Keep hearing conch-shell murmurs

I have walked on pure sandy beaches holding her hand in my carefree days. I have dug holes in the sea shore, patiently waiting for the waves to come and turn them into wells. Thus she taught me patience. She pointed at the horizon and showed me the countless colours the rising sun gave the sky as her dawn-clothes. She showed me the returning boats with their catch, emerging from the far skyline with the morning sun. Thus she taught me hope.
She would pick sea shells for me and occasionally an uncut pearl that had washed off shore. She would press a huge conch shell into my ear and let me listen to the eternal melody of the ocean. Thus she taught me music.
When time went by, despite her frail, aging stature, she grew to be the mighty ocean in my life. Her kindness was the soothing sea breeze and her smile was synonymous with the rise and fall of gentle waves. It was a sad twist of fate when her life was dragged away by the same sea waves she taught me to love and the same creamy foam that tickled our feet.
It was not only my Achchi whose life was swept away by the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, but that of so many. After long six years after the tragedy, we still look at the figures of causalities with sense of wonderment and ask ourselves a thousand times why they had to die. The infants, the young and the old, they were all scapegoats of one big sin we all did- taking our ocean for granted.
We gaze at stars and dream of conquering far away planets when we don’t know our backyard well. It is easier for everyone to call the strange light that crosses your skyline a UFO, but it is harder to figure out the causes for half of the natural disasters that hit us when we least expect them.
The ocean has not asked for any of the things we dump into it; tonnes and gallons oil, waste matter and sometimes excess harvest. It was just like we never asked for a tsunami. Those who survived the waters would tell you how murky that water was and how different it tasted from the usual sea-salty water.
The period I hated sea for taking Achchi away soon came to an end. She had all the reasons to love the sea and now so have I. She breathed in the same air that cooled the surface of the ocean and it is time I make sure the surface of the ocean is cool enough for me breath blissfully. Times have changed and so have the obligations and responsibilities.

My Phoenix bird tears

Go ahead and call my tears ‘weak.’ I will show you how my smiles draw in the brightness from the preceding tears. Laugh at me when I cry on your shoulder covering my face with the hands, I will show you how much time I buy to smile again from the tears I shed.
People say, courageous are the ones who hold up their tears not letting them escape their pent-houses. For me, courageous are the ones who could let a tear freely flow irrespective of time or place when it lines up in the eyes.
It needs a lot of physical strength to hold up a tear. It takes even more mental strength to let it just flow, knowing that people are eagerly looking at you, and their curious eyes are demanding for the story behind the open flood gates. You may be the daughter who silently cries to the boarding-room pillow because you are missing your family who lives far far away. Or you may be the lover who, sitting on a bus-stand bench, pour your sorrows out because he broke your heart. Tears just make you feel better like a fresh bath after a heavy day’s work. They can only refresh things up, but they can never become the remedy.
When everything else seems to fail, having a good cry and emptying your heart, can help you figure out things. But tears alone cannot perform miracles. You can make a person stay with you, with your tears, but your tears cannot round up that person’s heart from wandering beyond your radars. Tears can reflect your sensitivity and your empathy. But if you are a regular crier, people will take it as your weak point.
If your tear-glands are functioning well, you should be grateful as most of the people who are labeled “stony” are those who can’t cry not because they do not cry. Releasing their sadness and depression is a difficult task which can even drive them crazy. If the people are to choose between to cry and not to cry, the majority will be in favour of crying as it washes away your wounds and stops bleeding that cannot be treated by a doctor. Your tears are phoenix-bird tears and they do have healing powers when it comes to the scrapings and smarting of your own soul.

I wish to tell you

I wish to tell you that not every man is made in the same mould and the dressings and icings put on them by birth, customs and sometimes their professions shape them to what they are. And if you expect them to have the same attention span or the same length of brainwaves, you are the one to be disappointed and miserable in life.
I wish to tell you that at the end of the day, it is your mother’s food that make you strong, your father’s soothing words that smoothen the rough edges and your siblings’ bed-time talks that give a hassle-free sleep. No matter how far away you are from home a heart does not want visas or train tickets to cross the mile-long distance to be where your roots have grown deep and strong.
I wish to tell you that taking the untrodden path first comes in the expense of bravery. Then you continue to walk down that road with the mere curiosity of knowing what awaits you at the end of the journey. In between the middle and the end, you will begin to love the thorns that prick your soles, the leaves that brush past your hair and the dust that powders your face. You will come to terms with the fact that hard work gives you a blissful sleep and fill you with a sense of completion.
I wish to tell you that every mountain has a slope and every plateau has an edge. Whether you are in your comfort zone or somewhere in a stranger’s land, the best thing about it perhaps is that your stay is not going to last forever. Life is more or less like a sailing ship, that winds and the wildness of waters only decide the direction and the speed of the voyage.
I wish to tell you that dreamlands can get flooded with realities and the little cocoons and bubbles you build around you can shatter without prior notice. The ground reality is that you are spinning with the world that is revolving around the Milky Way or you stop at some point and let the world spin at its own accord. Either you become the traveler or the pensioner, but you can never become the Milky Way.
I wish to tell you that love is not necessarily a tedious sacrifice. The Buddha, Jesus Christ, they all had huge hearts to love the whole world in the same vein without categorizing and labeling anyone. If you call that humanly impossible, the most possible way to love is to need someone because you love him/ her rather than loving someone because you need him/her.

A gift for Lady Green

All of a sudden, I began to miss the sweet Christmas chill I felt at the dawn of every December. The alien dampness that has replaced it didn’t leave me any space to cheer up.
The chill used to draw dry patches on my face and arms. It left my heels cracked and rough. But, at the same time, it had a strange sense of relaxation. It prepared me to receive the year-end festivities in full cheer and look ahead for the beginning of the New Year. It was then that I realized it was nature’s way of relaxing before making schedules for the coming year.
When the loss hit me hard, I childishly thought perhaps it was my fault that I never said it out loud how much I loved it. Obviously, we have mistreated nature so much that we can no longer expect her seasonal treats and surprises.
Last morning, the Met Department only broke my bubble saying the rainy weather will prevail till the end of the month. In other words, this December won’t be like any other December I passed through in my life; which got me thinking how carelessly we handle things we ought to cherish and how badly we take things for granted.
Christmas comes closer and closer. For those who do not look beyond the festivities and shopping sprees in Christmas, throttling the slender neck of nature with every plastic toy they purchase and every polythene bag they carry around is pretty much of an easy task. Christmas, I see, is a time to feel the pleasure of giving and rejoicing in the gift of generosity. It is sad that we only think of people when we go to present things and completely forget the soil we set our feet on, the air we breathe and the water we pour down our throats. In return to their gifts, we keep dumping the soil with the undegradable materials; we violate the air and pin-prick the flimsy ozone layer.
Perhaps it is not too late to show your generosity towards the Lady Green. If not out of love, it should come in way out of respect and obligation. Take the risk and celebrate the next Christmas in the second Sahara desert, or exchange your gifts in a flood-rescue boat. The decision is up to you!

"By the River Piedra I sat down and wept"

“All love stories are the same,”

says the last line of the opening chapter. Yet, from the moment you turn the first leaf, the book ensnares you, take you to its custody and stir your inner piece in the least disturbing way. Finally when you come to the last leaf, it leaves you with such an urge to look back at your love, choices and decided destinies and lure you to question them according to your heart’s new found measurements.
Love, as Coelho sees, is the ultimate devotion that makes all the other devotions worthwhile. For him, choices are those that shape your journey and drag you into corners where you unknowingly longed to be. And patience for him was a not a walk in the Sahara dessert on a mid August morning but a sweet preserve of a long ago time that refreshes your heart and mind when the present discourages you to reach your waiting point.
From the surface, it was like any other love story. An encounter of a girl and a boy, childhood best friends, who were in love with each other even before they came to know what love really meant. The story was about their quest of digging into their individualities and realizing the length and breadth of love; a kind of love that can overcome every other physical and imaginary boundary and change someone for the better without making him or her feel lost.
If Coelho were a saint, his specialty would have been the balminess of his words. His optimism is not something dreamy and high above the ground. Be it ‘The Alchemist’ or the ‘Witch of Porbello’, it was the same cozy warmth of human goodness and the beauty of the human mind that sparkle through his dictions like the rising sun over the springtime Pyrenees.
Having read only three books from Paulo Coelho’s lengthy collection, it would be rather stupid to call ‘By the River Piedra I sat down and wept’ my most favourite. When Pilar sat by the River Piedra and wept, I wept too, for a love I sometimes took so much for granted. And finally when she beamed at her lover who was walking towards her, I smiled myself the same smile and convinced myself that the weeping was worth it. Before closing the book, I sent Shabs another ‘thank you’ message for gifting me a piece of my own conscience.

