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Monday, March 28, 2011

Being twenty-something

There isn’t anything that can’t be made right with a ‘gotta’ of freshly-fried tapioca chips and a big bear hug. As we grow old, we begin to nurse a new-found admiration towards soap bubbles. Work becomes the passion, the way in and the sole way-out; ‘studies’ is another name for CSR.
Facebook stops making it to the priority list anymore and you know Twitter can wait. Projects and assignments are monsters that haunt your dreams and keep you up till the wee hours of the morning. Yet, you feel it is important to be up for another couple of hours to receive a Skype from a friend who is at the other end of the world.
Dozing in the bus is not for the elderly anymore. Not even the good three cups of caffeine and malt you had at work can keep you from snoozing off. Stress is a reason to pay regular visits to your beautician. Hair is another name for the in-built trouble-making device with a lifetime warranty. Holidays cheat on you when they decide to fall on the weekend.
Chocolate is more faithful than the imaginary sweetheart who could not make it to your reality. Junk food is one step towards heaven. You can’t think straight when there’s a mound of French fries ogling at you from the table.
You didn’t know that there was a television at home until you see your dad taking it for repairs. Yet you know what is happening in the House, which Academy award went to whom and the so-called Middle Eastern countries that are swept away by the waves of revolution are in fact African countries.
Music is the only tranquilizer that is available in abundance. Leaving the earphones at home is like being out there without the NIC. Books are the childhood sweethearts who look at you when you pass the dust-sodden bookshelves at home.
Friends are the reason to go on living. Parents are your conscience-keepers. Getting married and settling down are two high- priority spaceship tours in the NASA schedule. Travel bug is an annoying sickness when you don’t have enough leave to take. You try hard to get away and go foot –loose, not because you hate your work that has become a religion, but you know that once the maturity comes and the religions change, travel is the mantra for experience.
And once in lifetime, you come out of the cocoon of the couch potato to become a tireless traveller, to seek refuge in the same cocoon in another ten or twelve years.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Closing the eyes against red lights


The moment you feed yourself in the illusion that a human being is unbeatable, she emerges from nowhere to show the frailty of human life. When one thinks the land he treads on is better than the other territories, she drops down the curtain in a moment of violence, and makes you realize that, nothing in this world is invincible, except the nature herself.
The Pacific Ocean tsunami that took the world by a storm and rendered thousands of families destitute only proved that Mother Nature is not at all happy with the way things are moving forward. The post-tsunami nuclear crisis that was declared in Japan sent around shock waves that were even more dangerous than the tidal waves, expected by so many countries after the massive tremor. Even though, the life in our cozy little isle was not so much disturbed, nobody could escape the dark shadows it threw of the Boxing Day tsunami. Perhaps it must have been why we could empathize with the Japanese so easily. The lives that were lost, the houses that were swept away, the families who lost their loved ones and the nuclear plants that were irreparably damaged by the waves symbolize only a speck of what one would expect if the destruction to nature continues in the same proportions.
The magnitude of the disaster was such that Japan, a land where occurrence of earthquakes is not an abnormal phenomenon, is still struggling to come to terms with reality and take wholistic remedies to put an end to the nuclear threat that is being faced by the world today.
Natural disasters leave us with so many questions. People will keep questioning why those who died in the disaster had to die and how safe is safe enough. There may be so many scientific explanations emerging as to why the prevalence of natural disasters is getting higher and higher. And they might not even see wounding the nature is one such reason.
Barely two minutes after the editorial was flooded with the news of the tsunami, my mobile phone had no rest from the relatives who live down south. Lost in the hullabaloo of the editorial peak hours, I kept myself thinking whether we took Chief Seattle too lightly when he said the life on earth is one big web and man is only a small strand in it. His words must have become worn-out with over-quoting, but those who quoted him had failed to highlight what he was trying to warn us about; the fact that we are only a tiny part of nature but not a force above her and even a little piece of polythene we throw on the ground can contribute to generate destruction.
The birth of earth has so many explanations; whether it was a gradual process or a divine creation, it doesn’t make much difference. The death of earth will have only one explanation, that is you and I failed to look after her the way we ought to have done.

Schools till 3.30? Oh! No!


