Who Let The Dogs Out?

A couple of nights ago, a Russian woman who was out with some friends in Colombo was harassed on Galle Face Green, one of the most public areas of the capital city, by a group of about 10 Sri Lankan men. The video taken of this incident, with its visual and audio evidence of the verbal insults and the physical assault on the person recording the incident, has been viewed by hundreds of people. 

There are a lot of reports in women’s online groups in this country with video evidence of women being harassed as they walk to work, or to the shops, or attempt to walk their dog in their own neighbourhood of the towns and cities in which they live. Or as they attempt to take public transport to work or college, and back home again, with random men trying to grab and grope them, pretending they don’t know that what they are doing is immoral. 

Women increasingly seen as sex objects

We can speculate that the growth in the pornography industry that has accompanied the rise in internet usage in the past 15 years has resulted in women being increasingly seen as sexual objects, and not human beings, with the right to be free of harassment and interference as they go about their lives. 

The disturbing rise in trade in nude photos and the monetisation of human desire for affection and connection, which results in girls being persuaded to share images of themselves with a trusted friend or boyfriend, who then violates the trust placed in him, is also increasing. You add technology to misogyny and you get exploitation and degradation like this. Sri Lanka unfortunately currently has one of the highest rates of consumption of pornography in the world, and also extremely high rates of violence and abuse against children and women. 

There is something wrong with the mindset of men who see a woman on an advertisement or a promotional brochure, advertising a product, and automatically equate the woman with the product, and assume that both are ‘for sale’. There is something actually wrong with the attitude of men who think it is acceptable to express their sexual excitement or approval unsolicited to a woman they do not know. Contrary to what many such men think, their enthusiasm is not welcome or felt as complimentary. It makes the women they approach uncomfortable. 

Women who have public profiles on social media have to post visual images of themselves in the public sphere, on Linked In, Facebook, Instagram etc. When a woman is invited to present a public seminar or participate in a panel discussion, the media team associated with the event will ask for a photograph of her, to enable the public to put a face to the name. 

Recently, a local chocolate company asked a young influencer to advertise their products. The comments on their page had to be seen to be believed. 95 per cent of them commented on the looks of the girl, ranging from ‘pretty’ in various forms, to sexually explicit propositions, implying that she was a sex worker. 

This actually does not happen in many other countries. It is not in fact normal, or sane, to assume that every woman or girl you see is available to you, or trying to catch your eye, or appeal to you in some way sexually. The boundaries between acceptable types of human behaviour in different contexts, and public and personal spheres, have become blurred. It makes me sad when I see young Sri Lankan women say they have just given up on dating local men, because of the low standard of behaviour they are faced with. 

In a country which is attempting to revive its flourishing tourist trade after the Easter Attacks and the current COVID-19 crisis, to allow the behaviour of street harassment and crude objectification of women, especially foreign women, who are merely attempting to have a holiday in a beautiful country, and bringing needed revenue into the country, is counterproductive, and totally unpatriotic. 

No modern woman who has a choice would ever choose to travel to, or work in, a country where she is subjected to this kind of treatment and nauseating scrutiny on a daily basis. By indulging themselves in this lewd and degenerate behaviour, these men are lowering the reputation of the country in the tourist and global travel industry. Members of Sri Lanka’s Tourist Board need to take note of this. 

If this obvious point is not taken up and acted on, Sri Lanka’s reputation as a place of glorious beauty, history and natural abundance of scenery and landscape, will be undermined and damaged by the repulsive and immoral behaviour of some local people, and the lack of safety and decency that both local women and girls and foreign women experience as a result of this behaviour. It is like seeing a beautiful building which has become neglected, being taken over by feral dogs. 

A couple of days ago, a woman publicly shared the name and photograph of a man who had verbally abused her simply because she did not choose to reply to him on FB Messenger. Naming and shaming the perpetrators of such behaviour, by sharing photographs and videos of the insulting and inappropriate behaviour of the men, are actions resorted to by women who know from past experience that their official reporting of such behaviour will not result in any charge being made, as the behaviour is so common. This situation must change, if the country is to go forward, as it should. 