Surprise! Surprise!

Spending a lazy weekend, trying to figure out the reason to be attacked by a pony in the middle of a busy Colombo road, I began to realize, that let alone beasts, I do lack in good judgment when it comes to people around me. The behaviour of the beast, I thought was very much pardonable as it was very likely that he must have been tied to a nearby tree the whole day under the scorching, capital city sun. So, in a wild moment of freedom, who would say no to a little bit of jumping and juggling around the walk-way in front of the public library, enjoying teasing and terrifying the gorgeous girls who pass that way on their way home.
Honestly, when I saw the four-legged creature at a distance, not for a moment I thought he would gallop at me or try to knock me down to the ground nor did I imagine it to jump at me from behind for the second time. But most of all, it was a sight to see when the armed man in the uniform ran into the library terrified of the unarmed soon colt-to-be.
On my way home, very much lost in my own world inside the crowded bus, I dug out a scheme to avoid a third attack. After good fifteen minutes, with a feasible plan in my hand, I convinced myself that it’s time I adopt the colt theory for people too.
As petrifying as it may sound, at least I learnt a few good things from the hullabaloo; that is the first attack may not be the only attack, never take the look of innocence as the actual innocence and that never be complacent with your judgment about people and their hidden ferocities and of course, a back up plan always places you at least one step ahead of your opponent.

Forever, we remember

Those who died in battlefields found their glory and immortality in their death. They left behind families who lost their sons, brothers, husbands and nations full of people who take their hats off at the mention of their names.
The stars and the medals, once glistered on their shoulders became heirlooms, to be taken out and polished once a year; to remind ourselves the fact that they treaded on this earth, to die knowing that their sacrifice spared our lives.
The calendar is full of days that mark or commemorate people and incidents that changed the tide of the history of the mankind. For a country like ours that had been searing in the ugly flames of a thirty-year-old war against terrorism the Poppy Day is not only to remember those who died in the World War I, but to recall and honour those who laid their lives at a stake so as to let you and I breathe and walk freely on this ground we call-the motherland.
Wearing a poppy flower so close to your heart for one day does not make you a real
patriot. As the redness of the flower symbolizes the streams of blood that seeped through war fields, we are in debt to each drop of blood they shed and each bit of grit they had, to take bullets on the chest and ribs.
Perhaps, they did it out of love or out of honour. If their difficult call was to die, then the call of their families were even more difficult ; to live to see their sons, brothers and husbands die, worse still go missing, and live forever with their memories.
Calendar days are good to remind things we keep forgetting. If they had forgotten their duty, at least for a wee bit, you and I may not even be living.
The mothers who still expect their sons to cross their thresholds, the wives who yearn for the affection of their husbands, the sisters who dream to disappear in the embrace of their brothers, the lovers who die for their beloveds’ kisses and the sons and daughters who had never seen their fathers keep enlivening the legacy of those who now lie sleeping peacefully under the stars. Peace for them is when they are being taken care of, supported and guided until they come to terms with their pathos and loss. For everyone of us, this is the call of the hour and the call of the honour and love.

Slot board life

Until November came and knocked at my door, I hadn’t realized what a sprinter, time is. When I sense a flimsy aroma of Christmas happily dancing in the Colombo air and the monsoon makes its way down to earth from sky, I, the lazy one as always, sit on my bed cross-legged and find myself already thinking about 2011.

How often do I find myself thinking about trivial things over and over again when the more important things go unnoticed and forgotten? How often do I get accused of being opinionated and how often I wrack my brains thinking of ways to come out of it? When looking forward, I realize that learning to plan the remote future is far easier than learning to live in the immediate present.

Becoming a shape-shifter to accommodate and tolerate the egos and hypocrisies of the people around me is an art I am still mastering. Be it at the university or even inside the editorial, accepting people for what they are is something that has to be practised constantly. When it comes to friends, it is always easy to take them for what they are and see them through even if you can see through them. But treating a stranger in the same way is something closer to generosity.

Conflicts are natural when you move among people who have brain waves of different lengths and textures. Be it a simple reason or a critical one, confronting a friend is always more difficult than confronting a mere acquaintance. But at the end of the day, I should make sure that I do not take a sore work-heart home.

After all, life is like a slot board and living is dropping the correct word strip on the correct slot. It seems to me that the coming days are all about figuring out the right word for each place.

The end and the beginning

When the year ends for the others for me it begins. Passing the last few moments of the twenty-second year of my existence on the mother earth, I begin to realize that birthdays become such lackluster affairs when you grow up. And I begin to see that forgetting the day you were born is perfectly normal.
I look back once again and count out the hearts I have won and the hearts I have lost within the past twelve months. I think for a moment about the friends I have made, the exams I got through and the line up of exams I am still to get through; another year, another line of exams, a bagful of new challenges wrapped in the same old wrapping paper of work, family and studies.
My Poetry Diary tells me that it’s time I get ready for the next Gratiaen. The plot inside my head tells me that it needs some sheets of paper to lie down. I would think and think again whether it is the right time to start off something which can lull the little balance I so vainly maintain. Sometimes, it is really difficult to wait for that call- the call of the heart, that tells you everything is under control and that the time is ripe and the winds are perfect to set sails.
Birthdays always have an element of surprise in them that can keep me excited for the next twelve months. It has nothing to do with counting the greeting cards I get or the presents that find lodging on my table. Birthdays gives me the much needed assurance that friendships don’t expire in different geographical or professional conditions. Birthdays tell me that like vintage wine, little fraternities only grow too precious with time.
They make me feel old in a good way that with every single year I shed behind me, I have a story to tell, and a history to rejoice over.
When I turn twenty-three tomorrow, I should be thankful to all who make me live and all the trouble-makers and heart-breakers who make me feel all the more alive. It may be one step towards death, old age and frailty but at the same time, it certainly is one kilometer closer to maturity, seniority and familiarity.

Author of my life story

Looking back at a week that could have changed my life forever, I stood in a moment of reflection, quite amazed at my own definiteness which until now, I never knew I had within me. Was it my head or the heart that did the trick for me to stand firm on my ground and assure myself that minor happenings in life are not major enough to change the flow and direction of my journey.
The past, even though is pretty much, gone, seared and expired, still has so many surprises in store for the present and future. These surprises, as ill-timed as they may be, can take you by a storm when you least expect them to stand on your way. There can be things that you rejected first and later repented rejecting them. There can be things that had been so familiar to you but took alien shapes with time. There can also be things that you longed for, but given up for better alternatives. In whatever face it appears before you today, what you got to realize is that, there is a reason why it didn’t make it to your present; and there is proof that you are better off without what you missed out.
It can throw you defenceless and off-balanced. It can make the life you worked hard to build look like a structure made of domino-pieces that with a simple finger push can tail off to the ground. More often than not, something that used to hurt you in the past is very unlikely to become a source of pleasure in the present. The prelude-winds may bring in nostalgia, but the temptation is certainly not worth the lifetime of hard work you are about to sacrifice.
As for me, my universe was weather-sheild with busy schedules and a few realistic plans for future. It was well-protected with a wall of love, friendship and respect when the storm hit. So much so that, I felt it like a breeze that could only blow away a taper I was oiling for this long. I let it pass, patiently watching it entering from one window and making its exit from the next. Despite all outward pushes and thrusts, I would never try to chase it and let it stir the cauldron of my peace.
Definitely, drama is not something I long for to give my life a theatrical twist. Obviously, writing drama is one thing, but being on stage is clearly something else.

I’d rather be the author of my life story, whose characters I decide and whose lines I scribble.

Yearning to be me

Di always surprises me with her thought-provoking random questions. So, when she asked me whether I would like to swap lives with someone, she singled me out and banned to say ‘NO.’
Through out the pensive weekend, I was torturing myself to justify my hasty choice- the life of my friend Kalpa who is married to music right now but soon to be married to his long-found heartthrob. Perhaps, it was his happy-go-lucky approach towards studies or near-perfect family life that made me pick his life over anyone else’s; or perhaps it was the way he makes life look every minute worth living.
Kalpa was not that type of person who had anything and everything even before asking. There were days he had to bus it to work when he overstepped the fuel limits set by his farther. There were tedious hours he had to practice in order to make his way to the Youth Orchestra. But most of all, he knew that most of the ingredients that make life fulfilling are not buyable; they were to be won, realized and achieved.
He has an amazing memory of people who had helped him- even a passerby who gifted him with a smile or a kind word never managed to escape his memory. He keeps making friends; not only us, the Montessori crowd, but a load of Aussies and Americans. But he never fails to keep in touch. This is why I want to be Kalpa, so then I can discover his secret of sectioning life so as not to leave anyone behind.
Weird enough, I never wanted to be someone else in my life. Perhaps I didn’t know enough about anyone to feel envy or even a tiny yearning. The thought makes me shudder. I try to imagine a life without polsambol and chocolate chip mint ice cream, a writing table with out Pride and Prejudice and recycled papers, a day without my girls pecking their heads at my weekend adventures and misadventures, a victory after losing out on two tiring tournaments, and a day without Colombo dust and sizzling drizzles that touch the edge of my denim pants. I’d rather be at home and home forever if I can.

