torch

Sri Lankans like to think that they're better than the rest of the subcontinent. Higher literacy rates, better infant mortality rates, a smaller proportion living underneath the poverty line; you name the useless statistic and normally we're better at it. We also like to think that we're slightly more advanced, liberalized culturally and socially than those redneck Indians, with their village practices of suttee (wife-burning) and child marriages and widow brothels and whatnot. Obviously too, most of these horrific practices are always perpetrated against women.

Yet the empirical evidence would seem to prove otherwise. The Hindus in the plantation region of Sri Lanka are generally from what is classified in the Brahmin system as low-caste (Harijans, or children of God as Gandhi called them). As a result, paradoxically, as is often the case, they embrace the rituals , superstitions and blind prejudices of the same Hindu caste system that perpetuates their down-trodden status. One such example is of a woman who works with us in a menial capacity. She had a 21 year old daughter who did not want to get married. She forced her daughter to get married to a family that the daughter specifically did not want to get married to. (21 years old is already too old you see, to be unmarried. ). This was accompanied by much prayer and rituals. Almost immediately, the daughter was pregnant (and the advent of the baby was hastened by the mother's supplications at approximately 20 temples). The baby was born 6 months ago. Incidentally, for the last year and a half, there was some problem with the payment of the dowry (given by the bride's family to the groom's family normally before marriage). Some grooms are happy to wait for the bride's family to take on untold debt and pay off the dowry gradually. Some grooms send back the wife to their parents' home if the dowry does not arrive. This groom's family's patience was wearing thin.

Last week the baby was in an accident. In a fire. The baby has third degree burns and was rushed to the Colombo hospital from the central province because they were unequipped to deal with the severity of the burns. The baby is now disfigured for life, although she has survived after four days of intensive care. The doctors all grimly assert that such a disaster could have in no way been an accident. The daughter has come back to her family and she will not explain what happened. The groom's family is silent. Everyone knows what happened, that the groom's family torched the baby as a sign of their discontent over the insufficient dowry. Meanwhile Pushpa has not stopped crying for 12 days, at the plight of her daughter and grandchild. And yet no one will file a case against the husband and his family, no one will torch his family. They do not question their right to mutilate the baby because of a rational annoyance over dowry.

It reminds me of a story I read in a newspaper. Of how an unsuspecting NGO worker advised a Bihari family in northern India not to give their 9 year old daughter in marriage. The article went to prosaically state that doctors, after 18 hours of surgery, have managed to reattach the arms that were hacked off by the angry father at the NGO worker's interference.

Development? What use? What a fucking joke. All over the world and throughout human history, I think religion has a hell of a lot to answer for.

And forgive the rambling, but it also brings to mind Shylock's poignant query,

If you prick us, do we not bleed,

If you tickle us, do we not laugh,

If you poison us, do we not die?

And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

And yet it is not true. Suppression does not necessarily provide revolution. One needs a sense of basic human rights, one needs to subsequently know that there has been violation, and finally one needs to want to progress, to advance. But if a community is happy to live according to medieval structures, under modern suppression, if tradition alone defines the value of lives lived, then development? what a fucking joke.

and again

We were talking about Sri Lanka today and the effects of culture on relationships.

The Westerners have a different style of breaking-up. We expect to be friends with the ex, after a decent mourning period, we expect continuity. We expect evaluation, joint post-mortems, some sort of reconciliation before the transformation of the relationship to friendship. We almost always expect friendship unless the break-up was bitter.

During the relationship we are careful. Wary of expressing what is not yet known, or not yet true. We demarcate, draw boundaries and lines of permissiveness. We operate according to the rules within our culture. He said "I love you" already? But he's not playing according to the rules! . To give too much too early is to risk rejection and failure. To express too much is a violation of privacy, violation of self. And we all know to have low expectations in the beginning. We bring baggage too, from all our past relationships (and the exes are still orbiting in our periphery, giving rise to the question, is the past ever past?) and we become more brittle with each passing relationship. We do not expect any relationship to be the final relationship, the odds are against it. We do not expect marriage; indeed we do not even know what marriage is, and view it with a faint sense of foreboding. The expected timeline of a relationship is a lot less than forever.

The locals do it differently.

At play is a confluence of tradition, culture and history. For the migrant Westerners, whose lives are marked by relocation, to come to a culture where a family's ancestors lived in the same square mile 300 years ago as today, is to experience 'deep culture'. Where the expectations and behaviours in relationships lead to marriage instantly, where the combination is evaluated pragmatically, with a view towards propagating children, where the element of the religious and matching horoscopes (and thus of a match preordained in heaven) rules. And 300 years hence, we are still overwhelmingly rural, with collective rural memories, with unconscious tribal expectations of unity and relationships. Love is not what is so important as is stability. And so every relationship begins with the expression of love, for there is no proper word in the local vernacular for the Western conception of love, but instead different words to distinguish different manifestations of affection, lust, romantic love, filial piety, and even love born out of duty. It is the latter that holds sway over the imagination here, the fulfilment of duty to parents (thus getting married to someone of their choice to propage the line), duty to one's wife and children, duty to God. And this carries over, with sometimes alarming effects into modern day love and relationships. One is ill-equipped to combine the two, to combine the almost wary, rational, equalizing, constantly-evaluated love of the Westerner/Modernist with the traditional, society-mandated love rooted in one-sided power relationships (based on traditional gender roles) of the Local.

And when East meets West, though never the twain should meet (wrote the Twain himself) then the consequences are disturbing especially in a country where gender roles are shifting. A local youth yesterday blew himself up with a hand grenade purchased from the black market, killing himself and critically injuring the girl with him (an ex girlfriend who had jilted him). Love suicides are very popular here (and to a certain extent are romanticized in local literature). It is fashionable to risk everything for love. And people who have multiple relationships are stigmatized (not held up as the benchmark as they are in the West and people who have sexual relationships are almost completely dishonored in the wider society. (People who have multiple sexual relationships are completely beyond the pale). There is a very confusing map to navigate for the young local male, who holds the most power. What he says dictates roles. The young local female can jilt him and move on, but at considerable risk to her reputation and to her chances of garnering another suitable young local male (since no one wants what someone else has already had). Notwithstanding that, amongst the Colombo elite, the rules of the West play, with the naked emotions of the East and if you don't know where you are, the combination can be heady.

Because the other thing, is that due to the giant collective trauma engendered by a 20 year war, people have come to accept loss far more readily. And live far more intensely. So they say I love you instantly and throw themselves into a relationship and when it doesn't work out, they walk cleanly away, meaning they make a clean break and cut off communication because they can deal with loss a lot better than the unsuspecting Westerner, caught in this bewildering emotional web. And it is astonishing because in the end, it is they, it is they who in fact experience greater total net pain than the Westerner, who is cautious with his affection, and who has not learned to let go.

petrol

It is a particularly irksome time to be in Sri Lanka at the moment. In addition to having foreign programs basically being de-incentivized on being shown on local tv (goodbye desperate housewives (tolerable) goodbye West Wing (not so much)), in addition to having a satellite provider decommissioned (rumours abound as to the underlying reasons but suffice it to sum it up with one word: 'politics') we now have no petrol.

This is shocking. The government has appointed a crony (former cricketer) to the post of co-chairman of national petroleum board Ceypetco. In response, the unions have gone on strike. Ceypetco had 8 fuel storage units when they went on strike. All 8 units have been depleted. The strike has been going on for 2 days and there is an impasse. Yesterday there were 3km queues at Colombo petrol sheds. Now, there's practically no traffic. Soon, we'll all be walking, in a throwback to the prehistoric days. F***ing ridiculous.

trade union

We are engaged in a trade-union dispute, my very first and I'm quite excited. It has been instructive in the tensions between classes, between corporations and labour, of the power of mobilization, why trade unions fill the vacuum of political representation amongst the poor, why they are always socialist in nature and the reasons why the much-vilified trade unions still exist and wield considerable power. The situation is as follows:

A partner-NGO in the much-mobilized plantation sector is responsible for securing land to build a school. The land must be given by the corporation owning the plantation. The corporation has refused to give the land to anyone other than another corporation-friendly NGO (whom we have severe reservations about working with). After months of negotiations between all four parties, the corporation held a board meeting (some members of the board were pro-worker friendly) last week and finally majority-ruled that there would be no deviation from this policy. Our partner NGOs have now enlisted the help of the trade unions of which pretty much every worker on this plantation is a member of (since the school will benefit the worker's families) and the whole jingbang is going on strike for the whole of the coming week in the hope to hold the corporation hostage to their desires. The corporation seems unbending and we're not sure how long the workers can hold out without their daily wage. Our NGO can't publicly take a stand because we'll be accused of using foreign influence to bear on the situation. But behind the scenes, we've been working the phones to the relevant government officials, to the corporation, and of course to our partner NGOs. Of course in none of this, is anyone a complete saint. But it's good to take on the Man. The only thing is, I'm pretty sure we'll lose.

nyt

So yeah. Our fearless leader was featured in the New York Times Sunday magazine this past Sunday. (From Today to the NYT, not bad) but unfortunately it was a hatchet job. The inside scoop is that the actual interview was pretty long but the interviewer condensed it into sensationalistic soundbytes and as a result, he sounds a bit of a clown. But never mind.

