The New Age of Literature: The Speculative age

 The world needs a new kind of literature. But to be more precise, the world is arriving at a new kind of literature. This form of literature is different from the Theocratic age, the Aristocratic age, the Democratic age and the Chaotic age of literature as described by the eminent literary critic, Harold Bloom in his book, The Western Cannon. I call this new age of literature the Speculative age.

The speculative age comprises of three important elements which I will further elaborate in this post. These three important elements are; The replication of technological advancement, the trend towards social engineering and the domination of the visual image.

By replication of technological advancement, I imply that most works of literature (especially pop cultural literature) tend towards depiction of an advanced technological world. These works of art either represent our world with facets of advanced technology, or build from scratch new fantastic and out of the world stories. The fantasy and the science fiction are the major genres of pop cultural works of art in the 21^st century. They tower over other modern and postmodern works in either its hopeful or grim perspective about the world under the technological advancement.

The 21^st century work of art cannot merely be a representation of life as it is. Why? Because our life is no longer just a simple life. It is imbedded with technological devices and their abilities to change our life styles. We are already stepping into a transhumanist world where technology yokes with biology to improve our living standards as well as our conceptions about living. Most of the time, the pop cultural works of literature today are an extension as well as an exaggeration of technological lives of ours’.

A good example of this would be the blockbuster movies of superheroes that is a recent trend in the cinematic medium. These superhero movies rely extensively on science fictional tropes such as weapons of mass destruction, aliens and genetically augmented beings in order to build the necessary fantastic and glamorous quality of these movies. These tropes help their creators to build modern epics (not modernist) similar to the epics of the theocratic and aristocratic ages as Harold Bloom has segmented the Western Literature.

This trend is also visible in other mediums such as computer games and cartoons. I was one day watching a recent Indian cartoon dubbed to Sinhala named Chandi whose titular character is a village boy dressed in a dhoti and naked above his waist. This child was a village hero who fought various forms of machines and outer world forces in his screen time. I was truly surprised at this trend of speculation and recognized the need to focus on scientific and fantastic elements in my own stories: it was reminder to me that this speculative tradition has taken hold as a long stayer for at least the near future.

Just like cartoons, the video game is another medium of art that cannot be removed from the speculative tradition of the 21^st century.  The video game is steeped in fantasy and science fictional trends more than any other form of art most possibly due to the scientific interests of their creators; the video game programmers.

Other than the scientific world we live in, another aspect that influences the speculative genre to come into the fore is that speculative fiction allows the artists to empower progressive social change or social engineering via their fantastic story environments. The fantasy and the science fictional worlds are a fertile ground to seed as well as sow the progressive social ideals. While a realistic work of art cannot pitch women in a world war II setting, fighting against the Axis powers (although there were women who did), a movie or a video game can present female characters as formidable equals of male characters in their speculative worlds. Some good examples for this are the Black Widow from the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Wonder Woman from The DC Extended universe. Both are fantastic science-fantasy universes.

The new speculative fiction also allows more space to engage progressively with race politics. The opportunity provided for multiple less represented ethnicities such as African-Americans, Mongoloids and South Asians in fantastic and science fictional movies and videogames is increasing day by day. This trend is made possible by the outer worldly cinematics and themes with which these works of art engage.

Speculative fiction is not only favorable to progressive feminist and race politics, but it also encompasses a larger community of people into their political or thematic dialogue by removing the engagement with themes such as religion and nationalism. The multinational and non-religious speculative fiction can influence more people than works of art that are either pro-religious or racially dominant (by Caucasian characters).

Third and lastly my attention goes to the medium of art itself: the visual image. In our 21^st Century, the visual medium is taking over the world of literature. It is not a prediction but a common sight that visual mediums such as Cinema, Video games as well as Comic-books are replacing other forms of literature such as the novels and the stage drama. This is not to say that the novel and the stage will die away. Surely, they will not die away. But in the present as well as in the foreseeable future, the more visually dazzling mediums will loom over the non-visual novel and the limited space of the stage. My opinion is that if these mediums have to be relevant again for large masses of people, they themselves should start tackling the same speculative ideas that are the de rigueur of 21^st century cinema and the videogame. As mentioned early, this is again not a debunking of slice of life or more grounded storytelling. These genres cannot die away. But the medium has to focus more on the speculative side over grounded story telling if they won’t to have a direct impact on society.