Rain, my chum!

It is amazing how I wrote my first article on rain exactly three years ago and danced with such a joy to see it coming out of print (on a rainy day). Here I am today, sitting on the same chair by the same ajar window looking perhaps at the same raindrops that fell three years ago.
Looking at the lively pearl-like raindrops that are dribbling down from the Jambu leaves, I just realized that the amount of our love or hate towards rain defines how intricate our lives have become in the process of growing up.
During those ‘uniform’ days, rain, for me, was such a treat of joy that the bitterness of ‘kottamalli’ was not strong enough to keep me indoors when it was pouring outside. I wanted to see, to touch and to explore what rain did to the giant trees in the school garden. I watched with fascination how the baby green grass in the playground danced to the tune of the divine drizzles. Taking a trek on the born-again plush carpet under the canopy of velvety rain clouds was too good to be missed at any rate.
The end result was, a trip home with smelly wet socks, sputtering muddy shoes and violent sneezing at most irregular intervals.
But, things changed when I started working. However much I loved the rain, I did not want to see it greet me before I was safely inside my office, greeted by my fellow workers. Potholes scared me, and the same wind that felt so soothing against my uniform became an evil force which tried to rob me of my umbrella. Mud, the creamy thing that happily stuck to my white shoes and socks and made Batik designs on my uniform, began to take the shape of the mood-spoiler of my clothes and sometimes me.
After the initial love-hate phase, today I greet the rain again as a long lost friend. I stand looking in awe at the way it blends with the roaring wind and make trees dance to their composition. I smile when it splashes a few rain drops on the sheet of paper I was scribbling on. And, I open my window full to welcome the rest.
After all, I didn’t ask for the intricacy that surrounds my life nor did I love to deviate myself from the cheerful forces that made me a happy person long time ago.

Seriously sidetracked

Distractions always come in attractive packages; sometimes in a form of hot gossip spilling out from Ollie’s chatty mouth or as a heart-catching cover of a book popping out from Sumi’s handbag.
They come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it just a momentary urge to turn your head at something that you are not supposed to be looking at or sometimes it is intense enough to make you float in the mid air for days and even weeks.
What is so dangerous about getting distracted is that it makes you forget what you are supposed to be doing, and thereby delaying the completion of the task you are entrusted with. Worse still, getting sidetracked can also mean that you letting go of one of the most precious moments you worked hard to seize.
Perhaps what we don’t realize is that, an innocent ringing of a cellphone when you are crossing the road or an eye-dazzling sari you see on a shop window while driving is not as harmless as it may seem. The moment you choose to give priority to distraction over your task, you are holding your life at a great stake, the gravity of which you don’t even understand.
Getting distracted is a natural ingredient we have in our characters in different doses. But like any other thing, it needs a good control and curbing. Your ability to focus and your presence of mind should be strong enough to fight away distractions that can sometimes ruin you in the long run. If you give away to temptation very easily, people around you may paste the ‘easily distracted’ label on your back. Once you win such a title, no matter where you are, be it school, workplace or youth club, and no matter how hard you appear to look responsible, you will not be counted in the lot of dependables.
Once you are labeled, others can find it an easy weapon to use against you.
It is always easy to let go of something you already have; but it is uncertain whether it will come back to you in the same easy speed it went away. This is the logic with everything you let lose in your life – from small things like concentration, presence of mind to ultimately your life.
And yet perhaps, it may not look as fearful as it sounds. Sometimes small distractions come in the form of divine treats. After all, I am no saint to keep my eyes on the computer screen when my ears pick at the sound of Di opening a bag of Cheese Rings or yummy waffles singing in Shehan’s lunch box.

My dear Mr. Darcy,

If there was one woman on earth who did not aspire to become an Elizabeth Bennet after reading Pride and Prejudice, she would have either been too much in love with George Wikham or had many a vicious scheme to abduct you for herself.

Complete madness or extreme bookishness call it what you will, to stalwart readers of Jane Austen you seem to get down from the realms of Pemberley comforts and into the lives of many women who, thanks to you, are led to set impossible standards in choosing men to share the forward portion of their days.

Is it worth the waiting behind the curtain of centuries-old dreamland that filled with the empire-waist muslin gowns and the fragrance of tawny pages of sonnet books? Waiting for the right man, no matter how different the times are, is as difficult as waiting for the sun to rise ending a big treacherous sleepless night. But their Mr. Darcys are never too certain to cross their fences like what you did with Elizabeth’s. Even the times change, there are certain things that can never be beaten by the time. The waiting and the hunting for men, Mr. Darcy, has only taken a different shape, but the arts and crafts and the rules and the regulations of the game are very much the same. Had you got a ticket to travel to the 21st century, you would figure out that there are more Miss Bingleys than Jane Bennets and of course hardly any Elizabeths who can never be bought with your ‘ten thousand pounds a year.’ You will realize that Mrs. Bennets have grown larger in numbers.

Checking on a list of Pride and Prejudice sequels that relate your side of the story, I was wondering whether you were just a figment of Miss Austen’s imagination or a shadowy figure who couldn’t make it to the story of her life but preserved in her ‘two inches of ivory’ for the generations to fall in love with.

At the time you fell for Elizabeth when she was doing the least bit on her part to encourage you, it was sheer consolation you offered for the women, whom until then never thought, that a man can fall in love with a woman without a single flirty glance or wink from the lady’s part. For them, you are everything a real man isn’t.

Isn’t it surprising that the living live a life of death while those who never born to tread on this earth continue to tread through the generations of fictional histories and emerge into real life as role models or trend-setters.

Too bad you never really lived and worse still the women who keep falling for you never believe that you aren’t real!

Trapping the time

The feeling of being trapped in a vacuum of time is almost suicidal. The day takes the shape of one huge rubber band that stretches as far as a bottomless horizon of emptiness. You keep looking for the to-do list that time forgot to bring to you. You keep sighing, thinking about the tasks you were too lazy to fulfill in your past.
Trapping the time before time traps you is an easy thing to do which rarely crosses our minds.
Life is too short and uncertain to postpone things you are supposed to finish today; be it a simple task of washing your handkerchief or visiting your grade one school teacher whom you haven’t seen in ages. Life is not as unfair as you complain; it is just a matter of how you take it. Perhaps, there is some fault with the way we prioritise the tasks that come our way.
Up to the nose with work, tired or tight schedules, whatever you call it, somewhere not very deep down inside, you know that your life is not as busy as you make it look like to the outside world. And at one point, if you do not start feeling guilty about wasting time, electricity and internet facilities which are given to you to make you more productive or not feeling bad about getting paid for doing nothing- then you have already gone beyond the stage of rehabilitation.
Once in a way procrastinating can be somewhat pardonable. But if you are that type of person who thinks highly of your conscience or recite ‘pansil’ before leaving for work and become insensitive to the fact that you are hoodwinking your management, or if you spend lavishly the money which went to your bank account at the end of the month, when you have no moral right to do so, you are not a simple procrastinator but a cheater!
Today, when you get lost in the charms of Cyber space to chat with your co-worker who sits in the next cubicle or watch movies on youtube, you may not realize that at one point, the opportunities, be it grand or simple, will stop crowding your life. Being jobless is more killing than the pains of over-working or working under pressure.
When you come to that stage of life when you are lured to hunt for work, work will stop hunting you.
How many confessions will it take for you to get over the guilt when it comes to haunt you at the age of walking sticks and toothless smiles? What will you tell your grand kids when they come to you for advice about being productive?
Trapping the time is all about taking the maximum use of the chances that come our way. The satisfaction of fulfilling a task, the adventures and misadventures and praises and criticisms will all turn out to be one beautiful album, you will keep turning when you enjoy the rocking-chair comfort.
You will know that you gave your best and your service worth every cent you were been paid, and you fully deserve the bliss that often draws smiles on your face.
After all, changing the world is when you can soothe someone when your voice does not quiver, smile with someone when your teeth still have the pearly glow and work for yourself and make yourself useful to the world and give your heart and soul selflessly for something you really believe in.

