Childhood books, still my favourites

 

Devika Brendon is an educator, reviewer, journalist, writer and a bookworm. She was awarded First Class Honours in English Literature at the University of Sydney, and holds a PhD in English Literature from Monash University. She is a teacher of English language and literature, and a literary mentor to emerging writers of all ages. Devika’s poetry and short stories have been published in journals and anthologies in Sri Lanka, Australia, India and Italy, and now she works as the consultant editor at FemAsia and. is also on the editorial board of New Ceylon Writing.


Q: What is your favourite book?

A: The books that I loved in my childhood are still my favourites. The ones that probably had the biggest impact on me were the Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin. Not just the trilogy, but the fourth one as well, which was published 20 years later.

Q: Why do you like it?

A: I liked the story arc, the difficult main character with his wilful stubbornness and pride, and the wisdom he learns from his failures. I loved the writing: Le Guin’s own knowledge and intellectual curiosity was fused in the story with the fantasy setting she created. Her writing style is so beautiful and clear and clean, uncluttered and precise.

Q:How about the characters?

A: Ged is a person on an epic journey, a flawed individual who came to understand the stages of a person’s life, and certainly that sense of quest is something I felt drawn to. There were not many female characters in books at that time who had adventures like that. In the fourth book, Tehanu, there is strong discussion about that, as he unites with Tenar, whose life paralleled his own, but who didn’t have the freedom he had to confront and create his destiny.

Q: How did you find the book?

A: This series was given to my brother and me by our neighbours, and it began a lifelong love for adventure, fantasy and science fiction stories in both of us. I was eight years old when I first read these, and the world was full of joy, and felt safe, not as dark and troubled as it is now.

Q: Did you use libraries?

A: I loved libraries. At my first school, we had book bags and we were allowed to borrow as many books as we could carry! This love of libraries continued into my university days, and into my doctoral studies, when I did research at the Duke Humfrey library in Oxford - where the oldest books are chained to the reading desks, because they are so valuable. Old books fascinate me - their texture, the ornate print, and their beautiful illustrations. I was given a first edition of a book by Jonathan Swift as a graduation gift by my father, and it is one of the most treasured books in my own library. I researched Dr. Swift’s writing for my PhD, and to actually hold a book that he had published as a young author himself in the early 1700s is an amazing experience.

Q: What is your favourite literature?

A: I can read French, but English is my first reading language. I love a broad range of literature - historical fiction, politics, satire, detective fiction, biography, memoir, philosophy, romance, speculative fiction, essays, as well as poetry, light fiction, manga and fairy tales, myths and legends. If I like a writer’s style of writing and respect their way of thinking, I will gradually build a whole collection of their work. Donna Leon for example, has created a very interesting character called Brunetti who solves mysteries in Venice. The descriptions and details of the City and his life and family are more interesting to me than the solution of each mystery. I like feeling the different atmospheres of countries and societies when I read - books set in Sweden or Iceland are very different from those set in Africa, India or Spain. The contrasts of character and codes of behaviour are fascinating.

Q: How do you select a book to read?

A: I select books depending on my mood and the context of what I’m working on at the time. Since the coronavirus crisis, I’ve been reading a lot of Agatha Christie, whose succinct portrayals of character and setting over so many decades are so satisfying. I’ve also been reading flashy escapist thrillers by Dan Brown about the end of the world, and Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances, and Tagore’s poetry, and Tolkien.

Q: Do you have a personal library?

A: I’ve been building my personal library since I was a young person. My mother used to read to us when we were little, and we were given books as birthday gifts when growing up. At school, we belonged to book clubs where we could order paperback books which were delivered by mail, which was very exciting! I still have favourite bookshops which let me know when books come in. I arrange the books according to era and subject matter.

Q: What are your reading habits?

A: I read every day, and usually in the afternoon and evening. I can read anywhere - if the book is interesting I can’t hear or see anything else. I try not to read after 8pm in case I read into the early hours of the next day and miss out on sleep! I write in the mornings, and I like to write notes in an unlined book and then develop it straight onto my phone.

Q: Which is the more interesting: Reading or writing?

A: Reading is like stepping into someone else’s created world. Writing is immersing yourself into a world you create yourself. It’s so exciting! I’ve written short stories so far, but am working on longer stories now, and it is literally a parallel universe that draws you in, a path your own hand creates. You’re discovering your own ideas and beliefs as the characters develop.

Q: How do you feel when you read a marvelous, touching book?

A: I am very responsive to great literature, very open to being impacted by new ideas, and am moved even by very touching passages in an otherwise bland or cliched popular story, like Me Before You. I find the closing pages of the first book of The Hunger Games unbearably sad and beautifully written. I found the opening chapters of the first book of the Game ofThrones fascinating. That story line of the family members all being suddenly forced to go their different ways is a mythic starting point. Like the story of the Pandavas ( five brothers) in the Mahabharata.

Q: What do you think of the present readership in society?

A: Everyone I know reads, today. Not only my friends and colleagues and students, but so many people of all ages are reading for pleasure at every stage in life. It’s more engaging and imaginative and effortful than passively watching a story unfold on a screen. You get to know and feel for so many human beings and their lives through the written word.

Q: Do you read Sinhala novels?

A: I learned to read and write in English, and because it is an international language, there is a vast range of literature accessible, and there was a mix of all kinds of books available to me in every country from a young age. Books are the biggest component of what I own, and moving house is very difficult for that reason! I carry a book with me everywhere I go.

Q: Any advice to an aspiring writer and a reader?

A: My advice is to create time to read in your daily life. Through reading, you connect to other worlds, other times and other people’ situations and see how they dealt with the human experiences we all share. To be swept up in a story someone is telling you, is to be enchanted. It’s not necessarily escapist - it can actually help you confront and face realities you might otherwise find it hard to process. If you don’t read, you are missing out. Swift scolded a young friend of his for laziness: ‘I never look at your work without wondering how a Brat who will not read can possibly write so well’. I agree with him on this 100 %.