If any artist is reading this blog post, then I suggest that you immediately start taking notes from the movies of science-fantasy you watch as well as the otherworldly video games you play. This is the future.

Reflections and Deconstructions of Creativity and Problem solving.

While I am surfing through the varying channels on the Peo TV, I confronted an advertisement selling an automated flying batman toy. The video depicted children who are amazed by the flying toy. But I asked myself, who wants to buy a toy like that. It was a matter that confused me until days later when I found my nephew playing or flying a very similar batman toy. I was intrigued. I asked him who bought the toy for him and he said it was one of his other uncles who bought it for him. I also asked him how did he enjoy the toy and he said he enjoyed vertically taking off or flying the toy very much.

A few months later I visited him for his birth day. There was a small gathering of relatives for his birthday and everyone had bought some kind of a toy for him. What amused me again the most was that almost all the gifts or toys presented to him were automated machines. There were no building blocks, no action figures or no stuffed dolls. It made me go back to my childhood when I would run to my neighbor’s place to play with my neighbor’s stack of building blocks or fiddle with action figures at home with my brother or myself acting as the nemesis of our imagined toy heroes. I also remember that I made buildings, cities, spaceships and uncountable number of fantastic things and played with them every evening. It was nostalgic, but I cannot return to that past now that I am an adult. What made the history even more striking is seeing my nephew not being chanced with a similar childhood; or a young life profuse with creativity.

Creativity is lost to the new generation of children in my opinion. My contention is that the new models of toys which are automated machines that follow a rigid computer program of execution does not kindle the creativity of children. The children on the other hand rely on the machines to evoke their amusement rather than creating their own. This is an improvident direction of children’s mentality in my opinion. The children should be presented with the opportunity to improve their own creativity and problem-solving skills via the immersion of their minds in their own fictional worlds.

While my belief is that creativity is induced by toys that demand imagining and fantasizing, I also feel compelled to deconstruct my opinion. When I reflect on my own life, to be critical, I feel that my own childhood and my fantastic engagement with toys made me an overthinker as well as a fatally idealistic person. It could also be that I played with toys too long or too much closer into my adolescent life or the age where you have to be creative in real life. This did not help me. I had various difficulties in my teen and adolescent life because of my overthinking which I am still learning to tackle and overcome. Therefore, it could also be argued that the playful and creativity inducing toys should be an object of life in the early years before adolescence rather than the later parts of childhood.

Furthermore, it can also be said that children improve their creativity skills and alternate thinking abilities in spite of toys. But this requires an adequate opportunity of freedom in action and the nature of being social. By adequate opportunity of freedom, I mean the allowance of a child within a family and outside a family to make choices as well as mistakes. To take an example from my own experience, I had less freedom in my house with regards to choices I made. My mother supervised every action I and my brother made within the house. Therefore, my family background did not help me to improve practical creativity and problem-solving skills. On the other hand, sociability is another important factor in improving practical creativity. Knowing the hows and whats of the society is extremely important for the evolution of practical creativity and social problem solving. Sadly, I was not a very social being for the most part of my adolescence. This situation made it quite hard for me to be witty in the department of social life right into my adult life.

Now, as an adult I am still learning to be a good social being with creativity and practicality. Although it is astounding to see others of my age are performing so fluidly in social sphere, my intention to be social and practical is further strengthened by the existence of my colleague’s vivacity.

A close reading of the Anapanasati Sutta’s explanation of samatha meditation.

Living in a Buddhist country it is no surprise if a person of any ethnicity is aware of the meditation styles of Buddhism supposed as the teachings of Gautama Buddha. One could easily say without wonderment that meditation is the focusing of the attention on the in breath and the out breath at the point of the nostril. Moreover, if somebody is a reader of Buddhist literature or a practitioner of Buddhist meditation, he or she might be aware of the other methods of ‘Anapanasati’ or the tranquility meditation such as the focus on the movement of the belly or laying attention on the body and imagining the breath coming in and out of all pores of the body. But in my opinion, there are considerable as well as trifle transgressions in modern meditation practices when compared with the teachings of the Buddha on the samatha meditation. Therefore, the purpose of this blog post is to do a careful and close reading of the part of tranquility meditation as taught and understood by myself.