Unknotting the pouch of time

Growing up comes in way after loads of bitter lessons and internal battles of choices. And it never sees an end. It is a process of learning many lessons and defining the margin between reality and fantasies

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When times go by you will realize that not everyone who did well in their Grade 5 scholarship exams will make it to the university. You will also begin to see that those bad kids who ran behind boys, got expelled and messed up their exams can end up in higher places than where you are.
You will begin to wonder whether the person who first said that life is not a bed of roses was actually too blind not to see the thorns as both the flowers and the thorns will make you what you are.
You will also begin to feel that switching the language of thinking can be a total disaster. But it is certainly better than translating the thoughts when communicating.
When you grow up, you will gradually develop a sixth sense to identify the back-stabbers and the tale-carriers. And you will be brave enough to live among the cut-throats and survive. Also, you will begin to figure out the few-tissue difference of a fake smile and a genuine one.
There will also be a time you will come to know that those who do not speak much will be walking up and down with countless stories that can inspire you to live and make others feel better about their lives.
You will also realize that the friends who have loudest of laughs are the first to cry. And perhaps those who tell jokes and make you laugh may not have laughed in their lives as much as you.
There will also be a time when you feel like transferring the silvery glow that is getting into your hair into your skin and ample stocks of melanin that darken your skin into your hair.
After years of waiting you will concede the fact that Prince Charming does not really have a face and that his ‘profile picture’ can be replaced with that of anyone you want.
As sad as it may sound, after wasting fortunes on fancy jewellery, clothes and accessories, it will dawn to you that men do not spot on half of the things women wear to boost the attraction factor. Funny enough, he will likely to notice the shape of your ear but the huge butterfly-stud will surely escape his notice.
Looking at your parents struggle with their e-mails or grand mothers struggling with the tuners of the radios you understand that one day, you will also feel as outdated as they are, but the technology never will.
Trying to get over the morning-mirror shock, you will repeatedly tell yourself that no matter how many strands of hair fall on to the ground still there’s enough hair to be tied into a pony-tail or bun.
Worn out slippers will begin to define your approach. Your table will define your appetite for intellectual food and what you eat will decide the sharpness of your eyesight and firmness of feet.
At last you will keep learning that, with constant practice, smiles can be polished sun-shiny and the laughs can be better tuned.

Tried hard and still trying

When I was really small and Achchi and Loku Nanda were overjoyed to find out that I was the newest addition to the left-handers’ gang in the huge family, it did not stop them from training me to use my right hand when I feed myself. The training I found very much torturous as a five-year-old. Their attempts were somewhat successful as I learnt to use my right hand when I ate things like rice and string-hoppers.
But when it comes to culinary etiquettes I was very much compelled to use my own etiquettes rather than the standard forms of practice; worse still when I have to eat things like sandwiches or cake I very much prefer to use my good hand. Even though, this has never been a cause of embarrassment for Amma and Thaththa, at the age of twenty-two, I am very much resolved to discipline myself before it becomes an embarrassment to someone else.
Some years ago, biting nails had been on top of my list of bad habits. I would happily chew into my thumb nail while watching Sri Lanka pathetically losing a match against a visiting team. Those days, stopping my fingers from going into my mouth was harder than swallowing the bitterness of defeat. When Saha was crowned with the title ‘Miss Beautiful Hands’ among us girls I was ashamed to raise my hands to give her a loud applaud. But things changed when I was out and away from tennis courts and among the bunch of Visakhians. For once in lifetime, I let my nails grow just to see how it would look like. The final result was my decision to let them grow as they seemed much better on my fingers than in my appendix.
The habit which annoys me most perhaps is converting my handbag into a mobile garbage bin. I would take the credit of not throwing bus tickets, hand bills and toffee wrappers on the roadside like most of the other pedestrians do. So trying to be the ‘good girl’ I always make it a point to throw away all the bus-tickets and bills as soon as I come home from work. But that is the very thing which escapes my memory. The final outcome is producing heaps and mounds of hand-bills and bus tickets when the bus conductor asks for change.
Even today, when a silent drizzle is falling over the plants growing outside my window, I have been playing a certain Hindi song from morning perhaps for the five-hundredth time. Even though it was downloaded only this morning, Nangi had already grown sick of it thanks to my excessive replaying. Now, the next battle would be stopping myself from humming ‘thujé deka deka sonâ’ every thirty seconds.
I have been wondering why it is always easy to get used to something bad yet very hard to get over with it. Wrong poses, eating junk food, smoking and drinking are some of those killer-habits that can cross your health at the wrong side. It is also funny that most of these bad habits sneak into our lives when we are wise enough to weigh things before choosing. If that is one of the benefits in growing up, I’d rather remain in my childhood and make others do the same. After all, sucking the thumb is much healthier than sucking in tonnes of tobacco and tar.

Calm as a swimming pool before dawn

World spins at such a speed that I have forgotten a good three-quarter of things I used to do when I was a teenager. Keep looking at past gives you good training to look at the things ahead of you. I draw inspiration from running back to the school days nuzzling those memories- with one hope that, one day sitting on a cozy window seat I would be able to scribble every bit of it into a book.
People may be clinging into their past for so many reasons. Some may be suffering from the impossible yearning of going back to their past or even worse, wishing if they could stop there forever. Clinging into the past or perhaps comparing your present self with your past-self often make you more depressed than cheerful.
People are scared of change. And there are some of us who are scared about the fact that things won’t change. It is just a matter of how we accept things that come our way without cursing or glorifying our history. So, when Di asked how I can be “so calm like a swimming pool when there is no one in it” I was wondering whether she has seen too little or too much of me.
Being ‘calm’ does not necessarily means that I’m always cool. There are enough and more instances when I lose my temper with people who love to toy with it. But if being calm means being content- that I certainly am.
My beloved teacher Mrs. Rajasingham, fondly known as Raj among us girls, always used to tell us that happiness is internal. Specially when we were studying Narayan’s ‘The English Teacher,’ she used to touch on the heavier subjects such as spiritual bliss and self-satisfaction. As a seventeen-year-old, I might not have grasped the fullest truth of her words, but in the years that followed, I certainly did.
I believe life would be easier to live if you can realize that the world does not evolve around you, rather, you are evolving in the universe along with the world. The world will not stop spinning just because you have broken up with your loved one or shifted houses.
Selfishly I thought that worrying about things that are beyond my control is pointless. However, that does not mean that I shut my eyes and ears to injustice, poverty or even environment pollution.
If something constantly tugs at my conscience I would write about it and see that it goes on print with the hope it will fall on the way of some one who has ways and means of acting against it. I believe that doing ‘my bit’ can tempt others to do their ‘bit’ and thereby change of directions of things that are moving in the wrong way.
No matter whether I’m passing a hard time or a happy time, I know for a fact that it is not going to last forever. But, I would continue to move about with things I love doing and be with people who inspired me to move forward. Life can never be as half so nice, if it is crowded with plans and becomes too predictable. I have seen so much and yet there is so much left to see. Finding inspiration in living makes the life a book that has many happy endings.

Letter to my fifteen-year-old self

Dear me,

Listen to your friends more; their juicy tales about how to slay dragons in school buses and trains are more useful than learning about T.S. Elliot’s cats. After all, cats won’t come and paw you as they wish, but majority of the male community who travels in buses certainly does it! Believe me; safety-pin rule really works.
Don’t hate the teachers who mark you down in every assignment, or the teachers who hate you for your good name. For those who mark your down know your capabilities more than yourself and believe that you can be made perfect. As for the latter, sympathize with them, may be they never had the childhood you are enjoying and when they see you, it is naturally that you look like someone who stole that perfect childhood they never could take pleasure in.
Stop when your coach tells you to stop. Even if your body says you are fit enough to win ten grand slams and you must be thinking what crap the old man says at the peak of your career, when he raises his hand, it is time to take a break. Take it now and start again or say goodbye to your game forever.
Share your lunch even if you have other work to fulfill during the interval. There will always be someone in the gang who will fall in love with Amma’s food more than you do.
Cover up the class when the class teacher is too scared to stand up for you and others. Your appointment as the class monitor has a purpose. Even if the other teachers will hate you for your guts, they will still talk about it long after you have left school.
Don’t worry about O/Ls, you will see yourself through without much ado. Take plenty of sleep and read whatever that comes your way, what you read during the exam time keeps dancing in the memory and provides you so much thought that can garnish your essay.
Keep writing the diary no matter what happens and where you are going to end up during the next four years. They will have plenty of material for you to write about when you are stuck without a seed.
Be proud of yourself when your heart and mind in unison, support your idea of changing schools. Be firm on your feet when Madam Principal tries to woo you with prefectships and lures you to stay for the A/Ls. After finding yourself half dead with a two-year class monitorship, Prefectship is not worth dying for.
School is the best place to start writing your history. So never forget your roots. Smile with every teacher who bumps into you whether they have taught you or not, for your days in that shade are numbered. Never skip homework. Sometimes, they are being taken as continuous assignments- believe it when Umi or Saha says that most of the zeros in your progress charts could have been easily avoided.