Why is it that some things are harder to get over than others, defying all rational explanation? Perhaps because of the lack of closure, the lack of finality. Why is it that some people can live their lives with no heed to the consequences of their actions, with no heed to responsibility? And their carelessness ends up destroying other people's lives, scattering ashes over the ruins of possibilities. Their inability to face the consequences of their actions, their running away, their cowardice can be more damaging than a bitter fight sometimes. Because the running away, lends no closure. No finality. And when you do finally gather up the pieces and move on, it's always as scarred.

But anyway.

schtuff

At first I was afraid, I was petrified.

Or so it goes. Back in Colombo after a quick trip to the hills to sort out some community land issues (two different groups were arguing in the vernacular over some land- I tried ineffectually to stage an intervention with me going: I think everybody needs to take a break and work towards a positive solution. They went furiously "No madam you don't understand". I decided to check out of the situation. It was all rather funny.

And something else too. I finished the third season of the OC and that draws an end to my procrastination over studying for the GMAT which is in approximately 9 days (crikey). I also have exactly 3 weeks and 3 weekends left. It is all getting a bit emotional.

embassy

What the hell is going on in Beirut?

I know the world has bigger problems than mine at the moment, but in the immortal words of Ally McBeal (god it seems so long ago), the reason why my problems are bigger than everyone else's are because they're mine.

And on that note, well here's a list of random shit. I am going via London to Boston (hallelujah) and all direct flights too which is a combination of lucky chance and my parents' munificence. (I wonder how long I can ride this cash cow?). Then my dad got stuck into me because my sister had some harebrained scheme of volunteering in Johannesburg in between jobs which is ridiculous because she will get raped and murdered no doubt (it's okay for me but not for my friends or kin!). Then I went to the US embassy today and despite not having a bank draft, or photos, managed to wheedle my way through (since it takes a month to give an appointment) and also sweet-talked the officer into waiving a 2 year home residency requirement on account of the fact that Australia is oversupplied with well-meaning public sector types and as a result, does not need me to return there to serve! I also met an Air Lanka cabin crew guy at the visa interviews process who gave me a detailed expose on the glamorous lives of lankan cabin crew. Then I walked away with the visa in hand which was a shocking end to my expectations of unnecessary bureaucracy and the like here!

I survived the day basically on 3 hours of sleep as I whined and droned to my sister half a world away while she proceeded to consultant-tize my love life (dismal) and I got stuck into her about how she's become a corporate drone and then she got into me about how emotional she was. So there was some 3am trans-Pacific sisterly bonding which was kinda sweet. And then was racing around today with everything else. I . Am. Exhausted.

emoting

There are some films, some dramas, some pieces of music, some books; shards of which you carry through your life. Re-experiencing these certain pieces of art is always emotional, for me, I'm always on the verge of tears, a knot of nausea begins in my stomach, I forget to breathe. I am not going to list them here, or even meander through a philosophical discussion on why it is so that certain art does that and not to others, but suffice it to say that it exists. (and that i shouldn't blog while I am listening to one of these songs).

As you can probably tell, I'm still feeling extremely, fragile and emotional. I raced through 17 episodes of the third season of the OC. (When the left is giving way, and the right is giving way, instead of attacking I resort to American television. Dire, I know). There's this song that keeps playing through it, and which I have come to resonate with, despite (or because of) all its cheap tackiness (and this is the Youth Group version, not the Rod Stewart one)
come on now, everybody sing, and.. "forever young, I want to be forever young"

let's dance in style
let's dance for a while
heaven can wait we're only watching the sky
hoping for the best but expecting the worst
are you gonna drop the bomb or not
let us die young or let us live forever
dont have the power but we never say never

the music's played by the mad men
forever young, i want to be forever young
do you really want to live forever, forever, forever
forever young, i want to be forever young

moving

Moving out can be very stressful indeed. People underestimate it, especially people like me, who leaves everything to the last possible minute and then races around to find the largest bag possible and sweeps everything from the cupboard into the bag in one smooth motion. But there are other little things, like when you ship shit overseas. I for one, when moving from London was felled by the appearance of a mouse, and called up my mother at 4am, sobbing because the mouse had peeked out at me.

Here's an encounter between my sister, who's at the end of the tether moving from San Francisco to Sydney literally around the world and across a dateline.

Doorbell rings, UPS man arrives
Sister: So these are my boxes. Could you please load these onto the car?
UPS LADY: (shaking her head) nah nah, I ain't carrying those! I can't lift those
Sister: But I called the UPS people and they said they would pick it up from my doorstep. That's why I'm paying you guys.
UPS Lady: But I'm a woman, and I can't lift those boxes. They're too damn heavy
Sister: But I'm a woman too, and I can't lift them and I have to get onto a flight in 12 hours.
UPS Lady: Well lady, you've got a problem. Under State Laws of California, I have rights and I do not have to pick those boxes up.
Sister: (Promptly bursts into tears).

I don't know what happened at the end.

team sri lanka!

spot the wallaby!

bits

Israelis blockading Lebanon and I have an email from a future classmate-to-be, detailing the reality of strikes and spending the night in bomb shelter and being unable to leave the country. Another future classmate-to-be writes of the Mumbai train explosions. Sri Lanka of course has its own conflict, less immediate, smaller-scale, but still absolute. We all paused for a moment today to think of the hatred that conflict spawns, of the inevitable vitriol against the Hezbollah, Israeli government, Pakistanis, Kashmiris, Sinhalese, Tamils. Will the hatred never end? Will only too few people ever have the courage to love?

I was talking to a close friend last night, over crab rolls and chilli cheese toast and iced coffee Sri-Lankan-style, who is in the field of peacebuilding/conflict transformation (violently opposed to the term conflict resolution, because resolution is a false concept, indicating the possibility of finality to a conflict which is never true). And she was saying, that it is forgiveness, reaching out, the act of love, which takes the most courage of all.

Am on a rampage through non-fiction at the moment, finished reading the superlative Alistair Cooke's Letters from America detailing 50 years of transatlantic radio dispatches, nearly finishing Imaginary Homelands which I managed to track down in a behemoth bookstore in London (and who says chainstore book-dumps don't have their benefits?) which is not quite as good as Step Across the Line which was more thoughtful and anyway I'm not the biggest fan of Rushdie at the best of times and also reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and a book of BBC dispatches from Britain through the war. I never thought I could get into this stuff, but it is intensely fascinating, in the absence of motivation to read literature which is sometimes quite exhausting. Like the codebreaker nonfiction of Battle of the Wits which a dear friend gave to me on a birthday many many eons ago.

goal, man

I'm contemplating a return to the hallowed halls of Goldman, if only so that I can finance a lifestyle where I could fly all over the world and sup on prosciutto and melon. The catch-22 is of course that were I able to finance such a lifestyle, I would not actually be able to live such a lifestyle. So maybe what I'll do instead is to chuck in the towel on today, which has been one long, irksome waste of time dealing cantankerously with cantankerous people and generally being on a post-London blue, and skip out, go get the new season of 24 and other DVDs including X men, and have a long, late lunch with my ONLY friend in SL, at a lovely Western cafe, loading up on brownies and ice cream.

And I found this on dealbreaker.com which was quite simply hilarious.

(This part originally from a Bloomberg columnist): (Stories all about Goldman Sachs employees)

The diaries are penned, allegedly, by junior staffers around the world. So, pinch of salt at the ready, let's join the young masters and mistresses of the universe. Meet Amol, a vice president in Treasury. Amol says he's at his New York desk by 7:30 a.m. He must be a genius speed-reader. While I'm wading through invitations to boost my bedroom performance or help relieve deceased African dictators of their ill-gotten millions, it takes Amol just 15 minutes to sprint through his e-mails and check on the day's news.

