urdu poetry

found through another blog (Akhond of Swat). This is the first time I was introduced to Faiz Ahmed Faiz, an Urdu poet. I wish that more poems like these, from different languages and different experiences, were more easily available translated. The sheer monolithic dominance of English writing sometimes means that English-language writers end up espousing the same worldview, couched as it may be in so many different ways.

Last Night

Last night your lost memory visited my heart
as spring visits the wilderness quietly,
as the breeze echoes the silence of her footfalls
in the desert,
as peace slowly, softly descends on one's sickness

and somewhere else, he writes

I listened,

And you became, like memory,

necessary.

Conrad and Coppola

In the film Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen and his Vietnam war platoon mates (random assortment, whatever) go up the Mekong river to find Marlon Brando/Colonel Kurtz (movie was based on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad). As they go up the river though; things happen to them; stranger and stranger things; surreal sequences with Playboy bunnies in an abandoned helicopter, corpses and villages flash-preserve, a meal at a French plantation with the logical and insane owner attendant with all culinary etiquette, a crew member that waterskis behind the patrol boat, a massacre of boat people by an American, shellling of a Vietnamese village etc.etc; and the boredom that goes on.

At the end in Heart of Darkness, the narrator (Marlow/Sheen) finally reaches Kurtz (also Kurtz) - brutal, brilliant, charismatic, contradictory, mad. Kurtz reads poetry aloud (Eliot for those of you that care), fucks native women, acts as a paramilitary, and is a deserter of sorts - a Lucifer that prefers to reign in hell, without the corresponding Miltonian incandescence.

The essence of Kurtz is emblematic of the savagery and unreason that lies at the core of human beings; that which allows them to commit evil again and again and again. This heart of darkness, is essentially, in both Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness, incomprehensible. It is never explained nor can it be. It is shown by everything that precedes the final discovery; the journey up the river ("going all the way"- Kurtz who has "gone all the way"), the journey to that beating heart of madness that is in war, whether it is Vietnam, Sri Lanka or the British empire in its colonizing brutality.

The audience's ultimate ability to understand these complex works will rest on the vastness of his or her imagination; the ability to imagine the banality of the horrors of war, the ability to imagine him or herself as capable of being perpetrator and victim. It is something I imagine, can only really be understood by all those who have felt it; and even then; not at all; - it cannot be intellectually understood; what permanent disorder really feels like; how it is to live in a state of permanent disorder and the ways in which all the small things as well as the large things, are fucked up.

high school

Listening to the old tamil songs of the 80s, a surprisingly large number of them featuring Khushboo. Debating between New York, Pondicherry and Sri Lanka; leaving behind people, starting again elsewhere, going home for Christmas to Singapore which will always be the place that I grew up.

Watched 'The Class' today (think that the French name for it sounds much better, Entre les Murs) and it was good enough. It reminds me exactly what teachers have to do every day, how terrible most teachers are, the fact that they are human too and that they exert an extraordinary amount of power over children. It's not quite fair either.

I remember the RGS days with pinafores and all. Watching Kadhal Desam when it came out; sneaking out to Bedok to watch Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (at least twice I think) with a friend; stalking boys and giggling endlessly. I remember a French teacher who made the first year of my life in Singapore bearable. I remember his kindness, wit and sincerity.

I remember shouting at him too in front of a whole class; and him calmly taking it in.

Were those the days?

Harlem Blues

My window looks out onto the Harlem projects. It is a part of New York that one rarely sees captured in film. It does not lend itself to the glowing sepia hues of steel and sepia that New York is often painted in; though it does not reside outside of Manhattan. Harlem is about as large as the rest of Manhattan is.

Imagine that; the overcrowded streets of the Financial district, the wharves and harbours of the Lower East Side, the Meatpacking district, the East and West Villages full of bankrupt boutiques and french bistros at half-price, the tony Upper East and West sides doused in privilege, neurosis and Jewishness, all hustling, jostling, competing to be heard; this is New York, no, this is New York, no this is the real New York. And yet all of them put together is not as big nor as real as Harlem.

Well, this is the only part of New York I can say that I genuinely like; that feels real and not artificial; not some tourist's Sex and the City dream of what New York should be, not one giant jumble of the best restaurants, museums, clothing boutiques, coffeeshops, taxicabs, stilettos and cowl necks, not some overprocessed white existential nightmare of craving and alienation.

