The Freedom Of The City

Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today





For a few days in January, several years ago, the fortress town of Galle in Sri Lanka started to host a literary festival, known informally as the 'GLF'. In the last dark years of the recent Civil War, this event seemed to gleam and glow, like a lava lamp of colour: providing an illuminated reflection of what a world focused on something more than survival could look like.

This year, after several years' absence, the GLF emerged into new life: generously funded by a corporate sponsor, Fairway Holdings, for the next five years, and offering to the inhabitants of the literary multiverse for a few gilded days an array of events: giving the book-reading and literature-loving public open access to authors and books, literary critics, reviewers, academics and judges.

Galle itself reminds me of an inlaid autonomous island - like Venice - or university towns like Cambridge, or Oxford - the self-containment of its inhabitants is striking. The absolutely everyday lives of its citizens continue unabated, while the pervasive influx of visitors buzzes and hums through its streets: myriads of people observing, purchasing, comparing descriptions in guide books and apps downloaded onto their smart phones with what they see in front of them.

There are not many streets, and the charm of this small City is that it can be navigated on foot, or by three wheeler, very easily. Everything is close to everything else. Old administrative buildings, churches and splendid organisational structures built by the Dutch, the Law Courts and hospitals and public squares, are being used as venues and backdrops for literary events, and glittering little restaurants and bars have been created on almost every lane and avenue.

Young army officers do training runs through the town, chanting their rhythmic motivational songs, school children in their dazzling white uniforms are just starting school for the New Year, and savvy old men pull out those ubiquitous plastic bucket chairs onto the uneven pavements to watch the passers by.

As in Venice, you get glimpses of people's ways of living through half-curtained windows and semi-closed doors: you get the impression of courtyards and luxurious interiors gleaming just past the paving stones leading to a personal threshold, of people's private existences continuing just beyond your ability to contemplate them.

As in Oxford, at Christmas-time, the narrow cobblestoned streets after dusk are draped with banners and streamers of multi-coloured lights, bejewelling the old stone walls and buildings, and even shimmering in the trees, like faux weeping willows.

The three-wheeler drivers are in their glory: interfacing with foreigners for whom thousands of local rupees are less than 100 units of their American or Euro currency, and who are happy to pay 300 rupees to be whizzed from one end of town to the other, laden with various-sized parcels from the boutique shops and Spa Ceylon and Colombo Jewellery Stores.

Galle seems really accessible, this time: despite the intense demand, it is still possible to stay in the heart of this City, in a bed and breakfast type inn, for twenty or thirty dollars a night. Students and clusters of young people proliferate and abound, and it is possible to reside right next to one's buddies in adjoining hostels. Each of these kinds of hotels within the Fort area have limited numbers of rooms that can be offered, so privacy and cosiness are ensured. Tiled floors, shuttered windows, plastered walls, columned street frontage, breakfast or tea out in the back garden, al fresco style, 'with different kind of Shady plants, with birds giving sound and pleasant music.'

Many people are sitting out in cheap and cheerful colourful cafés, with newspapers or magazines, their skins getting burnished and leathered by the sun in the heat of the day. The sea roars just a little, in the mid-distance, breaking on the shores and  up against the sheltering ramparts, distant echoes of the tsunami, and there are long moments of bell-like, resonant silence, interspersed with human connection in the midst of a flowing stream of effervescent, kaleidoscopic colour and texture.

The Festival itself offers multiple points of access to authors and their work, and this is the brilliance of its concept. Each author can give a solo presentation of their work, or specific texts, with visual technological accompaniments such as documentaries or film footage, or be in conversation with a local author or journalist, in really comfortable looking chairs on stage, with the audience listening in, or be on a panel to discuss literary issues with other authors and commentators. The Q and A sessions after these have been excellent and inclusive, and well-supported with technological equipment such as wireless portable microphones. The majority of the events on offer can be accessed relatively inexpensively, for the equivalent of 10 dollars, well worth the cost.

At the ticket office in the Sports Hall, on the morning of the second day, an irate American gentleman had just discovered that he had left it too late to get day passes to events on Friday and Saturday. They had been on sale for a month, and there were now none left. He explained that he and his wife had come all the way from the States for these two days. The All Galle Pass came to his rescue. For a mere 10,000 rupees, he could access every event in the Hall De Galle and The Maritime Museum over the five days of the Festival.

Elsewhere, just before an author started speaking on the stage, an ungenerous English man could be heard peevishly saying that the large signs saying 'Dialog' were incorrectly spelled, and what did these people think they were about? He thought it was supposed to be a literary festival, but the people couldn't even spell!

Clothing stores in Colombo had been advising the populace to invest in 'boho chic and crisp linen shirts', and many of us were delighted to find that  our wardrobes already contained many items which fitted this dress code. Swirling multi-hued skirts, parasols of silk and cotton lace, bling-embossed backpacks and gorgeous be-ribboned hats all add to the 'birds of paradise' feel in the streets.

On Saturday night, the Chamber Music Society of Colombo will play a selection of classical music in the Old Dutch Reformed church. A bejewelled sensory experience. And I can walk there from my lodgings in Middle Street, through the fairylight-festooned lanes.

The timing of this literary interlude turned out to be perfect: just after the stresses and strains of the festive season, with everyone craving renewal and refreshment. 'Me time' for a lot of people in our technologically-obsessed era involves interacting with books.

And speaking of interacting:
if you wish to meet an author of interest to you on a more personal level, authors can be lunched with or dined with for 7,500 rupees. Many authors are rather solitary and introspective people, and the thought of being auctioned off like this, even if only for a couple of hours, must surely fill some of them with horror and misgiving, but it is a great opportunity for writers and readers to interface, and engage with, and be inspired by, the wielders of words.

Galle is streaming on our screens again. With bells, and music and fairy lights from fairy lands no longer forlorn. A portal has opened again, more fully than before, into a world which seems to offer peace and plenty, to all.

As my small hotel informs us, in its own small promotional brochure,
'An open area is available to relax comfortably listening to the birds' music and enjoying evening breeze'.

It really feels as if the world we live in is lightening up, at long last.

Re-Calibrations Of The Self

Review of 'Phoenix', a collection of poems by Anupama Godakanda
Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today

'If I had a black box instead of a heart
Where the heart should be,
wherever it is, /
That faithfully recorded my life,
That, I believe, would take the joy,
The sheer wicked thrill,
Out of the telling of all those tall tales I tell'...
('The Black Box')

This collection of poetry, published earlier this year, has a clear and persistent discernible pulse. As the title implies, there is a portrayal of struggle, episodic and cyclic flights from frustration, a dialogue or altercation between binary oppositions and dualities, and eventual emergence, stark or muted, in every poem.

The poet herself identifies her recurrent theme in her Preface:

Her focus is on 'serendipitous moments of honesty' which cause her to 'meet [her]self face to face naked of all subterfuge'. This brings into focus the idea of a dulled and mundane, at times chaotic, reality, interspersed and riven with aspirations and fierce strivings. The struggles are internal: longings for access to an alternate, exalted sphere, triggered by external events. The reader sees, across the range of poems, that the longed for portal opens for the poet only in intermittent moments of awareness and clarity.

Godakanda says of herself that in those moments 'something in me dies and in its place something finer, I would like to think, emerges from the ashes of the perverted thing that has died. In between these unceasing moments of life and death my time is mostly spent on waging a constant battle against those forces within me - which are not really of me, but smuggled in by those forces from without and grafted against my wishes to my very being - that try to keep me from that enriching cycle of death and rebirth'.

Here the poet introduces her persona as a combatant, experiencing her psychological and socio-emotional life as a form of constant warfare, with her essential self drawn into unremitting skirmishes, but yearning for unencumberment, full personal  franchisement, and peace.

Many of these skirmishes are dialogues (or partial dialogues) with lovers, and deal with the failure of physical love, with its often egotistical misapprehensions and
limitations, and inevitable and messy sharing of the partially discovered self, and its continual failure to provide the access to
the personal peace that the persona longs for. Some are evocations of friendships which have become unsustainable, with life's remorseless individuation process drummed into their unravelling, in cycles that seem inevitable.

These personal conflicts take place in a wider and more fractured and destabilised societal sphere, in which injustice, condemnation, shallow judgment, misapprehension and cruelty distort the communication that could provide release and solace for people. The strength of these poems is that, although they are often clearly responses to personal experiences, they are not all merely personal accounts, but are of interest and relevance to the reader.

