Like a prayer does, a devotee
take me from these certainties
these paths that lead to common destinies
these ambitions spurring to known ceremonies
the rituals of normalcy
take me from the throes of a predictable day
from the insane sanity, precision, flawlessness
and release me to the unknown, unacceptable
uncompromised mystery
for this life of mine cannot ever be
something known, something ordinary.
I am rather silent these days. I keep my opinions to myself. In my previous blog I had declared ‘in the pats few years, in which I have grown from a school girl to a woman, I learned to reserve my political opinions; instead I write poetry.’
In this blog I have meandered off and on. And some of the opinions have been put forth, quite directly. In a way, it is a useless process I am involved in; adding my opinions to an ipinionated world, which couldn’t care less. On the other hand, people around me seem to have no opinion of their own at all. My family, for instance, is slowly realising the parochial media gimmicks, and are bewildered on what to believe. In the kind of life they lead, they do not read Marques or Galtung or Joanna Macy. They do not watch movies like The Edge of Heaven. They do not hang out with the think-different crowd. My family is the commons, in that way. They do not want to search; they need truths to be given for them to believe. Even when they realise that the ‘truth’ is the fabrication of someone in power wishing to hold on to power, they would rather believe what makes life easier for them this moment.
I try to give simple answers when I am asked for my opinion on the current politics these days. I am worried that I will become another cynic or a useless idealist that the world around me doesn’t need anymore. Thank god, my grandfather, simply because he’s lived so long, probably has started seeing through the dark mere. But with the rest, it is difficult to talk without getting into arguments. So, I wish I could revert to my old stance: Only small individual creative acts can make sense to me, personally, in this madness.
So, despite my mentor’s comment ‘we really don’t have the option of remaining silent, now’ which I think is absolutely right, I find myself attracted to silence.
The other day, I found myself, yet again in a delicate situation. Taking a bus ride with a new admirer, trying not to break his heart, holding his hand gently and explaining why I feel like the way I do, among a crowd of paranoid passengers, we are told again that a bomb has gone off in Mt Lavinia. Here we are: Kilinochchi’s won. Elephant Pass taken. And a very handsome, new star monk tell us how important it is to be grateful to our heroes; to take care of them. And the News First tell us the next moment how they were attacked and that a bomb just went off in the route that we are taking. There I was, holding someone’s hand in a crowded bus, telling him we shouldn’t, because I don’t want to hurt again and hurt him too in the process.
He closes his eyes for a moment and says, this is madness, isn’t it…this life, this country, with all these things happening around us? And here we are trying to find love…trying to find happiness…and it is absolute madness.
That moment I wish that all the social barriers between us disappear; and my painful memories of recent loves and losses disappear and I am free again, and brave again, to accept this little love that is offered to me.
So, when he asks me ‘what if a bomb goes off in this bus?’ I tell him, I would be the happiest dead-girl in the world. He does not want to die young. But agrees that life is suffering.
So after everything is said, all our political opinions are discussed, the recent movies and books exchanged, we sit in silence in the noisy traffic. And everything seem so meaningless and sad.
We got to love each other, says Don Mclean, cos politics is just a joke.
And listening to this song he wants me to hear, I wish so too. And I couldn’t have put it any better than Don Mclean, in this video, AND I LOVE YOU SO.
How young we are, and how bitter…just like this island so beautiful and so sad.
What is it that we have here, in this part of the world, and they – the developed world – don’t have? (Apart from the yearlong sunshine and refreshing monsoons…) If you rule out the exoticism and the lure for adventure that brings many ordinary white people (without hidden agendas and not working for the CIA 
to our shores, what is it that we offer them, in return of the luxuries they leave behind in their countries? I am not talking about the tourists, you should know by now. I am talking about those who come for longer periods, who come in search of work, who come because they ‘want to help’.
With my interesting connections to first world attempts to help the third, and with the excessive media coverage Wimal Weerawansa is getting at the moment, I couldn’t have timed experiencing this exceptional movie by Fatih Akin any better. (Ok, I don’t grudge Weerawansa his moment of glory, I only feel a whiff of nausea when it is overdone.) But Akin is a good antithesis to Weerawansa. It’s a good way of putting things rather than disqualifying all what Weerwansa says as bunkum.
The Edge of Heaven is not a story about conspiracy. It is not a story about aid workers. It is not a story about super powers’ manipulation of the world market. It is even not a simplistic version of globalisation and multiculturalism often bought and sold in the ideological arenas of the day.