Handmaids’ Tales

 

Photo courtesy of joinonelove

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

The results of the recent election in the US have highlighted several concerns and one which is clearly of significance was the public preference for a male leader, however brazenly flawed, over the highly qualified female candidate. Racism definitely played its part as well but it is clear that convincing authority and leadership still look masculine to many people in 2024.

This appears to be true even if the male candidates have credible allegations of sexual assault and rape on record against them.

For the past few years, we in the End Sexual Violence Now (ESVN) campaign in Sri Lanka have sought to raise awareness in the community of the different kinds of violence that are perpetrated against women and girls in our society and in the global context, which operate to erode our rights, our freedom and our dignity.

It is discouraging that the backlash against the advances in feminist awareness that we have seen in recent years is so prevalent and that women are still being relegated to secondary or minor roles and spoken of and treated with disrespect on the global stage. The stoking of the gender wars, the rise of incels and the dislike and distrust and resentment of women is palpable, and particularly evident in South Asian societies where many men generally feel frustrated and disenfranchised.

Women who are articulate and proud of the work they do, who have a lot to say, appear to be not very shy or demure or self-deprecating and who do not feel the need to placate the egos of the men they work with are seen as unmindful, arrogant and too ambitious by their male colleagues.

Underlying almost every interaction in every workplace is this power differential, as men occupy disproportional numbers of the high positions in every sphere. Women entering the workforce like immigrants into a supremacist structure are expected to stay at entry level for years and accept inferior status and pay and recognition. Their words, if heard, are expected to not carry much weight. It is in this context that workplace harassment takes place. Disrespect that is deeply felt and has become ingrained does not stay hidden forever.

Mansplaining is something we experience almost every day. If the differential treatment women receive is pointed out, the invaded male entities complain that women are always playing the victim and getting benefits from doing so. What about men who are assaulted? Men who are victims of domestic violence? Men who are used as wallets? Men who are abused as young boys but who can’t even articulate what has happened to them because all the social attention is on the victimized girls?

Are women in 2024 still virtual immigrants in a masculinist hegemony? Still holding only minority status although statistically, in fact, outnumbering men? What violence is done to women’s worth and sense of value in such contexts as these? Do we die of exhaustion, falling short of our personal goals, drained of energy by a thousand micro-aggressions, gaslit to the grave?

Many men, and particularly men who feel frustrated by their own flatlining signs of vitality both professionally and personally, carry underlying grievances. And this insidious sense of grievance is often concealed under social niceties and the appearance of goodwill and respectability in South Asia.

So it takes us by surprise when men overreact to quite normal behavior or respond with surprising aggression when they are not agreed with or when they are asked to explain themselves or clarify their position in a discussion. Angry, stabbing motions become evident in their arm gestures, they raise their voices and make compulsive, numerous verbal attempts, both overt and covert, to undermine the dignity of the woman they are engaging with. And they say they can’t help it.

Some persist in discussing topics a woman has clearly stated she feels uncomfortable in speaking about such as Female Genital Mutilation, for example, and the “medical reasons” according to proponents of such practices as to why such interventions on the bodies of children might be “beneficial for reasons of hygiene”. Beneficial for which party, one can ask. Are men wanting to be protected from possible infection while the bodies of girls and women are subjected to hostile takeover, assault and battering ram behavior in so many contexts in the world today? Such hostile underlying disrespect is itself violent in many ways. No constructive discussion can take place in such contested territory.

The common ground between the genders has become noticeably narrower in the past serveral years. A sneering, irritated assumption that all feminists are “feminazis” is also very much on show once the social masks come off and so is the reactive, foregone conclusion that every woman must be trying to take away from every man she meets any shred of self respect he has or recognition of any admirable quality he still possesses.

Choosing personal peace in such hostile, occupied land is like progressing through a minefield. One attempts to keeps one’s head when all around you are losing their minds and blaming it on you. A recent article highlights a growing dissent by women in the context of this erosion of their sense of safety and dignity.

The 4B movement incepted by Korean women is one which counters violence with non-engagement. Having identified dating, marriage and the whole process of having and rearing children as unilateral and bearing mostly alone the emotional labor and physical and psychological exploitation inherent in the social roles imposed on them by their patriarchal context, many younger women have chosen to opt out.

Women who choose to be single, child free and have control over their time and their energy and their bodies are particularly threatening to those of a patriarchal mindset. Incel men, feeling cornered and driven into a state of passive aggression and emasculated, resent women’s power of choice as it is often, as they perceive it, exercised to exclude them. So they retaliate by portraying women as parasites who are trying to use men as providers of wealth and stability. This limited and stereotypical belief system fails to respect the greater range of capacity of both parties in any connection.

Margaret Atwood, who seems to have accurately predicted where the western world finds itself in gender wars today, has commented that while men are afraid that women will laugh at them, women are afraid that men will kill them. That’s the difference.

There are any amount of talking heads on the internet explaining many “widely-held beliefs” to us: high value men and high value women (high or low net worth in terms of income seem central to these valuations), toxic masculinity and toxic femininity versus divine masculinity and divine femininity and a myriad apologists in singlets (the right to bare arms) and tight fitting clothes influencing our assumptions.

Violence expresses itself in actions but is also manifest in words and tone and conduct and it is always sourced in beliefs, often unconscious beliefs formed in childhood and modelled by toxic family and cultural systems and never questioned or challenged by those who hold them.

To eliminate the violence in relation to the way women are currently treated, the beliefs of superiority/inferiority, strength/weakeness, power/powerlessness and value/worthlessness need to be honestly faced, understood and addressed in the privacy of our own homes before we go out and start perpetrating havoc in the lives of our fellow human beings.

4B, or not 4B, we will do well to opt for personal peace in our time. In a world at war, the only peace we can truly choose for sure is private.