Central to their effectiveness is the poet's own frank admission of her impatience with the falseness of the norms and expectations levied on us. She invokes the social forces she is often warring with in prose in her Preface, in the form of the third person reported strictures of those who seek to scold her into conformity with acceptable contemporary models of conservative female behaviour:

'It is better to go on as it is, they say. Toe the line, less trouble, they say. But I choose not to. A declaration of war... And rarely does myself emerge victorious from these many skirmishes. However, these defeats, instead of crushing myself down, are often the very stuff that set me on fire so that I could turn to ashes once again and emerge from my pyre a little closer to myself'.

I find this powerful claiming of this 'pyre', as a form of wholly personal redemption and renewal, liberating. In my mind's eye, in response to these words, and as I read the poems, I think of the fire of purification, of Rama and Sita, circling the sacred flame, the ordeals of social sanctification endured by women, and the fire of suttee in which faithful wives were expected to immolate themselves for their husbands' greater spiritual ascension. The woman's identity often seemed subsumed in the relationships women had with men.

So this poet's embracing of a life created by internal self-immolations is subversive. Even in its often perceived overall or individual 'failure', tracked in each poem, I find the tracing of the poet's challenges to the dominant paradigm of female compliance very effective as a portrayal of an alternative to mainstream behavioural conformity.

    Images of fire, of comets, and transcendence, operate to integrate the poems thematically across their diverse forms. Martial imagery and astronomical references are invoked, appropriate for a celestial appreciation of life's required combats.

It is evident that these personal wars and battles are clearly more important to the poet than the political struggles of the country around her. These are invoked but she does not allow them to extinguish the flames of her personal anguish, or douse her personal rebellions and uprisings with a collective mass of depersonalised sorrow. There is a capacity for objectivity, detachment and broad perspective manifest in her work, which makes her direct treatment of everyday and personal disappointments very interesting.

Godakanda uses references to Classical mythology and archetypes to expansively broaden the framework of several of the interchanges showcased in her poetry: and allusions to Indian as well as Greek and Roman mythology, and Christian doctrine.

'Narcissus! Narcissus!', addressed to a younger lover, shows the persona strongly inhabiting an imaginative space of cultural strength not usually accorded to women who cross age lines in their romantic relations with men in traditional societies, and using classical archetypes for her personal self-empowerment:

'You beautiful boy-man
Looks fade and you grow old, sweet boy-man/
I, Echo, have seen so many like you
Preening and posing
On the surface of my lake...

Men come, sweet Narcissus,
To my life-giving pool,
And then they go,
When it is time to go -
But I, Echo, the keeper of life
Stay.'

The self-esteem and self-respect in the poet's tone here are further explored in 'Lucifer, I See You In Me', where the persona's identification as a woman with the socially condemned pride of Lucifer is portrayed as a necessary strength, in a world where she is often called into action, to affirm as well as defend herself:

 'Pride goes before a fall
  I have heard many mutter
  As they pick themselves up
  Dust and put the pieces of their broken lives
  Back together -
  Little pieces missing
  Lines not exactly meeting
  Humbled beyond words
  Looking for meaning
  In dusty volumes
  Until the next fall.

  I march towards my end,
  No heaven or hell,
  Until I too fall down -
  Yet, no Book would I turn to
  In despair for hope.
  Instead, reach deep within my being
  And gather

  That slow-burning Promethean Gift
  Between my sheltering palms.
  With that to guide and light the way,
  Once again
  I walk head high,
  Battered and bruised,
  But not broken.
  Lucifer, I see you in me.'

The relatively cliched final phrases 'battered...bruised/But not broken' are not threadbare but original in their placement in this cumulative sequence, as the evocation of the image of the 'slow-burning Promethean Gift' of fire held by the persona in her 'sheltering palms' suggests an invocation of the sacred which enables her to transcend the struggles and frequent indignities she encounters in the path of her life. Images of the vulnerability and fragmentation of the self cited during the passage of the poem are thus denied by the alliterated end focused phrase 'But not broken'.

Godakanda in her most effective work does not clutter or freight her poetic syntax with overwrought description, and her images are free of self-referential and self-conscious posturing. In 'A Closer Fit', she directly addresses us, the reader, with an abruptness that is endearing, and revelatory in its indication of her awareness of our shared human condition:

 'My skin does not fit right;
  An imposter in clothes
  Borrowed, begged, or stolen,
  That is how I feel, day in and day out;
   In places it pinches sorely,
   Too young to be me;
   In others, hangs loose
   In wrinkled, flabby folds
   That looked not even remotely like me,
   From afar, at least.
   Slink I into shadows cracks and nooks,
   In shame when among those
   With tailor-made skins, just right,
   The way they hang, chameleon-like,
   In vain, I know, do I stretch and shrink,
   A caterpillar gone mad in its chrysalis,
   Nip, tuck, and suck, endlessly,
   Looking for a closer fit.'

The frustration of the process of emergence from felt constraint is powerfully expressed in the climactic metaphor 'A caterpillar gone mad in its chrysalis', and the diction derived from dressmaking is particularly appropriate as a description of a woman rejecting the ill-fitting and unsuitable measurements made of her by her society. Here in Sri Lanka we are particularly aware of the many 'fittings' required for the dresses and garments that are tailored for us, and the various efforts required for us to feel as if we are physically appealing, and approved of. Even the most liberated of us wonder at times if we fit, or fail to fit, the models held up to us of female beauty and desirability.

The poet's evocation of youth and age here, as equally uncomfortable extremes, shows her prevalent desire to find the unique 'fit' that expresses her sense of her true self, rather than the 'imposter' that she rejects, who is constructed often inadvertently in response to the dictates of society.

  In 'The Cup Of Life', she describes herself as 'waiting for my cup to fill,
   With memories bittersweet,
   Dissolved in sweat and tears.
   One final drop,
   And then I will drink it
   And fade in a euphoric mist
   Into an eternity beyond everything.'

   In this first stanza, the phrases 'bittersweet' and 'sweat and tears' seem slightly tired, but the syntax and enjambement ensures overall clarity of meaning. The flow of the second half of this poem, however, is disrupted by unrendered words, which cluster claustrophically and do not allow Godakanda's own voice to free itself from the trappings and implications of well-known phrases:

 'Yet, I have lost count
  Of those drops,
  Seeping through the very cracks of life,
  Trapped in a hazy, labyrinthine mist
  Of life-choking mind-numbing memories
  And am still awaiting
  Breathlessly, hesitantly,
  For that final drop,
  That magical catalyst,
  To fall.'

The blurred abstractness of this idea, its unconnectedness to any specific image, obscures its meaning. Godakanda expresses a similar idea more effectively in a more physically concrete form in 'To Be Joyful Of Little Things':

 'A drop of nothingness
  Hanging pendulously,
  Swinging, quivering
  In the morning chill
  On a blade of the sidewalk's crushed grass;
   A little no-name plant
   Pushing itself staunchly
   Through a crack
   On the pavement,
   Despite being smashed,
   To pulp, day after day,
   By the pounding feet
   Hurrying along to nowhere;
   The one true note
   In the repertoire of screeches
   Of the fake-blind man
   With the cracked violin
   At the corner by the lights;
   One perfect ray
   That cuts across the choking smog
    And falls at my feet
    And follows me, and then guides me
    On my way
    To yet another yesterday, today, and tomorrow;
     Little things, they surely are,
     And they are all I have,
     Yet to find joy in them, I have learnt, finally.'

  The inverted syntax used here in the end focus of the last line very effectively positions the persona's unexpected realisation of joy inherent in the diurnal progress in which we pursue our various sacred grails.

The most powerful overtly political  statement in the collection is the long poem 'Let Me Cast The Last Stone', a portrayal of the state-sanctioned ritual murders of women which take place in countries adopting punitive and manifestly unequal measures to publicly condemn adultery and sexual 'impropriety'.

 'Let me cast the last stone
  At that Brown-bodied Woman
  Buried waist-high
  Runnels of sweat and blood
  Streaming down...
  Straining, as she braced herself
  For me to let go of that sharp-edged flint
  Whizzing through the air
  And hit her bloodied, ravaged body
  Once more.'

The poem, with its topical subject matter, runs the risk of being usurped by the 'incident reportage' style in which real events are responded to with emotiveness and often gratuitously violent faux profundity, and simulated outrage. Godakanda prevents this by her positioning of the textures and physical details, and judicious use of sequential plosive and sibilance to portray the perpetrators in relation to the victim of the unfolding events.

The woman being stoned here fragments from within. Initially, she is:


 'Confident, still...
     That those sons and daughters
     Of her ancient line
     Would shield her from more stones,
      Chase the infidels out
      And let her breathe once more
      A lungful of liberty.'