There is a gentle community here, still living the lingering aftereffects of poverty, history, race but also an up and coming black middle class that is proud to call Harlem its home, an everchanging tide of doormen, policewomen, laundryworkers, street cleaners that wash in from the Bronx in the mornings and leave late at night, a chain of jerk restaurants, and steak restaurants, and fried chicken joints and alcohol saloons, where the doors to doorman buildings are locked at nights and the candy is stashed away in stores behind bulletproof glass, and where the stench of alcohol always lingers, and where one tries not to make eye contact much when walking down the street. There is the constant Black-Latino tension too, but an uneasy peace too, a stand against the Man, a genuine pride in being the 'other' and from having spent years in the ghetto. Here, old street cleaners yell after young men "pull up your pants, chile", as if they were their own, and mothers fuss over young women not their own, and almost everybody is ready to spend hours discussing Obama, NYPD and where to go to get your hair done, and who is banging who.

And sometimes, when the sun is late to set, and Central Park at the foot of Harlem begins to glow, out come the deck chairs and the barbecue grills, and the children play basketball late into the night, and the mothers and young men huddle around stone tables, a continuous sea of voices rising, punctuated by stops and starts and exclamations, guffawing, and the rap music and the hip hop continues late into the night, and despite the rising unemployment, and the rising drug and alcohol abuse, and the constant stress of never having enough, the moment is enough, until the next day when you do it all again.

Wherever one may go in Manhattan, stale, rich, declining; Harlem remains unique, defiant and strangely authentic, in this New York at the end of its Gatsby years.

Breaking Loose

As children we start off spontaneous, idealistic, hopeful, young, believing in ourselves and thinking that we will live forever. Then we go to school and meet other children, other parents, teachers, principals, - and the introduction into the world as we know it. I had always thought education and true learning was to teach people to rid themselves of prejudice, liberate themselves from dogma, propel them to take leaps of faith, experiments with life, - to push the envelope in every way, to never accept the status quo.

But it makes everyone else feel better when you turn out just like them, make the same choices, the same compromises, - the same inability to risk, lose, become faithless, and stop really loving other people, humanity as a whole excluding your family and those that you care about in your daily life.

Why do we make these compromises, out of fear or love? Why do we diminish ourselves? Why are we so afraid of our full capacities? To think, feel, really look at ourselves without fear or favour?

Why is the human race only one tenth of what it can be, most of the time?

Because sometimes, it takes only an instant to remember what we can be like; from the small things to the large things; the human capacity to dream, to leap, to fall, for 'the heart to break loose on the wind'.

back to bach

It seems I brought the weather back from Chicago; it is bitterly cold, windy and rainy in New York. Spent the day rushing from puddle to puddle, shoes soaked, jeans soaked and starting to freeze (ahh the feeling of stiff, mud-frozen jeans next to skin), hair - well why go into the hair.

Finally back at home, curled up with green tea and chocolate chip cookies (yes, it has been that kind of a day), listening to Bach in the silence. "Bach thinks in music. Music thinks in Bach. God expresses himself through Bach" said Coetzee.

How can pure sound evoke feeling, memory, sadness and hope? And how can certain human beings be so gifted, so as to create sounds, a series of sounds, rising, falling, loudly, softly, stealthily, surprisingly. A quiet crescendo, in Bach, of the same series of repeating notes can turn such a surprising corner and fall dramatically into an abyss - and the sense of falling is so acute and terrifying and wonderful all at the same time. And 'the shock of recognition' when one does not know what comes next, what corner lies ahead, but when it does, one knows that it was ever meant to be so.

Any world that can produce this is wonderful, even as it maybe simultaneously unexpected, terrible and haunting. Because still, as Nietzsche said, "We have art, so we shall not be destroyed by truth".

Cities and Oceans

I should be working; I really should; after posting the list below of all the things I have to do in an effort to get me motivated; guns blazing with barrels on all fronts.