Love the morning mist that flows above the fresh playground grass. Sing the school anthem as loud as you can. And recite your ‘gathas’ in front of the ‘Budu Sadu’ who looks at you with the kindest eyes in the world.

Be ready to worship the memory that will shape you to what you are one day. After all, you are not going to stay there forever nor are you going to be eternally fifteen.

Love,
Me

Gone nuts: Back soon!

Looking back, I was quite amazed at how we girls became thick work pals within such a short time. When I was in the subs’ cubicle many moons ago, the closest I could get to Sum and Di was ‘Hi’s and ‘Bye’s we shared when I passed their way with proofs in my hand.
Things changed fast when we were rendered ‘Internally Displaced’ with the invasion of the web team. So, when Champi decided get my PC placed down the isle of the girls, I was not only glad to become an IDP but also I never had complaints about the resettlement.
Times flew at rocket speed and Shalika, Sum, Di, Ollie, Appzy and Shabs became good friends of mine, with whom I can discuss anything and everything under this sky.
Then the two boys, Shehan and Supun joined in. Hemanthi, the silent one was too scared to come too close, but generously sorted our support when she was stuck with tough translations. We were acting the anti-sugar police for her, always threatening to tell her husband if she indulged herself in brownies or chocolate.
Arrival of Ushama only added to the entertainment. The fake Penelope Cruz, Ushama was at her bravest when she was out of the sight of her uncle. She used to drive us insane with her sleepwalking ways of writing and reporting; so much for her enthusiasm we were forced to call her- Hemanthi No. 2, with the tagline-“Return of the tube light.”
The first one to go away from us was Shalika. The green soul, she left the paper to finish her studies. We miss her very much and always proud to know her.
Appzy and I had same tastes when it comes to books, poetry and sometimes even movies. We broke our hearts when the cheerful chubby announced her going away from paper. But, I’m glad she still writes for us. Seeing her byline on print along with ours brings in a strange feeling of togetherness and closeness.
Ushama didn’t stay long with us perhaps she was not made for paper. But thanks to her we missed our relaxing chair, so that was a double loss. Soon after Ushama’s departure, Hemanthi too decided to leave. So, Sum, Di, Ollie, Shabs, Shehan ,Supun and I were very much left for ourselves.
Losing the gangsters one by one didn’t make our friendships slack; rather it made us stick together to each other more than ever.
Times may change and I don’t know how long I will be able to enjoy the brainstorming sister-chats and the welcoming bear-hugs I receive at the end of every study leave session. But I know one thing, living is when Di complains about wanting of an adventure, hearing the music of Sum’s heals clicking against the icy office floor, getting irritated by Shehan’s twittering habits, punching Supun for his male-chauvinistic remarks, loving the tone of Ollie exclaiming “ané ammi” and acting the walking reminder to Shabs and getting infected by her forgetfulness.
Pablo Neruda rightly said when he voiced out- “I don’t want to change my plant,” with a band of easiness like this, I would rather say- I’ll never want to change my heaven.

Tops and pants from the wardrobe of life

When I was tidying the piles of clothes in my cupboard only I realized that more than half of my tops and T-shirts there were being bought for me by Amma; except for a couple of times, I haven’t even been there with her to try them on, when she went ahead with her freewill and bought them.
It was surprising that every one of those dresses fitted me perfectly, and they certainly lasted longer than the pants I had bought for myself. For Nangi, it was a different story; for her, Amma’s choices are either too grand or too short.
Clothes perhaps is one of those departments where I can close my eyes and let Amma pick anything, she thinks, suits me, but I would not do it all the time.
Thaththa, being a teacher, never tried to cut and mend our lives according to his criteria of ‘ideal daughter,’ and nor did Amma. But she was firm when it comes to studies and exams.
Amma who had been a grade five scholar a long times ago, was eager to see me getting through the hurdle with flying colours. Fortunately, she didn’t go to the extent of dragging me to every ‘shishyathva panthiya’ in the town like most of the mothers do today but gave me hard times, with math tables and essay writing. Essay writing was something I enjoyed doing by memorizing math tables was a nightmare.
With Nangi and Malli she was more lenient. I can hardly remember her urging Nangi to memorize her math tables or boxing Malli’s ears for writing wrong spelling.
I was spared the torments of being in the limelight until the day the O/L results were out. Like any other mother, she wanted me to pick science or maths stream. Amma was so adamant to dump me into a bio or maths class that anyone who phoned her to check on my results was given a full account of my so-called stupidity and pleaded them to urge me to change my mind. Finally with Thaththa’s support, when I said I would go to the Language class, she said it was a crime to be there with nine As.
This did not create a rift between us and after the first couple of weeks things were very much back to normal. To my relief, this status quo prevailed for another two years till the day university cut-off marks were released. Falling short of one point was a bitter pill to swallow for the both of us. I completely lost my faith in the local system of examinations and being a repeater was the last thing I wanted to do.
Amma who did not give up easily, wanted me to start studying for the following year’s exam. But, all I wanted to do was to go out from the egg shell and see the world. Just to please her I took to my books again and applied to sit the exam, when at the back of my mind, I knew I would never again step into an examination hall, wearing the school uniform.
Going back to the world of books whose pages were vividly recorded in my photographic memory was too much for a person like me who never fell in love with Chekhov’s Trofimov in the Cherry Orchard. So, Amma was never the one to pat my head and say “Good work, Loku,” when I joined an advertising firm as an English Copywriter. Later, when I joined the press, she was devastated.
But when I look back, I realize the fact that it has always been the way with her to object first, but give her much needed okay later. Perhaps it is a matter of time to see me surviving in the field I choose despite her complaints and pleas. She would continue to be so, but I will continue to love her.
After all, she must have used it as a source of encouragement, knowing that I do things I’m being told not to do!

Forgotten Gama Räla and Mahadana Muththa’s clan

If I ever wish to go back to my childhood, one of the things which tempts me to press the rewind button must be the two huge piles of storybooks, Amma and Thaththa heaped up for me when I was barely learning my alphabets.
They became an inseparable part of my life that I knew all the stories by heart even though I couldn’t read more than two words in each of them. Amma still recalls how I used to narrate the stories by just looking at the pictures. I loved my books more than any other toy I was gifted with. So, whether I liked it or not, my books became a part of the legacy which was handed down to Nangi with the handful of my toys. So much for my hopes on sharing those stories with her, I only can remember her tearing them into bits and pieces and cooking them in her famous ‘mallum.’
Like most of the younger siblings do, Nangi started imitating me when she was growing up. She would sneak into my study-room, pick up the book I had finished reading and run her eyes through over the pages. Even though she was not an avid reader, Nangi never skips reading a book I recommend. So, we always had something worthwhile to chat about besides school-work and teachers.
When Malli came along things were different. There was no one to relate him stories out of our favourite storybooks. Instead, he learnt to seek refuge in the TV or cartoon DVDs Thaththa heaped up for him. What we found in books he found inside the square-frame. The difference is, we drew the characters and the settings in our minds when Amma or Achchi narrated us the stories, but for him everything came readymade.
So, I know how it is like to be the ‘Loku Akka’ to a Nangi who loves to read but does not have the time and to a Malli whose world is utterly devoid of books.
Champi’s editorial last Tuesday made me think and think again as to why the kids today are drifting away from the world of books. Is the ailment with the books or with the kids?
Writing for kids is not a work of a day even though, a children’s story may carry only a few sentences with a number of pictures. A lot of filtering has to be done in the writer’s mind as to what message the book will carry and how. But, sadly it is a risk most of the writers do not like taking. Lack of encouragement and competition in the field has made them so lethargic that writers prefer satisfying themselves by writing for adults. Even those few writers, who would dare stepping forward and writer for children, hesitate going for printing with the current dormant market for children’s literature.
After all, how can you expect the kids to read the same old stories, read and re-read by so many generations before them? It is true that ancient stories have their charms and mysteries. But how can you expect a kid to create a mind-pictures of a village he hasn’t even seen his real life. And how can you tell a kid that animals talk, when he knows that human beings are the only species who use a language for communication.
This is why children’s literature in Sri Lanka needs a good wakeup call. As for us, Literature, be it Sinhala, Tamil or English, has become just another reason to hold a festival and call a politician to a podium.
For me, helping Lish with her Little Enquirer work gives immense satisfaction. Seven or eight letters that arrive on my desk every week is like a silent demand for every children’s author to write for the kids; and that they are willing to read. I only hope Malli will be at least at the end of this queue.

