Chasing Mirages

Amidst an inundation of news relating to Rizana Nafeek’s tragic execution, I was reminded of this encounter from a a few years ago, which I wrote about in the past incarnation of this blog.

I find myself wondering about these girls. All I can hope for is that they are okay and that they have found their freedoms.

—

11th March 2009

Katunayaka International Airport, several minutes had ticked by half-past six when I stumbled towards the liminal olive green immigration desks to fill out the embarkation forms. Laden with a weighty laptop and a folder of documents which traced my life in a paper trail, legitimizing me in the eyes of British Border Control, in the event they decided to question my presence at a place which has been my reluctant domicile for nearly 3 years now. I still need proof that I have no plans of leeching off an overburdened welfare system or disappearing into the woodwork to wo-man the counter of a rural 7-11. Because that’s what an MA will bring you these days: a minimum wage job in a country that can never replace home.  I hope the sarcasm has not been lost.

My country may have its share of problems but that kind of desperation doesn’t affect me. The kind of desperation which leads to catamaran journeys to Cyprus and Sicily. I’m happy where I am, thanks very much. But the papers I carry, just in case they do not appreciate this implausibility.

I scribble in my tired details etched on tens of forms identical to this, filed away in some musty corner, picturesquely gathering mould. The government plans on recycling are rather sketchy. “Nangi.” (Younger sister) A veiled woman approaches me. I’m complacently contained in my own personal semiosphere of memories, goodbyes just said and the dread of a day long journey ahead. I’m made uncomfortable by such acknowledgements of kinship, looking up uncertainly. An unnecessary cultural idiosyncrasy of uncles and aunties.

Expectantly she hands her embarkation form over. “I cannot understand what is said. I don’t know how to fill it in.” I would be lying if I said I wasn’t irritated. She could not read. So much for a 90% literacy, the pride of South Asia. My travel karma did not need unnecessary jinxing. Unnecessary like Nangi. I glance at her crisp novelty of a passport branded for the next decade as “House Maid”; a bold proclamation from the profession box.  House Maid. No euphemisms, no embellishments. Were we post-political correctness already?

Forgive my post-modern cynicism.

Born in 1982, somewhere in the slums of an undiscussed part of the capital. The other peripheral worlds marked by petti-kades, lelli geval and communal taps, rife with crime and unspoken professions. Bound to Jordan, several worlds and a universe away. That House Maid stamp seems awfully permanent for three years. She had that snappy sensibility only an urban existence could mould. I do not say anything as I hand over a completed form. She thanks me curtly.

Another hovers over my shoulder, insistent not expectant, as if it were my cheerful obligation fill out her form. She cannot read either. Sleeplessness and general morning grumpiness blankets me protectively as I complain to myself. I’m ready to settle down with a book at departures, catching snatches of sleep between the mechanical announcements of planes which pendulum between the Occident and Orient.

Born 1991 in a village off “Polonnaruwa?” I couldn’t contain my shock. A child. I am horrified. 18, perched somewhere between the wisdoms of my 21 year old self, and that of my 11 year old sister. Still horrified, I realise the width and depth of the chasm which divides Polonnaruwa and Beirut.  Across the Universe, five oceans and seven seas. I am afraid for her. She did not offer her thanks, strolling to the queue. I’m still taken aback. I do not know what to say. Do I wish such naivety well, as they chase their dreams into deserts faraway?

I watch them huddled together at the Gate making their last phone calls to extended family and friends, running out money as they swap sim cards. She gingerly sips the last of her Polonnaruwa water from a refilled Mixed Fruit Nectar bottle.

I plug in my iPod and return to a soundsphere suspended between the angst of Nirvana and Jason Mraz’s cheer. Conflicted.

I am still afraid for the mirages they chase, towards the oases of dowries and new homes, husbands and children.

The journey ahead would be no smooth sailing.

—

Rest In Peace, Rizana.

Stream of Warm Impermanence

I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste
was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test

Changes, David Bowie

After reading this and out of great curiosity, I went to a fortuneteller some months ago, who said my life would always be in a state of perpetual flux- of protean ambitions,  wanderlust, shifting aspirations and an abiding fear of commitment. I can’t speak for the future, but his observations of my lines and my stars spoke for the present.

2012 embodied liminality, a transition between sacred and profane, as Van Gennep spelled out. The kind songs are written about; penned in joy, frustration, lessons-learned and despair as I tentatively forayed from an academic ivory tower into the real world. The real world that broke me a little bit, but built me up a little bit more, reminding me that are worlds are all but transient- people, ideas and objects; in constant motion and persistent ambivalence as we quietly hope for better.

I’ve learned of volatility, that old friendships and halcyon moments wither, but new wonderful friendships can blossom from unvailing circumstances. For you, old friends and new, I am thankful. I’ve learned that dreams are often made up of choices, and that those dreams and those choices can change. The fact that I am not writing this, bundled up in a college room in Britain is a testament to that. Perhaps I will never know whether the dreams were wrong, or if the choices were right but even on the bleakest of days, it all feels okay. I’ve learned that people have the capacity to simultaneously restore and destroy our faith in one another. I’ve encountered the best and the worst, and can only hope that goodness will outweigh the negativity, because right now it feels like there’s too much of that in the world. I’ve learned of kindness and cruelty that defies rationale and remember both with equal resolve.