Rather I would sit in this cafe on this cold Chicago day, with the wind blowing outside; wrapped up and warm, eating a lemon poppy seed muffin, with strong coffee coursing through my veins, reading two books in front of me; Invisible Cities and the Broken Palmyrah, oceans apart and yet, does not the Atlantic meet the Pacific, the Pacific the Indian and the Indian the Atlantic again; and when these oceans meet, does not the wind blow differently, and the land rise spectacularly, and the water throb strangely?

Oceans apart and yet, I read Calvino again and dream of other cities and the city that I carry within me, wherever I go, though it breaks my heart again and again.

"it is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it."

and earlier

"Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one".

Things I do on the Side

a) Advise (and may eventually work for) a public cord blood bank to be set up in Pondicherry, India

b) Finish editing my short film

c) Work on 2 other scripts as assistant director with Sri Lankan directors (one based in Paris, and one based in Sri Lanka)

d) Act as manager to a leading Sri Lankan actress and represent her to agencies in the U.S. and abroad

e) Advise and fundraise for a Tamil NGO in Sri Lanka (who I might also eventually work for)

f) Organize Sri Lankan events here in NY (a new fundraiser and a new panel coming up)

g) Help set up an NGO in Bombay that's focused on collating documentaries

And in addition to this, there's work, friends, the personal life, the gym and doctors.

Why does it always get this busy?

unearned suffering

"He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God." -Aeschylus

"My personal trials have also taught me the value of unmerited suffering. As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course. Recognizing the necessity for suffering I have tried to make of it virtue. If only to save myself from bitterness, I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity to transform myself and heal the people involved in the tragic situation, which now obtains. I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive."

- Martin Luther King

"I will change the world, but I will not change "

(the attitude of most aid workers)

The following is inscribed on the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in Westminster Abby (1100 A.D.) …

When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country.

But it, too, seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.

And now, as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family.

From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows, I may have even changed the world.

Public Enemies

Billie Frechette: "I barely know you Mr. Dillinger, now why should I come on with you?"

John Dillinger: "I was raised on a farm in Morrisville, Indiana. My mama ran out on us when I was three, my daddy beat the hell out of me cause he didn't know no better way to raise me. I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, whiskey, and you.

What else do you need to know?"

"The heart has been fed on fantasy; the heart has grown brutal from its fare" W.B. Yeats

It took me a long time to understand this quote; written in the great fervour of Irish nationalism.

As Ahilan said, there is a great tradition of progressive leftism in Tamil politics; that dealt with the important issues of exclusion, class discrimination and tackled the great problems of caste within the Tamil community. One important outcome of the current political situation is that the Jaffna Tamil hegemony over Sri Lankan Tamil (and indeed Sri Lankan) politics is forever destroyed. And perhaps, it was for the best. The Jaffna Tamils (of the Vellalar caste) systematically propagated their narrow, insular vision of Tamil nationalism. It was a nationalism that saw no space for other minorities (within the Tamil community; such as the Up-Country Tamils or the Muslims), and one that was riven by deep contradictions (see the discrimination against the Eastern Tamils which led to the Karuna revolt and was the beginning of the end for the LTTE) and tragic absolutism.

Well now there is nowhere left to go, and no one left to go to. The heartland is lost, and will be under heavily armed rule for a long time to come. This repressiveness will either be tolerated by default by the Jaffna Tamils in Sri Lanka, sapped as they are from 30 years of suffering; or it will breed new strains of nationalism that will be channeled through democratic processes or through militant movements. But the dream of freedom and self-rule is forever gone.

One asks whether that dream was ever legitimate. It was certainly not expedient. But was it legitimate? Was it legitimate to have also expressed it through violent means after expressing it through democratic means was systematically repelled and thwarted by a Sinhala government in thrall to populist necessities? Was it ever possible that any other way could have worked?

I don't know. The more I know, the less I understand. Even if one can go back in time to unravel the complexities of the 70s that led to the birth of the LTTE; I don't know that it matters. Nobody can forget the things that happened to them; not for as long as they live. And their children can't forget it either. So the sins of the father are revisited again and again. And then the question is should they forget? Or forgive but never forget? Or neither?

I am not sure that one can ever forgive, let alone forget.

this used to be my playground

So I was talking to someone the other day and I said, I was a terrible student at school. In fact if there is one thing I could change in my life, is to change the method of instruction and school going behaviour that I had. By that I do NOT mean I wish I was a 'better' student in the 'traditional' sense (i.e. pay attention during class, do homework, study for tests, manage time well and do extra curricular activities as well, read outside the curriculum, engage with other students re class work (i.e. group study) etc.etc.); but that I had more to show in terms of learning; for the time I spent to school.