Do Not Resuscitate

Image Credit: Informed Health

It is illegal to take one’s own life, in Sri Lanka. And in addition to the legal blocks, the cultural stigma against suicide is extended to the idea of ‘death with dignity’ or death which is chosen by an individual. It is not sanctioned by the State - all the major religions practised in Sri Lanka uphold doctrines which guide adherents to hold on, and trust that the Divine Creator God, by whatever name we call Him, knows better than we do, or that the suffering a person undergoes in life in purposeful, is connected to our karmic burden, and has a limit. ‘This too will pass’ is a mantra we are taught, all our lives.

http://graduate.sjp.ac.lk/icma/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/iCMA_abstract_2015_P120.pdf

In Australia, assisted death is becoming legalized, under certain conditions, including incurable health conditions, and proof that the individual seeks death with dignity, and not just an ‘easy way out’, on a difficult day. This is perfectly in keeping with the secular and progressive values of Australia, which respects the rights of individuals over the compliance to community beliefs which characterize traditional South Asian societies.

Life is certainly not meant to be easy, as one famous Australian politician once said:

Malcolm Fraser: Life wasn't meant to be easy

Why life wasn't meant to be easy

But the degree of suffering experienced by people is also not equal: chronic illness, constant physical pain, and no win situations which have no solution and no remedy affect the quality of life we experience. The last few years in particular, with the outbreak of the Covid pandemic five years ago, and the stresses and disruptions subsequently endured by the global citizenry - universally but differentially, by all of us - have highlighted this. Many people felt acute dissatisfaction with their working and living conditions, and have now started actively seeking their own happiness, even if that has involved risking unemployment or divorce or financial instability or other kinds of hardship, in the short term.

It’s necessary, in my opinion, for each person to ask themselves the big question several times, in their life: Is my life worth living? Not just is Life worth living? But is my unique individual life, as it is now, this moment, meaningful and worthwhile? And to be honest, sometimes the answer to that question is: No. What the individual does, after coming to this realisation, is very important. Usually, the feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction that prompt re-evaluation is caused by a specific situation or sometimes concurrent compounded issues, each of which has both an immediate remedy and a long term solution. Compounded issues can cause overwhelm.

Euthanasia is never going to be a solution for any problem that can be solved by a better approach, or a hard decision that needs to be taken which leads to a better life. Many difficult situations can be well managed, to a point where the problems they cause are not impacting us on a daily basis, and are effectively pushed back, allowing us to progress on a more positive path. It is important not to give up too soon.

Often our feelings cloud the ability we have to objectively weigh up the value of our lives. These feelings are transient, so acting on them in a way we cannot return from is a waste of our potential for happiness. To understand the difference between how we feel and what is really happening in our lives, we need to be able to de-stigmatize our less positive emotions, and not suppress them. By seeing them as signs that we can recalibrate our lives, and not feelings to be ashamed of, we can use them positively.

https://www.sundaytimes.lk/111127/Plus/plus_17.html

Democracy includes the ideas of pluralism, diversity and inclusion, of tolerance of the opinions and beliefs of others. In a modern progressive democracy, the dictates of cultural tradition would be questioned, and at times even challenged, if they interfere with the rights of an individual to act in accordance with their own wishes, as long as these actions do not adversely impact the society as a whole.

Within the framework of the law of the land, our rights and responsibilities create lines which are demarcated both formally and informally. Sri Lanka is a society which can be very traditional, conventional and conformist, and like many South Asian societies, expects people to suppress and repress their pursuit and exercise of individual freedoms for the benefit of the wider community.

Marriages are arranged, pressure is put on young people at every stage to adhere to their parents’ wishes in practically every area of life, from birth through education, to the gaining of qualifications, to choice of job, to marriage. Many people wonder if they are living their own lives, or the lives shaped for them by others. However, when it comes to the end of life, the right to die with dignity, if that is our choice, should surely not be interfered with.

The unexamined life is not worth living. This is well known:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unexamined_life_is_not_worth_living

But the pace and business of life today makes it difficult to conduct these self examinations of our life at all, let alone regularly. I suggest that the traditional Biblical three score and ten years of a lifespan allotted to human beings is a wise one, encompassing the seasons of possibility we all potentially experience, from youth to maturity, and then peak wisdom.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34876119/

It is the challenge of our lives as human beings that, as we grow in intellectual and emotional wisdom and life experience, our bodies naturally deteriorate and weaken, as we age. The latter part of our lives is more likely to include serious health issues.

The quality of life encompasses far more than just physical survival. Human dignity includes safety, respect, cleanliness, kindness, joy, growth and the capacity to be supported in independence as long as possible. This becomes more important as we become more vulnerable.

In Western culture, individualistic and progressive, an individual’s life stages are defined in more material terms. We are born into a family within a social system, we become a legal adult aged about 18, we study or train for a profession, we become qualified, we start earning, and we build a family and work until we retire. There is only one life, according to Christian precepts, and this is it. And the value of our life is usually measured by what we earn, and the peak of our life is viewed as our retirement from work.

In the South Asian traditions, we are a student, and then a householder. But once our children are growing up, our life opens up rather than shuts down: we start to consider our spiritual journey. We step back from the hurry and the stress of our action-oriented working life, and we develop our inner and more contemplative life, in mindful preparation for the next birth. We work through our residual karma, to try and liberate our spirit, so that when our body ceases to function, we will be free of its limits and restrictions.

With the body we are allocated at birth comes the attachments that go with it. The facial features, the genetic attributes, the predispositions to good or bad health, the skin colour, the ethnic identity, even the cultural identity, are the externalised keys which turn in us to activate our actions. When we progress to the later stages of life, we realize that so many of these fiercely contested aspects of our identities are not that significant.

What matters is how we have conducted ourselves, and how we have played the hand we have been dealt. The content of our Highlights Reel looks different, through a less material and more spiritual frame.

If we are honest, we will recognise that the odds are in our favour in the early part of our life. Vitality, energy, optimism, egoism and survivalism all motivate us to build ourselves and the shape of our lives according to our ambitions.

We have, through the successful utilization of modern medicine, increased the years of our prime by 15-20 years, in the post Industrialization era, from ages 35-55. But we should not let this success make us feel all powerful and immune from the inevitable limits of our mortality. Because it is in this earlier era of life, while still compos mentis, that we make the choices about our life’s overall worth and value, and the legacy we leave.

As the odds start to shift against us, it is important that we realize that death with dignity is one every person would ideally prefer: at a time and a place of our choice; and as an action authorised and respected by the jurisdiction in which we live.