Echoes of gathās in the tub of floating dried leaves

Even though, at times it was difficult, being the first-born has its own perks and privileges. One of them perhaps was the chance I got to spend my early childhood having my two grandmothers side by side.
Amma and Thaththa, still fresh to the frustrations and agonies of finding baby-sitters for their first child, were more than happy to have their mothers down here to look after me when their professional commitments did not allow them to follow my tumbling footsteps or enjoy my baby-cries.
Amma would leave home while I was still dreaming in my cot with the feeding bottle hanging lose from my mouth. So, it was Achchi’s kind and cheerful face I saw when I opened my eyes to the disturbing sunlight. Those days, we didn’t have pipe-borne water. Gamé Achchi (Amma’s mother) and Weligama Achchi( Thaththa’s mother) would either bring in pails of water to fill my tub or if the weather was good, they would take me to the well with them. The time that followed was my fun time. I would count the turn of water on my head from Achchi’s pail; without stopping from there, I would pick the dried leaves and things from around me and make them float in my tub, pretending that I was bathing in a river amidst flocks of fish swimming around me.
When I look back, I realize the fact that, they gave me such a lot of liberty and free moment with the things that surrounded me. That was a kind of freedom I couldn’t get even from my father.
Feeding time for them was not a battle as Amma took it to be. Achchi would serve me a little bit of rice and vegis on a small plate, just to pacify me while she handfed me from a big plate full of things I liked and hated to gulp down. Both of them had so much time to spare for me, and moved about with their day-to-day lives without a single cry of complaint. For Amma spending thirty minutes with me after coming home looked like torture, but my grandmothers never got bored by my mischief, rather they were my first partners’ of crime!
When I was fairly manageable, Gamé Achchi returned home, but Weligama Achchi stayed behind. She read out so many stories for me from the books as well as from her memory. In the evening, she would recite the gathās and read out the Dhamma Pada for me to listen. The words in them made a very little sense to me as a three-year-old. But the musicality in her recitation and the soothing effect in her words tempted me to kneel by her side with my two hands bound in a gesture of worship in front of the little Buddha statue.
Gamé Achchi was the walking encyclopaedia of plants and animals. She worked wonders with the ‘pol athu’ we had in our home garden. She would make the most common fruits and vegetables taste heavenly with her culinary magic. Even at the age of eighty, she has all the charms in tact which drew me to her some twenty-years ago.
It was just the other day, when Amma took out a lace tablecloth, hand-woven by Weligama Achchi, the feeling of guilt overwhelmed me. The fact that I couldn’t see her before her life was unfairly snatched away by the massive Indian ocean tsunami is still something I’m trying to come to terms with.
If I’m ever to dip my pen into writing a novel, Gamé Achchi and Weligama Achchi have already reserved their places in the undecided plot among the characters that are still unknown to me. After all, that is where they deserve to be for gifting me a wonderful childhood and the best memories that I can recall like the Daffodils that kept dancing in Wordsworth’s poetic mind.

Fairies still dance in rounds

Waylaid in the abyss of reality
Hidden away from all gods' good glance
Dead childhoods getting ready
To dance their “Fairy Dance!

Before I get carried away with my weekly musings, I want to wish Aunty Manel a speedy recovery. The girls and I are waiting to hear her dragging her feet back at the editorial. We miss the music way too badly.
All this while, I have been wondering how one entirely woven story can haunt your better sense, keep you up days and nights, make you bite your nails, yet even after doing all these, leave you still depressed.
Fairy Dance by Brandon Ingram is not the most memorable book I read, but it’s undoubtedly the book that tortured me most after The Kite Runner and The Road from the Elephant Pass. A tale, inked in the silent tears of innocent children who become preys of poverty and brutalities of avaricious adults, makes too strong a mark in the reader’s mind that anyone who has a heart in his ribcage finds it difficult to let it go as just another book.
The story revolves around a girl who had been sold by her very own father to pleasure-seekers but later stands against the same evil forces who robbed her of her childhood. If there is one thing I don’t agree with Brandon that would be the ending. I asked myself a thousand times why, towards the latter stages of the story, Priya’s fate sound so promising that she had to be an eternal victim of the injustice- doesn’t she, the symbol of robbed innocence, deserve a better life. I did not expect an ultra-optimistic close as how can Brandon possibly give a sun-shiny conclusion to such a story when the real stories behind the fiction are still running down the southern sea-belt of Sri Lanka.
But it did not stop me from thinking that the story would be an ideal seed for a film because this is high time to let the flimsy curtain between ‘Sun, Sea and Sand’ and ‘child sex workers’ fall down to the ground.
I, in my egg-shell comfort, snuggled into my bed, read and re-read the book, ending up writing a poem to get out of the depression. When I sent my scribbling to Brandon, he wrote me back saying, “Thanks for being more aware of the tragedy that takes place under our very noses.” I think Brendon’s pen got it all right in his Fairy Dance about raising awareness when my friends who read the book were as shocked as I am, yet decided to do ‘something’ to stop the continuity of the calamity.
Buggy and Sarah both had a violent urge to act without knowing from where to start and how to go on. My copy of the book, doing rounds at the office is now with Sum. I hope a plan would dawn to her so then all of us can get together and start from somewhere to rip off the label mounted on those kids who do not even know what it really means.
Brandon certainly deserves something for his work of art which stirred the minds of so many. But like everything else, here in Sri Lanka, recognition sells for very high prices or even falls on the laps of mock-brilliant super stars by means of favouritisms ; which got me thinking, perhaps his book is too good for the Gratiaen.

Waiting for an aromatic mail

When Nangi questioned my obsession with aromas I could ague my way till the dawn. But, with her A/Ls ogling at her from the door-step and with the many piles of books waiting to be hugged touched and be slept on them, I was forced to left her alone.
It all began when Nangi exclaimed “There are people who can’t stand all these fancy smells and I am one of them,” soon after sniffing my new eau de cologne. The one thing I was trying to convince her was the fact that, smells are so special to me because there is no way of transferring or transmitting aromas like what we do with sounds, pictures and even videos. So much for the modern-age techo-freaks, no one has squeezed their brains to look for way to send an aromatic mail or a stinking petition.
Perhaps, this is what makes smells extra special- their transient nature and the mark they leave with the memories we so much treasure.
Strange enough, my nose recognizes places and people with the smells associated to them. I like to dip my nose into my parents’ wardrobes whenever I get a chance to arrange their clothes. There is nothing like letting the faint breeze of their perfumes loiter in your nose for a moment.
I also adore the aroma of moth balls and ‘savandara roots’ leaking out from Achchi’s almairah. That was one of those never-fading smells and at one point you will actually believe that nothing has changed around you and you are still that four-year-old child who would happily snug in the sanctuary of Achchi’s sarees when she arranged her things.
What I miss perhaps is the milky, sticky sort of baby smell mixed with baby soap and powder that greeted me whenever I cuddled my baby brother into my arms some ten years ago. For me, that was the fragrance of innocence and to my choosy nose anything that is godly and faultless had to have that smell. But when Malli grew up, he lost the scent, nature gave him, and now at the age of eleven he has lost much of his innocence too.
The juicy scent of freshly-cut grass drags me from my mind’s hands and takes me back to school. The ever-green memories of running, falling and rolling on the soft playground-grass and panting in teams until our breathing becomes normal fill with me with a childish desire to go there and try to run my usual ten circles.
And what is more, when it comes to seasons, I sniff them in the air too! April’s air contains a plethora of scents filtered from seasonal flowers and fruits. August has a scent of dust, dryness and the smell of sun rays. (Yes, that is the smell you get on your pillows and clothes that are crunch-dried in the sun) But my favourite is the smell of Christmas- the fragrance of pine trees, confetti and baking that bring in a hope of return, calmness and homeliness.
If I am to die tomorrow and I have one last chance to indulge my nose in something, I would go for the scent of dust that settles on a long forsaken soil after a much looked forward shower- one of those first showers that inspires and transpires brighter side of life and living.
Fragrances have become such a vital part of my life that I have almost started believing in the fact that I was a sniffer-dog in my last birth. After all, what is so bad about being a sniffer-dog, when it’s a privilege everyone cannot attain.
As for me, I am daydreaming to receive my first aromatic missive- filled with the scent of morning rain-I don’t want words, let the perfume speak!