The scene of her dissolution is simultaneously shown in 'real time' and placed in a historical contextual framework, in which the first stone is 'Cast by the White Sahib', and the last metaphorically by the persona herself. The persecutors are disturbing versions of the victim's own 'darling child,/ Savouring the often regurgitated cud
Of post-imperial anti-capitalist cant'.

The sado-masochistic and self-justified cruelty of the perpetrators of the killing is as accurate as a televised replay in its close-up poetic, measured detail, evoking and summoning the covert voyeur in the reader:

'Picking up a jagged piece
Running a testing finger
Over the sharp edge, sensuously
Weighing the thing
Turning it this way and that
To get a better grip
Before letting it fly
Whizzing through the hot noon air.'

The persona expresses the wish to cast the last stone to 'free her/ So we could bury her
Under the cloak of the approaching night'. But this action is not merely motivated by mercy, or compassion. It is an incitement to finish it off, to get it over with:

'So we could get on with our lives
Wading our way through
A quagmire of the post colonial slush
Sucking it up to the White Sahib
In absentia.'

The deliberate use of the inclusive plural pronoun 'we' in this implicates us all in the event, and indicates the eroded problematic situation of anyone in a moral void, where indeterminacy prevails, and post colonial issues create a 'quagmire of...slush', trying in vain to locate ground on which to stand. Any certainty here dangerously devolves into judgment or condemnation of an 'Other'.

Human connection eroded, other people's suffering is seen as a vacuous spectacle, an enactment in which the figures' claim to life, through relationship, constitutes the reason for their death, and their existence, judged, and castigated, is mindlessly and heartlessly absorbed by the machinery of the state.

'Phoenix' is a guided tour through the thoughts and impressions of a person of interest to us. The sentimental caterwauling we are, regrettably, as readers subjected to, in various forms, by writers of contemporary poetry, is refreshingly absent here, where the 'black box'  of the awareness which has been substituted for the 'heart', often clearly registers the re-calibrations which generate and renew the poet's equanimity.

Butterfly & Blue Sky

Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today

 Image Credit: mariko

'Blue skies, shining on me
Nothing but blue skies, do I see!
Grey days - all of them gone -
Nothing but blue skies, from now on'...

I taught a student a few years ago, whose creative writing project was a short story of 8,000 words. Its setting was the conflict in Sri Lanka in the mid-1990s. The protagonist of the story was a soldier, forcibly recruited and trained by a terrorist group. My student was of Sri Lankan origin, studying in Australia.

Her teachers praised the resonance and quality of her writing, but found the subject matter 'unrealistic'. Because the soldier was a child soldier. And in what monstrous reality would 8 year old children be abducted from their families and tortured, and trained to kill? In Sydney, such a notion seemed literally unbelievable. Yet, my student had thoroughly researched the story before writing it. And now, a decade later, a film-maker in Sri Lanka has interviewed former child soldiers, whose stories show that the horror in that parallel universe was real.

The documentary film 'Butterfly' has been made by Vishnu Vasu, to document the survival and experiences of the child soldiers, recruited in the last decade of the war, and who are now young adults. To make this film, he travelled to the remote regional areas where these survivors live. The film is short (45 minutes). It can be viewed in its entirety in a lunch hour. But its impact is permanent, and exponential.

The interviews are interspersed with long shots of the bleak landscape, and these images are underscored by haunting vocal and instrumental music. The former child soldiers survived by escaping their captors, fearing retaliation and retribution which was levied on their families. Their close family ties and bonds, their feelings and loyalties, were used against them.

One grandmother had her sons and finally her only daughter taken away from her, forcibly recruited, and killed in the conflict. She says sadly that she thinks of her children every day of her life. Their loss is so painful it makes her want to end her own life, but she must continue to live, because she has her children's own children to care for.

She gestures to three young children, playing nearby. The boys are helping a young girl find her balance while they play in a pond. They are smiling. The sun is shining on them. This is at last an image that my student's Australian teachers could recognise.

One young man was compelled by the terrorist organisation to work as a driver, and was ordered to blow up the vehicles holding the injured, ill and disabled children, who were deemed to be liabilities by the terrorists, because their injuries made them unable to be utilised in combat. Experiencing this unimaginable enforced cruelty has impaired this young man's essential identity: the sense of personal moral decency that we all need, if we are to respect ourselves. He will carry this damage all his life.

The picture that emerges from the stories is the surreal exact opposite of a children's cartoon where happy 7 and 8 year olds, in a country so free of danger that they need no adult supervision, have safe but fun adventures in landscapes where every virtual tree and flower is whole, and perfect: where the grass is a gorgeous, vivid green, and the skies a brilliant & beautiful blue.

I asked the film-maker about the way he ended the documentary - with a simple spoken tribute to the young survivors of this devastating experience. It is a blessing: 'May the children be well. May they be well, and happy'. Like most Sri Lankans, I have heard these words many times, as part of the METTA meditation, but I have never been so affected by them as I was when hearing them spoken in the context of this film.

This is why I asked the film-maker whether I could interview him. That interview follows this article. I asked that the faces of the children in the photographs accompanying the story be shielded from view, to protect their identities.

The film shows the viewer very clearly a reality that is awful to comprehend. These child soldiers lost their identities as children: their innocence, their joy, the wonder and curiosity and freedom and spiritedness all children should have. They lost it, but they did not mislay it: it was taken from them, by force.

Instead of being educated, they were conscripted, drilled and tortured; instead of being cared for, they were deployed; instead of being loved, they were used.

I believe, from the research my student in Sydney shared with me, that the use of child soldiers in conflict situations was a deliberate strategy used to disorient the adult soldiers who, facing them in battle, could not bring themselves to shoot children. This gave those who used the children as human weapons a devastating tactical psychological advantage, generated by inhumane cunning, & cruel objectification.

The film is called 'Butterfly', after the beautiful, fragile creature which is associated with change and transformation, due to its emergence from a long period of formation, in a cocoon. The title presents us with an almost unbearable reality: that we live in a country where our most vulnerable and innocent citizens were not only unprotected, but actively harmed, during the most impressionable time of their lives.

This film offers a clear conclusion: that assisting the emergence of these our fellow citizens is the only way to restore our relationship with them. This assisted emergence would include carefully thought-out, culturally sensitive and sustainable processes of rehabilitation. With a focus on organic and intuitive, humane personal contact rather than imposed and arbitrary material and monetary handouts.

'Butterfly' was screened during the 'A & K' Literary Festival, which took place on April 25th, at the Western Province Aesthetic Resort in Colombo.

It makes sense that the film was shown and showcased here, as the theme of this event was clearly resonant with emergence. Both initiatives were created by people who want to encourage all Sri Lankans to develop hope in our creative culture, and enlist our literary & artistic forces to work on positive projects, using the written, spoken and visual languages that we have available to us.

Elmo Jayawardena described the A & K Festival as an opportunity for all Sri Lankans to give expression to our diverse experiences, and share the common ground we have, in a love of reading and writing: 'a one-nation representation of literature from the pavement'.

In a recent interview, he expanded on his vision for the A & K. It was a vibrant and positive beginning. Some who attended commented that the Sinhala and Tamil language sessions did not, to their surprise, seem as well attended, as yet, as the English language sessions. One attendee said that he 'looked forward to a different selection of participants next year.' This comment conveyed a real sense that there is an untapped wealth of potential contributors from which to choose. Emergent writers, and interested critics and readers, and most significantly writers of all ages & stages as yet unknown, unedited, unawarded and unpublished.

I personally felt a sense of grateful exuberance, at seeing such a genuine diversity of people, of every background and generation, buying books, getting tea and coffee, and snacks from the stalls. The atmosphere was simple, fluid, relaxed and casual. It was peaceful, and although inaugural, and exciting, to me it was characterised by a beautiful lack of fanfare. It was wonderfully everyday, but not at all humdrum. There was a murmuring, humming, buzz of conversation, formed by greetings and encounters, of book-reading people collaborating & co-operating & communicating.

While a long war is being waged, forcing the people of a country to subsist and endure through all its terrible debilitating phases, cultural development, education, social service, and all other forms of civic nurture are drained of their energy. People are paralysed by inertia, deadened by constant dread, cocooned by the repetitive cycles of despair generated by ongoing conflict and chronic devastation.

This sense that we have been cumulatively robbed, plundered of our national resources and pride in our culture and creative potential, is felt by many. The nation's monetary and material losses can be reasonably accurately estimated and measured, and appropriate compensation sought; but the human cost cannot be easily quantified or straightforwardly remedied.