Of all this, I’ve learned the most important lesson of them all, that stars, lines and fortunes aside, we are all in a stream of warm impermanence.

Pretty soon you’re gonna get
a little older
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
I said that time may change me
But I can’t trace time

 

So dear readers, I thank you for still reading and your kind words over the past year.

Wishing everyone the happiest and most wonderful of new years,

V.

North by Northwest

I recall the events of May 2009, from my flat on City Road, thousands of miles away, and mostly as snatches of news, press photos, mobile phone footage and lengthy online conversations with my friend Saville. We were both so distant from what was taking place in our island home , our only information filtering in through the news and sometimes friends and family from home, who seemed more sheltered from the news than we were, as we sifted through the news sites wondering how and when it would all end.

I read through an old post Ayubowan dated the 16th of May 2009.

‘I trawl the Internet for news every few minutes, wondering what has changed. I see people’s digital patriotism and ponder if the rumours are true, as photochemical evidence surface on the news as breaking alerts and exclusive footage. If the war is really at an end.

It frightens me the uncertainty as Sri Lanka’s future appears to hang in a balance.  It seems to be the word on everyone’s tongue, this impending war victory. The end is nigh, they say as they look for out of season firecrackers. The great feats of soldiers of a government who have managed to “destroy terrorism”.  Sri Lanka’s problems always arise from a legacy of myopia we seem to have inherited from the generations before us. We have selective memories and we forget too soon. 

Weeks later, I recall my return to Colombo, where riotous celebrations had already taken place. Parliament junction was covered in flattened Coca-Cola cups. A veritable explosion of flags and bunting lined my road home as I drove back from the airport.

—

The North continues to remain as distant to me as it had been before. I am unable to reconcile others’ travels to the newly freed North; smiling family holiday photos against the post-war exotica of a barren shelled landscape, bullet-ridden homes, pristine shrapnel dunes, and the victors’ military spoils.

3 years later, I am living in Colombo, working in post-conflict development, embroiled in bureaucracies and wordplay, pushing for structural changes and social change like the clichéd development Samaritans that we have turned into, believing that there are differences to be made. The past few months have felt like betrayal as I learn to put my ideological differences aside for necessary work I try everyday to believe in greater good and other inevitable spin-doctoring.

When work-related travel to the Mullaitivu presents itself, I brace myself, partly intrigued and partly angry at myself for what has transpired. A formerly LTTE controlled area, Mullaitivu was the location of a large rebel base and the ground on which numerous battles were fought since 1983, until the Sri Lankan army took control of the town in January 2009 in the Battle of Mullaitivu.

I have now learned to be more positive. Perhaps that’s just the spin-doctoring talking.

We travel through the North-West, via Puttlam, through Anuradhapura and Vavuniya. The roads are unfamiliar, progress snaking across arid emptiness punctuated by repetitive towns and the occasional marker of archaeological significance and mytho-historical nationalist propaganda.

At Omanthai, the shells of old checkpoints form a warren that announces entry into the North with a cursory check by the army. I learn to reconcile many stories spun by the news and friends, into the relative realities of what I was seeing.

The road works power through full speed ahead, even in the dark absence of street lights at night-time, for infrastructure is where the development money is, we know. Yet long stretches remain broken and trying, with public transport links, houses, shops and even the occasional pedestrian conspicuously absent. The sun beats down on huddles of construction workers, men and women, I note. The dry scrub is barren, fringed with dry-zone wilderness. The ground is razed in part, singed blackened grass forming indelible shadows of the devastation this earth has known.

Our unholy trinity and its phalanx of messengers have left their flimsy marks on landscape, pledging their generous support to the region’s upliftment. Aluminum signboards crafted by the hands of the development aid apparatus, allude to geopolitical tilts and strategic alliances that funnel charity in return for dependency. Ferguson, Escobar and Moyo are the ghosts of my own past.

Concrete and tin shells of progress do not conceal the pronounced poverty of the makeshift dwellings that make up scant towns.

Puliyankulam. Odusuddan. Nanthi Kadal. Maankulam. Puliyankulam. Mallavi. Tunukkai.

News stories ring the place names familiar. Perhaps we are free in our passage, only occasionally halted by polite police or military personnel, but my mind and heart are heavy.

There is a young optimist our company; a protagonist of the war he has been in the region since the last phase of the war, for six years. He is enthusiastic about the progress that I fail  to see. ‘Many people have been successfully resettled and the development, we are just starting! patanganme abhimukhaye innava vage…‘ Schooled propagandist rhetoric, I resist judgment- it is what he knows, it is what he believes. ‘Roads are being built and after all  we must make the most of our victory.’ There is genuine, even perhaps endearing pride in his voice. Later he admits, there is not much change to be seen in our destination. It has been two years since he had last been there. ‘There’s not much development to be seen here. They built the state banks before the president visited… Mehe nam sanvardhanayak penne nehe. President enna kalin, banku tika nam haduva‘

There is an unspoken acknowledgment of reality, but he remains optimistic. There is even an effort to learn English and Tamil.

