KANDY LAKE LOVER

We don’t kiss on the road, we don’t hold hands kissing on the road, our roads are not meant for kissing, our roads are in bad condition, we won’t be seen kissing on the road. We walk with our loved ones along roads and we’re conscious that we’re being watched, guaged and placed — contained, compared and gloated on. My guy is being desired and despised. My girl is being devoured and discarded.

Around the Kandy Lake, signs remind us: “Kandy is a sacred city. Do not misbehave”. For all i know, there are benches all around the beautiful (and semi-stinking) lake and couples harbour their day for a quiet moment of semi-privacy here. Couples come here for an innocent moment or two — cos, as we know, our country has no provisions for youth and for their desires, needs, privacies etc. To walk as a couple, therefore, has to be a public phenomenon and the private moment one desires with one’s loved one, is, in that public sense, a “semi-private” affair: like most of our factories and services.

No wonder the beauty of love is reduced and contained. People watch us and while, at different levels, hypocratically cutting lime on couples in public, simultaneously get tantallized by our semi-private moment of privacy. Can sharing a moment with my guy/girl walking or sitting in the vicinity of the beautiful Kandy Lake be “misbehaving”??? By whose decree? And what other alternatives do we have? Not that we’re choosing to be gloated and stared at. It is the debacle of the chanceless. The choiceless and the one’s with an “unfair” choice.

Kandy Lake

Malvathu Viharaya and the Dalada Maligawa stand on either side of the lake. Monks in the malvathu receive all kinds of banes and they willingly play the part of boon to all kinds of political gimmicks. The Maligawa is a den of petty politics and one of the most cruciel political pawns in the government agenda. How many acres of “preserved land” does the Maligawa possess? How many, the Malwathu chapter? Jealosuly guarded land at the best of the feudal tradition — make just one recreation park out of the 1000 acres! Just one recreation park and then — THEN — talk about “misbehaving”….if you must.

Give away a couple of acres for proper housing for a a dozen needy. There are people who need it man. Like people who get their only shelter buldozed at Gotabaya’s bidding. Or the kind of people who have no shit-hole to shit into… Just a couple of acres, Mr. Nilame and Rev. Malvathu. Be gentle in your misbehaving and we will then behave on equal terms. How “Nilame Elections” are worked out, how donors and donations come and go, how power is manipulated — and on the other side of the coin, we sit with our innocent hopes on the idle stone bench by the lake. For whom were these benches put? For what purpose were these benches put?

We walk what love we have around the lake, cos we are in want of the luxury of a top-knot hotel up front, a cruise or a joyride overseas. Our means are little. Our dreams are small. Not that we want the hotel and the cruise. Perhaps, if we got it all, our love wouldn’t have been the same. Perhaps our emotions would have frozen and turned into crystal or something. So, we’re happy with what we have — even though we’re being watched, commented on and pinned into various im/moral showcases. We’re happy even though we don’t speed-race along the Galle Road at midnight or don’t have fuckfests at 5 Star hotels with friends and their spouses.

Sign us off not. Cos the lakeside is all we got.

Sri Lankan Filling 2008.

Pisson ma knees and i fumble the keys on ma way home, please

I gotta make myself ease,

Wanna break the law once with / without the guns

President and his sons and the world’s turning over

Like Casanova and his breathing the Brothers are writhing

Baiting and mating they’re masturbating

With our lives, their knives and their lies are grating our lives to pieces

And our worlds are falling — Our dreams are bawling to be

Heard, referred

And the prices are hiking and they’re hiking, hiking,

Fares ain’t fair, anymore and frightening figures and facts

Covered up with tact, tricking the Ol Devil in his devious pact

We’re waling, life’s failing and ailing we move as if the

Nailing’s unheard and in our sinking we groove.

We move — day in day out — we move like bat droppings

Thumping on unheeding grass, and alas, we now face walls

As they speed pass their arse. Open day light, facing walls

Guns aimed at our balls, watching innocent we’re locked

In our gazes, we’re rocked and ridden, it’s forbidden

To question their policies and aims and we are ridden

In the hidden bidden ends of their games,

Dripping being soaked with shit in and out

And whipping our asses being joked about:

Mahinda, brother, hinder my solo,

Come fuck me or simply come share my Rollo.