Many Sri Lankan people, when speaking of their own country and people, unconsciously express chronic negativity: 'Oh, we can't expect any better from our people... That is just not possible in this country'. We politely listen to experts on 'Change' sponsored by international interest groups advise us to 'challenge our poverty mindset' regarding the changes that must be made in our recovering nation. They address us from podiums at conferences and forums in the refrigerated ballrooms of luxury hotels. Their sponsored advice, although costly, and kindly meant, is often in its effect felt as a blow upon a bruise.

One of the most important aims of the organisers of the A & K was to 'promote an understanding amongst diverse cultures across the country... (and) promote better understanding and goodwill across communities through literature'. (Per Members of the Rotary Club of Colombo, Regency, who co-founded the Festival).

Creativity requires positive energy, and faith, and optimism. For these to flourish, and a process of cultural renewal to be sustainable, there must be a context of peace, where people are not living at a subsistence level, in a sense of survivalistic fear. Literature challenges cultural ignorance by offering intellectual and emotional access to the lives of others. Insight leads to understanding, and increasing understanding to goodwill. This is the essential sequence of the practice of METTA.

The children who were soldiers during the recent war have experienced treatment others can often neither understand nor imagine. We surely should not speak for them, without their permission. That presumption would be a further invasion and exploitation of their identity. Our different experience, and emotional and geographical locations, impede us from speaking directly with them, so the film-maker through his sensitivity and skill, lets them speak for themselves. He raises questions, to which the answers cannot be expressed in words but in consistent and sustained community action.

So much incremental empathy and goodwill can be generated by communication, and literature, that we can build these empathic bridges on common ground, and cross over them into a world we are making together. Where blue skies can shine, on all of us.

Both 'Butterfly' and the 'A & K' Festival were produced by believers in a better future for all the citizens of this country, who 'marched to this different drum-beat to elevate a thought to a vision and then make it a reality', according to Captain Jayawardena.

Through the spectacle of human experience presented in our creative work, literary & cinematic, through entrepreneurial initiatives and the channels of social media, we can re-evaluate our condition, build personal and national evolutionary momentum, and progress. Not just in measurable commercial terms, but in ways that are more valuable, because they are immeasurable.

And in this emergence the people of Sri Lanka can free the country and themselves as much as possible, in an ongoing way, from the impairments caused by this conflict, and the individual and collective suffering that resulted from it.

Thunder Struck

Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today

A review of the Stigmata album launch for 'The Ascetic Paradox' album on Saturday, October 17, at the British School Auditorium.

Paradox # 1: Sri Lanka, the tear-drop shaped pearl of the Indian Ocean, has a heavy metal music scene! Who knew? And this apparent contradiction is intriguing from the start. Yet, on further exploration, as this review of the launch concert for 'The Ascetic Paradox' will suggest, it makes perfect sense that it does.

Paradoxes are apparent contradictions: dissonances, which require energy and effort on the part of any querent to resolve into a grander harmony. Through exploration of the paradoxes that the metal music genre sets in front of us, we can seek entry into a freer, darker, clearer world.

Heavy metal music is noisy, it explodes our ear drums. It is played by people who like wearing black, are often misanthropic and nihilist, and festooned fetishistically with tattoos and diablerie. It is easy to write it off as adolescent exorcism - a throwing off of misfit rage. But let us not fall prey to cliche and stereotyping. Further up, and further in. Come with me - on the path strewn with potent paradoxes.

Metal music is what makes the ground beneath our feet tremble, and the walls that demarcate our accepted realities shiver into shards. It is aggressive, and it is often fuelled by anger, pain and human suffering. We carry the wounds of our experiences like medals, attesting to our survival. The distorted guitar chords and riffs, the screeching drawn-out wails and screams of the vocalist, give voice to the hatred & frustration that polite people cannot usually name. So it is perfect for a society like this. Kind of like the medieval method of 'blood-letting' used by the ancient healers to reduce the accumulated pressure in human veins.

But at the heart of its paradox is that its violence can lance our wounds, and produce exhilaration, ecstasy and joy, in its intensity and its assault on our somnolent selves. In some ways, a concert like this is like a religious ceremony, and in its rituals and dramatic tableaux a metal band offers its adherents a form of secular absolution from the restrictions that plague and bedevil them.

The album 'The Ascetic Paradox' portrays variants of the 7 deadly sins which afflict mankind, half-personified in the visual art of the album as humans/animals, centered on a Lady who must temper and balance all these against each other, using force if necessary, Dominatrix that she is (or is she just drawn that way?)

And so we find an interesting paradox: jovial and benign rock gods who are boys/men of the people, who after 15 years are in a sense veterans, but still only in their early 30s, who have created serried ranks and impressive synergy and who radiate an intensity which is arresting. At one moment in the middle of the performance, the chair, the floor (and the earth beneath it) were all shaking in chaotic unison. It made me smile.

The launch of this album was advertised as being for 'those who like their music with poetry, blood, fire and mythic story-telling', laced with archetypal imagery, allusions to Classical Mythology, scripture, and arcane intertextuality, expressed in primal roaring and majestic sonic thunderstorms of vocals and inspired percussion and instrumentation.

Mission accomplished! - and at a most paradoxical venue: The British School, in Colombo 8. Paradox #2! A venue shall we say NOT generally perhaps seen as a hothouse of the kind of volcanic rebellion and frenzied energy associated with metal music!

Metal music itself is at its heart paradoxical - it's generally created and performed by anti-establishment boho types who are so subversive and uncategoriseable that they are incomprehensible to the clean-cut mainstream restrained respectabiggles who, we could easily believe, breed in camouflaged, cowering, conformist captivity in conservative societies like that of mainstream Colombo.

The speakers vibrate and the lyrics reverberate. There is poetry here, and the invocation of great thematic materials. And the correlation with the shivering and screaming, pulsating sounds is intricate and cryptic, and often riven with counterpoint: as if the words are beating against the music, going up against it as if it was a duel, a combat where both strive for mastery and both mystically prevail. The wholistic sensory experience of this metal music is immersive, and overwhelming.

If the band has the experience & artistry to control the channelling of the energy they generate, it profoundly shakes everyone involved. Each song is potentially cathartic, and you are gripped and enthralled by cumulative shifts and cadences which carry you into & through what is usually an underworld, where desires and fears, repressed during the workaday lives most of us lead, rise up like a jagged serrated flood, bringing us into the core of our own awareness. Our private selves come out in public, in the generous, benign darkness.

So the experience is both shatteringly subversive and inversive: a great metal concert should turn the listener/spectator inside out and make them feel as though they are upside down. The thrumming of the drums and the power that builds from the instruments should surge straight into the audience, from the soles of their feet on the floor via a circuit of both instrumental & sensory electricity to the soul encased in their physical body. You feel hope, rising - that the lid that has been put on us without our express assent can for a short space of time be lifted off, that - to quote the main Lyricist - 'The divine reign of the gloriously mundane will surely end'. (From 'Rush Through The Twilight Silver Slithering Stream').

And most strange of all? Paradox # 3: This dark exorcism-like experience, with its conscious use of gothic symbols and horror paraphernalia, its armed and dangerous feel, its warrior-like shamans presiding, leaves you feeling washed clean, and radiant and clear. Almost irridescent. As if you have swum through 'a sea of shattered glass' ( From 'Calm'), and your reward was to be delivered ashore inexplicably and surprisingly whole.

There is profound innocence (which is I think particularly male) at the heart of it: the insistent creative expressive desire to rise and push through and emerge in the driving rhythmic music, and the herding coralling gestures of the 'band of brothers' onstage, who channel and mediate this ritualistic experience.

The song 'Cadence Of Your Tears' (Freedom's Chains), which was co-written by the Frontman, Suresh de Silva, and Sanjeev Niles and released on Soundcloud, is the only song I had heard before I attended the launch concert & was given my CD - and it was a revelation to me - a song that I have recorded on a continuous loop so I can traverse its sonic & lyric landscapes at will, or rather let them move through me unconsciously and with a view to summoning a more instinctive and visceral and less trained or reactive self, to experience its sequential and cumulative power. It starts off tenderly and gently, and the voices harmonise roughly and imperfectly and then rise and fuse and meld and strike the inside of your being and make the bells within you ring. You feel renewed - as if each of your frayed nerves has been individually and specifically restored by the application of intense radiant energy.

To quote Suresh, the Lyricist, 'What once was asunder is whole once again' (from 'Let The Wolves Come And Lick Thy Wounds').