Frankly, we think Amol is full of shit. An accurate representation of Amol's day would have started more like this version:

6:45 AM - Alarm goes off
7:00 AM - Get out of bed
7:10 AM - Drag my ass to the gym
8:30 AM - Drag my ass back to apartment
8:45 AM - Wake up sorry ass roommate
9:00 AM - Get to work, digest Page Six and Drudgereport
9:06 AM - Wonder if I will ever be on Page Six, and under what circumstances
9:12 AM - Receive call from irate landlord over noise
9:20 AM - Call sorry ass roommate, tell him to turn down stereo
9:30 AM - Ask myself repeatedly, "What'm I supposed to do? What'm I supposed to do?
"9:45 AM - Salvage faint glimmer of what I am supposed to do. Open LBO model from shared drive
10:30 AM - After working on LBO model for 45 minutes, realize this is the wrong one. Narrowly avoid taking over a perfectly innocent Muffin Company.
11:15 AM - Write email to ex girlfriend she is great, and I mean, I don't know yet...
12:30 PM - Break for lunch. Contemplate taking up a smoking habit. Can't find cigarette brand I identify with. Shelve idea.
1:15 PM - Bathroom break. Smuggle a novel into the John. Spend way too much time on job. Become neurotic as someone sits down in stall adjacent. Feel like prisoner on Russian gulag. Leave stall.
1:35 PM - On way out of bathroom, check self out in mirror. Practice various serious expressions in mirror. Throw shoulders back. Admire own tie.
3:00 PM - Lost time. Bang watch hands. They don't go back into place. Look around in awe. Can't figure it out.
3:45 PM - CNN.com. Re-evaluate plans to purchase gas mask.
4:15 PM - Decide against purchasing gas mask in favor of new Gucci loafers. With silver buckles this time.
5:00 PM - Mother calls. Send to Voicemail. Begin referring to mother as Sendtovoicemail.
5:30 PM - Call from client. Working.
6:45 PM - Order dinner. Debate the intricate differences between General Tso's Chicken and Sesame Chicken. There are none.
7:45 PM - Eat dinner, trawl television for Reality TV. Struggle to make witty jokes to impress coworkers.
8:15 PM - Probe nascent gut with hands. Am I getting fat? Can't remember what I used to look like. Can't make comparison. Will just have to wait and find out.
9:00 PM - Exeunt.

(and may I just say it's true. All my friends used to wonder where I got all the free time to make free international calls all over the world and read six newspapers a day).

champagne

So at the wedding there was champagne toasting and the best man popped open a bottle of champagne for the family. I want to be married! I want to pop open champagne, if only for the fact that after so many years, thankfully, it's finally fucking over.

london cab

Just to record for posterity this conversation with a cabman, thus continuing my lifelong love affair with London cabdrivers.

Partner descends from big black London cab, while handing me a green 5 dollar note, (from that movie, you know!), and cab drives off.

Cabbie: So you have a good night then, miss?
Me: (Sighing dramatically) Yeah, I guess so
Cabbie: Aww no love, what happened?
Me: This is what I love about London cabdrivers and miss! You don't want me to start telling you about my life story, I would bore you and myself senseless.
Cabbie: I'm a good listener love, and I've listened to them all.
Me: Have you ever been in love with someone for years and years, and ever wondered why it never happened? Was it because you had never been in love at all, or was it because it was never meant to be?
Cabbie: I was in love with someone for 20 years and I never told her. We married different people. I had two kids and she had one. Then, somewhere along the line, we both separated from our partners. It was never meant to be you see, with the Other then The One. And I met her recently, and we talked and exchanged numbers. I've been waiting for her to call me though. I can't quite work up the courage to call her. What if it all was such a dream? What if I had thought we had loved each other so long, and it turns out that I was the one carrying a torch?
Me: You should have called her. You should have told her that you love her, that you loved her. What use is there in keeping that burning love silent? At worst you'll be where you are right now. At best, who knows?
Him: I know. But somehow, that fear of it not being real, not even the fear of rejection, is too strong. It's like you isn't it love? You can't tell him.
Me: (Silent). (We draw up to my place).
Him: Let's make a pact then. Let's make a pact and say, we will not be afraid of love. We will not be afraid to tell them that we love them.
Me: Go on then. You're on. You have to tell her that you love her.
Him: I will. And you will too. (He turns the car around). Remember! Who dares, wins.

Of course, I still labour under some illusion/delusion that I was never in love at all. But I hope that wherever he is, he told her, that he loves her.

back

I'm back in the office after ten traumatic, exhilarating, sad, joyous, fun, blissful, conflicted days in London. I keep thinking that at some point the magic must end, that I can't keep going home. But I can, and that's what makes London so special. It's a fixed point in time, to which I have the magic powers to return to. I keep thinking that I should ditch the idea of school, stop moving around, find a nice boy in London to get married to, settle down and bear children in the 'burbs behind a white picket fence with a Jack Russell-like mongrel. But somehow the lure of adventure, of the unknown, of the fact that "Beware, for beyond here lie dragons" is irresistible. Perhaps, as Rushdie says, I am one of those inveterate, incorrigible frontier-crossers. It is always better and worse than imagined.But London was especially bittersweet and poignant seeing all my friends, having a best friend get married, walking down the aisle behind her bearing flowers in bloom in springtime in an old church, reading Yeats and Khalil Gibran on the invitation, wearing flowers in our hair and posing lackadaisically next to lakes and trees as the wind blew our saris wild. It was Sri Lanka from the 50s transposed and we never stopped laughing. Someone said that they should take a video the four bridesmaids laughing their heads off and rename it as a soft-porn flick "Bridesmaids gone wild". Had violent arguments on the tube with random French and Irishmen over the World Cup. Watched in frustration as Zidane's head of steel met Materazzi's middle, ostensibly for a remark calling Zidane a terrorist. Walked the streets of Kensington until the sun went down, talking endlessly, pausing on stoops straight out of a Woody Allen movie, existentially-so. And parts of me which I thought had been dead for ever so long started to bloom again, and under the weak , wan, life-giving British sun, I began to feel alive in a different way, in a way where all the despair and angst, pain and joy of Sri Lanka was far behind me and I came to be a child again, believing in love and life.

curl up and dye

Sometimes curling up into a ball and trying valiantly to stop breathing and thinking is the only way to combat memories of a drunken night out and of certain pasts. I actually just want to curl up and die. Or stop remembering, whichever is easier.

But it shouldn't have been that hard really. It was a good day though, started with lunch at St Paul's Cathedral (an old workplace of mine), then meandered to a visit to the British Museum with a friend to see the Michaelangelo etchings and the Elgin Marbles and then pancakes and then early drinks at 5pm on Charlotte Street at the Fig Tree and then dinner at Hakkasan, feasting on tea-smoked duck and fresh halibut and mint tea, and then severe drinking at the O bar in Soho, with mojito and tanquerays one after the other. Today, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery (the former to see the Da Vinci that someone promised he would buy for me) and the latter to see the finalists in the British competition.

Made dinner for Rads and Mags on Monday because I had dreamt about cooking: made prosciutto and ripe melon drizzled over with single-source acacia honey, grilled, marinated red peppers, on the vine tomatoes and fresh buffalo mozzarella, white, glistening and still dripping, drizzled over with lemony olive oil, and then rice with basil,lemon, wine, chicken, honey, pepper , and then fresh strawberries and blueberries with cream that I whipped myself (!) altogether with a lovely Australian zinfandel, with hints of strawberry and melon. It was fantastic.

World Cup fever is still upon us. We sincerely hope that the French will not win.

footie

Landed in London four days ago amidst a hectic whirl of dining, and more importantly drinking! Endless pinot grigio and mojitos which are the order of the day. The first wedding ceremony went off excellently well, despite me waking up a full two hours before departure to tie the sari (my mother had faxed over instructions complete with graphics and arrows and together with 50 billion pins I was able to ensure that no accidents happened!). The day of the match was also the England-Portugal quarterfi and in between watching the hindu ceremony (bride resplendent in an orange and turquoise sari) we were popping off to the kitchen where an enterprising soul had set up a television and antenna and it was terrifically sad to see England lose on penalties. Among the chants of alai payuthey were echoing cries of anguish over each lost penalty. It was all rather hilarious. And then we were driving back through harlesden which I did not even know was a portuguese area and the traffic was held up for miles on a two lane inroad and the cause of it was a mob of Portuguese fans that literally mobbed each car. Our windscreen was plastered over with the Portuguese flags and there was much ado and seething and frustration. And then scrubbed up and out and over to watch Brazil-France which was equally disappointing. Oh, it is good to be back.

tears

So I came across a post about No More Tears Sister the documentary about a Tamil woman fighting for her rights against a movement she once embraced and she had this to say which was strong and sad and true: "One day some gun will silence me. And it will not be held by an outsider — but by a son — born in the womb of this very society — from a woman with whom my history is shared."

shtuff

Dinner last night at the Gallery Cafe with cousins and mothers and people who I'd grown up with and never realized I missed until they were gone. The food was excellent, copious amounts of red wine, fresh seer fish, coconut risottos, black pork curry, brinjal pahi, tender lemongrass and ginger chicken, spaghetti with pan-fried mullet and pine nuts complete with dessert of jaggery creme brulee and a lovely cold, chocolate panna cotta. Food glorious food as the Oliver Twistian lyrics go. Did anyone ever know I played Mrs. Bedwin in a school production of Oliver Twist in Sydney and I had to sing in a plaintive song "Where is love? Where is love? Is it over there, in the window pane or something like that. Little did I know that like more than 15 years later I would still be singing that same damn song. I remember other bits of Australia too, how I ran for election as school captain and had to threaten/coerce my baby sister into corralling the third grade to vote for me (I was in the fifth grade). (I won the election btw). She told me ten years later that though the third grade voted for me, she herself did not coz she hated me! hahaha. I find this diabolically funny.