THE INTELLECTUALS

My cousin who works for a 1.2 million pay at a multi-national giant tells me academics are beggars – academics who work in alliance with NGOs promoting peace, national regeneration, pluralism and sorts. Gross generalization – yes. And it really doesn’t amuse me even if these so-called academics would succumb to market forces and HCL; cos, money is what invites them in there – not purely human welfare. So, there they go, substantiating and giving leverage to the agendas of the highest bidder, strengthening points of view, chipping into others.

And now, whenever one speaks of the Peace Deal or infrastructure development –leave alone the price of onions– we inevitably come across a so-called “Intellectual Community” that has something to say – something that justifies the Highest Bidder for whom s/he is doing the shopping. Indeed, being an “intellectual” pays and these intellectuals are no immaculate beings either. They calculatedly appear at various niches and nooks of the larger power structure, negotiating his/her way like a dhaam piece. In turn, the power structure gives them recognition, legitimacy and status – and together the “intellectual” is baptized and contained into a perfect symbiosis with the people who can readily pay him/her.

This is very much like what happened with the “Court Poet” in times bygone. The Kings of yore patronized the “local poetic boy” as a medium of pronouncing one’s power and stability. Not only did the court poet entertain and amuse, but behind the amusement was the more serious agenda of convincing and transmitting – the legitimacy of power being articulated through a pseudo-political, creative and convincing agent. Whether the poet knew that s/he was “doing some shopping” here is not my question – and that question is, in any case, invalid cos there’s no reason for the poet to worry about what his functions are – as long as he is paid for it.

So, the “intellectual”, today, is a metamorphosis of the Court Poet – the difference being: today the stakes are a bit higher, the politics involved are different and the status of the intellectual on the lay society is somewhat more influential. Who is the “intellectual”? To the uncritical eye, s/he is someone knowledgeable, critically involved and “wiser” – wiser than you. Wiser than me. Which, unfortunately, is bullshit – cos the “intellectual”, too, is play acting. s/he is obediently miming an “act” in this great game of survival and the great push “forward”. And in this strife, s/he –by the default “superior” status we ascribe to and by the virtue of privileged agendas that ally by him/her– parade in front of us as the “holier than thou” and the all knowing. The “intellectual” pretends to be the objective, the observant, the calculating and the troubleshooting. Talks about the theorization of having a “sustained, pluralist, democratic Peace mechanism”. Talks of “enhancing multi-ethnic solidarity within the framework of a Federal State”. Talks in a different language. Smiles intellectually. Not an ordinary person – walks intellectual. The hairdo’s intellectual. The accent is intellectual. Habits and principles are intellectual. Fucks intellectual? Maybe not all.

Who is this intellectual then? And what is being “intellectual”? It is essentially a forging of the self, the “making up” of a self to “stand out” as an authority and a legitimizing force. It is a way of acting a part to convince others of things that have to be convincing – for the survival of the stakeholders of various power “slots”. No intellectual is innocent. They are driven and governed by a “Higher Politics” that always threatens to take over the world. Scary proposition – that.

I tell my Sri Lankan friend in UK that matters will not be solved during our lifetimes. That the promise of a pluralistic bridge to gap the Sinhala-Tamil forge will not be. We know many activists working for it. But, it will remain an ideal that is worth working for. While the mad theorist rambles and as the intellectual gambles there is too little time left in our hands to be genuine in our addressing of issues. Intellectuals and their proxies that live for peace, actually live out of peace. Another doctorate, another research, another presentation – it’s as easy as another smoke. Like another brick in the wall. Nothing comes out of these processes that fail to identify human emotions and the feelings of people whom they pretend to speak for.

There was never an intellectual. There will never be an intellectual. The “intellectual” is a lie – a make-belief. Believe in it and you die. Stop dying my friends. Start fighting for your survival and start surviving for your “intimate group”.

LAL’S BURP ON DERANA

Something tells me its inauspicious to make the first post of a blog relate to a rowdy demagogue, who, in instances where he is tired, shows the true crude metal with which he is made. But, my inspiration, as i write, for some weird reason turns towards this Leader of the “Days to Come” — this wannabe, self-appointed, self-acclaimed Trade Unionist leader and heartbeat of the Working Class, who through the framed exit of Wimal Weerawansa is now the up and coming whip of the JVP paegent: K.D. Lal Kantha.