It’s a story about coincidences. It’s a story about what we gain and what we stand to loose in this world system. And what we ultimately want as the ordinary people we are; What do we want to do with our lives? What gives us meaning to continue the madness of existence?
Why do young people take to streets and resort to violence just outside the European Union? Why would Germans and Swedish and Danes risk their lives in our conflict zones de-mining our territory? And why do we reject their help? But why do they still want to continue despite the arrogant refusals of our governments? Why don’t my American and German friends want to leave Sri Lanka, despite the less than bearable visa procedures our government? Is it just the fancy lifestyle they get to lead here? Would someone give up a whole country, a ‘home’, a way of life as comfortable as what you get in Germany or Sweden to some material benefits that we can provide them here? The big gardens and bungalows with domestic aid, is that it? or the sunshine? or vipassana?Or is it the sense of purpose that we find in living in situations like these?
Weerawansa would have one answer to these questions. Fatih Akin has another.
When I look back upon the choices I have made in my life, I’d rather go with Akin. I choose Sri Lanka because it gives me what Sweden couldn’t have given me. Being here gives me a sense of purpose. I feel needed. And of course, it is HOME. I belong here. And I draw a clear line between that sense of belonging and love for a land and the euphoria I see around me these past two days.
Watch The Edge of Heaven. And let’s talk.
I am not sure this new year will bring us the happiness and prosperity that we so wish each other in our frenetic-poetic text messages. Not in Sri Lanka. Maybe not anywhere. But then, I confine myself to this island; and this island is what I give a damn about; and I give a damn because I want to be happy in this little island this year.
So here’s something that makes me write on the first day of the year. I don’t care for citizen journalism, but in a situation where all of us sit around and crib about our decedent politics, it was refreshing to see someone walk out there alone; paint some canvas and put it out in front of the Fort Railway Station. Ok, it’s not the mass rally that will topple the government. And this young man, Sanjaya is still shy with his words, but he gave me enough freedom within his paintings and his slogan “Fight for Love; Love Peace” (Direct Translation from Sinhala). I will caption it, MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR!
I am glad I went there. Apart from discussing about how poorly recieved art is among the masses with these fresh graduates from Haywood, we managed to have a decent conversation about why we should or should not leave out the words “war/peace” from our captions. After all, ‘peace’ is no more the winning horse. It certainly is not, as long as you think that Peace is a round of talks in Switzerland or a ceasefire.
We were not disappointed: a lady walked to us and wanted to know what we mean by ‘all this’? “Are you trying to say that the war we are fighting now is bad?” She just managed to introduce herself as an army doctor, and it was a shame she did not wait for an answer. (Like all supporters of war, they bombard you with questions and fly away…and that question is suppose to haunt you in your dreams: “Traitor!!!!!”)
But what actually haunts me is this: “how do you have a conversation with a person like this good lady army doctor, who thinks that we are an ungrateful bunch of spoilt madmen, who don’t give a frothing penny about what our poor soldiers go through up there!”
Do they really think we hate our boys so much to side with foreign conspirators for whatever the gold we get to utter the Poisonous word Peace! The other day, driving past Ratmalana Airport, the road gets blocked and eight ambulance vehicles whizz past me, surely with body bags, followed by a Rosa bus full of bandaged young men in sanatorium clothes. Eyes plastered, arms in dressing…I know it is not a movie! and I bang at my steering wheel in frustration! CANT WE SEE! CANT WE SEE!! CANT WE SEE!!!
AND YET WE SAY NOTHING!
Sorry I have to change topics. I need to cool down…..
So, like Sanjaya, I too choose to talk about love in this situation. And my impression is that Sanjaya too, chose so for similar reasons. It makes little sense to talk of how battles are fought and won between governments and guerrilla groups. Of course you can talk about it for hours, but what is it that we as individuals who are far away from that line of action, who are caught up so much with our mundane battles, begin to realise that there really is a thin red line that connects our personal battles to those big games. How are own personal battles, within us, between those who are close to us, are also arenas of conflict and violence of varying degrees. How cruel are we in these little battles we fight? between lovers, brothers and sisters, families, colleagues? How unforgiving? How mad do we get once we are out on the streets? How abusive?
No wonder the world is full of thieves, and people who are just about to become thieves.
The real battle is perhaps not the one up there in the north, in that sense…the real battle would be within us…within this society we face every day…to remain kind, loving, uncorrupted, good at heart, and have a conscience. The real battle is to believe in these virtues, in a time that they seem so out of vogue.
Perhaps I am as much a reductionist as Marx when he said that the fundamentals of everything is in economics: but I keep coming back to , no not economics, but love: love is the answer to many of the social deseases of the modern day. Love is a perspective; a practice; it is a process of healing and transofrmation.