gate foundation

Just found out that Warren Buffett is going to donate the bulk of his personal fortune to the Gates Foundation (after Gates himself stepped down from his executive/technologist role at Microsoft to pursue his philanthropic career). This would further catapult the Gates Foundation as the largest NGO in the world. Although its role is primarily as a funding organization and not as an implementing agency, nevertheless, the size of its grant pool has considerable ramifications for the global NGO sector. The sheer doubling in the size of global aid worldwide will lead to further problems of accountability and transparency in the sector, no matter Amnesty's newly released charter on accountability. Scaleability is the next issue. Watch this space

bits and pieces

A suicide bomb attack in the suburbs of Colombo today. High-ranking military commander dead, along with 5 other passers-by. I wonder who they were. This coupled with the attempted assassination last month of the Army Commander, also in Colombo, is illustrative of the new LTTE tactics in the face of the EU ban, the Oslo Communique and the presence of other perhaps paramilitary-funded anti-LTTE forces. In any event, it is certain that this is a provocative attack designed to generate a military response from the government (perhaps even a declaration of war from the govt.) which in turn would result in a massive, totalistic response from the LTTE. The moment that the govt. responds, if and when, with decisive force, the LTTE can tell the international community that they had no choice but to also respond with a military option.

It was a long weekend, where a cousin-in-law got baptized at a 200 year old church in Kynsey Road, built by the British, with long arching ceilings and Christ hanging forlornly off his perpetual cross, where I had a full facial, a foot massage and pedicure, eyebrows threaded (PAIN!), a lesson in sari draping, some intensive waxing, all for the insanely low sum of USD 40! It would cost a good USD 150 elsewhere, all this, at least. Also a weekend where a best friend turned 26, where another good friend wedded at the Fullerton with white columns and cornices, and where my mother flew into town for the weekend. Also a weekend, where because my internet was down, and my phone was not working, I finished watching Season 2 of 24. That's a good 36 hours of 24 watching in a WEEK!

This is an interesting and accurate comment on NGOs in Sri Lanka (in response to the measures taken by the govt, perhaps prompted by a leftist party resenting NGOs, in order to promote greater transparency amongst NGOS here and also to TAX the income received in grants by NGOs).

"NGOs in Sri Lanka often mimic the very parochialism they seek to transform in government. Clamouring for donor aid, scarce human resources, a paucity of genuine innovation and ideas, inflated egos and personal vendettas, Sri Lanka’s NGO sector is rife with problems that none can deny and is not generally one big happy family.
.... NGOs need to mature into institutions that are better able to work together and share resources. This maturity is vital in light of the vital role NGOs play in the peace process in Sri Lanka – as hubs of information, research, advocacy and civic engagements in support of justice, reconciliation and peace. At the same time, and with equal emphasis, a peace process demands NGOs to respond to voices opposed to the peace process, claim a large degree of public support and state that NGOs, as entities not democratically elected into power, lack the legitimacy to represent the views of various peoples"

going to london

I am going to London in less than a week! I can't believe it! I picked up the ticket today and had to take a moment to really look at it, to really believe that I was actually going to go home, at least for a short while. And the way that my Boston tickets are configured, I'll get to go to London again on the way to Boston and back, so that makes it 3 times in the next six months that I'm going to hit London. HALLELUJAH!

Do you have any idea what this means? I just sent out the schedule to CLOSE friends. That would be Sumathy, Arjun, Lewis, Radovan, Stephane, Raheman, Sofia, Ling, Krishan, Shanil, Akhil, Shaman, Lisa, Przemek, Salvatore, Julie, Imran, John and Bella. Do you know how many friends I have here? I mean people who I can call up and say let's head out for a coffee? The massive total of TWO!! I had a freaking life in London. And too bad I only realized it when I lost it!

I can't fucking wait. And yet, I have never and will never regret the decision to leave.

itty bitties 2

hiatus

So I managed to watch 24 episodes (17 hours of viewing time) of Season One of 24, which to be quite honest, I have not managed to catch in the last five years since it debuted, in three days. That's some hardcore viewing folks, averaging approximately six hours a day after work starting at 9pm. I'm bleary and tired but it was worth it. Sadly, now I have to get Season 2 ASAP peeps. I can't believe it was Nina!

Moving on. What else has happened during the last three days? I'm not sure, I can't remember. All I know is that I'll be in London next week (HALLE-FREAKING-LUJAH) and about to be a bridesmaid. Which means that approximately in the next week, I need to find a tailor and give them blouse material and the works. Sigh. And find beige shoes. And learn how to tie a sari (crikey).

I had some positive thoughts two days ago, but I can't remember what they were. This is not to say that I'm swimming in negativity at the moment, merely that there is a hiatus at the moment.

(un) rest in peace

Source: Tamilnet

The parliament resumed its sittings Tuesday morning at about 9:30 a.m. and after the conclusion of normal business of the House, Mr.Wimal Weerwanse, the Propaganda Secretary of the Sinhala nationalist JVP, with the permission of the Speaker made a special statement on the Kebbitigollawa blast.

Weerawanse charged that the LTTE was for the Kebbitigollawa massacre of Sinhala civilians including children and women. He appealed to the Sri Lankan government to ban the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka.

Thereafter he requested that the House should observe one minute silence for those killed in the Kebbitigollawa blast, sources said.

At that stage TNA parliamentarians Mr.N.Raviraj, Mr.S.Gajendran and Mr.Ariyanethran walked into the well of the house protesting against for not observing silence for Tamil civilians killed elsewhere in the North East.

That drew heated arguments between JVP and TNA parliamentarians. JVP parliamentarians Mr.Wimal Weerwanse and Mr.Nihal Galapathi rushed to the well of the house and pushed back the TNA parliamentarians to their seat.

Mr.T.Maheswaran, a Tamil UNP parliamentarian also entered the fray at one stage in support of the TNA parliamentarians.

Both groups thereafter engaged in fisticuffs and the Sergeant-at-Arms failed to restore order by bringing the two parties under control.

As the situation went out of control, the Speaker adjourned the sittings till 10.30 a.m.

random

A friend of mine has a great post on RGS and literature class, I only wish I could or knew how to link to it. It's actually rather hilarious. One sad thing was that the girl who was mentioned in the post, is no longer alive. I remembered her, briefly, as an extraordinarily intelligent, passionate girl, who was always the subject of discussion. I also remember her as extremely lonely.

I just finished watching a film adaptation of the Chekhovian play "Three Sisters". It was really not bad. Incredibly sad however, how the abuse of childhood, or the experiences in childhood come to shape an adult, their insecurities, their obnoxiousness, their loneliness. If only we learnt how to overcome what happened when we were young. Why don't they teach us that in school? Teach us to face the future with love and honesty?

roomers

So it's confirmed! I'm going to be living in a 4 room mate house for the next year at least, and possibly more. This, after having lived alone for the last three years. I can't believe I've lived alone for the last three years. The last two years of living alone though, in Sri Lanka has been the worst and I am very glad that I will be living with some company. Even if they turn out to be drug-abusing schizoids who have never read Ondaatje, I will suck it up.

Hora!

Today, being very hungover from last night's excesses and chiefly Rocklands Dry Gin, I was rudely awakened by a text message “We’ve been robbed. Get to the office asap”.
Showered and dressed, (the rapid response jumbling the cuttlefish and gin, making me nauseous) hailed an auto and told him to step on the gas, fearing the worst. Came to the office at the ungodly hour of 8:30am to find that the rest were at the police station filing the case and trying to get some brass down onto the scene.

We were not allowed to go into the office until the police arrived at the crime scene. So the staff sat outside on the terra cotta porch, waiting for the Force to turn up. We have computers (insured) and petty cash (uninsured) and that’s about it (we’re a freaking NGO for god’s sakes). Sum total of cash lost, : USD 150 (relatively big money in Sri Lanka). I know this day already is going to be one long, bureaucratic mess. Colleague informs me that Chief Inspector at local police station looks like Aamir Khan. I hang around, in the futile hope of salvaging something from the day.

The police turn up 4 hours later in a jeep (no doubt after their morning tea when they finally decide to attend to the day’s work) and the Chief Inspector descends, booted foot on the ground (EXACTLY like in the tamil movies). (Let the record reflect that there is no way he could even be a distant relative of The Khan). He parades around importantly, opening drawers, posturing, postulating. Turns out it was an inside job (which any fool could see since the ‘hora’(thief) zeroed in straight on the drawer where the petty cash was stored and jimmied the lock, leaving all our valuable computer equipment untouched. He had also broken open one of the back doors too to enter, since the front doors were impenetrable when locked. Had left one perfect muddied footprint. Also apparently had dinner at the office before he did his job since there was a food pack on the ground. The Nerve!