Pervasive disrespect normalised

Why should men think that their offensive behaviour should not be reported? Getting angry, and threatening those who expose the bad behaviour is not going to erase the fact that it happened. The men themselves have to recognise that they are accountable, despite the fact that a whole cultural tradition in many countries has traditionally supported the degradation of women. They have to hold themselves, and allow themselves to be held, to a higher standard of accountability in their conduct. 

It is sad to see that this kind of pervasive disrespect has become normalised in the world today. Many men, angry and threatened at the recent improved rights and increased success of women, seek to continually reduce them through word and deed and stereotype and insult and assumption, to the status of passive sex objects, as if it is only their physical  appearance and its appeal which defines their worth, and not their character, their ideas, their beliefs and thoughts, their intellect, their wisdom and multi-faceted experiences. 

Sri Lanka at this juncture has the opportunity to challenge the South Asian trend, of constantly treating women as second class citizens. We can see in Europe and New Zealand the recent rise to political authority of several women who are young, educated, well-recognized by their peers and skilled in leadership. We can see the welcome appointment of skilled professional women to important executive positions in renowned companies in Sri Lanka. We can see the value women bring to public discourse. 

The mindset that women should be restricted to home and child-raising is an old-fashioned one, suitable to a former era, when one partner’s income was enough to sustain a family. Today, people can and should choose the kinds of life they want, professionally and personally. Relationships being seen as partnerships between equals is one of the most enlightened and rational benefits of the modern era. We should recognise what a benefit that is, for all. 

But it is only really a comprehensive benefit to a society which truly wants to empower every member of its citizenry, and hold a position of respect in the global world. 

I suggest The Tourist Board could combine with the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs and develop an ongoing awareness campaign designed to elevate our public reputation and improve the living experience of women and girls in this country. Corporates and Media could sponsor and promote these campaigns. 

And citizens with their smart phones can continue to demand public awareness of this ongoing problem, which adversely affects the quality of life for the women and girls of Sri Lanka. 

And They All Fall Down

 The necessary overthrow of our idols in our journey of individuation.

We’ve seen a lot of statues being forcibly taken down from their plinths and pedestals, in the past few weeks, as the #BlackLivesMatter movement has started to increase in momentum. Statues of slave traders in Bristol, England; and profiteers from slavery in the United States. Statues of people who built great personal wealth and reputation from colonization and the economic prosperity that it brought to the so-called ‘first world’ countries.

Last year, during the #MeToo movement, we saw the downfall of a famous, enormously wealthy and successful movie producer, and the end of the professional career of a famous actor, ironically playing the part of a President in the aptly-titled political satire ‘House Of Cards’.
There seems to be a global upsurge in the violent casting down of idols.

The author J.K. Rowling, venerated by a legion of fans for her Harry Potter book and movie franchise for 20 years, is now being castigated and renounced by many in her fanbase because of her professed exclusionary opinions about what constitutes a ‘true woman’. The rigid monochromatic binaries of sexual, racial and economic categories which defined us, and by which we previously organized ourselves, have today exploded into a multiplicity of self-identification. For some people, this wide range of possibilities is perplexing, and unnecessary. For others, it is vital and liberating.

Greater respect for those who are different from ourselves, greater empathy, greater sensitivity to the contexts and experiences of others, will hopefully be the ultimate result of this conflict-ridden transitional period. It seems painful, but necessary. As if the human race is finally growing up.

I suggest that we could experience the events in this transition as less traumatic if we relate it to our own personal growth process. We all start the development of our beliefs and attitudes from our own specific context; and our early mentors and idols, including our parents, mirror what is normal for us, and what we aspire to be. They are the measure of us, and we measure ourselves by them.

But young people grow up. Outgrowing our idols, feeling betrayed by them, disillusioned and disappointed by their words and actions as their historical acts of offensiveness come to light, from genocide to sex abuse, exploitation of the vulnerable, promotion of racial or gender-based hatred, is part of our own self-determination.

As we grow, whether as individuals or as nations, it seems inappropriate to have statues in public places celebrating the deeds of people whose actions today are ones we cannot admire.