Love has the power to transform us in to more honest individuals; kinder and more contemplative; more compassionate. In this mass anesthetized oblivion of our lives, only love can strike a sensitive chord.
And without that sensitivity there would be no Art. Nor Peace.
This is the moral choice we make. And I pray, I do not want blood in our collective conscience.
Inspired by Sanjaya Senevirathne
Christmas makes me sing a few hymns from my convent days. Among them, the hymn I love most is ‘Ma Mavuni’. It’s a Sinhala hymn, calling to Virgin Mary. I have no idea if it has an English version.
Ma mavuni athi premaniya
Me loke mage adhaara
Shoken ma nithi santoshaya
Yangyave mava sundara
(My most beloved Mother; you are my help, my refuge in this world; you save me from sorrow and lead me to joy; you are the Mother of prayer, most beautiful)
As I sing this, I recall the little statuette of the madonna, that all of us sang to as young girls. These expereinces have led to a story found among the pages in this blog as ’silent night; whispering night’. I never realised the ‘mother cult’ we were so much a part of in the convent, simply becuase it was never really interpreted in a feminist light. I wonder if others who were a part of the same expereince, who sang along with me to Virgin Mary, our mother of sorrosw, our mother of joy, recall these moments the same way as I do…
There’s something about those sad eyes and the blue robe…and how many women from around the world must be praying to her in the same vein…Tarkovsky captured this on a celluloid poem in Nostalgia, in the scene ’The Madonna of Childbirth”. In an old crumbling church in a remote Italian village, a statue of Mary is carried in by women, praying fervently; among them is the one who hosts the ritual, praying for a child…at the fever pitch of their prayer, the robes of the statue is flung open and a flock of tiny sparrows fly out to freedom from the virgin’s womb.
I’m deeply moved by this scene. Is it becuase I am a woman? Is it because I was in a convent? Is it because I resonate with the yearning of a woman? When women want, they want so badly, so madly, so completely. They pray, they fight, they cry. As if wanting is the be all and end all of exisitence.
Do men want things to the same degree? Do they ever pray? In the same fervour I mean? Does a man ever want to be a father as much as a woman yearns to be a mother? And is it correct to say, that all women want to be mothers? What about those who don’t want to be mothers; but yearn to be loved as women, as madly and as fervently, as those who pray to become mothers?
I read somewhere that to live, is to want.
We pray for wanting; for the joy of wanting; for the sorrow of wanting;
So this is for the Mother of mothers…
Madonna of Childbirth from Nostalghia by Andrei Tarkovsky
Yesterday – Saturday – was an exceptional day, and I will tell you why. From nine to three was at Trans Asia for the workshop “How to Retire Rich” organised by Colombo Stock Exchange. The market’s devastated so they want people to come in and pick up stocks. The workshop was great. I mean for the material girls and boys. The first session convinced us that our kids will not be able to look after us, our government will not look after us (for purely demographic reasons, if not for others), the inflation will suck the value of what we earn and save and that by the time we retire in say 2030, at the rate of 20% inflation you would need more than five million bucks a month to survive. Ofcourse before that, you got to build your house in say, Boralasgamuwa, and buy a Toyota Corrolla at least and send your son to Middlesex for his IT degree, and oh, you have to afford at least a Pomenarian, right? Say your EPF runs out by 75…if you are a woman your avarage life expectancy is you’ll live till 76. And if you live till 80, HOLY SHIT!
So in one slide:
So basically, there were more graphs, calculations, predictions, speculations, analysis. The bottom line was you got to have an investment portfolio. Then, you got to calculate: diversify your invenstements. Plan. Research. Strategize. Invest. Buy low – sell high. Shave off. Cut-loss. Re-invest for highest interest rates. If you loose money, don’t worry, the world is not going to end tomorrow. Think Long Term. Think Real Income.
See, now I know a thing or two about Financial planning.
Please don’t misunderstand. I am not mocking this whole logic. It’s probably right; it;s probably true; it’s probably sane. But I cannot live on DELAYED GRATIFICATION!!! I cannot forgo life in order to live rich in retirement. I don’t want a house, unless it is a creative excersice to build one. I do not want dependents. My whole counterpoint was that: you get started on that line, you gonna go sleepless, baby. SLEEPLESS NIGHTS FOR A SECURE FUTURE. Sounds like a way too late sequal to FOR A FEW DOLLORS MORE!