For the exegesis of this blog I will be using different parts of the translation of Anapanasati Sutta by Thannissaro Bikkhu as uploaded in the weblink:

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.118.than.html

"Now how is mindfulness of in-&-out breathing developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit?

"There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore. Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out.”

In this initial portion of the sutta the Buddha explains the conditions that help to the improvement of tranquility. One has to find a quite place for meditation and he/she needs to hold the body erect, squatting on earth. The part that I want to discuss further is the last part of the first half from this extract:

‘Setting mindfulness to the fore’

Most monks and lay teachers of meditation imparts that this portion means to focus on the nostril or the belly for the movement of the breath. But this is the opinion provided by pali commentaries, Vissuddhimagga of Ven. Buddhagosha as well as the opinion of vipassana traditions. Buddha does not suggest that we should focus on a specific place when starting the meditation. Rather he suggests us to place the attention/mindfulness on the front. In my practice of meditation according to this interpretation, I recognized that meditation is less distracting from the object of attention (the front of body) compared to meditating by trying to keep your attention on a very narrow object of attention.

Starting from this point it is also easy to focus on the movement of breath in and out and be vigilant about the diversion of the attention. But it is also remarkable how Buddha has not mentioned or the monks that compiled the sutta has not at least briefly mentioned about the dispersion, diversion or restlessness of the mentality during meditation which brings to the following portion of the first quarter of the Anapanasati Sutta:  

"[1] Breathing in long, he discerns, 'I am breathing in long'; or breathing out long, he discerns, 'I am breathing out long.' [2] Or breathing in short, he discerns, 'I am breathing in short'; or breathing out short, he discerns, 'I am breathing out short.' [3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.' [4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming bodily fabrication.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming bodily fabrication.'

The most important elements of the above portion are the 3^rd and 4^th lines from the above passage which are neglected as well as unrecognized by the contemporary meditation trainers. This is a relatively an uncritical divergence from what the Buddha is suggesting the trainee to do:

[3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.' [4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming bodily fabrication.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming bodily fabrication.'

In my personal practice I recognized that the meditation practitioner does not experience the sensitivity to the entire body as well as calming of bodily fabrications if they focus their concentration tightly on single place like the nostril or belly.

But when the practitioner closes his eyes while focusing on the front of him, his attention gradually and naturally spans to the whole body while he/she is conscious of the breath’s movement simultaneously. Then the sensitivity to the entire body yokes with the movement of breathing becoming a single breath-body attention. This is a seamless process of improvement of the awareness and this can be even recognized in the subtle tone of Buddha in the passages third and fourth. The subtle third and fourth lines suggest a gradual as well as a conscious improvement of attention to the whole body.

Additionally, I also noticed that the fourth line’s suggestion of calming bodily fabrications is a hint to the existence of many tensions/pains in different parts of the body which can be recognized or at least I myself recognized when the body is calmed. As the body calms down the meditator/yogi feels these tension points in the body which has to be pacified by ‘calming bodily(tension) fabrications’ to achieve the higher and altered states of meditation:

  "[5] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to rapture.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to rapture.' [6] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to pleasure.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to pleasure.'

Consequentially as the sensitivity spans and the bodily fabrications are calmed the meditator experiences the Jhana or concentrated meditation states which are rapture and pleasure.

Therefore, in the close reading of the original sutta, it is clear that concentrated meditation states presuppose the calming of mental fabrications which are dissolved in the seventh and eighth lines of the sutta:

[7] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to mental fabrication.’ He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to mental fabrication.' [8] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming mental fabrication.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming mental fabrication.'

On following the guidance in the sutta I recognized myself that the body calms down faster than the mind, but the meditation does not deter from the tranquility it produces. After calming down the body it naturally begins to calm the mind if the meditator is maintaining his/her attention consistently with the movement of the breath as well as the breath’s subtle movement of body.