It only occurs to me many hours later what he may have been a part of, what he may have endured.

I do not hold him responsible, but I cannot share his pride.

Development, he confidently repeats, is happening.

Faithless

I was raised in a veritable pickle of a household. We speak three languages. We believe in different gods, some of us uphold a curious syncretism that defies logic and some of us, we don’t believe at all. We fear the wrath of a pantheon of gods, while some of us respectfully stand in the sidelines, amused but compliant to the arcane rituals that map our faith. Despite the contradictions and occasional absurdity, we co-exist and we keep celebrating each other’s holidays because festivities are always welcome.

Over the years, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the notion of religion. Mostly when it encroaches into my thought space in the form of the question, what religion are you?

As a child, I, like many of my peers were compelled to put a religion down on paper. At the start of every school year, they sent home a form that required the specifics: race, religion, denomination. There was no room for ambiguity; a binding pen on paper commitment was required. It was a matter of priority for annual timetables afterall.

Accordingly, our Christian institution grouped us twice a week to provide us with a religious education as set forth in the state curriculum.

There were two of us in that class for whom, the topic of religion did not matter because our parents did not give us much of a religious education at home. Mine were a non-committal pickle, hers were uninterested and amidst a group of girls whose Sunday School education had begun at kindergarten, we struggled to learn Buddhism in a Christian School. I recall the torturous experience of having to learn and recite unfamiliar sūttas that rolled of the others’ tongues. How we couldn’t recite on demand the most sacred words of the Buddha mystified the teacher. How I dreaded those afternoons where spot recitations were called upon and I’d struggle, owing to little more than a complete lack of interest in memorizing verses in a language I didn’t understand.

Our text books were populated not with the everyday choices that might require some form of spiritual guidance, but yarns of mytho-history that defined Sri Lankan, Sinhalese Buddhism. From historical buildings, facile meditation techniques and long-winded stories on virtue and other blessed things this text book was supposed to be instilling in us, we ultimately studied for an exam.

Remember, regurgitate. Remember, regurgitate.

So I studied Buddhism, unapologetically, to keep my grades up.  I even won a prize once. No wiser, no more interested, but compelled, for there was no option for marking down uncertainties on that austere typeset form.

Today, I am grateful for this education because I can tell you many little facts about Sri Lanka’s Buddhist history and significant archaeological sites, not because of the personal spiritual enlightenment it brought about.

I remain blissfully unconcerned about religion, pressing matters like death, heaven, hell, afterlife and reincarnation rarely occurring to me or intruding into my every day only when someone throws the unabashed question,

What religion are you?

Much like those school forms from many years ago, Sri Lanka allows very little room for ambiguity.

I falter. Buddhist I suppose, I say if they are looking for a short answer or if I’m looking for a quick way out.

Buddhism, separated from cultural pollution, provides a meaningful roadmap for living, to good and a balance of cause, consequence and karma. I respect that simplicity and freedom of being able to choose my path. Yet, I cannot recall the last time I went to a temple to worship or to gain some form of spiritual guidance or solace.

I try to believe in good and do the right thing, to give to the less fortunate and not harm the living. That to me is surely in the words of every religion, label and pen on paper commitment-free.

I often wonder what faith in Buddhism means to a purported 70% of Sri Lanka. The temples, the flowers, the verses of pali few undersand,  and the saffron-robed monks that preside over it all.

Last week, a 2000 strong Sinhalese mob rallied under the puritanical war cries of Buddhist monks who called for a local mosque which had stood for half a century to be demolished.  Petrol bombs flared, stones were thrown and the revered Friday prayer was canceled. Over the weekend, it was agreed on a political table that the mosque would be demolished and relocated to what I can only understand as a less-offending place.

An isolated incident, say the optimists anchored in the belief of a greater good and surely one that does not reflect Sri Lanka’s Buddhist virtue and humility.

For a nation so saturated with such Buddhist righteousness and integrity, we have seen a three decade long war, the full-blown armed hostilities which were triggered by an ‘isolated incident’ not unlike this in 1983. We pretend that thousands of civilians were not killed under the flags of victory. We do not think of the thousands more who remain displaced as a consequence. We pretend that our country is not rife with lawlessness, corruption,  grave insecurity and violence, while we hide behind the white cloth of Buddhist morality. Such ugliness cannot happen in a land where the Buddha himself set foot thrice, we tell ourselves.

This too shall pass, we avert our eyes away from the reality of ugliness that Sri Lanka has tumbled into.

Today, where Sinhalese Buddhist monks rallied the hatred of 2000 Sinhalese Buddhists against the faith of another, I find myself unable to falter.

I am faithless.

Of Protests and Introspection

Tuesday.

Protests. I am hesitant to weave through the crowds at Town Hall after work, but I am curious. Patriotic music echoes. Head aches. Black and white corporates assembled. Signage in English, a language that a fraction of the population speaks. Who are these signs intended for?