Pampered by a trouble-box

Life has fallen into a slower tune after the tiring exams which haunted me for an extra couple of days after all my papers were over. Floating in the low tide of things, or rather being jobless for sometime, made me categorize all my belongings into –Things I like and Things I really need.
My piles of handkerchiefs, books, my pair of black slippers, my water bottle all went to the second category, but to my utter amazement most of my things went to an in-between category called- Things I already have but I don’t badly need. My mobile phone, with its number keys worn out with excessive texting, and a thousand scratch marks on its screen, fell into the that lot.
So, when a couple of weeks ago, with a sarcastic snigger Buddika suggested that I buy a new phone I thought I that I didn’t even need the one I am using right now, let alone buying a new one.
I got it many moons ago as a gift from Thaththa for my A/L results and birthday. Initially I was carrying Amma’s phone around when I first started working at an ad agency as an English copywriter. It was teeny weeny thing with a blue flash light devoid of all the funky features a phone is required to have now-a-days. Thaththa, the trend-lover in the family, thought it was highly unfashionable of me to carry around a phone with a black and white display. That is how this phone found me.
But even before that, during the last few of my A/L days I was so used to hijacking my parents’ phones from time to time to text my school friends. There were funny SMSs that were doing the rounds, without stopping from there we used to share homework tips and translations.
Even after I left school, SMSs kept our friendships going. My inbox overflows with messages wishing me long life and happiness for the birthday and Avurudu. But I miss those birthday cards that used to crowd my letter-box. Short messages may be a reassuring sign that even though your friends are not there at a reachable distance, they never forget you. But I, the old-fashioned one, miss the tangibility of their wishes and curves and scratches of their handwriting on a cardboard.
At the same time, I am not the one to complain about the amounting pampering my phone does to me. I surf the net from it, change my ring tones and themes from time to time and go on shooting sprees with the VGA camera it has. Neither have I wished for these things nor do I want anything more.
But, having a mobile at hand means, it can disrupt my writing moods and sometimes drives me insane with rage or laughter in places I should be acting more professional and discreet. At least when I’m at home, I make sure that my peace is not shattered by some nonsense call, by shutting up the sound of the trouble-box.
As I was telling Di, Sum and Shabs the other day, if I ever get to go on a holiday, I want to drag my feet far and away from the maddening world of technology. I want to let myself lose in some eco-village where there are no televisions, radios, and somewhere I know my body is not being penetrated by analogue and digital signals. And most of all, its brochure should read as “Mobile phones are prohibited. If you possess any please dump it into the nearby lake before entering!”

Unforgettable ‘gutiya’ and the ghost-hunting in the hostel

It was when I finished my exam and was struggling to forget the tough time I had with my teaching methods paper, I was wondering how many of my teachers taught me according to the book. Then only I realized that despite the theories preached by behaviour psychologists and the thousand and one techniques supposed to be taught at the Colleges of Education, only a natural teacher can perform the miracle he or she is expected perform.
Unfortunately the faces of most of the teachers who were in my lower school are not clear in my schoolbook-memory except that of Lalitha Madam who taught Sinhala. She was not only my grade four class teacher but the reason I started writing; she was my first inspiration.
My Grade Five teacher was a different story. There was no question about her teaching, but sometimes she took to canes and rulers to curb the students. She used to have ‘punishing sprees,’ where she would get half of the class lined up at her table, waiting with our palms outstretched to received the ‘gutiya.’ Perhaps it was the pressure to see her students getting through the scholarship hurdle made her strict and seemed somewhat distant from the students.
Grade six and seven are two years I had my best of teachers who taught not only books but also things that are important to keep my head upright in society. Teenage-years may call be called the difficult years, but for my friends and I, they were the unforgettable years of school life, which laid the foundation to lasting friendships. The teachers we had in those classes knew exactly what they were doing and whom they are dealing with. As a result, most of us found good confidantes in them and the psychological and physical changes we were undergoing were no mysteries to us.
So, when the girls of my age were busy thinking about the boys they had seen in the roadside we had better things to do like investigating into a major hostel ghost story that haunted the minds of the entire seventh-grades. Even though the outcome didn’t make us ace investigators, the updates of the ghosts topped the gossip charts of the girls, beating the good looks of Shahid Afridi and the cute faces of Westlife dudes. Even though it sounds stupid to me now, as a twelve-year-old, with a brain wrecked by curiosity, ghost hunting wasn’t something to which I could say ‘No thanks.’ But there was one person behind us to save our backs-that was my science teacher- Anuradha Madam. She never burst our bubble by saying it was nothing, but lured us into brainstorming conversations about afterlife and scientific facts about spirits. So, by the time we found out there was no ghost of a white lady who got murdered in the colonial-time building- we took it in a good spirit.
The school also had two teachers who were very much like the personifications of horror. The couple was known as ‘T-56s’ among the teachers and the students. Their speciality was that they would hide behind a door or in an empty schoolroom, catch you unawares and punish you for something you did not do. I was lucky enough never to bump into any of their missile zones during my tenure.
When I left to Visakha, the relationship with the teachers there were not the same, but it was surely one of the first things which made me feel at home there. On a very personal note, I owe every one of my teachers because I have never stepped into a tuition class in my life.

Dinner at Thaththa’s courtroom

Falling into frequent arguments with Amma and Thaththa is the last thing I would like to do when I’m at home. Getting into a verbal fight with Amma over trivial matters, like Nangi does, is not really my ‘pol-pani’ pancake.
But, when the chance arrives, arguing with Thaththa is like being a courtroom or a public forum. Our topics range from politicos and their mock miracles to smart works of his so-called bright students. Unlike in the fights with Amma, I could leave the dinner table with the same spirit after such a hot-talk. This, perhaps, is one thing which lured me to join the press at a very early age, when my friends hardly knew what they were doing with their lives.
Thaththa is not what you call a petting-type, but he is always there for Nangi and me whenever Amma tries to release her work pressure on the two of us. He gives us a lot of freedom to walk around and see the world, trusting that we would not let him down. When I was showing signs of being a left-hander like him, it was Thaththa who taught me to hold the pencil correctly. He would buy me ten or twelve erasers with lovely bright colours and tempting aromas whenever I scored well in a monthly test. He happily gave the nagging job to Amma but was all eyes and ears about how I was proceeding.
Being a teacher, he was very particular about my math-score in term tests; the only thing I can remember him being hyper-sensitive about. During my math lessons with him, he would box my ears a couple of times in seeing me not getting the simple sums right.
Being a student of his is not as lovingly as being his eldest child, for he burdened me with tedious loads of homework with cutting deadlines.
With my 9-A’s when Amma and all the others were pushing me into A/L lab section, it was Thaththa who stood by me and said, “Let Loku decides for herself.”
Thaththa trusts in my judgement in many things, from picking up the right-tie for him to choosing electrical appliances for home. This makes me a proud daughter.
Amma is the biggest fan of the things I write, for she openly talks about them and shows my scrapbook to everyone who visits us, which can be embarrassing at times. Thaththa, on the other hand, only gives me suggestions to write but never goes to the extent of appreciating or commenting on the things which go on the paper with my byline.
So, I was taken by surprise when I went to school to pick up Malli, a handful of teachers of Thaththa’s staff, rounded me and said, “We enjoy reading your poetry and articles, Thaththa never forgets to bring the paper to the staffroom.” I could only say, “That’s him” in reply.
Daughters loving their fathers more than they love their mothers has been there ever since the phenomenon of parenthood came into existence. Whatever the reasons the high-profiled psychologists give, daughters tend to love their fathers because they are more liberal-minded and mild-hearted when it comes to daughters. This is the main reason why in most cases, a girl wishes to get married to a boy who has the same qualities of her father, and I am no exception.
I know for a fact that Amma’s favouritism is all directed at Malli, the devil and the angel, who can do no wrong in her eyes. And, Thaththa, of course, prefers Nangi to me, as she took to following his foot-steps by choosing Maths stream for her A/Ls. But, that doesn’t lessen the weight of the reality that I can love them both and take anyone’s side when I feel like it. In return, they can do the same with me.
After reading this, I won’t be surprised to hear Amma saying in one of her complaining tones, “This is not the first time, Thaththa, dûla teamed up against me,” when Thaththa is enjoying the praises of his staffers with the paper in his hand!