Moreover, the commentaries of the Pali cannon recommend the Anapanasati meditation to deluded and speculative minds. A deluded or a speculative mind will always encounter hardships in concentrating their mind just as much as I encountered in my own shortcomings with the more common methods of Anapanasati meditation which I practiced for a while. It is therefore my view that the commentaries also suggest a system of Anapanasati meditation as I have described in this essay.

As the reader can recognize (specially if he/she is a meditator) there are marked distinctions in the explanations of meditation between the suttas and the contemporary meditation trainers. But my intention is not to suggest that contemporary meditation systems are invalid. On the contrary these meditation systems are equally valid as the teachings in the suttas and in some instances very helpful for miscellaneous kinds of people. According to the writer’s perspective the more common samatha meditation systems taught by monks and lay people are helpful in improving strong concentration and mindfulness skills, while Buddha’s sutta method is focused on improving tranquility just enough for the exploration of the basic nature of the mind, body and the world; the impermanence, suffering and no-self.

And in a Long Time, She Smiled

She took her aim. That aim she knows all too well. That deadly aim that never misses. She was Death. And Death never missed. She has to be careful, so as not to target the wrong man, because that would mean the end of him. It was a cold chilly night. She exhaled and chilly vapours rose out into the midnight. She adjusted her hood, not only to make sure that her face was hidden, but so the cold wouldn’t get to her. But maybe the cold already got to her… a long time ago, because she never smiled. She went back to adjusting her posture. “I need to be perfectly calm, if I am to do this right” she thought. Although, she was the best, she never enjoyed what she did. But she made sure no one knew that. In her line of work, every detail counts. Even the smallest detail or misstep could tip the scales and that would be the end of her.

Perched up high on the tree, the assassin waited patiently. She liked the heights. The only few moments that she felt free and in control of her own life. She didn’t know who the target was. She wanted it that way. She liked it that way. The lesser you know about the person you want to kill, the lesser you feel the guilt. “But maybe I am just fooling myself”, she thought, because the guilt never went away. She was only given the directions. He would appear in the regal quarters, of the Eastern tower of the Castle Drogon, at half-past midnight. It was apparently his habitual time to sleep. That’s all she needed to know. “Yes, it was better this way”, she thought reassuringly. She took her aim again. One shot… that was all it took. Her arrows were deadly. She never left survivors, because she knew exactly what she was doing…. Because she was taught by the best.

The whip cracked. “Your posture needs to be perfect Katrina” her master roared. “He took out the whip”, I thought, “That was bad”. I tried to remain straight, arching my back to what perfection it could try to achieve, with no avail. I just collapsed to the ground. My juvenile battered body could not process his commands.  My body was still tired and hurt from the last strenuous session of ‘physical training’. “That’s what he called making a 12 year old fight a bunch of seasoned older assassins, till you blacked out” I thought, mustering some energy for a sad smile.  “Again” he roared, cracking the whip. He was mad now and I had no choice. I tried again, but my body betrayed me. I heard the hard footsteps, thundering towards me. I closed my eyes, readying myself for the next blow. He pulled me up by my hair, making me face him… to look into those piercingly blue eyes. It wasn’t the beautiful blue of the ocean, calming the observer. No… it was a blue that chills you and impales you with the slow horrifying knowledge of inevitable death.  And then the whip cracked, and I screamed.

My mind was back in the present, back on the tree. I was Death again. I adjusted my posture one more time and knew I was ready. I took my aim and waited. And then he came. His back was turned so I couldn’t see his face, “All the better” I thought. One less face to haunt me. And with my heart hammering, I readied myself to release the deathly arrows, when he suddenly turned. His face... the piercing blue eyes of slow death, met with mine. And in a long time, I smiled.

So I was experimenting with some medieval assassin/ femme-fatale genres. This is my first attempt at fiction :)

It's basically a simple portrait of a few moments of what goes on in the mind of the assassin before her kill. 

Drop a comment and let me know what you think :)

Surangana Kirilliye and Marxism

Peeps, its a very very very funny set of thoughts that I felt while doing Prof. Maithree's assignment on Research Methodology. I was getting bored,  and started playing a playlist ( an old hits list AKA millenial hits by several page admins on facebook) . Once Surangana Kirirlliye by Iraj and Infaas started playing , even without seeing the music video , visuals of the innocent bread delivery boy or the bakkare started popping up in mind. As the song progressed I came to end of the visual mentally where his breadbox drops infront of the girl and he runs away. 