Lal Kantha was on “360″ on Derana yesterday, being interviewed by Dilka Samanmali. And dude got pissed off a couple of times in face of the penetrating questions posed by Dilka. Lal Kantha is this prototype Communist showcase — displaying a degree of arrogance, inhibit of human emotions and a quasi-stoic mask to shield his human drives. That’s him on stage on a given routine day. His tongue lashes out in all directions cos what he says, as a member of the JVP, holds ground — cos their critique of power has always sold well, since they — as a single party — had never held power, used it nor abused it.

So, in the JVP’s priviliged status of never having run a government, they have always taken the UPFA and UNP to the wire for abuse and corruption. The JVP wing at present is still a “family” on the rise. Since their re-enter into mainstream politics in 1994, the party was grounding itself quite formidably through the rhetoric of Comrade Wimal and the semi-intellectual, rational face located in the likes of Comrades Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Hadunhetti and Bimal Ratnayake. The JVP premise was further re-fashioned by the multi-ethnic representation they proposed through the likes of Anjaan Umma and Muzammil.

Lal Kantha is, however, a guy who stood out in terms of his profile as well as his temperament. He identifies himself as a Trade Unionist and a champion of the TUs. His words cut, but they lack the artistic brilliance and the quick wit of Weerawansa’s absorbing oratorical toolkit. Nor has it Weerawansa’s depth, perceptiveness and power of appeal. But, Lal Kantha — in what I see as a stubborn love for the self over the party — championed Wimal’s execution.

Lal Kantha — whip or whap?

Today, the JVP is straggling for credibility and gasping for political breath. To say the party was shaken violently at Wimal’s exit is a gross understatement. Today, the JVP has lost its confidence and the vigour with which they attended any political forum on any TV channel. Their islandwide programmes have stalled and the mass Trade Unionist strike organized a few days ago ended as one of the worst defeats of the active Left.

Only one man seemed undeterred by it all — Lal Kantha. Lal went on the boards repeating that the strike was a roaring success and things werer being done to pull the government on to its knees. But, Lal Kantha’s rhetoric is also the nudity of the JVP, for his is hardly convincing and is in want of the credibility and the satisfying note of Wimal Weerawansa’s oratory. Between the strike and yesterday’s interview to Dilka Samanmali on Derana Lal Kantha had changed a lot:

1) He has grown in confidence as the whip of the JVP, but with his rustic tongue the whip in his hand degrades itself to the form of a bicycle chain — and it shows.

2) Lal seems a bit exhausted and his face has shrunken a bit — no one knows why.

3) He seems to be an inferior in maintaining his temperament in face of rigourous questioning — a quality that was hitherto unknown in the ranks of the JVP.

We have seen Dilka Samanmali being spoken back at by many politicos sitting for “360″. Partly, cos Dilka is a young woman posing all kinds of intriguing and (at times) part-nonsense questions and also because she is staunch in her cross-questioning politicos often find her meddling with their pants (even though they often wear a national…or are they? We don’t know ‘cos the TV only shows their busts). We can, of course, imagine a Mervyn Silva or a less-educated minister / MP being pissed at dilka, but the JVP has always had its own “cool” cucumber way of retaliating any trick question. That was, of course, until yesterday, when Lal Kantha showed first signs of cracking up under pressure — violent, “pissed”, retaliation.

JVP on fire…

What Lal Kantha and Co undertook at Wimal’s exit was to cure a pathetic political wound. The political myth the JVP had hitherto propogated — that of oneness, brotherhood and party-loyalty — got cracked that night Wimal agitated against a “conspiracy” against him from within the JVP body. For many the JVP was synonymous with Wimal Weerawansa and his all-inspiring rhetoric. And now, at its absence, the void to be filled looks too mammoth….and before its filling, other jealously-guarded party germs seem to lurk out.

Lal Kantha, in my view, lost it. He keeps losing it unable to maintain that public-profile the JVP was gradually building over for the past decade or so. No — Lal: you can’t fuck up on TV like you do on the stage of some meeting at a remote joint somewhere. You volunteered execution. Well, the die is cast. But, don’t drag the whole party down with your rustic antics and loop-filled heroics.

Dude — you will never be Wimal. Dudes — the JVP would never be without Wimal.

lettin git out

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jr_1978@gmail.com.