Chief Inspector straightens his shirt and slicks back his hair upon seeing me. Sidekick (head bowed, back bent) follows him like an eager puppy, not daring to look at me. The Sergeant of course. I half-expect Goundamani to come bounding from another door, but it's not a movie set, it’s just another day for the Dehiwala Police Force.

The crime scene is cordoned off and we’re not allowed to go into the office until the fingerprinting experts (from the CID and not the police force) turn up. They come of course after a leisurely lunch, by which time it has been five hours since the discovery and since I came in. (Notable sightings, a wild parrot in our guava-fruit tree).

I’m broiling in the heat,being bitten alive and ready to commit bloody murder. Oh, and by the way we had an interview today and I had to take the hapless candidate to the nearest Pizza Hut. Turns out he’s the chairman of a national board and wants to change jobs because everything is so damn political and uneducated louts with letters of appointment from the minister are in charge. (I could go on but I won’t).

Staff and I have an intense political discussion, about Marxism and its role in developing countries. Also about censorship. There's a Sinhala film with some nudity that's been rated as Adults Only but someone's written to the President and being the cultural lodestone, he's vetoed and banned it. The Da Vinci Code is banned here in Sri Lanka by the way.

Three fingerprint experts turn up, one to put the powder, one to dust, one to photograph (How many policmen does it take to change a lightbulb? One to change the lightbulb, one to tell him how to change the lightbulb, one to file the report). They dust everything in sight, covering probably 50% of the 2000 square foot office, including areas where the hora would have no plausible reason to go to. Turns out that the hora has used the girls bathroom.

The frenzied dusting turns up one pristine fingerprint. Everyone’s excited at the breakthrough and much photographing is done of said fingerprint. Turns out later that it was one of our staff’s fingerprints . Excitement dies down. I watch flies copulating. We all have lunch on the steps, washing our hands and feet with the garden hose. It feels wonderfully communal and I have the ever-frequent thought: how will I possibly leave?

Finally after what seems like a lifetime (during which we exchange jokes; here’s a classic. What does the man who wants to lead the best life do? He gets his salary from America, his woman from India, his car and equipment from Germany and his food from China. What does the man who is consigned to the worst life get? He gets his salary from India, his woman from America, his car and equipment from China and his food from Germany (HAHAHA)), they’re done fingerprinting and taking records of the footprints. We’re all fingerprinted too. It’s kind of exciting, but in the ‘watching paint dry’ way. The fingerprint experts pack up a mountain load of shit (despite only using talcum powder I think and camel-hair brushes). One of the littler boys who help us pack books says he’s terrified to stay alone tonight. We found a barefoot print too, so turns out there was two of them.

Finally, with half an hour left till close of business, we’re allowed back into the office. The internet promptly dies and the electricity goes off. A perfect end to a perfect day. So everyone packs up and heads home, exhausted from having done absolutely fuck-all. I asked them, doesn't this get your goat? To waste this much time? To wait and wait ? In unison they said "This is Sri Lanka".

Fanaa

Where do I start? The day before yesterday, the boys and I were going mad with the routine of neverending work and home and decided to bust out and go and watch Fanaa; a new Bollywood movie starring the ever-improving Aamir Khan and the incandescent Kajol (redebuting after 5 years). It was an oddly sweet, sad movie about independence, violence and love and a lot of it resonated with me. There were two moments when I felt that Aamir Khan had nailed his acting, and it was perfect (and I rarely see those moments in Indian cinema). One was when he was half-dead, struggling through the snow, knocks on the door of the nearest house, sees her, and there was this look of horror, longing and love that was pitch-perfect. The other moment was when after he accidentally kills her father, goes into the Colonel’s house and transmits his message and then he sees the Colonel at the doorway, having listened to his message, and Aamir Khan looks so tired, and so defeated because he knows what he has to do and does not want to do it.

Then the boys and I went to watch the Tunisia-Something or Other match at a nearby bar and knocked back the gins and cuttlefish and talked about life and love (or more accurately love failure). There is so much hidden tragedy in the office, in everyone’s lives and we skate over it, bury it, recessed. One colleague remembers the 83 riots and his house being burned down, and having to hide in a neighbouring cellar for two days. One colleague’s brother was shot and killed by an accidental gunshot from a policeman in pursuit of an unrelated thief (and I thought things like that only happened in Mouna Raagam). One colleague had to sell jackfruit from the trees for 50 cents to make it through his university degree and now has a girlfriend who is suicidal. One colleague never got to go to university because of the war and the limited intakes. One colleague’s father left to go abroad and never came back. One colleague’s husband abuses her and she is having an affair. One colleague is an ex-child soldier and has nightmares to this day.Why, why all these hidden human tragedies, reflective of a nation’s larger, forgotten, recessed tragedies?

Anuradhapura

Am listening to Khoon Chala from Rang de Basanti. I don't know why films like that, Swades, Fanaa, resonate. Because I think it highlights that there is so much wrong with the immediate world that we inhabit. And I'm not talking about the larger problems of world peace. I'm talking about the very specific problems of the subcontinent.

Today there was a large bomb explosion, killing 64 people, wounding 75 others. Retaliation swiftly followed in the form of aerial bombing of LTTE controlled areas. The explosion site was , as usual, where we do a lot of our work. The pundits are yapping about the definite, inexorable return to war. After 3 brief years of a better-than-nothing peace, it is inexpressibly sad.

I was never a peacenik. But, as Gandhi says, "When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it – always."

the way it used to be

An anonymous letter to a newspaper in Colombo, that I came across accidentally and which expresses more than all the pundits pontificating.

'The way it used to be'

The gram sellers at Galle Face Green sold their 'kadala gottu' topped with 'isso wade' for twenty-five cents.

The movie goers at Savoy cinema came out; Couples went to Aleric's for ice cream and families miserly budgeted for Chinese fried rice at Golden Gate.

Gunawardena opened batting for the Tamil Union and Sunderlingam kept wickets for the Sinhalese Sports Club.

This was once nostalgic Sri Lanka on easy street sans the raging war and the terrible turmoil;

The 'Yal Devi' took the Madhu pilgrims and the 'Ruhunu Kumari' carried the Kataragama clan. Marawila fishermen fished at Mullaitivu with the monsoon change and Lever's and Reckitt's Sales Reps sold toothpaste in Jaffna and drank 'Tal Raa' whilst bathing in the Keeramalai Tank. The Vel Cart used to come down Wellawatte and the waiters worked double time at the Sarasvathi Lodge.

The differences were there from the North to the South, but who cared?
Nobody killed anyone. There was life, simple and in peace.

Bala Tampoe took the CMU out on strike every year and the Parliament changed colours every five years with mythological promises.

That was acceptable.

The queues got long at the CWE to buy "Jumping Fish" and the bread prices leap like high jumpers. Those were our big problems.

The smiles were there too, affordable to the all and sundry, beat shows and big matches, sports meets and school carnivals, all within a ten-rupee budget.

Fashion-wise, the pinnacle was the CR-Havies match at Longdon Place; the Suzettes and Claudettes were there, dazzling in mini skirts, making their best attempts to get partnered to go to the Coconut Grove and jingo and jive to the Jetliners. Some made it to Akasa Kade too, to eat egg hoppers and hold hands and become more naughty whilst pretending to be watching the ship lights at the Colombo harbour.

There was peace; it was a long long time ago. That was before the Morris Minor taxis changed their English alphabet number plates.

Then came the carnage. Who's to blame? Don't waste time, that's kicking the moon and corralling clouds.

We all know better. We are all to be blamed, some for cheering and others for their silence. It has always been 'our soldiers' - but it is their war.

The guns are silent now and the talks go on and hope seeps slow like a weed-clogged wave. If the gods are kind, we'll have peace. Let it lie there.

North and East must be separate 'Don't give this', 'cant' have that', 'autonomy? What nonsense?"

Such passionate phrases below from borrowed patriotism.
'
My son has to study', 'No no, not to join the Air Force', 'Army?

Are you mad?' The same voices add the contradictions.

'We must continue to fight at any cost'.

Brave words, quite cheap too when rights and wrongs are just "whys" sprouting out from empty opinions on even emptier forums.

Try telling all that to mothers who buried their sons or children who pray for their missing fathers. Voice it to a legless 'Boy' from Velvettiturai or a sightless soldier from Devundara. Or may be to a lover who lights a candle for some forgotten fighter buried under swollen earth, too poor even for a memorial.

What does it matter to which side they belonged?

They paid the price, we didn't. They shed the tears, we didn't.

Let us then wish, nay, that's not enough, let us pray, to all the Gods in creation for "The way it used to be" to return.