The band played the entire album through in one intense stretch - which they called 'brutal'. It may have been brutal for them - although they seem to have a lot of stamina - but to me it was like being picked up by a monstrous, gentle hand and lifted to an exalted state. Many of my fellow metallics that evening knew the classic songs from previous Stigmata albums by heart, which I did not. But several songs ignited the darkness of my ignorance: from The Ascetic Paradox album, the 'Rush Through The Twilight Silver Slithering Stream' and 'Axioma' with their carnivalesque anthems and caravanserai exotica spirals of sound interspersed with medieval morality play notes of bleakness. Some of the songs sound sacred, like hymns, only the cathedral here is made of living & immediate sound, and not hollow stone.

There is a maturity, a certainty and a soaring feel to the shape and arc of this work. It makes me want to explore their previous albums, and trace the terrain that they must have traversed, to attain this authentic mastery of a complex artistic medium. The Lyricist/ Frontman Suresh's comments on the structured intention of the way the album has been crafted, show the integration they have achieved:

'Everything is synchronised, everything meticulously detailed, and conceived: musically, lyrically, conceptually... a mind-blowing Concept that will be unravelled image by image, song by song, painting the full picture'.

'Voices' (an older song from a previous album) to me was the most stirring song of the whole set, a chant which gave enormously powerful musical & lyrical expression to the degradations inherent in the experience of child abuse and sexual assault. The drums and guitars articulated very evocatively the suppressed anger & intermittent anguish, paralysis & powerlessness which accompany such violation, and left an auditory residue which was black and red and purple like a bruise, like nail polish that changes colour according to your mood.

The last song they played was incredible - the 'And Now We Shall Bring Them War' one. I knew nothing of its history and could only sense what fuelled it - with all my awareness. It was like being spun on a tautening wire, fraying as it extended.

I appreciated the sweet and childlike contrast of the food supplied outside before the music started - the hot dogs and the rumours of sweet milkshakes. Black gothic cupcakes and illegal shots of absinthe and those spirits that stain your mouth blue would have defused the paradox of the experience!

So the band are now about to go to New Zealand for the international release of their new album The Ascetic Paradox. They have over the past few years played huge venues in Australia, Dubai and in Dhaka, and are clearly feeling the excitement of the beginning of critical mass and exponential adulation.

Paradoxically, they seem not to be madly acquisitive - not driven to seek international acclaim. They clearly intensely all love making & performing their music, and they are rightly proud of it, and their love of their craft and desire for mastery and pure self-expression keeps them grounded. They seem entirely and remarkably free of false modesty. They are not brash, posturing, crass, 'unapologetic' (translation: rude) or 'unashamed' (translation: shameless) either. They seem to inhabit a well-wrought space, between earth and heaven, as all true creators should, if they are to connect their fellow humans to the creative energy of the universe: the music of the spheres, the electricity that flows and surges through all living & feeling beings.

These men understand what they are doing. They take it seriously. I was interested to read the Frontman Suresh's views on this in a post he had put up on Facebook in August:

'I have a responsibility as a Performer and a Vocalist to consistently "up the game". I have a responsibility as a Vocalist to always deliver my finest talents: creatively, traditionally, experimentally, extraordinarily, transcendently and diversely. As a Frontman it is my responsibility to ensure that every living organism on stage & off stage have the time of their lives, every single time. As a Lyricist I have a responsibility to carve evocative pieces of poetry that deliver the narrative of any song's theme or concept, but touch or move people as well.'

Well, if Metal is a religion, this is a creed. And I say, Amen.

There is a saying that there are 5 elements that make up the material world, which co-exist in dynamic equilibrium: Fire, Water, Earth, Air - & Metal. And the greatest of these on Saturday night was Metal. Metal - ductile, malleable and an excellent conductor of energy - of heat and electricity. Metal as it should be played, which takes us and ungently scours us, and - with great & generous kindness - leaves us clean.

All Creatures Great and Small: Review of 'How The Squirrel Got His Stripes' by Sam Perera and Alex Stewart.

Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today

It is in our childhood that so many of our tastes and sensitivities, our first impressions of the world, are formed.

Children's perspectives of human behaviour and the natural world are often fresh, and close-up: they are experiencing life and the world very directly through their five senses, and in vibrant colours; and they come to know things without pre-conceptions or judgments.

As adults, often shut away from both nature and colour in our working lives, we miss this tactile and vivid way of apprehending life. And this is where children's books even more than DVDs or virtual worlds created through technology win us over: we have to pick up a picture book, and read it, and turn the pages and trace the story.

Stories we read as children introduce us to the elements of the hero's and heroine's journey archetype: of the quest to discover hidden bounty, or recover lost or stolen treasure. We are introduced to the ideas that form our later beliefs about the way the world works, and life's paths unravel.

When children's stories are well written, they are both innocent and powerful. There is no need for mottos to be appended to them or for 'Cautionary Tale' labels to be affixed to them: they tell us their truths and wisdom through the actions of the characters, directly.

Fairy tales and their legendary heroes and heroines are particularly rich in this kind of intense suffused glamour.

Characters embody certain qualities. And children's clear-sighted and subtly clairvoyant way of seeing is shown in the instinctive way they name the animal friends and guardian spirits that people their imaginative landscape.

There is no need for the gimmicks and trappings of witchcraft and wizardry in the re-telling of tales of human enchantment and error. There is the effect of magic evoked in the cascade of cloud-like petals falling on an upturned face and an outstretched arm; of protective spells cast spiritedly in the energetic drawing of a circle around those the hero wants most to protect; the way friends rally to answer the call when the circle is shaken and the protective boundary breached. The spontaneity and freshness of the telling is reflected even in the cursive font in the opening pages of the layout, with its naive splashes, blots and sprays of ink looking as though the hand of the writer has just left the page.

It takes a wise mind to tell a story in a way a child can understand it. And a good listener to creatively imagine what s/he heard. And the 'kid lit' world, filled to the brim with jostling contenders, has just made room for a new collaboration.

Because this story book began from a story shared between two friends. And the characters in the book are also friends, and their behaviour makes them heroes in their own way, and their choices show us how we too can build bridges.

The first in an envisioned sequence of children's books was launched last Friday at Barefoot, in tandem with an exhibition of paintings from the illustrator of the story: 'How The Squirrel Got His Stripes'.

Sam Perera, of the PereraHussein publishing house, wrote the text of this re telling of a beloved tale from India's mythology, and this story as he told it to the painter Alex Stewart inspired the illustrations.

It is the story of the little ubiquitous squirrels that scamper and tumble about our homes, chirruping in the spring and causing havoc with our curtain tassels. Specifically, it is a re-telling of the legendary story of how these creatures, our well-known childhood friends, gained the distinctive dark stripe along their back and tail as a reward for industrious service to Rama himself, for coming to assist him when he most needed their help.

The text is simple, but not simplistic, and complemented by the intricacy of the miniature-like illustrations, which are delicate but not over-wrought. The colours are gentle, and the movements and gestures of the characters poetically evoked, a good counterpart to the telling prose.

In this book, the way the squirrels scamper through trees and bushes, looking for a safe place to nest in real life, is reflected in the way one or two squirrels in silhouette are included in each picture, often on the side of each illustrated image. When you read the story, and compare the pictures to the narrative, you realise that they counterpoint the way Rama and Sita, in exile, are also looking for a safe place in which to establish and secure their life together.

The story of the abduction of Rama's wife Sita, and the building of the bridge from India to Lanka, evokes some beautiful images: the drawing of Rama's magic circle of protection around Sita, and her subsequent temptation and her falling prey to Ravana's incitement to step out of her husband's protection, is visually created with clarity and tenderness by the artist.

The images both visual and verbal will remain in children's minds until they are old enough to really understand the implications of intrusion, abduction and the worthwhile effort of reclaiming what we most honour and value, which has been unjustly taken from us.

On a philosophical level, we see even heroic beings in trouble, invoking divine protection, and asking for assistance from the beings of the natural world, who are often perceived as 'lesser' or less sentient than humans. The way children see their own affiliation with all creatures both great and small as natural and instinctive, is honoured in this re telling and reflected in the lovely pictures of Rama's gratitude and his caressing gesture of appreciation, which confers the signature stripe on the squirrels.

After reading this dazzling little book, I confess that I wondered for the first time if the phrase 'earning one's stripes' actually derives from this legend! In the military, when a soldier has performed his or her duties faithfully and honourably, s/he is commended by being ceremonially given medals or other insignia in recognition of their loyalty and devotion. I will always think of these little squirrels when I hear anyone's efforts approvingly described as 'earning them their stripes'.