So I walked out saying that I got to have my kinda strategy. Live Simple. Die Early. While living simple invest as much as possible in food, sex, wine, travelling, movies, books, good music, good clothing, make up, friends, good art. (I might be missing a lot here, but anyway…)Also help a couple of people who are needy, who are around you…say the security guard at your office, or the cleaning lady, for instance. Talk to them! My security guard has a wife with cancer. She cries every time when he bathes her propped on a chair. The cleaning lady wants to send her son to Abu Dabi. See…
So that was nine to three, Saturday. In the evening, I went to join a group of friends. the art house crowd, ofcourse. No flashy mobiles dangling in their hands like in those in the workshop in the morining. Jesus, it’s like a diffferent planet. So they talked politics for a while. And then, they start singing. Sunil sang a Russian song from his college days, playing the guitar…raising his voice to a pitch that would make any woman’s heart toss! I was mad about him for those moments, sitting beside him!
And loosing myself in that revelry, I just felt, a fleeting sensation, my heart skipping from on clapping pair of hands to the other, that THIS is happiness. This is life and the best it could ever be. I loved every one in that room, yet I was not attached to any. I was not aching or pining for anyone, or anything. I had no dreams of things to achieve, personal or higher. material or intellectual. No more money to be earned, cars or houses, no more exams or certificates, no more need for husbands, babies, or even the urge to travel more…or live more…to change the political system of sri lanka…or anything really…i did not want, crave, need, yearn, pine, for anything, or anyone.
Driving back home alone in the night, with Sunil’s voice reverberating in my heart, I decided for myself: I will live simple (like a queen). And die early.
And the rest of the world can keep calling me insane for the rest of my life.
Photography: Sujeewa de Silva
Distance:
The void that cripples us
On life’s threshold.
So in shadows we mingle
In shadows we live
For a long time, I have been searching for this advertisement. I saw it first in one of my early workshops at JWT, when I was just a junior copywriter. This was done by JWT Buenos Airis and won a Cannes. Even if it wasn’t made by JWT and hadn’t won a Cannes it would still be my best add to date. The Dream this add stood for – an affinity to true and guneuine art – sustained me through many miserable late nights in advertising, writing unbearably frivolous lines for Celltell and Lux, I remember. Of course, it couldn’t sustain me for long…I could only last for eight months in advertising. Not even the possibility of an add like this, which I feel is a masterpiece, I will say it without wincing, could keep me longer.
I suddenly remembered this add today, out of the blue…maybe I was thinking about ‘The Journey’. From the one that we were, to the dream that we want to be. It is amazing, I knew instantly the line was from the Air Argentina add.
So, even an add could offer you some imagination, some wisdom.
How I wish, we had more of such adds, instead of the stuff we are forced to see daily…but then, I shouldn’t complain. I don’t watch TV. So I don’t see adds. So I don’t even know if they are better or worse.
Clint Mansell. It’s the first time I heard of him or his music. I am yet to see the film by Darren Aranofsky: The Fountain, but it seems promising. Somebody described it ‘a poem’.
Together We Will Live Forever is again a simple A major composition (you could make it B flat, too), that reaches deep into the twilight of our emotions. My emotions. At this point in life.
It has happiness and sadness in the same note. Simplicity and complexity in the same chord. Hope to hang on and the urge to let go in the same scale.
So I sit at the piano and a small enlightenement comes to me: whatever the tune it is, it has to be in these keys…with a little bit of fumbling and not quite the same scale I start to play Clint Mansell. It’s amazing…
Can day-to-day mundane realities have such a dreamlike quality?
Listening to Michael Nyman early in the morning…before work begins. Just close my eyes and let the piano keys draw inside a part of me a most beautiful mosaic of moods. I have been so tired this week…even after last night’s dreamless sleep, there’s a yearning for a camatose… a complete black out. A need to loose conciousness for a week or two…perhaps longer…
And I wonder, how much longer will I live? Another 20, 30, 40 years? Jesus! It’s a long time…
What kind of pleasure does heart ask for? It is something my best poetic expressions cannot do justice to, the way Michael Nyman does, in his haunting theme for “The Piano”: The heart asks pleasure first.
I am so lukcy that way, I could find a sort of intimacy so easily, in music; something so elusive to find in another human being. The moment I reach out for someone, they run away for miles…the moment someone reaches for me, I clam up and shut down.
Perhaps, this is why art exists: to fill the gap we cannot fill in ourselves…to complete that missing piece in our soul, we serach for so badly but cannot find, except perhaps in a poem or a painting or a book or a film or music . What a dream, ah!
And I still wonder, what kind of pleasure do our hearts ask for?
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