A New Low In Bro Behaviour

Image Credit to ‘Miss Estephani’

Look up “schoolgirl” and “rape” and “Sri Lanka”. There are many stories which are posted by Google Search with those taglines. We have to refine the search for the most recent atrocity by location and date. Location: Thanamalwila. It is difficult to determine the date because the case involves a situation of ongoing multiple incidents of rape over the course of several months. These incidents were brought to light only when the young girl became pregnant and gave birth to a child and a report was then made concerning the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy.

Twenty two perpetrators were involved in ongoing sexual assault, abuse and coercion of the minor girl. Police are interviewing and charging the students involved, the principal and deputy principal of the school, some of the teachers and some of the parents who sought to cover up the incidents to protect the school’s reputation, their own professional positions in the case of the teachers and the status and reputation of the perpetrators and their families.

The case is being called a “gang rape”. And that is the aspect of it I want to focus on in this article: particularly “gang” behaviour as part of male subculture. In many cities all over the world, teenage boys join gangs in their local neighbourhoods to establish solidarity with their peers and to gain protection and support and a sense of power for themselves. The emotional vulnerability of boys, and particularly in the age group in their teens and twenties, has been highlighted in recent times by many sociologists, focusing on the relative social and psychological isolation of boys, their difficulty communicating their inner feelings and the toxic masculinity culture which surrounds them and makes it hard for them to express or respect vulnerability in themselves or others.

They are also growing up in an online culture which is saturated in pornography where women and girls are routinely objectified, reduced to their physical appearance and characteristics and treated with scorn and disrespect. The most violent of these pornographic films and stories and images both portray and encourage sadism, where pleasure is derived by viewers from seeing acts of dehumanising cruelty inflicted on women. It must be said that this culture of pornography is readily accessible to anyone who has a phone, tablet or computer and that it exists and flourishes and is normalised within a general culture in Sri Lanka in which the status and dignity of women are unacceptably debased.

Gang rape is more prevalent in South Asia than in other countries and India and Sri Lanka report more incidents of such atrocities than other countries in the region. This reflects on the status of women in these countries and highlights the urgent need for the upliftment of girls and women in every aspect of life.

What makes this case stand out in a terrible way is that because of the age and context of the victim and her attackers, what is exposed is not only the breakdown of moral awareness and accountability on the part of the boys, but the dereliction of the duty of care of many of the adults involved from the teachers in the schools to the parents of the schoolboy perpetrators and allegedly some of the medical personnel who were initially presented with the crisis.

Smartphone penetration
It costs about Rs. 10-25,000 to get a basic smartphone which has the capacity to take photographs and make videos and share the images via WhatsApp or other forms of messaging. Even children in regional schools would be able to afford such a device. How they use it is up to them. Sri Lanka, despite its overall economic challenges, has one of the highest rates of smartphone usage in the world and has one of the cheapest rates payable for digital data in the world. Children from the smartphone generation may be technically proficient but show deficiencies in other areas of social and psychological knowledge, empathy and relational awareness in what are called “soft skills”. The very term suggests that these skills are fragile and undervalued in a vision of a harsh and challenging world.

Sri Lanka recently passed legislation to empower women: Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality Bills. It is difficult to think of any situation which could be more disempowering than the crisis in which this young girl has been involved. The references in the news articles to tuition and tuition teachers opens up an insight which we need to register while thinking about this case. The age of the students is significant because they were Year 11 students, 15 or 16 years of age, meaning they had finished or were finishing their O’Levels. Many students after O’Levels in Sri Lanka seem to lose any motivation for academic achievement and are bored and disengaged, relying on tutoring to get them through their school coursework. The focus on rote learning, and lack of teaching of critical thinking skills, and the absence of Civics as a subject in the school curriculum contribute to the lack of relevance of the formal education, from the students’ perspective.

School is therefore not for them a focus of learning but more a social forum in which they can engage with their peers. A’Level students are already geared for academic success and are from aspirational families who encourage their progress. The danger of stagnancy in those who are merely going through the motions of education is not only intellectual but moral. Students who do not see any future for themselves via academic routes still must attend school and it is in the Years 7-10 (up to the age of 14) prior to O’Levels that such moral education should be encouraged. This of course includes contemporary sex education focusing on consent, which is surely best understood in the context of moral responsibility to one’s fellow citizens. In other countries and in urban areas the students of this age group might be focusing on entering their A’Level courses, planning on further study at university and obviously not wanting to disrupt their own career development and prospects in any way.

But the personal disengagement of the children in this age group and these regional areas must be noted and addressed. Observing the responses to the reporting of this case on social media, which range from suggestions of punitive actions against the rapists, to harsh sentencing, treating the perpetrators as adults under the law, despite their young ages, we see that this case seems to have created shame as well as shock and horror and disbelief on the part of the general public.

Interestingly, while media outlets are updating us about the case, there appears to not be much commentary about this case on Facebook, the social media platform of choice for most Sri Lankans. Perhaps people have no words. They are asking “How did our society become so broken? Our systems are failing us”. The responses by public institutions such as the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus show that public authorities have early identified the collapse of proper protections for the minor child in this case. However, rectifying such a situation will be complex and challenging, where damage has been so multi-faceted: punitive measures and calling to account people who are fearful of their own reputations and have already chosen to ignore the rights of a vulnerable child in their care are the first step but may fall short of what the child herself requires. Does she know what help to ask for? Are these resources and supports available to her? Her ongoing health and well being need sensitive and consistent empowerment.

Psychologists are required to skillfully, patiently and with sensitivity help this child rebuild her sense of self: her dignity, her worth, her boundaries and her ability to trust not only others but her own judgment and to generate a sense of optimism for her future. In this case, the victim and the perpetrators all live in a small community and are known to each other. The degree of shame and stigma applied to her, the public speculation about her relationship with the young man with whom she was in love and who lured her into a situation of vulnerability, the repeated blaming of her as a victim rather than the calling to account of the perpetrators, are thus amplified. There is no protective anonymity in her immediate community.