So, as a child when the video was first released, it was one of these repeatedly played videos on several chart shows by different media stations. The whole Bread-boy and Rich girl love story fascinated me as a child . I was also mad at the rich girl who kept on ignoring the poor bread boy's love. OK. 

NOSTALGIA ASIDE 

With all our interesting sessions with Dr. Prabha on Marxism , I think the whole song-incident made me think of the class factor that operates throughout the video, with two strong symbols of the two polars . A well dressed , upto-shape , girl in sneakers jogging with an Ipod ( probably) symbolizing the bourgeois and the lean looking bakkare , clad in slippers who pushes the bread bike , symbolizing the working class. Marx claimed that the struggle between these two classes would be 'endless' ( as clearly seen in the video , their unison happens in the form of a  day dream). Can't a bread-boy love a rich girl? Has love been commercialized ? Why?  Or is it the result of the articulation of this commercialisation by diverse agents like media?
Ladies, your thoughts first.. Gents of course are welcome too.. ;) 

( Isuru, I am sorry for choosing a graphical content in this post. It was a very spontaneous moment. However, I am 100% sure that you know this visual which hit all of us a decade ago :D and who doesn't know Iraj :P ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70VUYE4Z2lI  

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

                       Most of you who read this post might have come across this poem by the famous American poet Robert Frost, either in your literary studies or even in your day to day life.  For those who don’t know the poem, this is an example for Frost’s use of deceptively simple life incidents to talk about not so innocent realities of life.

Enough of poetry studies for now!

By the way, aren’t we always faced with the not-so-easy task of making decisions in our day to day existence? From the simple fact of selecting a topic to write about in this blog to the things we consider as crucial like selecting the most suitable professional career, the weight of choice becomes something that is unshakable.  Don’t go so far.  Think how difficult it is sometimes to select one out of hundreds of food items when you step into a McDonald's or a KFC.  On the top of all is the nagging sense of regret that, you could have tried a Tower Burger instead of a Big Boss in your last visit to a KFC!

                       Let me go back to our A/Ls to talk about the power of choices.  When I was half way into my A/Ls, I regretted selecting English as a subject because of the extra effort I had to put on for that subject.  I realised that, I could have done my A/Ls with one third of the effort I was putting and be successful if I didn’t have selected English.  I am sure at least few of you sometimes have experienced a similar kind of frustration with whatever the subject you have selected for A/Ls.  However, I honestly believe that, it is that single decision which finally rewarded me with a wonderful under-graduate life at Kelaniya uni.  I am sure the number of times I sang with batch mates while arranging or volunteering for certain events in the university pay off all the hard labours of those years.

                       I do not intend to be over optimistic by saying that, all the life choices yield memories that we can cherish.  I also have a catalogue of unpleasant memories resulted by my decisions and choices.  But dear friends,, what really counts is the experience each choice brings to our life.

                       The vibrancy of life is its experiences.  Each new day can be a way to a new experience.  The ground rule here is that, we should not regret the choices we have made in our life.  Whatever the outcome of that choice, it surely rewards you some experience that finally constitute the person whom you are.

                       If you ask me my dear friends, there are thousand different ways that we can live our life.  If you take a minute now and list out the things you wish you could have done differently, it would give you tangible proof to what I am talking about.  However, we should remember that, those choices can be the very things that constituted our identity as an individual.  At the end  of the day, what really matters is the experiences we gained from our choices.  It is true that we have to choose wise but we also have to never regret our choices in life.  So unlike Robert Frost, never say sorry when you are forced to choose one out of two roads.  Be proud for having a choice in your life!

Death might not be a bad idea after all!