And this is true of ALL the schools I went to; from Australia, to Singapore, to London, to the United States. So it wasn't just a cultural and pedagogical issue.

I had friends who were STELLAR students, friends who were far more brighter, more capable, more 'in' with the teachers and principals; all of that. Friends whom basically got a lot out of their education and the time they spent in school. (Of course I made GREAT friends in school, for which I will be forever grateful for. And I learnt how the normal world works, how they think, how cultural modes of production are disseminated etc.etc.)

I pretty much spent most of 'class-time' thinking about either a) boys, b) the newest book I was reading (always fiction), c) politics d) a new movie plot; or fantasy sequence (one memorable incident was when my biology lab partner asked me "What are you thinking about right now?? and I said: I was thinking about me drowning in a lake, and my french teacher rescuing me, and our ensuing 'damsel-in-distress meets heroic rescuer conversation in French. I could never concentrate for more than 10-15 minutes at a time (and clocked in 20 minutes during my peak).
And I never learnt to think logically; which meant I was always unable to argue/debate/converse during high school. I just couldn't follow how other people thought, and how to speak that same language.

Now that I'm older, i'm a little bit more assimilated in the cultural modes of communication. I can concentrate very intensely, unconsciously if a topic engages me. (I tend to be exhausted though, after such periods). But I still tend to have a very Tourette-style mode of thinking AND communicating; in short, random, bursts of questions and thoughts. I do not think logically or linearly (which sounds cool, until you realize that you cannot structure anything and that every comment you receive on any paper is a) lack of structure, b) lack of flow blah blah blah c) irrelevant to the topic at hand (why is it irrelevant??? I THINK IT IS GODDAMNED RELEVANT).

But I guess that's life, and now, it's too late to change the way one thinks.

But, in no obvious order, the following are things I wished I had been taught in school, and how I wished school was different.

a) Shorter school days, 20 minute lectures on ideas, experiments, equations, and problems. i.e. not time spent explaining the concept since most teachers are REALLY poor 'teach'ers, but rather, let children learn HOW to learn, figure out stuff for themselves, run into road blocks etc. Of course this is a far more intensive teaching process than the standard 'lecture-problem set marking' mode.

But the shorter school days was one reason where I felt that the place where I learnt the most was in LSE, where the 'class' time was so short, the subjects were so in depth and taught over long periods of time (12 months rather than the 10 weeks in the US it takes for one subject), and where you spent long hours staring out of the Chancery Lane st library windows either thinking about a) cake or b) Rousseau and the nature of man (I spent a lot of time on this topic.)

b) Group work was by far the most painful thing in the US, to do. Not only did people come to the table with different capacities and blocks of knowledge, they came with different communication styles a) the 'rhetoric' person who loved the sound of his own voice, b) the ideas person who wanted to talk about every tangential idea, b) the 'rules' person who just wanted to stick to the narrow structure of the assignment task, and d) the 'leader' who wanted his vision mapped out.

I just wanted to go home.

But at the same time, I realize how it can be useful for understanding how other people communicate, how real world problems are solved mainly through a mixture of haste, fatigue, verbal compromise (where the guy who talks the loudest gets heard), and deadlines.
I would say definitely to HIGHLY limit the group work, make it more about negotiation and communication, and use the classroom format for a larger discussion (that was more facilitated and structured and inclusive).

c) The other things I didn't learn at school included a) how to interact with people (or as David Brooks said in the NYT this week: how to select a spouse, how to maintain a relationship with someone you love. By far this is the most important decision that you will make in your life, as well as the most important choice that has the most bearing over your lifetime happiness. On this topic there was neither instruction nor role models).

d) how to manage money: enough said. how to maintain checking, savings, trading, retirement, health, college accounts. how to manage discretionary spending, mortgage debt, student loan debt, credit card debt. How to build wealth. On this: NOTHING.