I loved to be at school as much as I could and when I had to go home, walking to the school van was always done half-heartedly. But I doubt whether even I could have enjoyed if the school hours were extended to 3.30 during our time.
Be it another shallow election talk or the newest work-plan to hit the local schools, it is going to trigger a lot talk and a great deal of concern among the students, parents and most importantly the teachers. However, not knowing the date of implementation and the procedure, it is too early to make predictions, the educationalists should know better than to nod their heads at every fancy-talk delivered at election podiums, specially the statements that directly concern children.
If the school hours are going to be extended till 3.30, will there be a change in the subject range taught currently at schools? Will the children will be given enough time to relax and will the periods be longer? Most importantly, since there will be a lot of time, will the students taught how to live beyond the world of books and classes?
The initial repercussion of the situation will be that children may not have time to go for tuition classes, which might lead the tuition teachers to hold their classes till midnight. So, if this idea came up to scale down tuition classes, it will only victimize the students who are already victimized by the system.
Copying things from the West have been the age-old tradition; however emulating good things is always considered a sign of growth. But if the argument for lengthening school hours is merely because the kids in the west have it that way, we are standing on shaky grounds. Those students have access to a lot of resources and their curricula do not only target subject-oriented knowledge, but also aesthetic studies, physical training activities and community development projects. If this system is to be brought down home, it is highly doubtful that, even the best and most resourceful secondary schools in the capital city will have enough resources to cope up with the new situation.
Once upon a time, when English medium education was introduced to Sri Lanka, the authorities did not have a clear idea as to how they were going to train the teachers and how the textbooks would be set. Let’s hope and pray that if this nightmare to become a reality, at least this time they will have a strong back-up plan for it.

Living with the Muse


There is an artistic soul in everyone; like there’s a shower-time singer and a bedroom-mirror dancer in every person. There’s an author in each person who takes the trouble to sit down with a diary and scribble the day-to-day happenings. And there’s an unacclaimed painter in every person who sways paint-brushes for a living; be it the person who paints walls or marks the lines of pedestrian-crossings, the truth does not change.
Even the most unartistic person by self-estimate will certainly have a dose of art in some hidden closest of his persona.
It is different when one part of the human race performs for a living, the other part’s living becomes an ultimate performance that makes the world a beautiful stage for others to stand up and perform.
Art becomes art because it holds a mirror to those who keep the artists in them under lock and key. It is this realism that is being constantly processed in to art, captured and reproduced in various forms of works of art.
It’s the sheer determination that leads an artist to take the path of art. It is not only going against the social conventionalities but taking the risk of walking empty-pocket.
Perhaps it takes even more amount of courage for someone to give up the artistic soul within him or her and go on living a life with full of burdens to carry, knowing that art alone cannot feed the hunger. Even the harsh realities cannot keep the artistry under the waters forever. It emerges from the tiniest vacuum. Those who do not call themselves artistes perform only for a limited audience; like the drenched shower-curtains or the tiny dust particles in the mid-day wind.
After all, the very first artists of the civilizations never called themselves so. They were in fact hunters and farmers. The folk-songs sung in a bullock-cart journey or during the time of harvesting do not even have definite authors. But that does not make them less heart-catching. In fact, they became a force inspiration for the compositions that were to come. The cave-paintings depicted their lifestyles, the melodies of the folk-songs cried out the hardships of rural life. Art reflected the real life in many forms, thereby provided insights to life and inspiration to live.
Forgive me Mr. Wilde, I don’t think art can be as useless as you think.

Success: Fathered by troubles & mothered by support


Success is a story with a definite author. Those who scribble their secrets and anecdotes for triumph once they are safely on the cozy rocking chairs of retirement might not remember the helping hands that dragged them out from tough times. Their names might not even make it the acknowledgements of the book.
Such is the world and the mentalities of the people who dwell in it. Very often do we remember the particulars of those who plotted against us, tried to pull the carpet underneath our feet and talked behind our back. But the family members, friends and even the superiors who pop up in the guise of guardian angels and saviours in the hour of need may not be in the limelight when you look back at your journey. May be it is because we draw in more courage from the obstacles that cross our ways than from the support and the assistance we get.
Success is never an illegitimate child. When the runners who finish their races with world records talk about how they ran barefoot in the baby-stage of their carriers, might not remember the name of the person who bought them their first pairs of spikes. Whether you liked it or not, your success may be fathered by hardships but it was mothered by the inspiration and support given by those who always had faith in you. Remembering to remember them is more important than dumping your memory with names of people who never did a single good thing for you.
Everyone has his or her own style of narrating and illustrating the moments of life. And their memories are recorded in such a way that they can erase or highlight the people they want when they recall things. Forgetfulness is one thing you have to accept with the same grace you accept maturity and old age. But forgetting the faces and names you ought to seal in your memory is unpardonable.
Perhaps your forgetfulness will make those who wore the robes of angels wear devil masks. But remember that, your selectively vivid memory will not make the devils wear white robes.