Recently I had to kill some time near the zebra crossing at the famous Kelani Kanda (the main  road to enter the University of Kelaniya). It was bit early in the morning and all the bustle around the university was starting to build up. I just sat on a concrete bench gazing at a traffic sergeant who was taking an enormous effort to minimize the congest. He was signing the vehicles to pass in a rhythmic style and sometimes grinned at a motorcyclist or a car driver who tried to scurry their vehicles through a smaller gap neglecting the pedestrians who crossed the road on the cue of the traffic sergeant. What I saw was a typical morning around the Kelani Kanda! Nothing unusual! Nothing extraordinary! Then suddenly out of the blue it hit me! It hit me so hard that I was taken aback and I made sure that I clutched the concrete bench so hard! Death! All the drivers in the traffic and the impatient pedestrians near the zebra crossing will have to face the inevitable death one day or the other. What followed was a horrible thought that gave me the creeps for two or three minutes. White flags began to swivel through all over my mind! Then this weird question came to my mind in a flash. Does that car driver who is perhaps humming to a fancy song cozily inside his car is seriously aware of his death? Does that traffic sergeant who yells at drivers has ever pictured his own death? Does that aunty who is vigorously mopping the dusty Cargills entrance to welcome the busy customers in ten or twenty minutes is aware that she has to leave her beloved ones? Does that security uncle who is dozing off in his own chair after a hell of night workload aware of his death? My instantaneous answer was ‘no’! My troubled mind seemed to find its way to calm down. Yes death is a bad concept and a bad word to many of us. Some of us, no, I cannot generalize people, but I can talk of myself, for I am very afraid to die. However, the concept of death might not be a bad idea after all! When I looked back at those people I understood that all of them (including myself) are equal in a wonderful manner. Even though we like to categorize ourselves in thousands of ways that does not matter at all in the end! For a one moment, I could not distinguish the difference between the car driver, the sweeping aunty, the traffic sergeant and the dozing security uncle (please be kindly noted that I am using the professions as a mere signifier). They all appeared to me as human beings. Human beings who tried to smile, to earn a living amidst thousands of untold miseries. They might be different in so many ways, but all of them are equal. I personally think that it is a good thing to feel death now and then! (I might be melodramatic here, but I mean this as a positive thing). The idea that we all keep remembering the fact that we will leave everything behind will make us better people since I believe that thought could function as an amulet that scares away all the negative feelings and ideas. People will respect each other better, show humanity to the fellow beings if they are constantly made aware of the impermanence of life. After all what is the point of being hateful, deceitful or jealous if you have to die? Death might be scary, but it also can discipline us in a wonderful manner. It can heal our all wounds if we are smart enough to use that concept creatively. With that happy note I wrapped my philosophical thoughts and got up to climb dear beloved Kelani Kanda.

A country by the people, of the people, for the people

I found the following poem on my newsfeed on facebook.

Dear Sri Lankan,

NAVINDRA FERNANDO·THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2018

When did ‘she’ become so humiliating to you?

this land that nurtured you?

that you must mock her flag or adulterate her anthem?

to laugh at her plight or ignore her loss?

Have her sandy shores ever ceased to amaze you?

have not her hills the tall mountains never left you mesmerized?

A nation needs leaders, who act justly and protect it

our leaders may have failed us

but she has not

Her fertile soil still bear crop

her waters still quench our thirst

her beauty still bring us joy

She is being pushed to breaking point

yet

she strives to survive

Believe

that amidst those who try to rip her apart

there are those who still bring her pride

those whose actions still feed the hungry

educate her young and heal her sick

for no cost at all

Those gone before us and many beside us

still bring her glory

Honour to her name

Ally with them

By all means unite to undo the wrong

that has now engulfed her

To bring back law and order

Unite to end corruption and violence within her

poverty and pollution which destroy her

to restore her worth

Still think twice before you choose

which path you take

For her sons and daughters may have failed her yet she never failed them

She only loved and loved and loved..

So never forget to be kind to her

in her chaos to be true to her

to pray for her

to cherish her

for she will always be ‘the Pearl of the Indian Ocean’

nothing else but

real treasure.

It was written following the coup d’état in Sri Lanka that was initiated by President Maithreepala Sirisena on the 26^th of October 2018. President Sirisena stripped Ranil Wickremasinghe of his post as the Prime Minister of the country and appointed Mahinda Rajapakse, former president, in his place. Following this, many Ministers of Parliament changed their political party. The context in which this poem was written is one where a facebook user posted an image of the flag of Sri Lanka in which the lion was replaced by a frog. This was meant to represent the Ministers who changed parties following the coup d’état.   