Rape is not about desire, it is about power
In recent studies done in Australia where domestic violence and gender based violence are sharply escalating, 90% of young women surveyed said they felt unsafe and disempowered in relation to men. In this case, the 22 perpetrators were abusing the power their gender confers on them in a patriarchal society, and the power of numbers, against one defenceless girl, forcing her to drink alcohol to diminish her capacity to resist, bonding with each other through the shared outrages they committed against her, leveraging the vulnerable state in which her regard for the boy with whom she was in love placed her and harnessing the power of technology to shame their victim into repeated compliance. Her humiliation clearly made them feel powerful. They must have felt a cowardly, roaring sense of affirmation and victory to be able to trap this young girl into a situation of chronic shame, worthlessness, panic and helplessness, effectively making her into what they seem to see her and other girls and young women to be: a sort of caged and defenceless, subhuman being, with no autonomy and no power of consent, whom they could terrorise and subjugate to their collective will.

The facts of this case seem to come straight from a vision of hell, a world where innocence and humanity have been eroded. We are all the losers every time such incidents occur. Many are saying, “How have we come to this? The country is damaged beyond redemption”. However, people who live and work in such a society and still continue to strongly adhere to the highest personal standards continue to work to raise awareness of the urgent need for improvement in child protection and the status of women. In a way, the dark context revealed by the emergence of cases such as this illuminates those who are working to improve the situation, by contrast.

We live in a world in which people are hyper aware of their own rights. In this context, responsibilities towards others, including respect, courtesy and the upholding of their rights and dignity, need to be modelled by adults to children and applied with integrity and consistency by those in authority. If the children of a country are its future, we need to support and protect them far better. They are all, including the perpetrators of these acts, showing the impacts of the dereliction of duty of care which is owed to them under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

They are becoming desensitised to the rights of others, particularly those most vulnerable. Just like a personal health crisis shows the need for immediate improvement in the self care of an individual, so a case like this shows us that a total re-evaluation needs to take place in both the way such cases are handled by authorities concerned and the provision of pre-emptive measures via education and awareness of youth in regard to matters concerning sexual conduct as well as attention directed to ongoing support and care of those affected by abuse and attack.

We all, as individuals and collectively, look in the mirror at stages in the process of our development and at times like this we do not like what we see. What we then do next is what determines the outcome. We could transform our shame into action; we could make Sri Lanka a case study of radical improvement and positive change, just from citizens’ activity and collective conduct. Social media and online communication platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are powerful instruments. Such a use of online resources to inform and uplift our community would be a remedy for the abuse of technology we have seen in this case where smartphone capacity was unconscionably abused, to shame and degrade one of our children.

Some members of the public are so desensitized that they indulge in laughter at the case. Many of us reading the details of this case may be struggling to have any empathy for the perpetrators, finding it hard to try and envisage or imagine why they engaged in this terrible behaviour repeatedly and over such a long period of time.
The emphasis in Sri Lanka in these matters always seems to be on punishment and retribution. This does not help. It is surely an illustration of a fear- based culture, which shames and blames, but where atrocities continue to occur. The perpetrators need counselling to restore their moral compass. Their identities are being protected while the legal charges are being formulated, as is that of their victim.

While researching this story, I found an endless store of images of girls covering their faces in fear and shame that are continually used to accompany the media articles concerning the case. It is sickening and also disturbing. Why not show images of the shameless perpetrators instead? Or at least artist renditions? It is the perpetrators that need to account for their actions. What they did, and the reasons they did it, once proved, actually disqualify them morally from being able to rejoin society without reforming their characters. The perpetrators should be the focus of the attention of the authorities, not the victim. Not just in this case, but in all such cases.

Punishment after the fact is not enough; pre-emptive education is needed.

Reframed: The power of women

Devika Brendon reflects on Anoma Wijewardene’s recent exhibition held during the SLDF.

Anoma Wijewardene’s latest exhibition took place, appropriately, at The City Of Dreams, the new Cinnamon Life Hotel, during the Sri Lanka Design Festival (SLDF). The artworks were captioned by poetic lines written by Ramya Jirasinghe. There were also contributions by other activists and writers, interspersed with the artworks in the form of placards.

Reflect: Reframe: Renew celebrates the magnificent power embodied in women to overcome the devastation inherent in our experiences of life and emerge transformed, just as the Earth renews itself after every catastrophe.

This series of paintings expressed in a variety of media by the artist Anoma Wijewardene incorporates the writings of the poet Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe and Jayanthi Kuru Utumpala, the women’s rights activist and mountaineer. Anoma, Ramya and the activist Rosanna Flamer-Caldera participated in a vibrant conversation about creativity and the vital need for creative expression, in a panel discussion moderated with great insight by Radhika Hettiarachchi during the Design Festival.

The theme of the exhibition was ‘Reflect, Reframe, Renew’, and many of the images in the artworks and the words focused on women, and feminine energy. These are not at all soft skills: the capacity to reflect, both to mirror the world courageously and to confront the self and its experiences, to journey within, is an introspective process that requires great courage. What happens when we look at what the mirror reflects, and are challenged by what we see? Do we gloss it over, or do we regenerate?

Much of female experience in the world involves reframing narratives which exclude or limit us, or narrowly focus on whatever parts of us are deemed attractive or desirable. We are also required to support and console many of the hurt and suffering people in the world, helping them to reframe their sense of self and the trajectory of their life, after trauma or loss.

That recalibration requires a setting aside of the ego, and the understanding that we live not only physically in a material world, run by masculinist viewpoints and machines and money, but simultaneously a spiritual realm, in which our intuition and our energetic awareness and our capacity to imaginatively create and celebrate and wonder are our guides.

Renewal is a process that we as women intimately understand: cycles of body, mind and spirit define our lives. The natural world with its seasons and prompts, the budding and the blossoming and the shedding, all illustrate renewal. Seen and measured by the utility of our reproductive capacity, we need visual art like this to illustrate our multidimensional regenerative abilities, of healing and mending and again and again, the making of choices which shape the world.

