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.

airplane sleep

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

on daatje

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

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


Elimination Dance
by Michael Ondaatje

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

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

Those who are allergic to the sea

Those who have resisted depravity

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

American rock stars who wear Toronto Maple Leaf hockey sweaters

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

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

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

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

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

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

Any person who has lost a urine sample in the mail

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

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

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

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

Those who have accidentally stapled themselves

Anyone who has been penetrated by a mountie

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

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

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

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

Men who have never touched a whippet

Women who gave up the accordion because of pinched breasts

Those who have pissed out of the back of moving trucks

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

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

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

Literary critics who have swum the Hellespont

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyone with pain

perf art

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

groupie!

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

and then there are days like today

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

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

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

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

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

(a little later)

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

a dead bird

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

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

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

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

Never-mind.

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

change

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

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

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

girls

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

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

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

weekend blues

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

over

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

intros

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

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

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

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

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

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


Somebody please kill me now.

analysing peace

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

Can the Peace Process be revived.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

language

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

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