All choked up about CHOGM
View(s):Really, dears! There’s no pleasing some people, is there? On the one hand, there are those who have done nothing but grumble that our roads, streets, and highways are in a terrible state of disrepair. On the other, there are others whose grouse is that the repair crews and renovation equipment are making a shambles of our once beauteous garden city.
Wasn’t it in response to such a mercurial mindset – our grudging admiration sullied by no small measure of carping ingratitude and ungracious cavilling – that the old bard, glancing about hither thither and drinking in the winter of the hoi polloi’s discontent, essayed this… that “how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful child” (much like an ingrate civilian population)?
Rem acu tetigisti. The sweet swan of Avon indubitably hit the nail on the head. We want the world to beat a path to our door in the same breath that we want to slam it shut in their faces. We want the powers that be to do us proud at the same time we want to see that their pride and pompous posturing come before a fall, come a-cropper, and that the mighty are fallen face-flat indeed. We want our mud cake and we want to throw those glass-house stones at the same time. (Do I mix my metaphors? Very well, then, let it stick and break my bones!)
Remember the good old, bad old, days for a much needed opening dose of reality. In the first place, before our glorious incumbents assumed the mantle of growth. When our gripe was that our cities looked like towns, our towns looked like villages, and our villagers looked like refugees in a war movie. In the limit, now that the whole of the civilized world (ye olde eke ancient commonweal; bar the US, which can’t or won’t pay its bills, and the dollar-reserving world’s dues) is coming to town. We can’t get enough of the city lights, the glare of the international media, and the warm but fuzzy afterglow of general development.
That, together with a dizzy sense that we’ve somehow, somewhere, staved off the then impending, now forgotten, fall of night. But amidst the simultaneous nods of approval and the extended pats on the back, we’re winking behind concealed hands and shaking our silent heads in dismay and disappointment at the state of the nation (well, at least its capital) these days. O tempora – do I hear you mutter, dears – and add, under your breath, O mores?
Rotten state of affairs between Oktoberfest and the Onset of the Silly Season! How unfair that you could not get to your luxury spa or salon or gourmet dining saloon on time! When will this endless beautification and beefing up of Colombo’s hot spots and historical spots, the trimming of its tree-lined avenues and the sprucing up of its posh plazas end – whose idea was it, anyway, to reconvert the once battle-scarred old one-horse homestead of a town into the sparkling, glittering Singapore of the South?
Ridiculous, isn’t it: this split personality, this disjoint in our psyche? We’re like the pretty girl on the beach who’s afraid that she’s being watched at the same time that she’s afraid no one’s looking. Schizoid. Schizophrenic. Scared that we’re missing out on some unfulfilled destiny that might pass us by – like an uncaring convoy of panicked policemen, prissy provosts brandishing painted batons, and pleased-as-punch politicos rushing from one non-event to another meaningless appointment. And now: hark, hark; the dogs do bark… the beggars are not to be seen… for CHOGM is coming to town… and we’re all, but just about all, choked up about it!
Republicans good and true, consider these. Cosmetic changes to the city are being made. Constitutional imbroglios such as the case of the two chief justices are being swept under the carpet. Cultural norms are being defied every day that we uphold our “ancient civilisation” and its values in one breath and approve “authorised casinos” and their worth in the other.
Constituency minefields – like the recent one in the north, with the swearing-in of the new chief minister vis-à-vis its governor – are being tiptoed around. Cosmopolitan-norm controls of street-bound sound pollution and vehicular decibel levels are on the cards. Comedians like Russell Peters will harp on CHOGM’s choke-worthy aspects, while politicians like Stephen Harper’s critical stand has petered out. Comic offers, to end it all, like that of Bonnie Prince Charlie to assist in the murder investigation of a brutally slain British tourist, are being entertained in the same vein they are essayed (well, sorry, do you know who killed Diana, for starters?).
Really, dears! That’s why I’m all choked up about CHOGM. You would be too. That is if you were trying to voice your opinion; speak up above the propaganda din on all sides; shout out about the cost, the waste, the hype at home in the face of progress for a few at the high price for many unseen and unheard; and also keep down the bits you’d swallowed hook, line, and sinker, which were now threatening to come up in protest at the hypocrisy of it all.
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