Or... let us be silent. We owe that much to those who died nameless

goatherd

twilight

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
- William O'Douglas

The game is afoot

The game is afoot!

Feeling extraordinarily alive at the moment. We are on a search for old, forgotten Tamil literature to publish again, to rejuvenate real literacy and cultural connectedness among the children of today! It's truly surprising how Tamil children in Sri Lanka have no idea of their cultural or historical heritage. Some say that it is because of the Burning of the Jaffna Library (akin to the destruction of the Alexandria Library) and that it erased a nation's consciousness, never to be revived since the new Tamil Marxist-Fascist ideology turns away from religion and culture on the basis that it is divisive . The old library had ancient scripts that were written on ola leaves amongst other rarities and was burnt in the Siege of Jaffna (Eelam War 2 I think). It reminds me of a quote from Ondaatje in the English patient that "libraries burn" and Heinrich Heine's "Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn human beings".

Anyhow, since then, (and also due to what some say is the lesser emphasis placed by the government curriculum on Tamil medium literature) the poems, folklore etc have been dying out. And a Sinhalese colleague and I are on a mission, as part of our NGO's programs to discover these lost treasures and publish them! Now this is the sort of work I love and which I shall dedicate myself to in my remaining 5o days. And maybe it is a labour of love by us to a nation too, an act of piety by him as he said.

First came calls to my father's generation and conversations on the poems of their day. I was lectured on the Tolkaapiyam, the Cilampathirakam, how Kannagi burnt the city of Madurai in her rage at her lost lover, how Rama was an incarnation of Vishnu who also turned up on the battlefield of the Kurukshetra to deliver the Bhagavad Gita to a lost Arjun. Then came the homilies and the proverbs and the poetry of the Indian Tamil freedo-fighters for independence against the British like Bharathiyar. Then after that, came the Ceylonese pulavars (poets) one, who was the first to translate the Bible into Tamil and the others who more recently have expressed the collective desire for a free nation.

We started off the physical search by prowling Wellawatte Tamil bookshops, holes-in-the-wall with 70 year old proprietors turning crisp under the sun. They in turn led us to old translators (where I made the astonishing discovery that Marquez's works like Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude are translated into Tamil and Sinhala and enjoy a wide readership here! How surprising!).

Who led us to one in particular, who had studied under some famous Tamil professors and knew of a man called "Google Krishnaswamy" who had apparently the second largest collection of Tamil literature in the Island after the Jaffna Library. Once, as the story goes, Queen Elizabeth herself requested an old biography of an Englishman from Ceylon and the government scoured the island and only Google Krishnaswamy had it and he was able to "fish it out of his recollection" (verbatim from the translator) where the book was in his massive, uncatalogued collection and send it to her and she replied with a note of thanks!. (Hence the nickname 'Google' Isn't it funny how the old and the new meld and even amongst non-Anglophones google thrives).

He died six months ago and his collection passed to his daughter who is rumoured to live in Wellawatte and now we will lie in wait for the Postman of Wellawatte who makes his rounds before 8am in the morning as he is the only one who knows in the neighbourhood where this Daughter of Google Krishnaswamy might live. We have also sent moles, old translators invigorated by such a cause, to loiter the streets of Wellawatte and accost random individuals to see whether they know where she lives. And this is how the lost memories of a nation, are found, rediscovered.

argh

I need my head examined. Sometimes, frequently I think, I'm such a disaster when it comes to people that I'm really better off not going there at all. Sometimes I commit the most diabolical swerves off the trodden path that I just need my head examined.

Nevertheless. The interviews are continuing and I have met a large and interesting cross-section of Sri Lankan society. I was told today that I am too young to be making these decisions, by a candidate nonetheless! I was also told that we need to work in the plantation sector because the people there are slaves and don't know anything beyond a teabush! I was also told that by one candidate that he is a member of the fan club of the current Miss Sri Lanka. I was , in short, told a bewildering array of very bizarre pieces of information by people who are LOOKING for a JOB for Chrissakes!

Jesus. And I can't get my computer to vomit out the CD drive so I'm ANNOYED.And I have like the GMAT and stuff to prepare for which is NOT going well. Arrghgh. SOMEBODY KILL ME NOW. Actually a lobotomy will do just fine.

Finishing reading "A Cause Untrue" by David Blacker, a Sri Lankan thriller about the Sinhalese Special Forces and the Tamil Tigers. All I can say, is that the sex scenes are pretty decent.

jag

Lucy Kellaway writes about being asked “Are you alright” by a colleague and to her horror bursting into tears immediately. It brings to mind a very pathetic episode by yours truly at MS, when I was so tired and stressed at work, that the moment I was to have a meeting with a superior, and she asked me “what’s wrong” and I started crying! It was in her office and no one else was there but still. It was most unprofessional, but she was a good British sort, a Hildabeast (literally from St Hilda’s at Oxford) and had seen it all and she said “there, there, have a good cry then”. So I cried for a little more and then blew my nose on her handkerchief and on we went as though nothing had happened. It was most illustrious of what a good manager should be like, at least for me and I have never forgotten her magnanimity since.

enough

Enough. If I am to be alone, then so be it. It would not be right to get married out of fear, which is the option I have been thinking about. I would make two people unhappy. And no doubt the right person will come along for him, if not for me. But better to be alone, than to be married out of fear. And so, I shall concentrate on what I shall do, for even if nothing else will exist, then at least I shall have that.

A Skin Diary

I can't remember where I found this excerpt, but I did so think it was rather strange and hearkening back to a truth before all our oh-so-tiring civilization. Rather Phillip Pullman-like I must say, if he ever wrote adult fiction, oh what it could be. And I like that below, from the Indian Ocean, came the myth of the captive woman for it is true of Asia and its female children.

The Seven Seas
By John Fuller

The first symbol of life
enclosed by its masters was the
Mediterranean which celebrated rule and scale,
and the myth of the waiting woman

And the second symbol was
the Baltic, from which the
masters fled, fearing to be
lured into its deeps. The
terrified tribes brought with
them a new myth, of the fatal woman.

From the Arctic, where the
lights stained the air like
radiant hair and the gnawed
bone rocked on the threshold,
came the myth of the devouring woman.

From the Antarctic, where
straight lines are uncertain
and the only regularity is
darkness,
came the myth of the invisible woman.

A sea which is a true sea
will come up to its coasts
like an inquisitive animal,
lured by the fragrance and
by the weeping:
from the Indian Ocean
came the myth of the captive woman.

Where the wind blows
strongest there will be
voyages, and where there
are voyages there will be
partings: from the Atlantic
came the myth of the unfaithful woman.

And then when the clouds
roll back and the sky is a
perfect shell, when the line
is fulfilled in the circle, and
horizon confirms that the
only land is now contained
by sea, the light and the life
negotiate in the Pacific
the myth of the desirable woman.

So for a man the woman is a
home that will always be
there, the place he has come
from and will eventually go to.
For him, the interim is exile.
The story of his life is
the adventure of categories,
the licensing of names,
the geography of his exile.

publishing

Have been having conversations with future room maters-to be and I must say that I am pleased with the way everything is progressing. They seem grounded, down to earth and with a lot of the same interests as me, chiefly literature, social entrepreneurship and of course policy and politics. The moving is going to suck though. I’m going to have to pack up my shit here, ship it to the States and then go back to Singapore and pack up some more shit and ship it to the States and have a break and then do this all before, god, August 29th or something. Somebody KILL ME NOW!

Occasionally it seems like the next two to three years seem kind of positive. I mean I know they will be, its just occasionally I wonder what I’m giving up everything here for. The cleaving is already beginning to happen as my exit date nears. And we STILL haven’t found anyone to take over, notwithstanding ex-Cabinet Ministers of Education applying. (It would be hilarious if that candidate took over! At one point in time, he’s also been the Ambassador of Japan and the Ambassador of Korea). On the other hand, my CEO and founder’s book recently came out (only advanced reader’s editions available thankfully, it hasn’t hit bookstores yet). I make a cameo appearance and it’s rather hilarious because he’s got every single fact wrong about me. Sigh. Also finished reading Monkfish Moon by Romesh Gunasekera. It’s not bad, but not great. Sigh. Why don’t we have great English-language writers like India does? It’s not like we don’t have enough to write about. And an interesting fact that I came across recently, English-language published-abroad authors like Ondaatje and Gunasekera don't have a large following in-country in Sri Lanka because their books retail at US prices. Locally-published authors however have the benefit of reaching a wide in-country audience, however the standard for local publishing is abysmally low due to the near-total absence of local editors. Sigh.

classical

I’m in Colombo for a bit now, so I’m using the eventimes, by my lonesome to catch up on film as a) I will not be able to afford to do so in Boston, and b) will not have the time to do either.