In our personal lives, people we looked up to, who represented certain qualities to us, which we admired intensely when we were younger, including wealth, fame, beauty and success, are sometimes shown by their own words and actions to be morally deficient or limited in their outlook. We find that our values no longer align with them.
I experienced this recently when researching sources for an academic paper I was presenting on the topic of Exoticism, looking at the ways in which women were described as alluring and provocative in varied literary texts. I found an extract from Pablo Neruda’s Memoirs in which he describes how he sexually assaulted a woman who was employed to clean his house while he was stationed as a diplomat in Sri Lanka in the late 1920s. I was horrified both by his action, and the emotionless and matter of fact way he wrote about it, and mentally dethroned Neruda from the position of respect which I had formerly accorded him.

I recently discovered that Derek Walcott, a brilliant poet and post-colonial writer whose literary work I have long admired, was not given the prestigious role of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University because of accusations of personal misconduct against him.

Psychologists say that we project qualities we admire onto others: it’s ‘the halo effect’. We are so impressed by their good qualities that we do not see their human frailties and failings. It makes it even more difficult for those elevated by public acclaim to self-evaluate or set limits on their own behaviour, as they are allowed so much license by the indulgent, adoring public.
We can blame those we have idolized, for failing us. To use the statue analogy, we can throw paint at them or deface them, to display and dramatize our disrespect. We can insult them and berate them.

Alternatively, we can appreciate that our own standards and expectations are transforming. We can mindfully clear space for worthier inhabitants of those pedestals, which better represent our modern-day ideals.

Or we can do without those statues and those pedestals altogether. We can cease to idolize others, and we can take greater responsibility and accountability for the objects of worship we put up in our public spaces, and those individuals we venerate in our hearts, minds and spirits.
We can develop the qualities we admire in ourselves, and make them living personal ideals which guide our lives, rather than giving away our personal powers by externalising them onto idols made of stone.

White Noise

I have stopped sharing certain kinds of visual images on Facebook. Not because Facebook have sent me any message that anything I have posted ‘has breached their community standards guidelines’. But because the kinds of pictures that are being shared at this point in time are often so ugly, so revealing and so disheartening.

It’s an incredibly significant turning point for the human race. Glossy surfaces and whited sepulchers are being broken up and excavated, statues that have stood for certain symbols and beliefs are being  dismounted from their pedestals, and public figures who seemed culturally ensconced, embalmed in their own success, fame and iconic status are being investigated, through archival material.

Videos taken on smart phones and posted online without context are being circulated: African American men being accosted by police, tasered in the parking lots of fast food restaurants, set upon by attack dogs. Statues are defaced, covered with graffiti and splashed with red paint to represent the bloodshed and human suffering which resulted from the policies of the men whose image they embody. 

A picture of two little white girls in the Belgian Congo in 1955 show them playing with a tiny African child in a cage, as if the child was a pet animal. Human zoos existed until relatively recently in the world, thinly disguised as anthropological exhibits. Saartje Baartman, a South African woman, called the ‘Hottentot Venus’ was exhibited in Paris. 

Fact checking reveals that most of the icons that have been set in stone over the past 250 years have at best a chequered history, and that most of the stately homes of England, America and Europe have been built on profits from the unpaid labour of slaves, or poorly paid indentured laborers. 

Gradually, the public, most of us non-specialist historians, are realising that we have learned a very selective history, and believed a dominant narrative, and that, not very far under what we prefer to believe, there are further facts which are harder to reconcile with our preferred myths of how the human race has progressed. 

The Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a process of cultural reckoning and exploration of colonisation and its ongoing impacts in many countries. Euphemisms like ‘settlement’ cover the indecent rapaciousness and cruelty of what other historians’ term ‘invasion’ and ‘genocide’. A sort of diffused white noise, a fabricated, self-justifying vista of peace and serenity, seems to have absorbed all radical dissent until now. 

Sir Winston Churchill, for example, one of Britain’s ‘most loved’ politicians and statesmen of yesteryear, is known widely for his rallying speeches during WW2, particularly the ‘we shall fight on the beaches... we shall never surrender’ speech in The Battle of Britain. 