No War Crimes in Sri Lanka, Look Elsewhere

Don’t Be Mislead by Terrorists, Listen to the People

All Sri Lankans Hate Violence.

Help Sri Lankans Live As One Nation

They are mostly young. Women in sunglasses fan themselves, shading their faces from the evening sun. Men in ties tote corporate banners photographing. They link arms and grin for photo after photo. Amateur photographers armed with camera phones click. Pose. Click. Pose. Click. New profile pictures are buzzed off into cyberspace. Such amusement, it could have been a cricket match.  A confusion of slogans and Sri Lankan flags wrapped on their heads or shoulders as a sign of respect, perhaps?

A mockery of the three decades of life that was lost to the island unfolds. Its suffering reduced down to an ideological pissing contest between geopolitical overlords and Third World underlings. These puppets revel, they cry ‘NO to war crimes and NO to Western Conspiracies’. I wish I could ask them to define both.

Estimates of the war’s casualties range from 80,000-100,000. The numbers from its later phase remain hotly contested. Ranging from 40,000 as suggested by international observers to the government’s ever-fluctuating numbers between 0 – 1,400 – 3,500 – 5000. Perhaps, we will never know save for those of us who knew real loss then, of family or friends. Real people with names and faces, who were loved and mourned for.

In May 2009, when the government confirmed its military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) following months of intense fighting, it also left an estimated 300,000 civilians displaced. Housed in welfare camps, Sri Lanka‟s internally displaced population faced a devastating humanitarian crisis riddled with critical predicaments of nutrition and sanitation. According to the United Nations’ Joint Humanitarian and Early Recovery Update as late as September 2011 (well over 2 years after the end of the armed conflict), 7534 internally displaced persons remained in camps waiting to return to their areas of origin, while 384, 401 people returned to the Northern Province (UNOCHA, 2011). A few thousand still remain suspended in the limbo of internal displacement. A bloodied past, a purgatorial present and an uncertain future.

They protest in vehement denial, so unabashed about their heritage, their pride, their arrogant patriotism. Sri Lankans, they roar! Yet I wonder what they have done to earn this glory besides hold up a placard, wrapping a flag around their heads and choosing sides in a game they have not even bothered to understand.

By denying the realities of the war they deny the existence, the humanity of those victims whose lives will forever be shaken in ways they cannot ever comprehend. They forget or ignore the uphill battle left in revising policy and discriminatory practices so deeply engrained in Sri Lanka’s social fabric. They deny thousands of fellow Sri Lankans equality of citizenship by decrying their tenuous present and horrific experiences are fictions concocted by the international humanitarian apparatus.

I wonder why such public gusto, such concern has not been channelled towards pressuring an internal mechanism for fostering reconciliation, to push through necessary policy documents that still stutter between ministries and attitudes towards inclusion, integration and the sustainable peace we as a nation owe to those civilians who fought and survived three decades of war.Not just those of us who were touched by a history of bleak news reports and the lurking fear of a bomb blast in the city, but those who have lost far too much for words or tears.

The LLRC even with its apologist contradictory wording and repetitive lip-service calls for changes that need speedy implementation. In the very words of the polemic resolution there exists,

‘.. The need to credibly investigate widespread allegations of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances, demilitarize the north of Sri Lanka, implement impartial land dispute resolution mechanisms, re-evaluate detention policies, strengthen formerly independent civil institutions, reach a political settlement on the devolution of power to the provinces, promote and protect the right of freedom of expression for all and enact rule of law reforms..’

Are these protestors denying the existence of these realities and the interlinked need for changes? How many of them even bothered read the LLRC, or even this resolution they are so opposed to?

—

Thursday

The resolution passes and the sentiments pendulum between unapologetic apathy and ignorant rage. I am disgusted, as hate is spewed towards the United States and India. A cricketing rivalry with the latter turned vitriolic against its supportive stance on the resolution. India raised the LTTE, someone announces to cyberspace. Or perhaps it was such anger and ignorance directed at a section of our own people.

Implementation with technical assistance, the resolution calls. Sri Lanka is indignant, bitter, even. Its pissing contest against the galactic empire lost, even with the support of China’s rebel force.

The rage, the ignorance the horrific claims that clutter my virtual world sadden and disgust me as I see more protesters still uncertainly lurking at Town Hall.The conflation of anti-US sentiment with the purpose of the resolution thickens.

G.L Peiris states,

‘The most distressing feature of this experience is the obvious reality that voting at the Human Rights Council is now determined not by the merits of a particular issue but by strategic alliances and domestic political issues in other countries which have nothing to do with the subject matter of a Resolution or the best interests of the country to which the Resolution relates.  This is a cynical negation of the purposes for which the Human Rights Council was established.

Many countries which voted with Sri Lanka were acutely conscious of the danger of setting a precedent which enables ad hoc intervention by powerful countries in the internal affairs of other nations.  This is a highly selective and arbitrary process not governed by objective norms or criteria of any kind.  The implications of this were not lost on many countries.

As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, our policy in respect of all matters will continue to be guided by the vital interests and wellbeing of the people of our country.  It hardly requires emphasis that this cannot yield place to any other consideration.’