The book is released through PereraHussein's 'Popsicle' imprint, and is the first of several stories which Sam Perera will write and Alex Stewart will illustrate.

Interview With Vishnu Vasu, Director of The Documentary Film 'Butterfly'

Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today

Q: You end the film by quoting words familiar from the ‘metta’ meditation: 'Let the children be well, and happy'. It was a moving and inspiring way to end. Was it your idea to frame the stories for a particularly Buddhist viewing audience?

I was born to an orthodox Buddhist family from Kandy. I spent most of my childhood in our village temple memorizing scriptures, chanting pirith and picking flowers to offer during daily rituals. As a kid I dreamt of becoming a monk. But when I migrated to Colombo, no sooner I finished schooling, things changed. It was the formative years of introduction to free economy in Sri Lanka, and we the youth started building fantasy futures for ourselves. Instead finding a teacher to continue with my spiritual path I joined the corporate sector. As an advertising copywriter working for multinational agencies I created campaigns to sell products that were not only harmful to one’s body but also contributed largely to the degeneration of our value system. I am part of the team that created the ‘Coke’ sub culture and boosted LION. After becoming a highly paid creative director, while earning popularity as an ace percussionist, performing with top of the line musicians, things changed for the worst. I thought no end of myself and my ego was sky high. During this time I met Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne the founder of the Sarvodaya Movement, and started travelling around the country to places I never thought existed, to meet with marginalized and powerless communities. Two months down the line I felt ashamed of myself. I realized I am nothing but a corporate slave contributing to a Greed based society but not to the creation of a more sustainable need based one. I quit advertising completely. This was the time of conflict I became an active participant in organizing mass peace meditation programmes. The more I worked on the peace front the more I deepened my understanding of loving-kindness. Metta became my buzzword and I fell back on my spiritual path, but this time walking with millions of fellow pilgrims.

This film I shot soon after returning from a forest meditation centre off Sydney, Australia having lived a life of a novice monk in yellow robes. During my month long stay I meditated upon nothing but Metta. Though my focus was to give a voice to these children I wanted to do it in a more compassionate way rather than choosing an aggressive path. Loving-kindness has a universal appeal. NO it’s certainly not just to appeal to Buddhists. In fact to tell you the truth I hate to call myself a Buddhist. I don’t want to confine my self to a geographical barrier and call my self a Sri Lankan and carry the Dhammapada in my hands and shout loud ‘I am Buddhist’. All I know is that I am a human being seeking for truth.

Q: In what way has making this film changed you, personally?

I spent one and a half years of my life in the North researching into this film. I met scores of people belonging to many different layers of the society. I made this film during the previous regime. It was not easy with military intelligence watching every step of mine. Personally it was one of the most challenging shoots. But all the hardships I went through added a different determination to my own determination and gave courage to see to the end of the production. Personally it was a journey that deepened my understanding of impermanent and decaying nature of everything around us including relationships and emotions.

Q: Are you positive in your beliefs for the future of the country? Or do you feel the 'peace', so hard-won, is fragile?

It’s time we revisit certain grim passages of history and assure all citizens of the country a safer future. We need to launch a well thought out, long lasting reconciliation process, instead of working on short-term projects. It is time we cultivate the virtue of forgiveness, and start embracing each other with deeper understanding. I prefer a genuine civil society initiative, rather than government policy superimposing upon our lives. To sustain the hard won peace, a paradigm shift in consciousness must take place now. Peace is the only way.

Q: What role do you think your film could play in opening people's eyes and minds to the hidden stories of these children? Could it be shown for example at cinemas after the big military parades every Independence Day?

I am someone totally opposed to big military parades. Twice every year we display our military might, spending millions. Those who wave national flags at high flying war planes on that day never realize how much it affects certain communities. How sensitive is it for certain fractions of the society to digest all that pomp and pageant? We should not confine ourselves to screening films on chosen days, but design a process that engages all stakeholders to carry on a healthy dialogue.

Q: These people that you interviewed clearly trusted you. Was it hard to gain their trust? How long did you have, to spend with them?

Well when I researched into the film, I had a world of time and they were free to share. I cried with them, I laughed with them, I shared meals with them and I hugged them from time to time. They trusted me to the very atom as they probably felt I am part of them.

In fact one person travelled all the way from Jaffna to Colombo to see me when I met with an accident last year. Such was the bond. But when I went with my camera to shoot, they only shared some of the stories as military personnel were present. When interpreters become interrogators that’s inevitable.

Q: Do the people you interviewed have faith in the processes of rehabilitation and the political and civil groups that are reaching out to them?

NO not all. To my knowledge there had not been a proper rehabilitation process. It was more or less a vocational training in the watchful eyes of military. I have never been to a rehabilitation centre. This is what they told me. I sensed that anyway. They feel that most are following an agenda except of course a few genuine organizations like Sarvodaya. What is the use of periodical workshops with payment for participation? It’s time we adopt a PROCESS instead of ad hoc project planning.

Q: How long do you think it will take for the wounds to turn into scars, and for the scars to fade? Metaphorically speaking? For these child soldiers & their families? The memories of being used in this way? Their ideals betrayed & their hopes manipulated?

It will take more than one lifetime to heal the wounds, especially those who suffered the war in full. These kids and people in the area are constantly reminded who they are, the place they have in the society and a list of dos and don’ts. In a forced environment as such, how can we expect them to forget? I met some ex child soldiers who are still afraid of loud noises, darkness and even dead meat. There are child soldiers who refused to talk to anyone, who hide themselves in dark corners in fear, who are unable to eat as they are reminded of incidents they went through. Unfortunately, as the majority of them are unemployed, they live without a rice grain of hope for themselves or for the country. Unless we remove the root cause, the suffering will continue.

Q: Do you think that far greater sensitivity is needed in dealing with this specific group of people than has been realised?
We must be ultra sensitive in dealing with not only those who suffered but also all minorities. It’s deeply saddening that today those of us who stand by truth and justice have fallen into the category of minority. Actually the real war has just begun, to win the confidence of those who faced brutalities. All our efforts go waste every time they see military drills, air displays and even nonsensical statements by various authorities.

Q: How could future out reaches, activists and aid workers be better trained & informed than they currently are?

For the majority of those whom you mention they are part of a project in peace building or rehabilitation or health care, etc. Their mushroom growth of interest lasts only as far as the project lasts. Actually I want them not to visit those areas or talk to individuals, as half-hearted contribution could be very damaging. If you are to build true relationships you must study the issue thoroughly and understand the gravity of their intervention before you step into those areas. I do not speak Tamil. But all embraced me as they felt I am agenda-less. In the beginning I only had love and affection to offer. To date they have not asked any favours from me except a warm hug every time we depart.

Q: What in your personal education, training & experience has led you to have this feeling for this particular group of people? What would you like to see happen as a result of this film you have made?

I have a very special place for kids in my heart as I suffered a miserable childhood. In fact I never had one. I was an aimless kid. Only natural that I am drawn to these kinds of stories. I want the whole world to see this film, and understand the brutal war they funded, the arms they supplied, encouraged with words, deeds and actions. I want all communities to feel my film from a humanistic point of view without taking sides and forming ‘opposing camps’. I want everyone to say “NO MORE WAR” after seeing my film.

Stepping Up

Image Credit: www.lowes.com



Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today

Each working week, in the boardrooms of companies in Colombo's CBD, and designated conference rooms in City hotels, WIM workshops and mentoring forums and seminars are taking place. What is WIM? The title stands for 'Women In Management', an organisation founded and directed by the dynamic and down-to-earth Ms. Sulochana Segera, to assist women in their professional development in corporate and public roles in Sri Lanka.

Earlier this year, a series of events were organised by WIM, centering on issues raised by International Women's Day and its focus on empowering women in their professional lives in developing contemporary Sri Lanka. They were diverse, practical, and interesting, and the presenters were frank and open about their own professional experiences.

The topics of the recent workshops included: 'Playing High And Playing Low', focusing on developing the ambient awareness a team leader needs in order to support and encourage her co-workers; being authentic and self-aware as a base for connecting more effectively with others; and 'Leadership By Design'.

Each of these mentoring seminars took place over a simple and welcome) buffet breakfast, so that the participants could attend, take notes, and then proceed to the subsequent events in their daily working schedules. The attendees worked in banks, in the Human Resources sections of companies, in executive and administrative positions in diverse firms.

As a teacher of English, I have been struck by the idioms used in professional corporate life: 'stepping up to the plate', for example, and 'wanting a seat at the table'. These semantic fields and lexical sets evoke a sense of being at a banquet, of taking one's place in a public and dignified gathering place.