But he also said some other equally defiant words, in relation to colonial invasion of the territories of North American and Australian indigenous people, which have an ugly ring to them in our contemporary era: 

‘I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place’. 

When we turn off the computer or TV from which we get our news, and put down the newspapers, and look at the cities in which we live, we see the values of our society emblazoned on billboards, and indicated in the public honors we confer on our citizens. 

There’s a petition to change the Order of St. Michael and St. George in Britain, which contains an insignia showing a white-clad saint trampling a dark-winged devil, underfoot, literally with his foot on its neck and a chain leading from his hand to the neck of the black figure. The image of George Floyd is recalled by this posture, but so is the image of big game hunters, those grinning parasites and propagators of Empire, posing with their kills, in their solar topees. 

Racism operates by creating and imposing hierarchies of value, and assigning human beings into categories based on skin colour, and ethnicity, especially visible physical features. Beliefs about character and personality are imposed via stereotype onto these physical attributes. And these beliefs are reinforced and spread through propaganda, heavily infused with symbolism. 

Professor Priyamvada Gopal, an Academic in the University of Cambridge, author of the post-colonial critique ‘Insurgent Empire’ is currently under online siege by brazen and overt white supremacists who feel disrespected by her statements that Britain should re-evaluate its own history. I have heard Professor Gopal being interviewed on the BBC, in a conversation in which it was patronisingly suggested by an Anglo-Saxon English academic that she should ‘use the resources of Cambridge University which are fortunately available to her, to research the colonisation processes of other countries, not just Britain’. ‘Whataboutism’ and deflection on a truly epic scale. Also, condescension and mansplaining. 

The beliefs underlying colonialism were blatantly racist, white supremacist and overtly capitalist. And these beliefs are stated on record, where we can read them today. White people owned resources. Non-white people were owned, their cultures dismantled and their resources appropriated. Voices in favour of these ideas were so loud and numerous they drowned out all opposition. To suggest that these racist beliefs be re-evaluated now is only radical or threatening to those who benefit from their affirmation and continuation. 

The insults sent to Professor Gopal via Twitter must be seen to be believed. They are a perfect illustration of the state of cultural illiteracy and regress of Britain today. Anger, misogyny, outrage, xenophobia, hypocrisy, vileness, racial vilification – all vie for prominence in the comments threads. 

No amount of shooting the messenger is going to suppress the need for cultural evolution. The ideas of comparative racial supremacy and inferiority served the agendas of the nationalistic and competitive building of Empire for the past few hundred years. A global world which requires real co-operation and respect between peoples can only rise in the public space created by the dismantling of those ideas. 

It’s a big and colourful transformation. It’s something to make a noise about.

Our diminishing attention span

 

One of the most noticeable things about these recent times is how rapidly the news cycle and its presentation of stories moves from one crisis to another, taking our energy and attention with it, mapped in bipolar extremes of highs and lows.

If we think about it, from last year’s Easter Attacks of April 2019 to the COVID-19 crisis which has dominated our lives since February, through curfew and lockdown and interruption of education and commercial enterprise, the rise of unemployment and restriction of activity and movement, to June 2020, where we see civil unrest and riots exploding in the US, we have been subjected to a non-stop attack on our sense of survivalism and security. 

It is difficult to maintain our optimism and equilibrium in times like this. And if we consider it, we can see that the issues and incidents that occupied our thoughts a few months ago keep changing, in step with the news reports, and the myriad opinion pieces. 

It is almost impossible to determine if what is being shown and told to us is real or not, as we are usually physically removed from the place in which it happens. We are aware that visual images are photoshopped, and videos can be faked. We rely on those presenting events to us to be accurate, objective and factual in their representation of events. But often they are not. Sometimes, it’s brazenly and unapologetically. And in that uncertainty, and that falsification, in those gaps, scepticism and conspiracy theories thrive. 

Personal protective equipment

Today, it seems as if the peaceful space outside our own home windowsill shows a completely different world from the one we see exploding on the television and computer screens, with escalating numbers of deaths reported, in lists and infographics, and video footage of Police in protective gear unleashing tear gas and plastic bullets on unarmed protestors. 