Invaders spice-attacked

My line-up of exams had turned me out to an insensitive creature, that until a little while ago I didn’t realize how our Poor Aunty Manel had felt when I was turning a deaf-ear at her continuous mumblings about the recipe for ‘Kurakkan Kenda’ which she never got.
Pasting a mental sticky note at a reachable corner of my mind, I started to think of my mother’s territory, which has been guarded by a number of regiments and battalions of vessels and some countless number of kitchen utensils.
Since food was not on top of my lists, kitchen was not my most favourite haunting place in the house. But it always has a mystic sense of fascination which often draws me there when Amma prepares her ‘thuna paha’ and other spices at home. It is not the food, but the colour and different shades of spices that make me put down my book and run to the kitchen.
Cooking with Amma always keeps me on toes. She doesn’t like anyone messing up with her jars of spices. She wants them to go back to the shelves immediately after spoonfuls of them being put into the curry. This is something I never could follow. I always wanted to have me surrounded by these talking jars even though Amma kept on insisting that first they should go back and then I could flirt with the curry. One day, by the time I finished parking them in their original places, the hearth had cooked a curry on its own! So much for cooking with the Queen, I felt like the knave who stole the tarts.
But, this does not stop me from breaking into the kitchen especially when she needs a brave knight to scrape her coconutty-fellows every night.
I love the feel of cute cutlet balls on my palm, but I hate the smell of sardine that survives all the scrubbings afterwards. It is a treat to see them dancing in the pool of hot oil. Once they are out from the pan, the sight of Malli and Thaththa devouring them when they are still in their fiery state, fill my tummy. Amma made a great fuss about my becoming a plant-eater, but now she praises me outright for eating every part of the plant she cooks without letting out a word.
But mostly, it is my chocolate cake that lures people to fall in love with me. I have always prided myself of not celebrating a single birthday without serving my friends with a piece of Daw-special messy chocolate cake. As some one I overheard uttering, “I prepare the world’s best fried chicken,” I don’t want to crown myself as the maker of the world’s tastiest chocolate cake. But I have seen Nangi living a couple of days on my cake and my cake alone! So, I guess there’s certainly some tummy-filling charm in it.
Apart from the culinary work, kitchen is the place where Amma and I have our conspirations on how to surprise Thaththa on his Birthday or what to buy for Malli when he is appointed a prefect in the primary section.
It’s surprising why Nangi can never cope up with the smell of frying chillies or I guess it is her wrong timing when she is suddenly thrown out of the place with a heavy cough on every rare occasion she volunteers to help Amma. We made a good laugh of it the other day saying that even the kitchen hates her.
After all, it would be a good idea to work on self-activating spice launchers in view of vicious foreign invasions, specially at a time like this when we expect so many!

Bookworm: Modern term for ardent booklover

If anyone happens to see me in the morning, taking my usual bus ride to work, there are two possible conclusions he or she might jump into. If someone who knows of my peculiar habits sees me lost in a world of my own with a book or a Reader’s Digest in my hand, when heaps of passengers are overflowing from both the entrances of the bus, the reaction would be, “Oh! that’s typical her.” But, to a stranger’s eye, my eye-locking with a book at that time of the day would be an act of a ‘super nerd’ or ‘creepy bookworm.’ Whatever the titles I am honoured with, my flirtation with books knows no bottom.
It is rather surprising how reading had crept into my busy school-day schedule which was tied up with sports practices, music, literary association work and of course studies. I guess, once you get so used to do something, it ceases to be a habit and becomes an addiction. Such was my love for reading.
Amidst my editorial bee-work, when Aunty Manel demanded a piece on ‘Reading habits of my generation’ I knew it was not going to be as easy as reading Jeffrey Archer. She may be true when she said there was a love-lost between my generation and books. When Thaththa said the only few young avid readers who are existing in the world today are either journalists or undergraduates, I nodded at his words. But, the fact that most of them raiding bookstores and library shelves out of sheer necessity than out of their love for books escaped his notice.
Do the folks in my generation read at all? I think they do. It is not fair by them if you expect them to read ‘Complete Works of Shakespeare’ when they are caught up with the rat-race to find jobs or move higher in their studies. They may run their eyes through the front-page headlines of a newspaper, maybe a little bit of sports and fashion; that is their portion of reading for the day.
The mushrooming blogs in the cyber space also do some work in keeping their reading habits away from the extinction lists; but the question as to how good the material these blogs provide is a point worth pursuing. Unlike in printed material such as books, magazines etc., most of these blogs carry raw-writing. So, the regular readers of these blogs (mostly the techno-loving youth) cannot help themselves from catching up wrong language expressions and bad grammar. The common complaint heard from newspaper offices about the scarcity of good writers shows the acuteness of the matter. Leave alone breeding writers, most of the CVs and bio-datas get rejected in the job process because they contain grammar or vocabulary errors.
Interestingly, a boy who turns out to be an extensive reader gets teased by his peers more than a girl who is found out to be a bookworm by her friends. This maybe another reason why my generation tries to pretend that books don’t exist. Apparently, the e-books that are quietly getting into the Sri Lankan scene are a relief to those who love to read but no time to hold a book in hand.
Like table manners, values and health habits, reading too should be planted from home and nurtured at school. Parents can monitor what their children read, but never pull off a book from a child’s hand and try to give the wrong message that you are against reading. As for me, my grandmother read me out stories from so many books and I was so enchanted by them that I knew every story by heart even before I learnt to read.
That is how I got into trouble! Today, anything which comes between me and my book gets the ‘trouble’ label straight.
After all, there’s nothing like curling up in my bed at the end of the day, hugging ‘The Road from the Elephant Pass’ for the sixteenth time and falling in love with Captain Wasantha over and over again.

Ad hoc ad clips

Apart from a few rain-clouds that had crowded the far edges of the sky, the day was pretty sunny. So, I was not the only one taken by surprise when it started thundering in the middle of the hot afternoon. Malli, who is still learning to get used to the habit of having regular baths, was humming his usual Mission Impossible theme under the shower when the first thud of thundering was heard. Poor boy, who got petrified, jumped out of the bathroom, clutching the cake of soap in his hand; dripping soapy water. Amma, after finishing her Saturday-morning cooking and washing was getting ready to have her nap. The sight of his son almost turned into a ‘mer-boy’ would have been a joke to her if she hadn’t notice that Malli was actually wetting the bedroom floor. Knowing what was coming up from Amma and in a vain attempt to cover up the shameful act, Malli put up an angelic face and asked, “Amma, What is this new soap?” His condition and tone was uncommonly funny that Amma instead of boxing his ears started laughing. Witnessing the spectacle from behind my bedroom curtain, I decided that the scene would be an ideal one to relaunch a soap that is already in the market!

So, when Aunty Manel asked me to write how I see the issues Samitha Akki has spoken out loud in her last week’s column, I was more than happy to scribble on something that is within my comfort-zone.

If we are seeing an excessive number of nude or semi-nude female models in TV commercials, the reason for that is the advertisers and the brand teams not giving much thought to conceptualisation. The product which they are trying to promote could have been advertised in a different way, placing it in a far better light than next to some waxy pair of legs. After seeing a certain soda ad, continuously played on TV during a cricket match season, I tried to figure out why they used a ‘faceless’ female model, wearing a red coloured dress with above-the-knee-slit to advertise a fizzy drink. How come it didn’t turn out to be an ad on a hair-removal cream?

It is a fact that the businesspersons do not select nudity as their first option. But, as someone who had been in the ad making business for sometime, I have seen clients go for exposing when the other concepts we offer are out of their budget.

If you are someone who had tough times with clients who rejected your most creative concepts because they thought that they might not understood by the people, there you go, I am not talking gibberish.

But the agencies and the clients are making a genuine effort to look for other ways now. Local TV channels do not have stripping-clips like in Indian or any other foreign TV channels. They are quietly realizing that the times when the woman was used for cheap commercial gains are coming to an end.

But the left-alone trend is creeping into the music videos. This is why Thaththa banned Malli and Nangi to watch the Sinhala Chart Shows going on TV. He doesn’t want the local versions of Bay Watch stealing into my poor siblings’ minds. Making a music video eats up both money and time. Unlike those days, every guy who can shower-sing thinks that he is a super star and starts like acting one. So, a woman who’s willing to go on air is easy to find to squash into his first video clip. Unfortunately, the so-called fame-seekers do not realize that a video full of skinny girls in bikinis does not make a lasting impression on the viewer.

As Samitha Akki said, nudity is an art, and it has to be used likewise. Overkill of nudity does not raise sales, but rather backfires. So, if you are planning to advertise your next fruit drink with semi nude girls, you might as well give a ‘sili sili bag’ free for the lenient consumer who might have had the urge to throw up seeing the ad and yet bought your stuff out of sheer sympathy.