I watched the film “Ordinary People” with Timothy Hutton, who was naught but a boy in Robert Redford’s debut directorial venture, for which he won an Oscar. (He was rather excellent in the film, but execrable now) The film was prosaic, but real, and a sturdy effort in examining one family’s sadness at losing their older boy. But it was unique in that the entire film was set to one soundtrack, and movements from that soundtrack would be played and it lent a weight and sadness to the movie that otherwise might have listed to one side. The soundtrack was Pachelbel’s Canon.

And set me off on a discovery of classical music. That and Ave Maria from the West Wing when Josh talks about his sister dying. (Note to self: must find Brothers in Arms, the piece that the Season 2 finale is set to). And now I’m swimming in discoveries of Bach, by far and away the most capable of crossing the bridge between the human and the divine, Beethoven, Schubert, and a few others. And sometimes, when I’m at my most depressed, it is classical music that has helped fill the void of a break-up, of the end of a path.

Went to a party last night. Spent most of the night reminiscing about how my tenure was soon going to end. And how could I leave?

gandhi

I watched Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi again last night. This makes it probably the 12th time I’ve seen it. When I was a kid, my parents, like lots of subcontinental types, were obsessed with hammering the Gandhi story into their children’s consciousness. I think it was because of the values of discipline and truth that he stood for (which my father thought we obviously needed a drubbing in). The film itself rather exalts Gandhi, without going really into the depth of what made him so complicated, difficult to live with (can you imagine being his wife and having your husband take a vow of celibacy- he was also widely recognized as a bad father) and also of leaving a rather complicated legacy behind (of a divided India). The film glosses over the horrors of Partition (where over a million people died in the largest cross-border exchange ever known to man) and cannot make up its mind whether it was a result of the divide and conquer tactics by the British or the own, parochial power-hungry interests of Jinnah and Nehru. The film too paints Nehru in a one-dimensionally rosy light . And it also doesn’t examine how Untouchability and the repression of women has not ended in India, despite Gandhi’s best efforts and his statement that these are the two kinds of slavery in India. Nevertheless, in 1948, India had 350 million people, not the billion that it has today. And it is remarkable that the birth of a nation has not produced more bloodshed than it has. But still. As the Amritsar Massacre pre-independence by the British has shown, it was nonetheless tragic.

However following on the South African theme below, the film was illuminating for showing how Gandhi was successful in repealing anti-Indian legislation in South Africa (then a British colony) and how his principles of ahimsa, nonviolent noncooperation was born through his struggles there. It is also interesting that the Indians in South Africa have managed to carve out since a separate identity for themselves (either or not as a result of his efforts), as neither black nor white but somewhere in between , with all the requisite privileges.

Oh, I do so desperately want to write and make film and create and produce. It seems such an impossibly far away dream and I seem to be on another path entirely and I wonder when everything will coalesce, and I am both professionally and personally stable.

cocktails

Went to a US embassy cocktail party yesterday (that was dubiously hosted by some garment industry types). Only went because one of the invitees had expressed some interest in our work. We ended up meeting the US ambassador and other CIA-types who wanted us to launch into the Maldives . Urgh. These people make me ill with their blinkered foreign policy statements on Sri Lanka (the US embassy has really come down hard with a lot of bigoted polemic against the LTTE). I'm not saying that their intention is wrong, but they should follow what Roosevelt I think said and that is to tread softly and carry a large stick. But it was mildly diverting nonetheless and we escaped afterwards for a lovely dinner of tempura prawns and crushed blue crab and tanqueray and tonics galore. Some interesting thoughts on the CSR initiative were offered (garment workers are notoriously ill-treated although conditions are improving in the sector). Textiles are the biggest import to the US.

poe

The First Rule Of Sinhalese Architecture
By Michael Ondaatje

Never build three doors
in a straight line.
A devil might rush
through them
deep into your house,
into your life.

because

Because a close friend said that the Ondaatje poem had left a funny feeling in her , that lasted all day. Viva good literature! Death to drivel!

Because I always wanted to talk about Anil's Ghost and indeed propose to re-read it for the fifth time today. (I never understand people who say that they cannot re-read a novel, who gain about 90% of the book in the first reading). How can anyone love a book then? I find it truly incomprehensible.

Because I found another Indian literary blog today that celebrates Ondaatje amongst others. Because he has never written a false note, incoherent though as it may be. Because he is an excavator, first and foremost. Because his writing yields most after intensive study and can never be read without drowning.

Because Aldous Huxley, once, long ago saw Sri Lanka as a model for utopia and not the dystopia that it has become. Because no one else records Sri Lanka as Ondaatje does. Because I saw him and fell in love with a voice. Because I want to, and don't want to, live at this pitch for the rest of my life and then, drop dead.

babbling

Well then. I just finished reading Cry, the beloved country. I remember all the ACS boys had to read it for O level literature, but for some reason, RGS girls had to read something else, for the life of me I cannot remember it, except it was African (and not South Africanand therefore not dealing with racial tension) and dealt with village life and with bare-breasted natives dancing around the fire, tom-tomming to ancient rhythms. Or so.

Anyway, Alan Paton's book is remarkably straightforward, and surprising for such a style only yields pathos in the most gifted of writers, (instead of turning into melodrama, which is what it would do in my hands). He writes of a broken South Africa, in 1948, well before Mandela, of rivers that run red, of tribes that are broken by colonialism, with no new structure of moral order to replace them, of white men who are parochially invested in keeping the African men downtrodden. And he speaks too of an Africa beautiful, where Zulu cries echo across the land, welcoming the new and the old. And he says, "Cry the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear".

And of course it is fear that debilitates, fear of loss of power, fear of urbanization, fear of the white man that leads to assault, rape, pillaging, murder- what South Africa was associated with just a few short years ago. And he says, that only love, and forgiveness will cast out fear. It may have taken South Africa more than 40 years since then, to grant universal enfranchisement and voting rights in the 1994 elections, but the path to reconciliation has been begun and one hopes that there is no turning back.

The sad thing about communal violence, Amitav Ghosh writes is the tragedy of brothers, peoples living in harmony prior, killing each other. Whether it is the partition in India or in Sri Lanka, it is heartbreaking to see families that have lived 20 years together, sharing rituals, breaking bread, taking up violence against the other.

And then, I know that this is random, but i was reminded of Michael Ondaatje's poem which I shall pirate here, for its description of what violence does; create a new language. And I was thinking about it in the trishaw today- that it requires this, this is the historical record of those deaths from ethnic violence. Of dead bodies of priests, that came floating down the rivers. This is all that lasts, of the forgotten. And that is both terrifyingly tragic and ennoblingly commemorative.

The Distance of A Shout
By Michael Ondaatje

We lived on the medieval coast
south of warrior kingdoms
during the ancient age of winds
as they drove all things before them

Monks from the north came
down our streams floating that was
the year no one ate river fish

There was no book of the fores
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died

Handwriting occurred on waves
on leaves, the scripts of smoke
a sign on the bridge along the Mahaweli River

A gradual acceptance of this new language.

angst-

Let the record reflect that I am sick of angst. And the repeated, first-hand experiences where I realize I am weak, weak, weak.

Spent the weekend at our first ever girl's scholarship ceremony. The evening before, we trundled up to the hall, and had bizarre conversations about local implementing partners. Then came a flurry of calls from outraged moralist principals, who had recently discovered that one of our candidates, a 11 year old girl, had a mother who was a , ahem, blue film star. One wonders of course, how these said principals and affronted parents and teachers knew that, but they wheeled out the Rustic Moralism , the hypocrisy that arises out of close, confined, communal living. Where there is a sharp divide between public and private morality. It was all rather hysterical really. Then the other catastrophe of the day was finding out that one of the girl's parents had committed suicide rather recently.

Today we were interviewing, and I met a rather old, lovely distinguished man, who had vision and understanding of the Sri Lankan educational sector, and he talked about Jaffna and how when he grew up in the East,he had two excellent teachers from Jaffna, and they were revered as gods in the village. And we pondered for a minute, that lost, long-ago Sri Lanka, before all this had started.

annoyed

So things are entering a lull. Good. I can be lull-ed for a while. Until tomorrow afternoon when a fundraiser enters town and the fun(d) will commence. Sunday is our awards ceremony for the Girl's scholarships, in the hill country. Expect cued, mass-weeping like those Christian cult worshippers. I'm in a strange, isolated mood of sorts- attempted the GMAT out of sheer boredom and was duly rewarded with an awe-inducing score of 570. Needless to say, this will NOT cut any ice with the Admit Gods so I had better buck the fuck up. I'm annoyed at the moment with Sri Lanka. An author was killed in an (inadvertent? can they ever be inadvertent? isn't all war inadvertent?) random landmine explosion and everyone is mourning. I shall have to check his literature out. I plan to cook today, which I haven't done in approximately, oh, 3 months. I also started reading Cry, the Beloved Country and am wading through Underworld and I'm just annoyed in general with life and a pastel mint-green sari that I will have to wear as a bridesmaid. Annoyed annoyed annoyed.