Panel discussion from left: Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, Radhika Hettiarachchi, Anoma Wijewardene and Ramya Jirasinghe

The artworks are visually stunning, both individually and as a sequence. They use techniques of superimposition, which at times make them appear embossed: correlating images like human fingerprints and strands of hair against semi transparent human figures, and the weblike roots and branches of trees. The overall impression is that of Life, streaming through us, in a river of sensations and impressions. Some images look like frogspawn, some like strands of DNA, some like a mosaic of kaleidoscopic waterfalls, some like fragments of tears. Some of the human figures have nimbus-like radiance around their faces and heads. The artworks show us as made of water, and of glass, as Ramya’s poetic captions highlight. They show individual fractals in a collective stream of consciousness.

I had the pleasure a few years ago of doing part of the final copy editing of Anoma’s monograph titled ‘Anoma’, cataloguing and collating her entire life’s work, and this exhibition is a powerful addition to her oeuvre. In keeping with her lifelong preoccupations, it shows that the fragility of our human lives, and our heretofore careless misapprehension of our place in the natural world and the geopolitical spheres, which has led to the climate crisis we currently face, has only one remedy.

Give me one life. A woman: humble, proud, arrogant, lost, drained, searching, mad. A woman redeemed by her core that refused to become a lie.

We must awaken. To return to a sense of alignment and attunement, to ‘return to the heart’s centre’ to co-create, and co-exist. To use our sentience. In the poem ‘Renewal’, Ramya states in words what Anoma’s artwork illustrates: ‘Here every renewal must be self-made.’

Ramya’s poem ‘Deliverance’ expresses a hope that:
‘We will choose instead
The water that springs from
The earth at its darkest hour
And will hold in one
Cupped palm every possibility.
In a moment, on our own,
Each of us will return
To the singing winds
The lucid light and
Call our bodies this earth
This earth our raft.’

The whole experience of attending this exhibition and the discussion was an immersive and flowing one. The volunteer guides, the administrative staff, the interns and trainee curators, the individuals who helped pack and convey and hang the artworks in such an evocative way in the Mercedes Benz Gallery, were all exemplary in their professionalism.

Congratulations to all concerned!

In her artist’s statement for the exhibition, Anoma writes:
These are the best of times and the worst of times for women.

Individual women are breaking glass ceilings, becoming Presidents and Prime Ministers, heading corporations, flying into space as astronauts, winning Nobel prizes in the sciences and fighting on the frontlines with male soldiers.

At the same time violence against women throughout the world is on the rise and the vast majority of women are involved in care work in the family without any relief or support. In war zones they are killed, maimed and cower as bombs and drones destroy their families and every fabric of their society. In some countries they are denied schooling, employment and cannot leave home without a male relative. Women in many strata of society face sexual harassment and abuse with certain cities being notorious for their high incidence of rape.

In all societies they still remain victims of misogyny, dismissed and diminished in everyday life. Yet women comprise 49.72% of the global population.

In that sense the fight for women’s freedom is only beginning.

There is so much more to do.

Growing The Market For Local Fine Art

The first Charity Auction of Modern and Contemporary Sri Lankan Art was conducted by the renowned auction house Sotheby’s under the auspices of The George Keyt Foundation, on 9th December, at the Forum, in the new City Of Dreams at Cinnamon Life.

There were 46 pieces of modern and contemporary art and sculpture on the auctioneer’s block, donated by the artists themselves, or by artists’ estates, collectors and philanthropists. This was what is known as a ‘white glove’ auction, because every piece sold, and most lots sold for amounts far above the estimates. The proceeds from this auction are for charity, and to support The George Keyt Foundation, which is committed to encouraging emerging creative artists in Sri Lanka. People who registered, gave and bid generously as it was a charity auction, and to help the creative economy.

This auction superbly achieved its goal. Every part of the process was smooth and orderly, presided over by Sotheby’s world wide Co-Head, Director of Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art, auctioneer Ishrat Kanga, and facilitated by a panel of George Keyt Foundation observers led by Malaka Talwatte, on the watch for incoming bids from all parts of the crowded venue. The artworks themselves had been on display in an adjoining room for the past few days, and there had been fundraising dinners, and panel discussions illuminating various aspects of the event, in the buildup to the auction itself.

In conversation with the artists Prof Emeritus Jagath Weerasinghe, Mariah Lookman and Anoma Wijewardene, Ishrat Kanga had pointed out the significance of the ‘43 Group not only in Sri Lankan but world art, and the pride that we should all feel as a country that so many great painters and creative artists have been born and worked and found inspiration here. Sri Lanka in all its complexity is the prompt for incredible creativity, and this is now becoming clear to all, with the kind of commitment shown by the organisers of this event.

Until recently, and globally, art has been seen as exclusively the realm of the wealthy and the highly educated elite. In Sri Lanka, with its economic challenges in recent years, when basic commodities were in short supply for a large percentage of the population, the making and selling of fine art was definitely seen as a luxury and viewed by many as ‘non-essential’. Food on the table was more important than art on the walls. But an interest in making and owning art is a sign that we are not just surviving, but thriving.

So this auction was an indication of how wealthy some citizens of contemporary Sri Lanka are, and a clear sign that the art loving purchasers are willing to invest handsomely in the creative effort and enterprise of their own local artists. This interest raises the value of all the art works not only in this auction, but the wider bodies of work created by all the artists who participated, and by extension the broader artistic community.

The catalogue for this auction was beautifully designed and presented. The photographs of the artworks within its pages are vibrant, clear and detailed, and it also incorporates sections which outline the procedures involved in registering to bid, and to participate in the auction. There had clearly been a great deal of thought and dedication involved in presenting this event, and the ways in which the artworks were made visually accessible to members of the public who were first time auction attendees, or unsure of the procedure, were very effective. The young team at the welcome desk were extremely helpful, patient and professional in dealing with the attendees.

There had been great interest in several of the items prior to the commencement of bidding, and the big seller of the event, featured on the cover of the catalogue, started at 17 million LKR and sold ultimately for 24 million LKR. The bold, distinctive work of George Keyt himself, and that of the brilliant Stanley Kirinde, went for comparatively lower prices, when their renowned reputations are considered, although the prices were still substantial in relation to their initial presentation. In contrast, the works of the younger generation of contemporary artists were spiritedly bid for, and the auction brought their work into a higher platform of recognition and appreciation.