A few weeks ago, while 100,000 people were reportedly dying in North America, of a virus we had only heard of in February, we were told the hospitals there did not have adequate personal protective equipment to supply to the medical staff on the frontline. Doctors and nurses working long shifts dealing with the health crisis were wearing plastic garbage bags and homemade masks because the proper protective gear was not available, or not being given to them. Healthcare workers were dying from prolonged exposure to the highly-infective illness, due to lack of essential protection. 

But the Police and security forces dealing with these protests against racial injustice today seem very well equipped. 

For 15 years, I taught a course called ‘Representation and Text’ as part of an A-level Literature syllabus. This showed us how to analyse and deconstruct images and narratives that are offered to us, as representations of events and incidents in the real world. It was great preparation for the world we live in today.

Through technology, we have access not only to the rest of the world, but to perspectives which are created by the ways that world is framed to us. Through selective reporting, through omission, exaggeration, distortion, sensationalisation, minimising and understatement, viewers are presented with a version of reality which is not an exact record of the facts. 

Repetition and iteration of these distorted perspectives, on timed cycles and news loops, imprints and reinforces these ideas. And the barrage of information and infotainment impacts us. This is significant because it affects our thinking, and our beliefs; and our beliefs inform our words and actions, which in turn influence others around us. 

Human beings are naturally responsive, reactive individuals. And when we are in a constant state of tension and crisis, our responses are easily triggered. This volatility has socio-political implications as well as personal ones. 

Meditation practice teaches us to step back and be aware of the transience of our thoughts: our thoughts are like passing clouds, and our mind is the sky. It is our task to try and keep clear skies above us, and to recognise the changing patterns of our thoughts and beliefs, as we respond to each event which is relayed to us. 

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the incoming overload of information and representation. But when this happens, I suggest keeping in focus how quickly our attention is directed from one trauma to another, all targeting our fears and anxieties.  

To be well and to be happy is the goal of Metta Meditation practice. This seems to be a state of harmony which is increasingly challenging to achieve. To develop immunity against the consequences of these destabilising events, we must develop resilience of will and strength of mind. 

Remove the adjectives

A simple rule when hearing stories told about what is going on in the world is to remove the adjectives from what is said. It’s like removing unwanted and harmful fat from the top of food, which can only be done when it has cooled down. If you take your temperature, metaphorically speaking, when watching or listening to something which disturbs you, wait until you cool down before absorbing it. 

The contrasting difference between factual events and someone’s representation of it will always show us the intention of the person presenting it to us and expose our own biases, which are being targeted. It is up to us if that difference is clear to us or not, and how we act on that awareness. 

Skin in the game

It’s hard to know what exactly to say about the recent forcible removal of statues of slave traders and colonisers in public places in Britain and Europe.

On the one hand, it’s a great step forward towards racial justice and equity: putting up a statue of a person celebrates their contribution to the culture of the society in which they lived and worked. 

Seeing the bringing down, dragging and (in some cases) the beheading of statues of Colston and Columbus and co., I feel like I’m watching the French Revolution in real time, even though I agree the repellent values they embody should not be respected. 

But my Facebook and Instagram are filling up with videos of real people being actually killed, caught in the person-to-person crossfires that are cropping up everywhere. And beheadings and lynching are terrible things to hear of, because whether it’s audio or video these are our fellow human beings doing terrible things to each other, and having terrible things done to them. 

The dominant culture propagated by the West for the past 400 years is being visibly challenged. The Colonisation and its underlying belief system is being questioned, and those who profited from it and furthered it in their time are being removed from their pedestals.

I see the red paint-spattered faces and shoulders of these men, and watch them being pulled down by ropes and trundled down the streets and thrown into the harbours where their slave ships docked, their petrified bodies kicked each step of their un-royal progress by people of all colours and creeds. 

With these images in my mind, I think of the tumbril, that crude, terrible open cart in which the aristocrats were taken to the guillotine at the Place de la Concorde, through a howling crowd, who were rejoicing in their abrupt reversal of fortune. 