—

Perhaps what we as a Nation, should be concerned with instead is our grave need for introspection and realising what passive crimes occur each day through our own choice of ignorance, apathy and prejudice in the name of a misguided patriotism.

Knowing that I am not alone in my sentiments however, comforts me.

Perhaps there is hope? Perhaps.

Sri Lanka, Reconciliation and Lessons from Polanyi

Polanyi. Markets. Coase. Firms. Olson. Collective Action. Ostrom. Tragedy of the Commons. Knight. Social Conflicts. Chambers. Poverty. Kabeer. Gender. Akerlof. Identity.

Analysing Institutions in development was the bane of my existence a year ago. From social hierarchies to the bureaucracy of aid, endless readings and long-winded essays on how economic principles meet and mesh with social realities do not feel distant enough just yet. Being in the business of development however, has provided an intriguing counterpoint to this labyrinth of policies, practicality and the ‘packaging’ of jargon and its potential for social change in a manner that can be widely understood.

Numbers games are easy enough.  State-sponsored extortion covers fuel, electricity, potatoes and otherwise. Pay hikes compelled by union action culminates in a few blokes swinging off the Lipton Circus Fountain and the police getting trigger-happy with teargas. Wages are increased and prices go up since Western powers are after all conspiring to pack Sri Lanka back off to the Third World where fly ridden children are sucked into the neo-colonial aid machine, catalogued, photographed as the face of an organizational calendar and paid in awareness leaflets and oversized teddy bears from First world primary school pen pals. $9.99 a month salvation and one less distended-bellied child. Praise be!

The relevance of social and political context informs Polanyi’s conception of the market’s “embeddedness” which suggests that economy is integrated into society. This view inevitably challenges good ole’ Adam Smith’s description of man’s “propensity to barter, truck and exchange one thing for the other”. This subordination of the economy to politics and social relations underscores what Polanyi further asserts as the need for the government to play a role within the economy through the imposition of sanctions protecting national interests, rather than relying on the intangible economic theories of self-equilibration. While the markets of the world play the number games of hunger games, what of social change? Polanyi tells us that the market cannot be disembedded from society, but do the same gold standards and price tags apply? Can we measure social change in numbers or achieve it through lingo-heavy policy recommendations?

Policy design in Sri Lanka resembles something akin to a Smithian free market; the disembedded marionette strung by the ‘invisible hands’ of political and legislative powers. An uncanny automaton awkwardly flailing amidst real people and real social problems, one that’s trying to get these people, their politics and their problems in line with repeated mechanical recitations of the equality-for-all constitution.

Within development, the predicament of the numbers game (or the epic failure of economists as the rest of us social scientists like to believe) is being noticed. Mostly because the IMF and World Bank’s history of basic needs approaches and structural adjustment programmes caused more problems than they solved. The call for the integration of the global into the local forms an oxymoron of a one-size-fits-all square scheme being shoved into the triangle of a local market. The international development apparatus’s failure to account for the social and political embeddedness of local institutions and recognise that these institutions are not necessarily socially efficient and calibrated to fit into the neat boxes of a monitoring and evaluation report has proved to be detrimental to achieving any real development. Or do I mean empowerment and upward mobility?

After my automaton-like flailing (anthropology strings attached) amidst a group of economists versed the finer points of Keynes, I realise that within the framework of institutional analysis, what becomes significant is the agency of human behaviour and choice that economic theories limit as a set of axioms upon which predictions might be based. Much like policy yes? Wordy promises that fail in localised implementation initiatives. The development apparatus too is reluctantly learning from its mistakes and doing bold, hippie things like qualitative studies that are no less patronising in obtaining quotes on what it’s like to experience poverty from a ‘poor woman in India’ (calendar girl photo included). It is also looking at institutional analysis as a means of tailoring solutions to ground-level, social problems, by examining social institutions with an ethnographic astuteness that I promise you will herald significant positive changes towards achieving development goals like ending poverty and creating world peace (anthropologist’s bias, savvy?).

As far as reconciliation in Sri Lanka goes, a policy automaton is being ‘perfected’ (I suppose) in the hallowed halls of ministries with long names and shallow goals. The three-year mark since the end of the civil war in 2009 is creeping up on us and little progress has been made towards implementing anything tangible.

The LLRC was (should have been?) Sri Lanka’s institutional analysis; a document of ethnographic thoroughness that addresses the social minutiae through a broad-based consultation process that considers the deficiencies, hierarchies and limitations which are hindering the country’s progress towards reconciliation. Douglas North suggests that if an institution is made up of humanly devised regulations and enforcement, one must also consider the human limitations that factor into the creation and maintenance of these institutions, particularly the perpetuation of hierarchies and creation of ideologies by those in power. Within the more specific example of ethnicity (which I don’t believe requires too much explanation as a key agent in Sri Lanka’s social, economic and political landscape), Posner suggests that if ethnic politics serves the purpose of coalition building to gain greater advantages by virtue of a shared ethnicity, policy design will mirror these imbalances. Thereby, what can be questioned is whether a valid institutional analysis can be conducted from within an institution comprised of those positioned within the institution to serve a public mandate within for example, a democratic political system or a governmental one such as the LLRC?

