of an independent coordination mechanism for NGOs and the deficiency of government integrity and efficiency led to a dismal regulation of the quality, volume and distribution of aid.

Building a coalition of committed local civil society actors in program implementation can bring expertise and innovation to standard relief models as well as facilitate a mutually transformative dialogue and a refined understanding of situational politics. Another recommendation is to challenge communities to provide some resources of their own (e.g. land or labor in construction or relief delivery), thereby compelling local capacity building, community ownership, continuity of projects, and ultimately sustainable development. Educating donors on the complexity and necessarily longer time schedules of delivering efficient, empowering contextually appropriate relief is also essential, as is the realization that INGO accountability is to both donors and beneficiaries. However ultimately these are medium-term solutions that a) take time and thought, both elements denied to charities in crises facing a complex web of pressurizing operational and funding realities and b) do not answer the larger calamity of development and human security in Sri Lanka or other conflict-affected Third World nations.

If the local media could be strengthened to be nonpartisan, unfettered and intrepid, like its Indian counterpart, it could demand accountability and deter abuse. If the Aegean stables of the government bureaucracy could be rid of corruption and streamlined to focus on cost and time efficiency, overnight governmental revenues would grow, national productivity boosted, FDI attracted, infrastructure developed and a class of risk-taking entrepreneurs created. Higher living standards and an exposure to substantive democratic debate might also generate a trans-ethnic civil society with the critical mass to catalyze a peaceful, acceptable resolution to the current violent ethno-political problem. The road to sustainable, self-sufficient development would coalesce. Yet these are the thorny dilemmas that INGOs steer clear of, afraid of overstepping their mandates and wearing out their welcome.

The willful myopia, the inability to tell truth to power and the reluctance to engage with difficult questions of mandates and the limits of sovereignty must -- and can – change. What is in the balance is worth saving, an empowered local civil society supported by its global brothers and sisters, that can hold governments and populations accountable for their destructive practices, and that can bring capitalism and democracy to a developing country and generate political, economic and human security for all. It requires a revolution in current thinking but it is certainly not impossible.

hmm

So I am a step closer to becoming Josh Lyman from the West Wing. The question remains if I am a step closer to finding Josh Lyman from the West Wing to spend the rest of my life with! Hah. I know. I'm insane. My sister said " So does this mean you're going to be President of the United States and I had to say, "Regretfully no. The United States does not recognize the superiority of my birthplace, whose legitimacy is being contested over a 20 year civil war".

Just came back last night from the plantation sector, where we are also launching our girl's scholarship program. Met a bunch of women's groups and activists, specifically a well established NGO there that had published research on the sector and its unique problems of being labour associated with a very specific industry. Someone pointed out the other day that we are all of Indian origin, albeit settlers at different times, and why should the plantation sector population always be referred to as Tamils of Indian origin as opposed to the other Tamils in the country?

It is an interesting question.

And now I shall have to pick a policy area of concentration and I can't decide whether I want to concentrate on American electoral politics and campaign management or international development. Both have the potential to be singularly disillusioning.