e) how to write: Not writing subordinated to a specific topic where the writing was judged on the topic, and what was taught was the topic itself; but actual writing. How to be concise, relevant, engaging, compelling and investigative. On this; nothing. I don't know where I learned to write (and I still cringe at my writing), but I think it was only towards the last semester of LSE, and my boss at Morgan Stanley; Tim who had the best writing style I saw personally, who really hung, drew and quartered my writing and forced me to write better and better (for non fiction of course).

f) how to negotiate: Now this I learned somewhat in Harvard, but only by choice. Everyone should have these lessons learnt at an earlier stage rather than later. The art of getting what you want in a world with competing demands and scarce resources without compromising your integrity or someone else's integrity or needs is essential. These techniques come in handy everywhere: from buying a car, to getting a promotion, to making joint decisions with spouses, to handling your parents.

g) And the last, that I can think of right now, which is for me the most important was : how to learn. On this point, I cannot say enough. I did not say 'how to think', but 'how to learn'. This is so important for everything; for the growth of an individual, for the growth of a society, for the growth of government and policy, for the progress of ability in ANY field. It requires teaching how one can first, a) identify the unknown: i.e. know what you do not know and know what you do know. This sounds basic, but very few people can do this. b) identify inter-relatedness. Nothing happens in isolation; not even algebra. Understanding how a particular topic; pick any topic: e.g. rain water harvestation is connected to a variety of competing influences and pressures from how its history evolved, to how the product or process or topic works, to the subject of rainwater and harvestation, to how the product is used and what influences its take up (from cultural, to agricultural practices, to policymakers, to distribution channels, to colonial influences, to desertification) and knowing or being aware that all of these create a certain topic; is essential. So knowing that, even if you do not know it in GREAT detail is essential. Then comes the 'investigating", or the 'going deep' process where one has to know when one has reached a limit of learning (which is of course either a) personal or related to the task at hand) and when one hasn't reached it yet; asking the right questions to inform understanding; knowing that there is more (i guess this is connected to 'know what you don't know'). All that sort of thing. And the last thing is managing memory. We all have a limited and declining capacity to remember things. Learning how to a) expand one's memory, b) make the relevant trade offs in choosing what to remember and what not to, and c) managing declining capacity (i.e. procedures not to forget) are key. Right now I have a pretty decent photographic memory, but it has seriously declined and I just KNOW that I am going to get Alzheimer's and should start learning how to manage it!

This also brings to mind the research done in this field about intelligence, knowledge and memory. The research shows that in terms of intelligence (i.e. speed of grasp, reach, lateral thinking and in depth thinking, investigative thinking); we hit our peak at 17 and steadily decline. When I look back on my own life; this is definitely true. I thought MUCH more and much faster when I was 17, then I do now. (I will leave it to the gods to judge whether the 'topics' on which I focused my capacities on were worthy or not!!!). Now, it takes me longer to understand something, I get tired quicker or more impatient quicker, I tend to stop thinking before I should, I am lazy in thinking about the satellite issues even though what I KNOW at 28 is FAR greater than what I knew at 17.

But yeah, if I ever have kids; I'm going to find someone who can teach them all this.

And now, to the trenches.

"The world has changed, and we must change", President Obama, Inauguration speech, Jan 20,2009

If I went to bed in June 2008 and woke up in June 2009, I would have found myself in an entirely different world, from such a short time ago. In my own life, and those of my closest friends around me, there was turbulence galore, volcanic eruptions of lingering issues that had been pushed under the carpet; repressed so to speak; the structures of daily life that were carefully imposed over the cracks of the foundation were finally giving away to tectonic shifts underneath. In the world outside, well; besides the election of an enormously intellectual policymaker (who unlike many before him was able to bridge that seemingly impassable divide between thinking AND doing; who married great intellectual heft with extremely strategic politicking); there was a Great Recession, with many people laid off. Ivy leaguers and blue collar workers mourned the passing of the era of the Masters of the Universe, of Detroit.  America was no longer Motown, and day after day, companies folded, factories whirred down, newspaper presses became silent. And of course in Sri Lanka, in the past year, another 20,000-30,000 Tamil civilians perished, the LTTE was defeated and a lookalike body of Prabhakaran was paraded in the streets, and the senior Tiger leadership decimated. It seemed as though the death blow to separatist aspirations was finally delivered by the Rajapaksa government, who now enjoyed the widest Sinhala support ever by any Sri Lankan president. 300,000 Tamil refugees still exist in camps, starving and under the watchful, repressive eye of the armed forces. The UN, blinkered and hamstrung as always, in a session intended to reprimand the Sri Lankan government, instead ended up praising it for its 'liberation' operations, and also praising it for not allowing emergency humanitarian aid workers into the camps. 

