Thoughts from London

Once more unto such tripe dear friends
Shame on you, said a friend when I ran into him last Sunday at the popular Sri Lankan event called the Festival of Cricket when a fine summer day is spent guzzling Lion Lager and gobbling biththara appa.

For a moment I thought I was being chastised for slapping him on the back whereupon the mutton roll that was six inches from his open mouth disappeared into the nearby shrubbery. No he didn't mind that - actually he was surreptitiously trying to rid himself of his wife's culinary efforts the previous night that had become more rubbery than a Kelani tyre.

"You chaps call yourselves writers and journalists. But have you written even one book after all these years?" he asked mockingly.Before I could tell him that my first book titled "Sri Lanka murdered: an inside job", was taking shape, this chap was telling anybody who cared to listen that a Cabinet minister had published a book. "See, while you fellows are spending your time writing rubbish, our hard working ministers are turning doing your job too."

Chastened by his public admonition made in a voice that rightly belonged to a parade ground sergeant, I gently asked for the author's name. "So you don't know that even aah? I'll fax you all the details," he said before gulping more beer. I promised faithfully to read all about it.

He kept his promise. So did I. And therein lies the rub.At first I thought he was referring to Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando who launched his literary effort at the Royal Commonwealth Society in London about three months ago.

Over a glass or two of Beaujolais, Minister Fernando was saying that his 50-odd paged book of science fiction was actually written while he was in opposition, which seemed to suggest that had he been on that side longer we might have had a thicker book.

Unfortunately democracy and the weighty responsibilities of ministerial office robbed readers of a budding Isaac Asimov. Otherwise Tyronne Fernando might have continued to entertain us with his tales of runaway asteroids hurtling towards earth and threatening to flatten not only Moratuwa but half of this globe.

Fortunately he only brought us "To the edge of doom". But news that another Cabinet minister had taken to literary pursuits left me with horrendous thoughts. Reading that the minister concerned was Milinda Moragoda did little to erase them. I also read that the book titled "A Warm Heart, a Cool Head and a Deep Breath"- a collection of speeches by Milinda Moragoda had been edited by M.D.D.Peiris, my senior at Peradeniya University against whom I had played cricket and table tennis in inter-hall competitions and who I knew was capable of imparting plenty of spin.

The next day I heard from another former university colleague that Nanda Godage, formerly of the Foreign Service and now something to do with the Peace Secretariat which is some sort of appendage of the peace process, had written a very favourable review of the book. Moragoda, of course, is an integral part of the peace process and has been a travelling salesman for the effort to win international support.

I do not doubt Dharmasiri Peiris' editing capabilities or Nanda Godage's ability to turn out a glowing review if that is what he did. But having read a couple of Moragoda's speeches long before his entry into the publishing field, my worst fears were not diminished.

If Tyronne Fernando took us "To the edge of doom" then "A Warm Heart, a Cool Head and a Deep Breath" could only tip us over the edge. If nothing else the title would. At least Foreign Minister Fernando thought it best to leave his speeches alone and take his chances in the genre of science fiction.

Economic Reforms Minister Moragoda, unable to spin a good yarn or two like his Cabinet colleague, has put his faith in his speeches, hoping perhaps that if his thoughts are rubbished today as pretentious prattle and neo-conservative buffoonery, they could be polished a century or so later by some dutiful descendants and presented to posterity as supreme wisdom more valuable as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

No wonder then, Minister Moragoda's collection of speeches was launched in book form in Greece. When I first read the faxed material I wondered why anybody would want to launch a book in Greece unless you were Plato or Socrates.I know Greece is a place for launching some things. Take Helen of Troy for instance. Was it not her face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilyium. Since that day thousands of ships have been launched in and from Greece. That is how Aristotle Onasis and several other shipping tycoons made their money.

It was in Greece that the first Olympic Games were launched. It was in Greece - well, really Athens - that democracy was launched by such great minds as Pericles.
Somebody told me the book also contains speeches or articles in Sinhala and Tamil. If they are in the same book, then Sinhala and Tamil would sound like Greek-even to the Greeks.

Perhaps it was not strange thinking that saw the book launched in Thessaloniki in Greece. When the erudite Basil Mendis lectured to us on Greek philosophy at Peradeniya he used to say that one Greek philosopher- I can't quite remember whether it was Anaximenes or Anaximander - had a theory that the earth was a hollow tube and man lived on the top of the rim.

Perhaps it is hoped that some day Moragoda's book "A Warm Heart, a Cool Head and a Deep Breath" with such anatomical juxtapositioning, will find itself a place in libraries in all of Greece between Plato's Dialogues and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

Personally, if I were a Muslim cleric I would issue a fatwa for some of the heretical thoughts that Moragoda has spelt out. I have previously commented on his speech to a security conference in Hawaii where he urged the United States to assume the leadership of the world and bring us the Washington version of democracy, free trade and peace.

The people of the world, particularly the Muslim world, have had quite a foretaste of American democracy and peace even before its hegemonic takeover. Moragoda with his Swiss and American qualifications in business might try selling his ideas of American overlordship to the Iraqi people.

Even Moragoda's friends in the US administration from the Rumsfelds to the Wolfowitzs no longer continue the pretence that Saddam Hussein's non-existent arsenal or concern for human rights drove Washington to invade Iraq. Moragoda might enthusiastically wave the stars and stripes. But Washington's moralistic preachings are fast turning out to be so much tripe.

Having been bombarded with baloney, I thought I'll try Moragoda's website for some other speeches and writings I had not seen or read. At least these might carry some sound thought I hoped. So I went into www.milinda.com and there was the name of his ministry and his photograph looking like Telly Savalas. I clicked on speeches. Instead of Milinda Moragoda's weighty thoughts on global security, indigenous cultures and traditional Asian values I found something called popular links under search. On the right was a column called popular searches.

The first one under popular links was titled "Napster of Porn: Top Ranked for Free XXX Passwords". The next was "Find Sex related sites at SexTracker.com" and so on. I am no computer whiz kid and I might well have got it wrong. Or perhaps my computer is at fault. But I tried three times and this is what I found. Quite recently in Britain some guy who claimed to be a researcher and went into some website for paedophiles was arrested for supposedly committing an offence. Not for all Moragoda's unread profundities or plain platitudes was I going to go anywhere near that website.

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