J.K. Rowling

We are seeing living icons falling too: J.K. Rowling, whose unprecedented personal popularity rose with the rise of social media, and was partly created by her engagement with it, has now fallen from her plinth, and even though she has been responsible for her own fall, it’s not hard to see the parallels between her being verbally dragged and vilified on Twitter on the vast platform her own talent had created, and the stone men in their stone costumes being thrown into the sea. She, like them, was famous in her time for her philanthropy. It was the ‘tax’ she paid to occupy her exalted state. 

To be frank, even a cursory check will show us the marginalisation and tokenism in the characterisation of the world of ‘Harry Potter’ where we saw one Chinese girl, two Indian girls (because they are twins), one West Indian man, one Irish boy, one Jewish boy, etc. Hogwarts was their home, and Hogwarts reinforced a lot of dominant narratives of race, as well as gender. 

Cho Chang and Padma and Parvati Patil are all described as the prettiest girls in school, but they all behave like bimbos, in comparison with the intelligent Hermione and the brilliant Ginny, both stout examples of the ‘best of (Anglo) British.’ We would be accurate in seeing these portraits as identifying JKR’s socio-cultural narrowness of mind. It was there all the time. In plain sight.

Perhaps this represents Rowling’s personal ‘pushback’ response to the loss of Empire, and the rise of immigration in Britain. She herself did not have an international education: her school and university education was local, regional and provincial, and she was not hugely well-travelled when she wrote the books, 20 years ago. 

Her current challenges on Twitter, in my opinion, are caused by her fame (and expectations of her wokeness created by it) outstripping her personal ideological evolution. She is being cast off because she will not recognise the validity of variations of gender identification diversity. 

But she is really not a pluralist: over and over, in both gender and race, she portrays a rigid binary - two races: white and non-white. As if white is normative, and everything else is other (and undifferentiated). Which (I assume), is how she prefers it to be. If she didn’t, she could have created a more diverse world - in a magical realm of her own invention.

Those ideas of binary rigidity are not words to live by, or uphold in the modern world. They have no capacity to inspire or include the rainbow spectrum of human existence and experience. 

In the late 18th Century in France, it was people power that was in the political ascendant, and being called an aristo traitor got you a death sentence. Today, in 2020, with its voracious and volatile identity politics, the current unpardonable public crime is racism. 

People who exhibit this noxious quality are doxxed (search for and publish private or identifying information about a particular individual on the Internet, typically with malicious intent) and exposed, and rough and ready justice is dealt to them by a Twitter mob: a motley crew of genuine anti-racists, educated socialists and historians, anti-imperialists, Marxists, intersectional feminists, liberalist humanists, anti-fascists and anarchists, and people who just like causing chaos, some of whom have been paid to foment civil disorder by interested parties, and brought into the relevant town in buses. 

Milan Kundera

We must take great care to select what we are replacing the torn down myths with, now, and consciously choose better. The writer Milan Kundera, brilliant witness of the dismantling of democracy and the rise of socialist autocracy in Europe during the Cold War, noted: “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, and its history. Then have somebody write a new culture, invent a new history.  Before long, the Nation will begin to forget what it is, and what it was.”

Many things that have had a stranglehold on our imaginations are being challenged in the here and now: not history or culture alone, but mythology. Our selective memories and cultural narratives are being mass audited. History is being created, and we are here to see it, not just as witnesses or recipients or inheritors, but participants and co-creators. 

‘A Little Is Enough’ - published in The Sunday Island, 10th May, 2020.

It’s two months since curfew came down on us, cutting us off from the all you can eat buffet tables and the succulent Wagyu marbled beef platters and all the flavoursome foods of the life we had got used to. Was it actually real? It seems like a dream, now. A haze of drizzle and fondant and glaze. 

At speed, but experienced slowly, like time lapse photography, the casual grocery impulse buys of early February have become the craved high end luxuries of late March. 

I had believed what I was told: that the middle class was growing, and that urban elite Colombo had plenty of money to spend, and money and time to burn on grills and rotisseries and pies and patisseries. But how quickly austerity came in, riding shotgun with the fear of Death and rumors of this terrible, non-discriminating disease. No amount of wealth could immunize anyone from it. 