As the song goes: There's a reason to believe we almost got it right. 

But the differences contained in almost are vast, infinite, uncontainable. Indeed, the world has changed, and now we must change. Caught in a great dilemma of action, we must choose instead to reflect, mourn, grieve and then begin the arduous, and lengthy task of reimagining democracy, putting our faith back in the power of truth, settling down for the long haul instead of the romanticisim of immediate revolution. Whether we want to or not, we must now imagine ourselves to be part of one country, and force that country to recognize us, and our demands, expressed democratically, expressed through civil resistance and non violence. For those of us who have the luxury of reading and thought, we need to reimagine resistance, and mobilization. I don't know how it is going to happen, and whether I have decided that it is my battle to fight, or to leave. But I am hoping that a door is going to open somewhere soon for me, and that this great burden of indecision will be lifted. 

Sometimes people in Sri Lanka (usually Sinhalese people) ask me, " What do Tamil people have to complain about in Sri Lanka today? Yeah sure in the past we know there were real issues. But what is there today? "

Well, what is there today (prior to these last few months and the "end of the conflict")? There are endless accounts of abuses by Sinhalese police officers (which comes under civilian law - I'm not going to get started on the military yet) of abuse of Tamil prisoners within jails, of racial profiling at checkpoints and others, of looking the other way when Sinhalese mobs descend on Tamil shopkeepers yelling now you've lost, so pay up!, of the small, mundane, undocumented instances of prejudice. There is the oft-touted fact that Buddhism is the national religion. And the fact that although Sri Lanka recognizes Tamil as an 'official' language, government documents are not printed in Tamil, government servants (who administer Tamil areas) cannot speak Tamil, and Tamil constituents are severely inconvenienced not ONLY in terms of practical things, but if you can't even understand your local government servant, let alone what the local politician is saying, how can you possibly feel 'included' or have 'faith in government'?

Add to this the atrocities of the past few months; of the terrible abuses going on in the camps, of rapes and killings and young Tamil men disappearing lest they sign up for a new Tamil militant cause. Of the 20,000 dead due to government shelling (and of course yes, LTTE cadres also used these civilians as hostages, but this government never even considered these people's lives as worth saving; rather it was a moral trade-off that could be easily accepted). Of the current 300,000 Tamil people who live in camps that are refused access to by basic emergency agencies like ICRC and OCHA. 

And then let us go back 30, nay 50 painful years to the complex roots and histories of discrimination and oppression, of nonviolent protests that started in universities in the North, to the desperate resort to arms and violence, to the thousands of young boys and girls who signed up for a cause, who died, apparently for nothing. No one will forget this moment. No one could, even if they wanted to. And I, who started off as a moderate, who did not want this war to continue, who at one point, considered 'peace at any cost', even I am now starting to question whether I can quell that irrational side of me, the side that will never forget, and never forgive. 

We are all a product of history, and we all make our pact with the devil in some way. In reality, as much as we want to be purists, we all have blood on our hands. But that does NOT make it OKAY. That does not mean we cannot point out other injustices, current flaws. That does NOT mean we have to accept things as they are. I have never known Sri Lanka without war. And it seems like I never will. 

life

We neatly define our way out of positions. We are not pro-LTTE, nor pro-Government; we are moderates that believe in peace, justice and democracy. But the moderates have nowhere to go, and no means to make their ideals a reality. So does it matter anyway? What do all these carefully articulated theories with history relegated to the footnotes mean, when there is no way to make them true. Rather, throw your lot in with one devil or the other. This is the world we live in. There is no such thing as truth, or standing up for what you believe in. All it matters is how you die. With your people or across the lagoon from them. This is what all those principles mean ultimately. 