A panel of old timers in talcum wigs failed or perhaps inadvertently (too optimistic?) brushed over this necessity, producing 400 odd pages of carefully selected (repetitive and sometimes contradictory) statements and legal gobbledygook. Thus we arrive at a familiar stalemate: the one-size-fits-all scheme square that attempts to fix a veritable Rubik’s cube of social problems pertaining to ethnicity, conflict, affirmative action and a return to square one policy capable of instrumenting social change. Yes that is two-dimensional ink on paper apologetically recommending more two-dimensional ink on paper legal and constitutional changes. What must be considered also is that institutions themselves are able to further inculcate the social divisions from within which they arise.

So, what now? Mandates, imbalances, validity and all? Invite the sticky-fingered West in for a ‘independent investigation’?

Civic responsibility comes to mind, but civil society and policy are equally bland in these parts. No collective action zing, until those marginalised by poor policy and a majority’s apathy return to a repetition of armed conflict. Fight for your rights, yes? ‘Che Guevara want you to rebel!‘ The sticker on a tuk-tuk I see every morning proclaims.

Upon realising this, we must question and challenge (covered under broad-based public consultation yes?) its limitations. Given the sheer number of people who are so clearly aware of/care about foreign intervention, should care enough to get some local awareness intervention going? Ha.

It is necessary that legal and constitutional fairness is in place, but implementation cannot succeed as shining idealization in an ink on paper promise.

It must be methodical, meticulous; examining social, political and economic bodies as ideologically founded and politically motivated institutions that function in their own right. It is necessary that the social “embeddedness” of these are thoroughly scrutinized and not reduced to a series of series of bureaucratic interactions of exchange, but as those subject to the tides of human prejudices, society and politics. The need lies in identifying the social divisions, issues of integration, not as our now proverbial free market independent from the social and political context. Reconciliation in Sri Lanka does not simply require state of the art policy perfection sparkling with idealist jargon and a mention of South Africa thrown in, but a thoroughly localised examination of the social and political realities upon which institutions are built. It requires analysing the powerful social divisions of ethnicity that draw on the potency of language, history, heritage and culture, how it features deeply and pervasively within the formal institutions of politics and governance. What must also be acknowledged is that Sri Lanka’s history has been mapped on what Posner (2005:2) identifies as the ‘formal rules, regulations and policies that structure social and political interactions’ and how these institutions in turn have shaped people’s identity choices, where ethnic politics can be viewed as a form of coalition–building for greater political and economic advantage. Policies and politics which led to ethnic groups acting in their own self-interest as they could only receive knowledge or human capital from members in their own group resulting in a phenomenon of ‘ethnic capital’, which subsequently leads to income differentials between groups.

Easterly  suggests that good institutions are founded to provide minorities with legal protection and ‘constrain the amount of damage one ethnic group could do to another’, but what of institutions that are inherently tilted? What we can hope for is a worthy effort as both state and civil society to fix the tilt. Where many a nation is plagued with the challenges of establishing sustainable democracies or combating ethnic inequalities, the least we can do is strive to genuinely understand what made us this way.

Readings:

Easterly, W. 2001. ‘Can Institutions Resolve Ethnic Conflict’ in Economic Development and Cultural Change, 49, 4.

Knight, J. 1992. Institutions and Social Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

North, D.C. 1995 ‘The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development’, in Harriss, Hunter, and Lewis (eds), The New Institutional Economics and Third World development. London and New York: Routledge.

Olson, M., 1971, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Ostrom, E., 1990, Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Polanyi, K. 1944. The Great Transformation: The Political Origins of Our Time, Boston MA: Beacon Press.

Posner, D. N. (2005). Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Twenty Twelve

First of all, I would like to wish everyone reading this a very, very happy new year! May 2012 bring you happiness and success in everything you do hand in hand with a wish for peace and prosperity world-round as we forge through and past economic, social and political crises towards a more inclusive and just global society.

I would also like to avoid cluttering this post with pessimism about where the world is going. We can never know, unless we all try harder to be better people. This is why I would also like to urge you to make this effort. Change like charity, begins at home with small acts of kindness, forgetting to keep score of our own but remembering and reciprocating those of others.

So here’s something for you reader to think about, in a little (uncannily and uncharacteristically optimistic) post I wrote for The Platform where I’ve tried to look beyond this culture of blame that salts the wounds of our existence, because sometimes hope for better things to come is all we have left.

Taking Back Democracy in Sri Lanka

I do believe that ‘Change lies in the hands of people, not just in that of governments.’ And I do not mean simply in protest, violent or otherwise, but rather in bearing equal responsibility to foster equality and inclusivity.

Let’s Talk About Incest

*Reader discretion advised: This was a difficult post to write and does not make for a pleasant read. The title of the post is self-explanatory and if you are sensitive about reading related material, please close the tab now.

….

Authorities in Sri Lanka are not particularly skilled in the art of making sensible statements to the press.

When I clicked on the twitter link this morning, I was confronted with this article on Daily Mirror Online.

The Police states that 1637 cases of rape were reported this year.