Peace

Peace: The Difficult Yet Necessary Path

By Jayadeva Uyangoda

A large-scale break out of hostilities between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE seems to be now inevitable. As things stand right now, the decision by the European Union on the question of listing the LTTE as a terrorist entity is crucial in shaping the agenda of events in the next few weeks to come.

Mr. Erik Solheim, the Norwegian Minister in charge of Sri Lanka’s peace process, has given expression to an increasing sense of pessimism felt by the international actors, concerning the prospects for Sri Lanka. He spent two days, May 25 and 26, in Colombo, along with the special peace envoy, Mr. Jon Hanssen-Bauer. Then on May 27, he flew to New Delhi to consult the Indian government. As AFP reported on that day, he has said in New Delhi that Sri Lanka “could be heading back to all-out war.”

Solheim has also commented that Sri Lanka’s peace process was “more difficult” than he thought. These are indeed strong words coming from a man who knows the mind of both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. One may also note that Solheim as wells the Norwegian diplomats have always been very cautious in making public statements about the failures in their peace-making task in Sri Lanka.

Banning

Meanwhile, the proposed banning of the LTTE by the EU is most likely to be a defining event in the conflict. It will certainly force the LTTE into a period of isolation and in turn to a behavior of isolationism. Both the international community and the government appear to work on the assumption that the LTTE leadership might become flexible in response to a coordinated campaign of international isolation. It would be interesting to see how this strategy works. Tigers might be less likely to be flexible under conditions which they see as coercion. This is a major policy dilemma for any government in dealing with the LTTE.

In the coming phase of isolation and isolationism, the LTTE might be tempted to act unilaterally. There are already warnings of such unilateralism. In an extreme scenario, the LTTE can withdraw from all their international engagements, including the dialogue with the SLMM and the Norwegian facilitator. Such an action will amount to withdrawing from the CFA, without actually saying it in writing. The LTTE leaders probably think that by such action they would be able to turn the tables on the government as well as the international community.

Show Down

Meanwhile, it appears that both the government and the LTTE are willing to risk a major military show down. If the war breaks out, it will create immense destruction to both sides. The tragedy is that the two sides know it, but take little concrete action to arrest the sliding back to war. Such is the way things happen in this age of unreason.

What will eventually happen after a mutually destructive war between the government and the LTTE? One distant possibility is the realization of what many Sinhalese patriotic forces are opposing at present, namely the entry of the UN peacekeeping troops to separate the two warring sides from fighting. Those who oppose such a development seem to behave in a manner that will actually create conditions for it. The unkind dialectic of politics is that one often gets outcomes one does not want. If the JVP leadership is really committed to preventing an eventual UN intervention, the best course of action is to prevent a large-scale war from breaking out. But their thinking appears to be based on the assumption that in a full-scale war, there will be a real chance to defeat the LTTE militarily. As this thinking goes, an external military intervention to separate the two warring sides will only prevent such a favorable outcome.

Mutual Bleeding

The second, more realistic possibility is that after a lot of bleeding, the two sides, tired and exhausted of war and violence, might ask the international community to come and mediate in the conflict. This scenario of mutual bleeding will interestingly create a new strategic equilibrium between the government and the LTTE on an ‘I lose-you also lose’ framework. This would be an original contribution that the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE would be making to the theories of conflict resolution: A lose-lose outcome is as important in defining conflict dynamics as is a win-win outcome.

This is where Sri Lanka has to learn lesson from Nepal. A country that does not boast of its achievements as we Sri Lankans do, Nepal has shown a tremendous example of a low-cost path to political change and reform. There is a low-cost path to conflict management in Sri Lanka. It is the path of political engagement. Return to political engagement is not only a low-cost path to peace. It is also the most humane and rational option.

Window of Opportunity

The reported statements made by President Rajapakse insisting that he does not consider war as an option can constitute a new, though narrow, window of opportunity for re-opening the path to political engagement. But the effects of these statements need to be further strengthened by elaborating a broad framework statement for a new process of political engagement between the government and the LTTE.

This ‘framework statement’ can have three main components. It should fist re-iterate the government’s assurance to fully implement the CFA as well as the commitments made in Geneva in February this year. By making this point, President should invite the LTTE’s reciprocity. Secondly, the framework statement should propose broadening of the scope of political engagement, from talks on the CFA and de-escalation to political negotiations suspended in 2003. Thirdly, it should propose a political-constitutional framework for ethnic conflict resolution, conceived in terms of extensive regional autonomy.

Time, indeed, is running out for Sri Lanka. More than ever, the fate of Sri Lanka depends on the decisions made by one person, Sri Lanka’s head of state. One can only hope that President Rajapakse has the strength to continue to defy the counsel given to him by some of his advisors and allies for a military solution, and without delay inaugurate a new phase of political engagement with the LTTE. This is difficult, but necessary. Even if does not work fully, it is a path worth taking.

caste-away

Have I told you about the ancient house where my office is quartered? It's a sprawling, old-style Sri Lankan house with open courtyards and high ceilings, made out of stone and brick, and in the garden, butterflies flit, hyacinths and red lilies bloom, and fruit falls from the neighbouring mango and sarsarapilla tree. (The papaya tree for some reason, stubbornly refuses to bear fruit). The house was built in the 30s, and the inside fittings, antique frosted glass and the like, reflect that. None of the cheap stuff. (Although of course the plumbing and electrical fittings could do with a hand!).

Anyway I was talking to the proprietor today, an old Muslim man who hails from the Eastern province, who is quite a character in himself. His heart, he says, belongs to the rice padi fields of the East, but his head is in Colombo, where his wife and children are. He said that in 1983, during Black July, with the worst of the communal riots when Sinhalese mobs were prowling the streets of Colombo, armed with scythes and chopping up those suspected of being Tamil (to be fair the Tamils did that too, but it is widely agreed that one side was more culpable than the other. This event is also a landmark symbol in the Tigers' quest for freedom, such has it penetrated the national consciousness). Anyway, during that month, the owner (Muslims were left largely alone) hid 4 Tamil families here, in this very house for weeks, in one of the back rooms, locked and refused access to by mobs. And then when it was finally safe, he took them to the refugee camps that had been set up.

The strange thing he said was that while they were in the house, as refugees, they all lived, ate and slept together. In the camp however, the same social stratification governing normal life, began to take hold. People segregated themselves according to religion, caste and origin of birth (northerners held themselves apart from the easterners and likewise). And in Sri Lanka, that was the impediment to true democracy.

felled

I have been felled by a prawn, laid low by the devastating damage that a bad prawn can do, weakened.

Nevertheless, I plod on. Have managed to finish Step Across the Line by Salman Rushdie, in between bouts of wracking pain where my stomach tried to eat itself, and between hours spent in the stalls. So it may have coloured my perception of this work, but let it be said that he attempts (unsuccessfully I think) to eviscerate Naipaul and Coetzee (both Nobel laureates, which of course Rushdie is not) saying that Coetzee's characters lack humanity (which is their strength, in that they are human, and express emotion through action and not through diarrhea) and that Naipaul is a bigot (which to be fair, many Indian writers have in not-so-many-words accused him of being). Which is somewhat beside the point really. Naipaul in turn, eviscerates India, in two of his nonfiction books, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: An Area of Darkness , cf. titles being descriptive of content in this case. However Rushdie does manage to hit a few highlights of his own, particularly in his specialty of 'cultural commingling', of the writer as traveller, as migrant.

Particularly Rushdie is most insightful when he writes about Frontier. The existence of the frontier, whether it is America expanding West, India rebelling against her Raj, whether it is Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations most forcibly expressed in the war between Islam and modernity, changes the imagination. The perception in itself, of there being an as-yet-unseen frontier, changes the perception of what is possible. The frontier exists between what is known and what is not. In that sense, quite obviously, crossing the frontier, stepping across that line, creates an increase in the sense of self, (as Rushdie says). Whether that increase in dimension is good or bad is not yet immediately known, but more is capable. Of course there have been attempted frontier-crossings that have failed, and not everyone can cross it, but for those who do, it represents an increase in human possibility and for that, everyone should be encouraged to step across the line.

never let me go

So I was catching an auto to work today, standing on the main road under the burning sun, next to a steaming heap of rubbish with mongrel, mangy dogs prowling its circumference, when a car stops in front of me, and the driver checks me out and says, get in darling.
I wanted to clobber him over the head, but I just gave him the nastiest look, and said "get lost" and walked off.
And yet, even in the awful auto that I managed to flag down, as I was weaving past pedestrians, cows, dogs and blind women, head-on into incoming traffic, swerving wildly to avoid buses and trucks, I wondered, how could I ever let this go? and that title from Ishiguro kept coming back, as it has been of late. Oh darling, never let me go.