I will tell you a story, an imaginary story. A man lost his brother once to a war that they had not asked for, but had fought in. When the army recruited them; one brother said to another; be careful. fortunes wax and wane. Those who are strong now, may be weak later. This is the world we live in, and all your ideals of justice will have to bend or break against these truths. And the other brother said; here I stand, I can do no other. He died at a moment when the revolution he fought for, was losing. He never lived to see it rise again, as it did. And the other brother watched, and waited, and bled along with everyone else, secretly; and was forever torn between the battle that he should have fought for, and the life he chose. And he never forgave himself for it. Which brother lived better, and which brother died better? I don't know the answers to these questions. 

El Salvador

So I didn’t end up seeing much of El Salvador besides the airport, hotel, UN offices and 2 restaurants, one of which was a stone house built on top of a mountain looking down on San Salvador; Central America’s largest city. Everything was lit up at night and the whole city ran down the mountains like molten lava. Of course everyone in San Salvador thought I was Spanish and one guy told me it was because I look like a Mayan princess. Erm, I don’t really know what Mayan princesses look like but I know that they were sacrificed to the volcanoes so either way their lifespan was limited.

Oh yeah and the other weird-but-normal thing was when we were in front of the UN building buying a sandwich with a couple of colleagues, and an open pick up truck drove up, parked, and two guys wearing bullet proof vests jumped out of the back (from sitting on the rims) with submachine guns with the safeties off, according to my colleague, went into the store next door, came out five minutes later without looking anyone in the face, and roared off. El Salvador has the highest homicide rate in the world, a direct result of the large amount of small arms in the country due to the civil war that ended years ago. Ah, Sri Lanka- this is your fate.

I learnt a lot during the trip about housing the poor in Latin America; the challenges faced in post-conflict Latin American countries like El Salvador and Colombia and Nicaragua where oligarchs rule the regime and the poor are left to the mercy of guerrilla factions that inevitably end up devouring their young. I learnt too about the United Nations and the infighting that goes on with interagency turf wars, budget conflicts and staff egos clashing; national stakeholders (El Salvador just had a historic change in government and the whole Cabinet is going to be thrown out, but our housing deal was inked with them and now it looks like we will have to start at scratch; and what happens when donor-driven initiatives are enforced in a top down fashion onto the poor. Glory for all.

Adventureland

Every now and then, there is a movie that perfectly captures the mood of your moment. Not in a general, zeitgeist, kind of way, but the mood of the moment that your life is in. Adventureland is such a movie; a coming-of-age story of a young man who still believes in love (and not sex), and who still believes that life is an epic adventure waiting to be lived; the large ambitions, and not the small ones, not the minimalist outlook for him. And yet, at this point, he is still a creature of thought, and not one of action. The movie explores this hibernatory phrase, of the things that happen when dreams are broken, and patched back together again, oddly shaped, but somehow stronger than before. And of course, the culmination of the movie happens with the young hero wending his way to New York city, to solve the essential problem of himself. And to start again. 

memory

I remember standing in the middle of a waste field, four years ago. All around me were large hills, pocked with the green of tea bushes and the black of the Nuwara Eliya earth. In front of me were two community heads, two panchayat heads and their coteries, all male, all wearing sarongs that they had untied from their hips, in deference to the sole female present. I was tired, and exhausted after 10 hours of bone jarring driving and walking up and down these hills and dirt roads. Finally, we had found some land, that someone was willing to donate to build our school. The details of who, and why escape me now. All i remember that day was that the sun was setting, and the hills were casting shadows, and I was there, mediating between too panchayat heads for the land fell squarely between two districts, and both were squabbling over whose jurisdiction the school would fall under. Land title, money (from school fees), power. And me, parachuted in from so far away, yet never ever feeling anywhere else, as though I was absolutely finally at home. And then a phone call came, from as far away as New York I believe, and the connection crackled and jumped, but I heard a voice which to me then, was also home. And I spoke about where I was and what I was doing, a million miles away from the starched world of crisp Pink shirts and heels and banking, where my trainer was beginning to sink into a sea of mud, so waste the land was. And everything felt absolutely right at that moment.

tired

Where do we go from here? I attended a talk the other day about peace in Sri Lanka. One of the speakers was a Tamil activist who had lost her sister to the war (a documentary film was made about her called No More Tears Sister). She happens to be related.

