Ceylon Gone
The ethnic scene in 1976 (UTexas Maps)
Was talking to my token Tamil friend. Word on the street is that the cops are out in Kottawa Kotahena, asking for bank details. Looked online, and indeed tis so, CWC filed a case. This is one reason I think 1983-type riots won’t happen again. Open economy, you know? It’s all about the money now. Go upstairs, another house, another time. Sri Lankan men have this unusual desire for their own company, a substantial desire shall we say. Lean my knuckles on the table and try to contain the irrelevant cauldron within. The women are downstairs. Old School is telling me some stuff I don’t quite believe. About JVP curfews when the streets went dead. About Burgher girls, there being more of them, and the mini-skirts they used to wear. I wonder where they all went. Another place, another time, wholly among my own kind. Usual scene, usual questions about work and bullshit. Plastic chairs, no bloody booze. I honestly don’t identify with the Sinhala race much at all. I’m Sri Lankan, and I miss the Burgher girls. There are so few Tamil girls and so early curfews that I can’t even imagine that wonderland.
Ceylon, from what I hear, was pretty cool. For the gentry more than others, for sure. But for someone at least. The civil service was still a honorable thing. I don’t know have any peers in the government service. My interaction with government people socially is pretty much the same as mobsters. They have bottles on the table, cars in the parking lot and you don’t fuck with them. But anyways. Government jobs became a (political) right and not, say, a job and this is what we get. Now the Sinhalese have the reins of government. The Tamil technocrats have bled and the Sinhalese have fled. The Burghers have regretfully boarded flights and tend miserably pristine gardens in Oz. I met Mahinda once, with a bunch of foriegn people here for a conference. He spoke in Sinhala, and literally one person there understood. I don’t think he speaks English. The short eats at Temple Trees are good.
I’ve been watching the Jazeera. Feels vaguely dirty yet the coverage is good. The little blipper at the bottom reads ‘Inflation in Zimbabwe hits 66,000‘. Reminds me. Mugabe decided to kick like 4,000 white farmers out and give the land and equip to locals. Fine and dandy, except they couldn’t operate the farms. The breadbasket became destitute. Sri Lanka used to have a capable (English speaking) civil service, with a great many Tamils and minorities. And millions of Sinhalese clamoring to get in. So now they’re (we’re?) in. And we can’t work the levers.
There’s a total Sinhala class in the private sector as well. They’re below management level, and for a reason. Most Sinhala speaking people are illiterate in the sense that they can’t (or don’t) really write. The written form is drastically different and most people say they can’t write. They can read enough, but writing or typing with confidence is a rare trait. So that means that they don’t really use email, can’t process computer-readable paperwork, research stuff on the Internet, get better at their jobs through international text and study. In the government that class is running things to the very top. And it is a class thing. It’s totally a class thing. Peeps between don’t necessarily have lunch together, and they certainly don’t have the same perks – in the private sector. Good or bad, whatever. I’m trying to learn Sinhala to get myself marginally ahead, but I don’t really have to. Their prospects won’t tangibly improve unless they learn English, or Tamil.
Sinhalese need to wake the fuck up. We’re not Arabs. There’s like 16 million of us, we don’t have natural resources, and we don’t have significant markets on this island. We need to stop extorting Tamils and learn Tamil and sell them stuff. We need to stop calling English a ‘sword’ that divides, we need to learn English, improve our skills and compete in the global marketplace. A unitary Buddhist Sinhala state is one of the most boring and mediocre places I could ever imagine. I feel like that’s where we’re going, and it makes me miss Ceylon. I certainly miss the Burgher girls.
Wow…just wow…This is probably the most telling post you’ve ever made. You have some serious self-hate and self-esteem issues – you might have autophobic body dysmorphic disorder. I don’t know what more to say, because if I tried, I probably wouldn’t be able to stop. But wow.
“And it is a class thing. It’s totally a class thing.”
Too true. And yet we pride ourselves in our ‘equality’ to people from all walks of life, and look down upon the nations which display their class warfare more openly, and are actively trying to just make it all go away!
Good stuff. Agree with you.
This is basically what the SLFP govts did to us. (except Chandrika’s to some extent) But buffalo continues the legacy of SWRD and Sirima.
Yeah, We need to learn english……….. one of my student quit my class because i was teaching in english…….. how the fuck am i going to teach computers in sinhala…… that would be hilarious,,,,,,,,,,,,
The Sinhala majority of this country need to get off their high horse, and rethink their superiority complex. Like you said, we’re just 16 million people (not much of a market for the big MNC) and we’ve got no natural resources. So unless we start to think and act internationally, we’re never going to be able to survive, let alone compete with the rest of the world. Of course, you’ll probably hear the ultra nationalists scream and holler about how happy they are to be living in a unitary Sinhala Bhuddist utopia!
For a glimpse of the past read some of the following:
V. L. Wirasiniha’s “No Cousin, I’ll to Fife” for a brilliant account of Civil Servce life. Very intersting to see the standards of the past.
E.F.C Ludowyk’s “Those long Afternoons” a gentle nostalgic memoir about growing up in in Galle in the early 20th century.
Conrad Felsinger’s ” It was the Babblers Nest” for a hilarious account of school life at the turn of the 20th Century.
When prize winning novelist Michelle de Krestser was aked if she visited Sri Lanka for research on her book (the Hamilton Case), she said she last visited in the 1980′s and that it was a another country now.
hmm..A tad bit racist ne? But it’s a pity English was and still is a class-marker. that’s a fault of the sinhala-only buggers, if most of us were comfortable in English then the management-level guys would shift to sinhala more often.
What some sinhalese (the patriotic/nationalist types) have is more of a minority complex. They look around the world, and think ‘fuck we are just 16 Mill and all of us are here, so we better protect this place.’ They look at TamilNadu, realize it’s 62 Mill ppl and piss in their pants. we know what happens next..
Velcum 2 parasice!
“we don’t have natural resources, and we don’t have significant markets on this island. ”
Err… actually we do have natural resources. We have enough Thorium to build a couple of Nuclear power plants. And plenty of other mineral sands (Zircon and Rutile) to fuel the world’s advanced ceramic industry.
What we lack is a couple of business-minded engineers to tackle the task, and the political will to support such entrepreneurs.
Political support can at least be shown by staying the hell away and not asking for a 10% commission.
One correction. The cops were out in Kotahena and not Kottawa collecting bank account numbers, balances from the Tamil residents.
crap, kottawa is nowhere near, definitely kotahena. Corrected
why would any tamil with intellect and opportunity want to stay in that country?
why would any tamil with usable knowledge or practical skills want to return?
That’s what the JHU wants to know too.
actually the JHU want to know “how can tamil with intellect and opportunity be prevented from staying in this country”
like a turkey through the corn