It was noticeable that the more hard hitting political pieces and the more subtle and layered works were less sought after than those presenting profusions of flowers, and splashes and explosions of bright colour. Perhaps it will take a few more auctions like this for the valuation of art in the country to expand and become more refined, to include appreciation of aspects of geopolitical history, and philosophy, on the part of the public.

For this, the younger generation must be made more aware of the rich history that is our collective legacy. Public and private art galleries are now understanding the value of educating their audience, and the whole process of viewing, interpreting, analysing and appreciating art is being made more accessible to all, although acquiring and owning the artworks is still only possible for a relative few.

The valuation of art is a subjective and subtle realm. Far more than even its monetary or market value, is the value of the effect of shape, form, texture and aesthetic impact on a person who lives with a work created by another human being. You can see a sculpture like the compelling ‘Jupiter’ by Sanjaya Geekiyanage, in diverse ways, and from multiple perspectives: the crafted face of the father of the gods, with spirals of copper emerging from his mind space, like the imagining of the cosmos itself.

Included in the value of each art work is its provenance, the multilayered story told by its form and design, the materials used by the artist to convey their insight and vision, and the details of the life of the artist who created it: what place each work holds in the overall creative landscape of each creator. This value increases over time, the more we learn and appreciate the works of the artists amongst us.

Power To The People

Image Credit: John Lennon YouTube Channel

Reflecting on the recent elections in both Sri Lanka and the US is an interesting exercise particularly because, as the two countries now have synchronized election cycles, comparisons and contrasts are readily evident.

The US has presented itself for decades as a beacon of democracy: progressive and inclusive and an upholder of human rights within its borders. However, the prospective 47th president of the US and the team he is appointing seem to be getting ready to preside over the demolition of democracy and the erosion of many rights and freedoms, particularly for the most vulnerable groups in the country.

By endorsing the rights of billionaires, tech bros and capitalists; asserting the rights of those who have committed multiple atrocities against women and girls; and prioritizing the territorial and occupancy rights of proud white Anglo European Americans over the multi-hued peoples who have until now dreamed the American dream, the new administration is going to complete what the thugs who assaulted the Capitol on January 6, 2021 began. They play exclusionary politics inciting human fear, focusing on a message of survivalism and thriving on adversarial combat, heedless of the destruction that ensues and even glorying in that destruction, describing any challenge to their bullish, self-serving narrative as “whining” and “fake news”.

This hostile takeover siege of the US mindscape has destroyed what the country has taken centuries to build, in just a few desperate years.

Qualified representatives
In contrast, Sri Lanka is emerging from a haphazard 75 years since independence with a record number of female politicians in the new government including for the first time several ministers representing the minority Tamil community. These are educated, professional people, ready to lead and mindful of their responsibilities to the people who have elected them. Few of them come from elite or privileged backgrounds and the nepotism and cronyism that characterized the previous administrations are not likely to take hold in what is clearly a meritocracy.

Their first act, now that the results of voting are being finalized, is to request that all incoming MPs undergo training and familiarization with legal and political protocols and procedures during a three day period of briefings and training.

A second positive step is that no MPs will be permitted to hire spouses, children or family members as part of their personal team of advisors or ministerial staff.

The instant recall of politically appointed diplomats and government representatives after the presidential election a few weeks ago was also a clear sign of the consistency with which new policies are being enacted.

Politicians and those claiming to be dedicated to enacting the will of the people are now being held accountable. Performance reviews are clearly being undertaken. Those who demonstrably do not add any value to the political process or the country’s reputation are being disqualified. The swamp, to use a recent American metaphor, is being effectively drained.

There is a lot at stake for both countries. The societal outrage that built up in Sri Lanka in 2022, erupting in the aragalaya, has been effectively channelled in a positive way in the formal election of this new government. The election has completed the dissolution of corrupt and outdated governance that the aragalaya began.

A new accountability
However, the people have suffered a great deal over the past several years and will be expecting very high standards of performance from the new administration. The abolition of the executive presidency will be a crucial first step and a test of political integrity.

The united scorn of the voters against the previous incumbents was shown not only by the noticeably low number of votes that previous MPs, particularly the loudest and most notable, received at these polls. It was an extraordinary sight to see, posted by every major print newspaper’s social media page, pictures of the unsuccessful candidates with the words Out!, Lost!, Gone! and Failed! stamped over the pictures of their faces. Only the most brazen of these people have sought to get a seat in parliament via the national lists, having not secured enough personal votes at the election.

Authoritarianism is expressed most openly when any individual wields absolute executive power and this has been demonstrated multiple times in many countries. If a leader has the support of a majority, they often believe they can dismiss or ignore the voices of the minority who did not support them. The people as a whole are given lip service and are only listened to once every few years as election dates approach and ignored wholesale for all the years between. If voters are uneducated regarding their rights and responsibilities, the true power of democracy is white-anted until only a facade remains providing no shelter in any storm.

The US is chaotically lurching towards authoritarianism and the cowboys and cowgirls at the helm seem to be glorying in the thrills involved in the public demise of the values of the founding fathers. In the name of patriotism, a return to colonialist settler values is being imposed: Christian prayers are to be said in all schools; the erasure of difference or divergence – whether related to sexual preference or neurological status – which is called dangerous or abnormal or deviant, enforced; and the forcible annihilation of pronouns and gender identity and reproductive choices that challenge the idea of anyone not wanting to populate the country in a binary way undertaken resulting in a retrofitted society with trad wives subservient to masculinist husbands – A Handmaid’s Tale territory. And fueling this retrograde is the backlash against feminism, the rise of incels and the normalization of “high value” and “high worth” standards used to describe men and women but being sourced only in terms of the income a person earns rather than their character and their conduct.