The talk was full of passionate voices, from Sinhala Buddhists to rabid Tamil separatists. Many spoke movingly of people they had lost, and tears sprang to many's eyes. 900 bodies buried here and there. Hospitals where female patients were raped. War, more war, endless war. Even with a cessation of hostilities, there will just be more war.

For the first time however, I was tired. Normally I would have felt full of energy, passion, wanting to do something about it; talking, meeting people. Now, I was simply tired. Exhausted again, the way I was with Sri Lanka. Spent, unsure, uncertain again with nowhere to go. And again, and again that quote came back to me, from someone who was born in my family. and who died in this country and this war that will not stop.

"Some times tears flow uncontrollably and I cannot work anymore. I know I want to be strong, I want to call my historical strength as a woman. I want to remember and hold on to memories of women who conquered the inability and pain. [...] I cannot leave this small country, its belly constricted by hunger and mind blurred by pain. My head tells my emotions — hold on, hold on for one month maybe two — the routine will engulf you — the need of others — disturbs the silence of the tomb. 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."

back then

back then, knowing myself beloved, exuberant in your presence, i was the flowering tree: daily transforming, girl-child to tree, careless of blossoms, daily unleafed, daily budding, lavish with words, immoderate in joy, a willing daphne, the bride of the king's son.
- transparent hummingbird.

Cry, Beloved Country

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."- Alan Patton

a night devoid of stars

As the official war in Sri Lanka between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) draws to an end; the question percolating now in Colombo and donor capitals is what next? Will the government use the considerable political capital it has gained through a successful war to embark upon a project of pluralistic nation-building? Or has the eradication of the LTTE as an immediate threat also eradicated the need for a political solution?

Without a political solution, many fear that the LTTE will find increased support both inside Sri Lanka and externally among the diaspora to mount an offensive further down the line. After all, that is the nature of a guerrilla war, to recede, regroup and resurge. Some say that the government's proposal to develop the North, provide jobs and kickstart the economy will reduce deprivation and erode support for the Tigers in their heartland. But the same program has been attempted in the East, and increased lawlessness and militarization prevail.

Unfortunately, a meaningful political solution with autonomy is unlikely given this government's nationalist allies. The prospects for successful post conflict reconstruction in Sri Lanka are grim. The lack of depth and breadth in horizontal ties between groups, the high political fragmentation, the absence of leadership in the Tamil community, the scrabbling over resources and power-sharing that is likely to ensue between all political parties, the uneasy shadow of Sri Lanka's large northern neighbor, the massive internationalization of the conflict with multiple donors and agendas, the muzzled press, the worrying ability of the Rajapakse regime to operate outside the law and the lack of true bottom-up representation likely point to a failed reconstruction process.

And sadly, amongst all of these competing narratives, it is those without a voice that suffer the most, the starving, the injured, the displaced, the forgotten. The mere absence of war, as has been oft-quoted, and in Sri Lanka, oft-proven, is not peace.

the arc of the moral universe

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." — Apple Computer Inc.

And then they came for me

The war is nearly over. Jaffna has been completely captured, the highway has been taken control of, and now the Tigers are confined to one tiny pocket. This is the beginning of a long slow descent into hell. As Martin Luther King said, “Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Last month, a leading editor of one of the few independent newspapers in Sri Lanka was assassinated. Assassinated and not murdered, because it was a political act, widely believed to be the long arm of the government, reaching out to punish those who had spoken against it. This editorial (excerpts of which are pasted below, link also below) is a poignant reminder of how journalism can change the world, of how truth is the only thing that can save us all, of how principles matter, even if, and especially if, lives are laid down for it. And I have to say, that in these days of cynicism, working from the vaunted halls of an international organization that is supposed to keep the peace, I am reminded that all it takes, is one human being, to make me believe that the right thing should be done.

The Sunday Leader
(http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20090111/editorial-.htm)

“No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honor to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader’s 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognizing the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.”

….
An example that has inspired me throughout my career in journalism has been that of the German theologian, Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: The Leader is there for you, be you Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, low-caste, homosexual, dissident or disabled. Its staff will fight on, unbowed and unafraid, with the courage to which you have become accustomed. Do not take that commitment for granted. Let there be no doubt that whatever sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory or enrichment: they are made for you. Whether you deserve their sacrifice is another matter. As for me, God knows I tried.