Emphasis on reported for posterity.

The article goes on to state: ‘SP Rohana said girls between the ages of 13 and 16 are especially vulnerable and are party to these cases… These underage girls should be taught about the consequences of their behaviour. Also the parents and their children should have a strong relationship, he added.’

What’s wrong with this picture?

I cannot help but wonder about all that goes unreported in this country. Not just rape.

And the authorities want 13-16 year old girls, victims of statutory rape, to take responsibility for their behaviour.

As a nation, we possess a remarkably short memory and more shockingly, a complacent silence that forms a shining veneer  of South Asian morality, which covers up every manner of sin we perpetrate, endure, or worse those when we encounter but ignore or look the other way. When it comes to education, we push for children to become doctors but never push for them to be educated in matters of health science that possess very real and important sway over their life decisions and more importantly, abusive relationships that exploit their circumstances and ignorance.

I do not wish to dwell on laws and definitions of rape or incest, but rather recount a couple of incidents I encountered. Unreported incidents.

…

A few years ago, when I was researching labour in Sri Lankan plantations, I sort of unintentionally got mixed up in somewhat of a chase.

As part of my routine, I spent much of my day with the plantation’s welfare officer. Malar* was only a few years older than I was and her job was to mediate between the residents of the plantation and the management.Healthcare issues featured very prominently in her tasks and she liaises with the clinics, dispensaries and the matronly Mrs. Selladurai who had been an estate mid-wife for over two decades.

One particularly warm day in August 2009 just before I finished up my research, Malar, the plantation’s elderly mid-wife and I spent the better part of a day trying to track down the whereabouts of a pregnant 15 year old girl who had been compelled into an incestuous sexual relationship with her father.

I am horrified to hear that this is not uncommon. Frequently occurring in homes where mothers are absent (often those who have migrated to the Middle-East or Colombo and its peripheries as domestic workers), I am also told harrowing stories of mothers who choose to ignore what goes on in their homes. The reasons for their deliberate turning away remains unclear, but is often linked to alcoholism and domestic violence.

I am extremely disturbed by the number of stories Malar, Mrs. Selladurai and the dispensary’s pharmacist Uma share with me.  The specifics of their recollections are difficult to pen down, even now. Forced incest. Older brothers and younger sisters. Daughters giving birth to biological siblings. Silent mothers. Women being violently forbidden to use contraception by husbands and relatives. Abuse and rape by fathers and brothers in-law. Alcoholism. Suicide. Murder, suicide.

The women are so matter-of-fact about this grotesque local reality. My head spins.

We trudge on winding mountainside paths trying to find this 15 year old girl. We even go to her school. She has skipped the examinations that were happening that day. Her house is empty. Her father is gruff, uninterested and does not want to speak to anyone. The neighbours cradle their faces in their palms and whisper knowingly.

By mid-afternoon we have not yet found her and the mid-wife, both tired and angry calls it a day.

‘I will go in the night and catch her. She is just hiding from me. She doesn’t want to admit that she’s pregnant! ‘ I never found out if  Mrs. Selladurai found her. 

I was naive in thinking that my encounter with such ugliness was at a close. Some days later, Uma and I are off on another welfare visit. On a lonely road, we see a boy no more than 12 with two younger girls skulking in the terraces. The boy disappears into the tea bushes and the girls emerge wordlessly.

Uma goes into a veritable rage. She screams at the boy, demanding that he comes out and face her. She chases the girls angrily.

I am bewildered.

“That boy is a dirty boy. Look at him- only 12 years old. The girls 8 and 10.’ She continues to chase him. ‘GO HOME! Have you no shame!’ She picks up a stick, as if to chase a stray dog. A threat.

That boy is from a bad family, she confides in me as we watch them disappear down the hill. He keeps looking back sheepishly. ‘See these people live in such close quarters. This boy has been caught before doing things to his sister and cousin, things that adults do- they see and they try to imitate.’

She does not need to explain further. Bile rises to my throat and I feel like retching.

8, 10, 12.

…

Yes, these girls should be taught. Not simply the consequences of their behaviour.

* Names changed.

P.S. : Sri Lanka’s Campaign for 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence culminated successfully with a series of excellent contributions that deliberate different facets of gender-based violence in Sri Lanka and the launch of a very useful website with multiple resources that deal with violence against women and more importantly what you can do about it: http://www.actnowsrilanka.org/en/.

Remembering The Help

The Help has generated glorious buzz among readers and film buffs alike, with the ambitious but ultimately lacklustre cinematic rendition starring the lovely Emma Stone, who is sadly no match for the spunky Miss. Skeeter.

Promising the ‘other side’ of Gone with the Wind (immortalised in the line “Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.”), Stockett tells the tale of The Help who populated the peripheries of white Missisipi in the 1960s. The writing is wonderful in its ability to convey the complexity of heartbreak and small joys existing side by side, as these women, both coloured and white, perpetuate and challenge a grey rainbow social injustices.

The book has been met with well-deserved praise, and I shall ramble no further save for saying pick up a copy, if you haven’t already.