This poem, written on the 8^th of November, promotes the idea that though the Ministers of Parliament and the President have been a disappointment to the people of the country, the beauty of the land has never faded. In this article, I shall argue that a country is not just its scenic beauty but the minds and behavior of the people living in it. I shall explain why I am not proud to be identified as a Sri Lankan. Following is my reaction to the post:

A land is a land. But a country is something more than that. A country is the people who live in that country. A country is not just beaches and mountains and grass as the poet here suggests here,

“Have her sandy shores ever ceased to amaze you?

have not her hills the tall mountains never left you mesmerized?”

and

“Her fertile soil still bear crop

her waters still quench our thirst”

A country is not just these things. Actually, in my opinion, even this scenic beauty of the country, is adulterated by the people of this country, which is a reflection of the hearts and minds of the people in it. A country is all the hearts and brains and consciences of people who live in it.

            The poet also writes about the disappointment that the leaders of the country have brought upon the people in it,

“A nation needs leaders, who act justly and protect it

our leaders may have failed us

but she has not”

Here, I would like to bring to the poet’s notice the fact that the Parliamentarians of the country are a cross-section of the people in it. They are representatives who have been sent to parliament through elections. None of them forced their way into the parliament, just as MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake said at a media conference. One could say that they are a compact picture of the people of the country. The behavior of the leaders of the country is thus a representation of that of the people in it. ‘Every nation gets the government it deserves’ as the French philosopher, Joseph de Maistre stated.

            The poem has a section where the poet demands of the reader since when the country ceased to be their pride,

“When did ‘she’ become so humiliating to you?

this land that nurtured you?”

It is not true that it was the ‘land’ that nurtured the people. The land is an inanimate object. It is not the scenery of the land that nurtured its people. It is the adults, the family, that brings up a child, that nurtures it. Therefore, when I say that I am not proud to be a Sri Lankan I mean that I am not proud to be identified with the rest of the people living in this country. I shall explain.

“there are those who still bring her pride

those whose actions still feed the hungry

educate her young and heal her sick”

I agree with the poet in this respect. A country is made of good and bad. But, it has a lot to do with the percentage of relatively good people in it. You might say that other countries have bad people too. But what matters is the percentage of them. I have met only a handful of good people in this country.

Most of the people here are selfish: look at the way they pollute public places with plastic, polythene, waste. 

Most of the people here are jealous: count the number of people who are not given promotions in their jobs because others slander them. I personally know many who work hard but are jealously not rewarded. Most of the people here are racist: look at how politicians make use of this to get more votes, like Prime Minister Bandaranaike made Sinhala the only official language of Sri Lanka to get the votes of the Sinhala majority in the country. Most of the people here are homophobes: look at the way people look at others who are neither male nor female, the way these people are laughed at. Even homosexuality is a crime in this country. Homosexual conduct between two or more consenting adults is illegal. Even President Sirisena himself implied that the Prime Minister and his supporters were homosexual, in his comment where he compared them to a group of butterflies and Sirisena’s supporters, including Ragapakse, applauded this comment. Most people here are sexist: look at the way a girl or woman cannot walk on a street without being catcalled. So, tell me: are we good people? Wrong question. Are MOST of us good people? Yes, there are good people among us, but only a handful.

The writer claims that though the people in the country have adulterated the country- politicians and the people who replaced the lion in the national flag, with a frog- the country has done no wrong to the people.

“For her sons and daughters may have failed her yet she never failed them

She only loved and loved and loved.”

I would bring to the notice of the poet that a land cannot possibly do wrong to anyone. A land is an inanimate object that simply exists. It is the people of the country who do wrong to each other, who hurt each other. Again, I say that not all people are like this; but the majority of the people are as I have explained above. This is a reflection of what the country is.

My dream country is one where there is little or no pollution. Where people are not laughed at or judged for being themselves. Where people don’t hold grudges against each other. So, remember: a country is not simply its beaches or mountains and its scenic beauty (even there, Sri Lankans pollute this country). A country is what the people in it make it. It’s all to do with the love of the people who live in it. I am not a proud Sri Lankan. I am not ashamed of not being a proud Sri Lankan.

-Nati

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