Even a store-cupboard full of authentic Italian pasta sauce in lovely glass bottles, and a fridge full of Scottish smoked salmon and mild white English cheddar cheese would only delay the inevitable, as imports were cancelled. 

People started growing their own garden vegetables in pots, and baking their own bread. Indigenous medicinal plants and herbs were praised, and Facebook posts became focused on conserving what we had, and extracting the most value out of every ingredient. 

Nothing Exceeds Like Excess 

Did we really need to have so much, and so often? As our bodies waxed fat, did our souls shrink thin? Are we all better off, actually, for an indefinite period of intermittent fasting? I am not talking here of those who never have enough to eat. 

I was surprised to see the queues at the superstores, and the empty shelves. I don’t think our generation has experienced the fear of actual hunger before. Even the most disciplined person has been conscious of their privilege. By acknowledging it, and the inequity that underlies it, they pay the social tax that enables them to go on attending the round of banquets and feasts that constituted life in the Capital. Rich people have further to fall. Their elevation makes them vulnerable. 

But I think if you have so much that you lose count, and the sense of each individual item becomes indistinct, over time you don’t feel the true worth and the luxury of having things. Bit by bit, Eke Eke Eke. It is pleasing that a phrase for metaphorically making something last as long as you can, ‘one by one by one’, is visually similar in English. 

The Branston Pickle Miser

There’s a fine line between prudence and miserliness, stocking up and hoarding. I have heard a wealthy man complain at his own table that his wife’s guests were eating too much of his favourite Branston Pickle, and spreading too much clover honey on their morning toast. This was because he lived far away from his beloved England, and Fortnums did not deliver hampers full of Gentlemen’s Relish to his home, and rare commodities rise sharply in value. You could see him measuring the amounts with his eye, and finding the smallest teaspoons to put beside the jars of the precious delicacies. 

He had been dirt poor as a boy, he said: a scholarship kid at a cathedral school. And he grudged people’s wish to make him share because he knew how hard it was to create a personal hoard, and build a sanctuary, crisis-proof. He opens the store cupboard sometimes and just looks at the bottles, and touches their coin-shaped lids. 

A person sharing her experiences on Zoom recently said that, for the first time since she set up her own house, she is doing her own marketing, receiving her staples direct from the trucks that deliver fresh vegetables on the road; and she weighs each item in her hands, and knows the selling price of each, down to the smallest measure. She has never felt so grounded.

Self Made = Sovereignty 

I too have been breaking new ground, in the new earth. My shellac manicure started to split and flake off weeks ago, as I dig in the garden to plant seeds for vegetables, in pots and in the small garden beds. My friends’ hair is growing grey they say - and I think they look lovelier this way. We speak to each other in our pyjamas in a way we have never done before. 

I never knew until now that you can grow whole pineapples in pots, by planting their spiky tops; or spinach by planting their white stalks in the earth. The store cupboard becomes less important when there are living things striving for life and expression in the garden, with their bright energy and stubbornness and momentum for joy. The slow natural progress sets a schedule of its own, and we adjust to it. The sun pours on us all: seeds and stalks and stems and human beings, each morning, and then the clouds come in and the rain falls every afternoon. There is harmony slowly building from the slowly earthing roots of our abruptly interrupted former life. 

We have left it very late, I know, but - even now - it feels like Time itself is on our side, and we have a wealth of it. 

Sharing Is Caring

Almost at the end of the fourth week of curfew, there are some observations that can be made. The global pandemic has prompted varied responses in varied governments across the world. One of these is clearly manifested across the whole spectrum: the damaging belief in personal (cultural, ethnic or socio-economic) exceptionalism. 

Faced with a human catastrophe affecting all human beings with a respiratory and immune system, none of whom have herd immunity, many people’s default response was to believe and hope - against all the odds and accumulating evidence of statistics and data - that they, personally, their race and society and nation, had some kind of innate inbuilt or circumstantial protection. 

If you want to remind me that this is an unprecedented event, for which no country was prepared, I do take your point. My concern is that there seems to be a sense of wishful thinking operating where people assume that they themselves would be immune as a race or a nation or a culture, just because their country’s numbers of infected persons were initially low, and so they did not enact early intervention or vigilant precautions. 