I would also however, like to draw attention to the novel’s epilogue that remembers Demetrie, Stockett’s own childhood maid. She writes,

‘I’m, pretty sure I can say that no one in my family ever asked Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississipi, working for our white family. It never occurred to us to ask. It was everyday life. It wasn’t something people felt compelled to examine… I have wished, for many years, that I’d been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie that question.’ (2009:45)

Within this third world island (Or do I mean a politically correct developing world, emerging economy?), labour is cheap and bound to a tradition of devoted ‘help’ that raise the ‘babies’ of wealthier women, wash clothes, draw baths and prepare meals; the kind of dedication that made ‘Sri Lankan’ domestic labour prized beyond its watery borders.

The peripheries of my own existence in Colombo were populated by a steady stream of women and men, mostly if not entirely of Plantation Tamil origin , who transited through our home, for anything from a few weeks, a few months to a few years. Sometimes three generations of the same family, vertical and horizontal relatives flitted through, attending to our meals and laundry.

I would be lying if I said I remembered the names and faces of these umpteen women whose own lives were intimately bound with our own for pockets of time. But several remain deeply ingrained as a part of my childhood.

There was Mallika, a teenager with a mop of curly hair from Kandy, who was a worthy playmate and went on a trip with us to Anuradhapura.

There was Mary from Rathnapura, who watched me when schools were shut at length in the late 90s and adept at frying prawns and letting me sneak ice cubes out of the fridge.

There was Poovathi from Badulla, my sister’s nanny whose incessant aches and pains made me dub her ‘the paper doll’. Her family remained linked to our’s  for many years: son, daughter, husband, a cousin who had a dramatic encounter with ‘spirit possession’ in our living room one night.

There was also Seetha who lasted three days, being intermittently possessed by her dead father severely interfering with her ability to hold down a job. I kid you not.

There was Yogamma, a refugee from Trincomalee whose tragic life we still speak of. She liked me the best, I think of all her counterparts and spared no butter in making me sour dosai. She wanted more than anything to ‘go to Dubai’ as she would say to earn money for her children who had been relegated to a refugee camp in India. Conned by several employment agencies, she died in the Tsunami in 2004 while attempting to claim and sell her family’s land in Trincomalee.

There was Letchumi, a raging but ultimately endearing alcoholic from Rathnapura who lived with us for many years, until she fell off a Jack tree while on leave at home. She thankfully recovered, but her love for the bottle continues.

Presently, there is Kala, the most idiosyncratic of them all and Letchumi’s daughter. A riot around the house, she once garnished coconut chutney with sliced plums, coriander, carrot and one solitary segment of green bean. She is also of the bucket fame, when one morning a group of builders working on our house found her playing Tarzan on a bucket pulley dangling off the roof. We always laugh about that one.

The faces, the names, the stories are numerous. Enlaced but separate, filial but somehow lesser, familiar but never friends.

Within the Sri Lankan context, the relationship between the help and their employers remain as complex and blurred as that of 1960s Mississippi, albeit less about skin colour and more about class and sometimes ethnicity and the injustices, jealousy and resentment that arise from these socio-economic and cultural differences.

Two Sri Lankan writers, whose books I don’t love but certainly consider worth reading, explore the snarled threads that tie nonas, mahaththayas and babas into convoluted relationships of dominance, reciprocity and even wickedness.

In A Disobedient Girl, Ru Freeman captures the interplay between patronising generosity and resentment, between Latha, an orphan deemed to a life of perpetual servanthood , and Thara, the baby of the privileged Vithanage household.

I could not bring myself to sympathise with any of the characters, who I found to be overwhelmingly selfish. I did not care for the plot revolving around the mysterious connection between Latha and Biso, a wronged woman fleeing to safety with her children.

However,

Freeman does succeed tremendously in portraying the sexual politics and tangled struggle of human emotion seeded in the soil of class prejudice; a socio-economic terra firma that both nourishes and poisons the actions of those entrapped in inflexible social hierarchies. Freeman’s account is moving and insightful, allegorically representing relationships of servitude, upper hands and curious unspoken friendships that are all too familiar to those of us who were fed, cleaned and watched over by women and girls not much older.

Karen Roberts‘ The Lament of a Dhobi Woman is not a great piece of literary fiction by a long shot, detailing the life of Seelawathi, a village girl brought into an exploitative and demeaning equation within a Colombo household. However, what it lacks in skilled prose and plot, it somewhat makes up for in its observations on the fractured nature of Sri Lankan society.

The author positions the book as a sort of exposé ‘to shame people into changing their behaviour‘ (2010:288), which in my opinion impacts Roberts’ character development negatively, with an almost unequivocal demonisation of the proverbial ‘Colombo set’, save for the innocent untouched by the wickedness or sociality.

I suppose, the point of this post- aside from a few recommended reads- is to remember, to wonder about those very women whose lives are in most ways no different to those of the real-life Abileens and Minnys from half a century and several continents apart. They toil, raise children and be enmeshed into the most private spheres of those people who will never acknowledge them as equals.

I wonder the same thing Stockett does, the questions it never once occurred to me to ask.

“We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.” (Kathryn Stockett, The Help)