There was a generic corporate culture prevalent in the 'Top Tier' law firms in Australia in the late 1990s, which I witnessed first-hand. The partners were all male, and vied for the offices with the best views of the City on the top floors of the building. The administrative staff were all female, and clustered in open-plan, centralised partitioned desks to make them accessible to their superiors at all times.

When the company invited 'All Staff' to lunches, kaleidoscopic arrays of sandwiches were laid out on sumptuous platters. The partners were invited to approach the table first. After they had filled their plates, and moved off, the administrative echelons came in and surveyed the tables, picking and choosing from the remnants, putting together their lunches from what was left, and returning back to their designated work stations, because they literally had no seat at the executive table.

It was like watching an animal documentary film on 'Wildlife' Channel! The corridors of power and the typing pools of powerlessness. It was clear that the 'support staff' and their 'soft skillsets' were routinely undervalued, in that context, because the partners and the executives brought in the money, aggressively and combatively and publicly, and the support staff's work was not overt. By definition, it was 'behind the scenes': the conversations, the dialogues, the building of communication and professional co-operation, to co-operate to achieve deadlines, to create and sustain the infrastructure. To keep the household running, so to speak, while the warriors went to war.

Many of the attendees at the WIM mentoring sessions, and all the presenters, are balancing the demands of businesses and professional careers with the responsibilities of managing partners and children, and often extended families, in their personal lives. The younger women are facing the challenges of constructing their lives, often concurrently doing full-time work & part-time study, in such a way that, when opportunities arise to expand their roles and enhance their skills, they will make informed and ultimately personally empowering choices.

Mentoring is a vital structural component in the construction of any field of activity. It is through working with and learning from more experienced colleagues, those who have survived and thrived in circumstances we have yet to engage with, that we can observe the skills we need to develop & put into practice ourselves, to make our pathways straighter and smoother.

The presenters of the workshops and seminars all emphasised the significant skills and advantages that being women bring to participants in professional life. Management language terms these 'soft skills' (which I, of course, find fascinating.) Who defined these as 'soft'? Are they termed 'soft' because they are subtle, indirect & persuasive rather than aggressive, associated with intuition and empathy, with 'EQ' or emotional intelligence, rather than 'IQ' or 'hard' rational intellect (traditionally seen as the 'masculine' sphere)?

What the presenters highlighted was the collaborative and non-competitive focus of these skillsets. The traditional 'corporate ladder' is, as the metaphor implies, envisioned as a vertical hierarchy - people start at the base, at entry level, and seek to 'climb the ladder'. It is a rigid model of progress, aimed at incremental acquisition of status, based on monetary reward and harsh punishment, with designated gatekeepers at each level, comprising tasks to be competitively performed, and performance evaluations, scrutinies and appraisals to be undergone. It is an obstacle course.

In fact, the whole structure can be likened to the board game 'Snakes and Ladders'. Do you remember playing this when you were a kid? You climb the ladder, and progress, and as you move towards your goal, you must take care not to slide down a snake, retrograding and retarding your forward trajectory.

The difference between the game and the reality, though, is that 'Snakes and Ladders' is a game of chance, and the player's progress determined by the roll of dice. In contrast, our career path is one that can be planned, and designed. And these mentoring sessions show us how to do this: to start planning, to factor in clear-cut goals, to bring forward our whole armoury of skills: hard and soft, rational and intuitive, to be able to progress in a meaningful, creative and fulfilling way towards achieving our personal aspirations.

The masculine model of success, which has dominated boardrooms and conference rooms for centuries, appears to me to have been limited by the exclusive focus on logic and rationality, and the adoption of duellistic and adversarial mindsets at all levels of the hierarchical ladder.

The emergence of this more feminine complementary perspective will have a welcome and balancing effect, and make the corporate culture far more inviting and accessible to all.

Sight Unseen

Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today

Professor Savitri Gunasekara gave an illuminating address at the SLWC on the 21st of March, 2015. Her topic was 'Visible and Invisible', and she in this framework outlined for us the history of the status of women and their political & social recognition; and the status quo regarding women's rights in contemporary Sri Lanka.

Professor Gunasekara's chosen title perfectly highlighted the paradox women as a gender face in the world today, and especially in Sri Lanka, which is known universally as the first country to have a female national leader: Prime Minister Sirimavo Ratwatte Bandaranaike.

This visible and well-known fact is often cited as an example of Sri Lanka's claim to feminist fame, and it is assumed that a nation where women can be elected leaders must of course be a nation where women are intrinsically appreciated, recognised, promoted and valued as equals by their male counterparts.

This assumption is not accurate.

What would be occurring if this was true would be extremely visible: women at all levels of society would be aware of their legal rights as well as their responsibilities, financially literate, and aware that they could make independent choices regarding if, when and with whom to have relationships and bear children without family pressure, and without sacrificing the other roles they wanted to perform in life.

Women's biological role and reproductive capacity is seen and very visibly recognised: Professor Gunasekara made the point very clearly that women as mothers are venerated in this country, which is itself called 'The Motherland' by many citizens. But this recognition and respect are too often limited to the childbearing role of a woman.

Women as human beings wishing to enter partnership with men as girlfriends, sweethearts and lovers are in comparatively very difficult terrain. The paradox is particularly obvious in the advertisements and photo spreads in magazines and on television: the public faces of wonderfully pretty girls and lovely women, interesting because they are so attractive. And we find them attractive, as scientific research informs us, because their glossy hair, glowing complexions, bright eyes and rounded bodies are manifestly symptoms of fertility - and thus marriageability.

This is the 'Happy Ever After' scenario.

Yet the statistics for reported physical, verbal & emotional abuse and domestic violence within marital relationships and romantic/sexual relationships are hidden: and they are extremely high.

Many of our young women are still told and believe that marriage is the best and most fulfilling of occupations, for all women. The younger the woman, the less life experience she is likely to have had: so many girls forego fulfilling & expansive alternative life paths out of ignorance.

There are many romantic myths and sentimental fantasies centred on falling in love and having children, on living happily ever after and on being partnered for life with one's soul mate. Many contemporary industries profit from this eternal human quest: astrology horoscopes, fashion, makeup, fitness, Valentine's Day, jewellery, adornment, dating agencies, tele-summits on 'Calling In The One', counselling, and wedding planning.

But those who fail to achieve the dream, or are failed by the myths of the society, are not so visible: battered women do not live long lives, or happy ones, and their futures are cut short. Women's and children's refuges are not in the public eye, and are extremely underfunded. The need for their existence is often denied: the call for women's rights and children's rights as part of human rights is called a 'Western feminist' concept - and a divisive one. The concept of the 'Sinhala lion' has traditionally left no room for acknowledgment of the Sinhala lioness.

Professor Gunasekara informed us that equality of women was in fact an inherent fact in Sri Lankan society in the time of the Buddha. Women were equal seekers for knowledge, wisdom and Enlightenment, and equal as students: in speech and in conversation. Sri Lankan women had gained the right to vote before their British sisters, in 1931.

She described her own generation as being blessed to attend university in an atmosphere of freedom and inclusiveness, where students from all backgrounds could meet and come to know each other as professional equals, where divisions of socio-economic status and class were often privately questioned and replaced by civilised sensitivity to disparity.

The Free Education legislation of 1948 did not differentiate between the genders and mentioned no special provisions for women because none were needed! Equality and the respect and dignity it encompasses were part of being a Sri Lankan.

This generation, their academic potential supported through free nationwide education, went on to become successful and productive throughout the world, in many countries. The professional women emerging in this era in fields of law, education, business, medicine, social work and other fields were able to work in ways that fulfilled their intellectual potential; greatly enriched and enhanced the societies in which they worked; and also raise children who had access to the very best opportunities the world could offer any individual in terms of higher education and professional and personal development.

Yet in more recent times, these values and with them the status and dignity of women have been increasingly unrecognised, and their potential and capability often eroded. There is evidence that the concepts of equality inherent in a democratic social republic are not being translated into reality.

There is a marked gap between the spoken Rhetoric and the lived Reality.

Professor Gunasekara pointed out that, since Sri Lanka is a signatory to international Human Rights legislation, violations to the equal status and dignity of women ranging from sexual assault, abuse, domestic violence, harassment and gender discrimination, are a violation of International Law. The terminology of Equality is actually meaningless unless publicly invisible and unacknowledged discrimination is addressed - and addressed concertedly and systematically, systemically throughout all levels of our society.