Reprehensible conduct
The discourse adopted by the incoming team of robo bros is indicative of the way they intend to dominate the Disunited States. Mockery by stereotypes: Childless cat ladies. Disabled people whose vulnerabilities are seen as offensive by those who are not disabled. Darkies. Savages. Trash people. Garbage people. Losers. Failures. All these phrases are fascist projections of disturbed and contemptuous mindsets that identify physical perfection as being exclusively embodied by seven foot tall, super rich, blue eyed blondes.

North America, unbelievably to the people proud to be American in the past, may become part of a protectionist Aryan hegemony like something out of space fiction. Narrowing its citizens’ minds, suppressing books that threaten its sense of historical evangelical destiny, tarnishing its legacy as an upholder of human dignity while shining up the dollar signs and appointing sex offenders as national role models. Calling itself a “First World Country” with an International Dial Code of #1 while its leaders intimidate their own voting citizens and encourage abuse and violence towards those who fall outside the criteria now being imposed on them. It starts with illegal and undocumented immigrants and mass deportations. But as anyone who has ever deep cleaned their own house will testify, cleaning and clearing and de-cluttering can become addictive after awhile. Where does it stop?

In contrast, Sri Lanka appears at last to be positively embracing diversity and opening itself to the reality that people of varied experiences and capacities can grow in leadership. The active and dynamic citizens’ justice movements that have emerged in adverse circumstances have created an ecosystem which has determinedly brought increased awareness of human dignity and the rights of the vulnerable into the social and cultural landscape, questioning the traditional patriarchal values and the feudal class systems which have suppressed the contributions of many talented individuals. The economic hardships suffered by the citizens over the past years have tested their resilience and they take nothing for granted. Social division and the politics of contempt and derision is something that no one wants, having been collectively jerked around like puppets by racist ideologues for decades.

Unlike the citizens of the US, most Sri Lankans do not feel entitled to anything they have not earned including international recognition and respect. On a personal note, US citizens engaged in international discussions on social media seem to automatically assume that every post on FB is referring to them and that they and their concerns are the center of every thought and conversation. It is over-reach. The whole world is not a backdrop for their narcissistic motion picture. Any nation which ceases to look beyond its borders will stagnate.

I predict that, if Sri Lanka’s financial and economic situation continues to improve, through collective focused effort a far greater autonomy can be achieved by this small island nation, which consistently punches above its weight in the talent, creativity and capability of its people. It will be possible for a better awareness of human rights and the dignity of citizens to grow in a more stable country where corruption in all its brazen and insidious forms is stymied.

Once the swamp is cleared and the sovereign soil reclaimed, we could find that very soil, steeped in decades of mud and mire, offering fertile possibilities. The national flower, the lotus, which famously emerges and flourishes in the most dire conditions, will then become an even more meaningful symbol for us all. Then people seeking better prospects need not look overseas for them.

What could we see happening, if the brakes and limitations that have operated on this country are summarily dissolved and removed?

What will we see when people frustrated by corruption, cronyism and normalized low standards of conduct, are incentivized and supported to become their best selves? This will be the self governance that a former colony has always wanted. In shining contrast to nations who have built their wealth on colonial exploitation and forceful slave labor and laid the foundations of their societies on the oppression of others.

Examples of what to be, what not to be.

Sri Lankan people today are going in a sociopolitical direction that will place them in a better position than bigger and wealthier nations in the years to come. 22.4 million people are far easier to manage, educate and effectively resource than 334.9 million. And after everything we have collectively experienced, we will hopefully start to unshackle ourselves from the horrors in our own history, both imposed and self-created.

Lessons have been learned by Sri Lanka, which we hope will not be forgotten in the years to come. However, the US is likely to be an example to the world, over the next few years, of the dangers of indulging in the compulsions of our baser selves. We can watch it all on television as an example of what not to be. When Elon Musk boastfully tweeted “Game. Set. And match” in the immediate aftermath of the US election, it was the crowing of a death watch not only over the Democratic Party but the heralding of a new dark ages. America the self-styled beacon of democracy will see many of its cherished values wither in that darkness. Its much vaunted wealth and economic force are now being marshalled by grabbing individuals to whom a sense of inclusive community is anathema.

The country that gave us 150 years of great literature, cinema, art and culture, which housed and supported some of the greatest expressions of human talent and artistry the world has ever seen, which embraced people from all cultures and races in the 20th century and provided a place in which they could reach their fulfillment, is now shutting its borders and dumbing itself down, preparing to be presided over by a bunch of stormtroopers who learned their moral values from computer games and pornography.

It’s not entertainment. It’s a tragic display. We in South Asia have endured this kind of abusive politics for decades. We would not wish it on anyone.

In Sri Lanka, we used to call ourselves a resplendent land. In the years to come, we are set to shine again. We will be over here, being our best selves, raising the value of our passports. And questioning anyone who tries to come here illegally. After 500 plus years of colonisation, we know what bullying looks like. We have a right to defend ourselves and a right to prosper. The true enemy of the people until recently has been our own misplaced aspirations, learned helplessness and the ease with which we have been manipulated.

Recent events have shown us the capacity of people power to change the trajectory of a country’s future. Vistas of splendor and prosperity proved to be mirages and evaporated in Sri Lanka in the heat of 2022. A sense of awareness of the bitter suffering and frustration of the collective was felt throughout the country and is now being acted on in a unifying way which recognises and respects individual difference and diverse experience.

In contrast, in the US and in contradiction of every principle of democracy, hierarchy and social division are evident: public discourse is increasingly acrimonious and incendiary and people are being labelled as “The 1%” and “The Rest”, as winners and losers. The sneering and contempt which have become normalized in the past decade between adherents of the two major political parties are being modelled by its leaders.

The next few years will see one country course correcting, engaged in self monitoring and conscious reform and the other violently sweeping away many advancements in the name of “strength” and “national pride”. Actions will speak loudly and it is the actions of both sets of leaders that will impact the citizens of both countries.

The people who have tried to game the system will lose. Politics is not a game played for entertainment. It is people’s lives and hopes that are at stake. The winners in this new era are those who will care for something more than themselves and their own fame and aggrandizement. Any leader who does not embody and enact the best values of the whole populace is a loser before his own inauguration, no matter what demands and delusions are bellowed through megaphones and magaphones.