Mass testing for a person to person transmitted contagious disease is far more indicative of the state of the spread than restricted testing. Yet despite the evidence that this worked well, many countries did not practise this. Given the opportunity to observe the tragic rise of numbers in South East Asia and Europe, and the reasons for them, many still did not adequately prepare. Knowledge sharing between countries was essential. But different governments had different views of what they should share, and what they could implement, in their own countries. 

    Human beings like stability, and no one on earth wanted to believe that the crisis would be extended, and that restrictions of mobility and access to provisions would become normalized. Clearly, many people were not prepared physically or emotionally for total shutdown, and did not have time or financial resources to stock their cupboards with necessary groceries, medicines etc. so governing authorities are balancing these considerations against each other, based on the numbers each country faces on an ongoing basis. 

The problem  is, the numbers on which these decisions to impose or lift restrictions are decided may be low because of lack of testing rather than actual lack of infection. So this gradual extension of restrictions based on the developing situation is hard to implement effectively. 

It’s been like watching a terrible, apocalyptic game of musical chairs. The countries that have managed it best so far have been the ones who imposed severe restrictions rapidly, before the number of deaths in their communities started escalating. Democratic governments have been slower to lock their citizens down, and have appealed to their sense of civic responsibility. This commendable respect for citizens’ individual rights has unfortunately led to countries with a great deal of economic resources  leaving it very late to intervene, and so failing to limit the spread of the illness throughout their communities. 

     It’s harshly ironic that the very aspects of human life which make our lives enjoyable and meaningful - community events, people socializing, eating together, worshipping and celebrating, doing activities as groups - have been the very activities which spread this contagion most virulently. 

We have all been required to make sudden major changes in our thinking and conduct: to face the reality of residing and working exclusively in our homes, without the relief or outlet of outings or adventures of any physical kind. Any faults or threats in our relationships with those we live with have been inevitably highlighted, by the enforced stay at home orders. 

      We have seen queuing, frustration and fear of actual hunger as stores logistically struggled to move from a small online payment and distribution process to total online purchasing in a few days. Competitive eyeing by people of each other’s ‘quarantine cooking’ has been noted, with self-styled ‘concerned citizens’ pointing out the insensitivity of people posting up their own culinary achievements in the face of the hunger of their fellow citizens. 

Until limits on how much people could buy at a time were brought in, there was vocal dissatisfaction expressed on social media towards  ‘the people that went and hoarded at the beginning [and] are nicely relaxing at home sharing pics of their food on Facebook, while the considerate few that actually thought of others and didn't hoard away are starving now.’ 

The initially often repeated phrase ‘we are all in this together’ was quickly shown to operate differentially, according to the amount of square footage each person lived in, and their level of preparedness. Blaming and criticism was natural, but it was not indulged in for long. 

On the national level, preparedness was also the differentiating factor. Faced with the urgent resourcing of medical staff with respiratory equipment and protective gear, the distribution and allocation of essential goods in wealthy countries was shown to be not as effectively managed as in countries which are less resourced, and therefore less arrogant. Community funding of supply chains and community awareness of the need for social distancing and better hygiene became crucial. 

Sri Lanka’s excellent response as a citizenry showed little delusional delay and time-wasting self pity. The recent experiences of war, natural disaster and terrorism have created a practical and resilient people with the essential capacity to thrive in conditions of austerity: the ability to be frugal, the skills to conserve their personal resources, and to repurpose their possessions. 

From the very start of this crisis, community organizers started raising funds and collecting commodities to protect the most vulnerable. The ability to think as ‘we’ and not just ‘me’ is the true test of a people in an event like this. It is a concept of survival on a collective level. Psychologists and counsellors have shared their expertise freely, to assist the public to manage our natural feelings of anxiety and panic, and to progress from individualistic survival thinking to a more generous approach which will ensure our success. 

The miracle of the loaves and fishes comes to mind, at this juncture. The true miracle of that event, where want was turned into plenty, may be that everyone shared what they had, and the result was that everyone had enough. What we are witnessing is that it is not how much a person or a country has, but how effectively they manage and distribute their resources.