Women at university & college level need to be seen as sisters and as fellow-students, so that disincentives to their confidence and progress, such as the differential targeted ragging of female students at universities (illegal since 1998) do not flourish in a culture of misogyny. Students with great potential are often intimidated and discouraged by the awareness that the bad treatment they are subjected to is overlooked or dismissed as something inherent in the society that they must learn to accept.

If ragging is seen as in effect an acceptable initiation process into university life, what challenges can a young professional woman look forward to, if this scarring and traumatic experience is the threshold of her future?

Women need to be seen as sisters and daughters in professional fields, and in the corporate world, so that their creativity and dedication to development of their professional skills can be supported, mentored and encouraged by their professional leaders & superiors without exploitation and hypocrisy.

She spoke of the Family Values promoted publicly by those who govern us politically, and also reinforced by advertising and media, with their hypnotic & suggestive images selling milk powder, children's food and baby products: enforcing the role of woman as nurturer, as the source of life and nourishment. Yet this positioning places almost total responsibility for the functioning of the family on the woman - who often, today, juggles competing roles in & outside the home in order to balance the family budget and make sure no one goes unsupported in her domain.

This obsessive focus on woman as provider of emotional and nutritional nourishment actually erodes the man's participation in child-rearing and destabilises the functioning of the family. For which women are then often held responsible - which is to say, blamed.

Women can be treated with respect as collaborators and colleagues, and come to be known for their diversity of capabilities in a more truly equal society. Invisible discrimination can be treated as unacceptable and so go unrewarded. Visible abuse and discrimination, in the public sphere, can only be treated as unacceptable when offenders do not go virtually unpunished.

The gap between Rhetoric and Reality in relation to gender equality should be and can be diminished. The whole country and every citizen will benefit, from this systemic realignment. And be able to relate to others with capability and confidence, as true equals on the world stage.

For The Love Of All Women

Interview with Sulochana Segera

Written by Devika Brendon
Published in Ceylon Today

Q: WIM is not a 'whim' but an excellent & very positive initiative. Can you outline how the idea came to you, and how you started it?

I was in a good professional position in a Multinational Company till the idea came to my mind that I should do something differently. I started my own HR Recruitment and Consultancy company. And I was doing very well - there was no reason to complain. But I saw that there were very few women looking for senior positions in recruitment; as well as markedly lesser numbers of women who participated in Training and Development programmes. While I was researching to find out why women are not being recruited for senior positions in the year 2009, I started to research the words 'women' and 'empowerment' and I was not happy with what I saw and read. For me personally empowerment is not charity. It is more about mentoring and leadership. I then started looking at the other Asian countries who had reputed women organizations and I was happy to follow and learn from Malaysia and Singapore about some of their practices.  So I decided to start Women in Management as a Private Organization where women can use the opportunity we provide to professionally collaborate, as a Networking Forum, as well as a Leadership Practising Organisation.

Q: What challenges have you faced as its founder, in developing your ideas into practical reality?

It is easier to follow someone or an established organisation, rather than creating your own idea and trying to get people to enter into it, especially women. When WIM was started in Sri Lanka, there were only a few women's organizations which were active, and they were only focused on charity. WIM was mainly targeting career women and it took a while for me to take the career women out of their 'comfort' zones. We as Sri Lankans have learned to ask: what is in this for me? Rather than: what I can do for the future of myself AND others? The challenge was making them realize that their leadership can inspire another woman and it is not just her own career which will benefit, but the economy of the entire country. Also I wanted to change the existing attitudes towards team working. There is a saying in our society that women cannot work together. It is commonly believed that women are best at working on their own rather than working in a team. But for increased development and success, I believed that women should learn to work in teams. So this was another challenge which I faced to make them work as teams rather than individuals. WIM started developing small groups, and invited WIM members to take part according to their own wills and capabilities. I found that young career women are very keen to work in teams - more so than mature career women. As an Asian country we often think only age brings maturity;  but my work with WIM has made me see that younger women today have access to information and concepts which enable them to develop maturity at earlier stages in their professional development: maturity of outlook can be developed at any age.

Q: What programmes do you offer to young women seeking professional development?

WIM is already a licensed trainer of International Finance Corporation Business Edge. Under their guidance and certification, we can offer more than 36 professional development programmes for all calibres of career women and men. Apart from that we bring local successful professionals together and we share their success and failure stories. This is one of the best programmes we offer, and it allows young career women to learn and find out how to develop their own path. We also assist them with finding suitable jobs. Career Counselling. Etc.

Q: How do you envision WIM developing in the near future?

I think WIM's future is in today’s work and the development of our young members. WIM has taken steps to find women in leadership and bring them to the attention of our corporate as well as our national leaders. WIM has developed so many corporate women to take senior positions and we believe they are thoroughly equipped to perform their duties to their companies as well as to the country. WIM is not only focused in Colombo; we have gone a long way to establish initiatives in rural regions too. Today women who were just daily earners have become entrepreneurs as well as small exporters. We were the first to give them management skills needed for the daily lives as well as for their businesses.

The future of WIM is to ensure Sri Lankan women are recognized as Professionals rather than just as women Globally.

Q: What in your education & upbringing do you believe has influenced you to take this path in life?

It all came from my Father and Mother. I was different from my brother and sister - I always had something to say - and too many questions were asked by me as a child! I remember once my teacher said I was the most disturbing child in the class because I asked so many questions! My father was a journalist, and he associated with all levels of people, from president to the coconut plucker. I always admired his ways of thinking and the way he respected people for who they are; and also my mother, who was a housewife but yet she was in her own way a true entrepreneur. I can say my mother earned more than my father as a housewife. My education background is in Human Resources Development. With all that l, as a single mother by age 27, with two kids, found that what I went through as a woman and a mother made me who I am today, and gave me the dedication and strength to create Women In Management.

Q: You have really highlighted the importance of mentoring & guidance in professional & personal development. May we know who has mentored you in your own life?

As a Catholic I would say 'God chose me'. As well as my father, in his own way, because with his contacts he would have got me a good job just when I finished school, but he was the first to ignore me for finding jobs! It gave me a great strength - to find my own career path as well as facing job interviews, etc. When I was young we knew nothing about mentors, nor about women and leadership. We learned everything after getting in to a job. Most of our generation is self-taught, and it is one of the reasons I think our generation has become mentors to the younger generation today.

Q: The mentoring sessions I attended were clearly, vibrantly & energetically presented. The presenters were interesting and diverse. In choosing presenters for WIM's forums and workshops, what qualities do you look for? What do you think is more important in a professional woman's development? Qualifications? Training? Or her attitude to life?

I think first it should be the willingness to accept a challenge. Then the attitude, followed by qualifications. Yet training is a must b’cos most qualifications are just exams and do not emphasise the practical. When a person is able to put into practice what they have learned in theory, that is what encourages them to move forward.

Q: What limitations in the corporate environment do the WIM programmes address?

Many companies are inflexible in their attitudes to women professionals, and do not recognise the multi-faceted roles professional women are required to perform. Old-fashioned traditional management thinking identified women as 'Costs' rather than 'Assets' to their company, because women in their late 20s and 30s require maternity leave to have children, and construct their careers simultaneously with raising their families.

It is also unfortunate, although understandable, that meeting these competing demands is tiring, and as a result, so many professional women choose to opt out of the professional arena, often at the prime stage of their careers, as they feel unsupported by their companies, who do not offer flexi-hours or recognise the real difficulties of the situations that their talented 'multi-tasking' female employees and executives are facing. This needs to change. A responsible company will only benefit from adapting its structures to support productive and motivated personnel.

Q: What does the term 'soft skills' mean to you, and to your organisation?

Soft Skills means having the right attitude to do the right job at the right time. Our organization believes in soft skills but it does not mean just courses. It means practising  your inner skills with your abilities. Eg: After attending a leadership soft skills course you cannot expect the participant to take the leadership of a department unless she has that in herself. Soft skills help people to understand their own specific strengths. They increase a person's adaptability.

Q: How will you measure the success of WIM & its initiatives in the years to come? What lasting contributions would you like to have made to Sri Lankan society through this organisation?

WIM want to promote more women to decision making levels. i.e. corporates as well as parliament. WIM need more women leaders to join hands with WIM but quality is more important than quantity. WIM personally believes Sri Lankan women should come out from their 'comfort' zones and stand up for themselves, rather than asking organizations to stand up for them. Also we believe by 2020 the Sri Lankan Parliament will have more Professional women leaders representing the country and they will work towards women and family development, changing the present attitudes towards women politicians.

"Taj Mahal was built for the love of one woman. Women in Management was built for the love of all the women."

“A Strong Man will Empower his Woman”