The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake

Sri Lankans are jaded-not those in foreign climes
The vast Diaspora of Sri Lankans abroad are constantly trying to light a fire under the feet of Sri Lankans at home, in an attempt to get them all passionate and heated up over certain issues. This is the case with the Tamil Diaspora, and the smaller Sinhala 'Diaspora'' as well. Some say that this is why Balasingham and Thamilchelvan and all these people (how could I forget Karuna) shoot their mouth with the Diaspora, whenenever they are in England addressing the "Tamil nation'' scattered over the global village. It is being said that these LTTE potentates can pacify their cadres in the Wanni and tell them that the Tamil people should settle for something less than Eelam. But, if they try this talk with the Diaspora in Frankfurt or in London or in the Pall Mall or wherever, they will get boiled.

With the Sinhala Diaspora, it is these various hotheads such as the SPUR and FOSUS (that's supposed to be short for 'friends of Sri Lanka in the US') who constantly keep reminding the folks at home, that there is such a thing called a 'country' and a nation' to be preserved. They keep saying this over Websites, and publications, and they will march on a cold day in their thermal underwear and demonstrate in front of 10 Downing Street about 'cruelty to the Sinhala race.'

All well and good, but the Sri Lankans back home are generally going to work in buses, coming back, trying to get their children into tuition classes and generally doing the glorious domesticated mundane. However hard SPUR tries to spur them on to do greater things, it does not happen.

My dictionary defines jaded as "tired, weary, off - colour (of the appetite.)". Jadedness of course is a condition that is generally associated with having had too much -- being stuffed, satiated etc.,

This is not the same as being apathetic, which means being indifferent. But there is something fashionable about saying that someone is jaded, whereas there is nothing that's fashionable about saying that somebody is indifferent or apathetic. This is why it is good to say that Sri Lankans are jaded.

Nothing disturbs us from mundane domesticity. Private buses may mow us down, arms may be smuggled right into our living rooms, we may have a judicial system that is rotting faster than carrion, we may be having problems of water-logging right in the heart of the city -- but nothing can faze the life's ambition of the average Sri Lankan which is glorious mundane unending domesticity.

This jadedness, however, which used to be the norm in the urban setting is now rapidly proliferating in the rural backwater. Those were the days when the rural folk could not do anything about their lot because they did not have the means or the social wherewithal to protest.

But today's kind of rural jadedness is different. It takes after the urban jadedness, and is fed by the same message which is that as long as one brings up ones family, and leads a life of indifferent unending domesticity, that is it. The way people treat animals for instance, even in a rural setting is rapidly changing. Slaughter houses, Chinese food outlets, these inevitable symbols of crude modern living are as common in Kebithigollewe as they are in Colpetty.

The only people who apparently see the somnolence of the nation then, are those that have gone abroad. But, when they try to re-awaken the nation, people sleep even longer because it is not a home grown message, and it does not have the exciting promise of re-awakening that Anagarika Dharmapala carried for instance.

One plain reason for the 'domestic' kind of jadedness is that nobody wants to stick his neck out. The modern inversion of heroism is that those who stick their necks out are seen as the losers, while those who continue on the pilgrim's progress of utter humdrum domesticity are the heroes. It is a culture that constantly utters a manthra called 'he is doing well''. Or "they are doing very well.''

"He is doing very well'' or 'they are doing very well' means that the man or family spoken about is inextricably caught in the stifling tangle of domesticity. It ideally means a daughter at Vishaka Vidyalaya, a son at Royal, a Toyota Corolla (new series) in which the whole family is constantly running about trying to beat the maddening increasing traffic.

This sort of domestic bliss cannot be disturbed by the intervening idea of social vigilantism. This is the heroism -- the domesticity. If there is a social vigilante who wants to take on mad bus drivers, road hogs, litterbugs, tree fellers, destroyers of the environment, destroyers of the judiciary, surely, he is an utter eccentric?

The Diaspora of course has been trying to do the job of vigilante from outside. They have often alleged that the Sri Lankans are asleep to the fact that their race is being sold down the drain. The Tamil Diaspora has been telling this to the Tamils, and the Sinhalese abroad have been telling this to the Sinhalese.

But one can't play vigilante from a different terrain. How can a vigilante from Bambalapitiya take on hoodlums in Brooklyn? How can Dharmapala's from Dunblane bring peace, harmony and sanity to Colombo?

But leave the social vigilante aside. The vigilante is but the lone ranger (or what's the American image that plays at the newly refurbished Majestic theatre with surround sound and what not -- Superman?) who goes out and snuffs out various anti-social elements. The lone ranger maybe necessarily operating on the fringe, but what of the social conscience as in collective social action? What are the consumer protection societies doing about the menace for instance, of private buses? They'd say it is not within their ambit? So why isn't there any organised dissent building up against this menace -- a 'fed up with private buses" society for instance?

Again, it clashes with the march of mundane domesticity. Any husband worth his salt will be earning those extra bucks to install cable television, instead of wasting his time with the uninitiated and the socially naive hicks in some Consumer Protection cabal. Domestic bliss is a serious pursuit. Nothing can interfere with that -- not even the task of prevailing on the Municipality to clean up the drains once in a way , so that you along with your Corporate friends and their wives and children do not have to wade home knee deep on a rainy day to watch surround sound TV beaming the latest update on Superman.

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