How I Learned To Stop Worrying
The light at the lend of the tunnel
I don’t think about politics much anymore. Things seem pretty stable. Nothing really irritates me anymore. After the American Idol for ugly people that was the Parliamentary campaign I don’t even mind seeing Mahinda around. He at least has style. I think Namal’s eyes are a bit widely spaced, but I can deal with seeing him too. I’m sure there’s mad deals and fun going on which I’m missing out on. Whatever connections I have are now like a phantom limb, a stump really, but life is still pretty good. I don’t have too much control over my own volition and this is where I am right now. I don’t really care.
I almost miss the tension. What’s the book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. I remember driving into Vavuniya as the war was ending, in an armored bus. I peered out the window, slid back and piled on top of mattresses and junk, shooting superfluous video of the road. Like I’d discovered the place. It’s amazing how poignant and important a bunch of trees and dirt can look through gun slits. I drove up there a month later and realized it’s just a road. I have a bunch of video of a fucking road, like I was Magellan.
I remember getting into Menik Farm, the paperwork, the troops, the tension. Now that, too, is just a road. We drove through there on the way back from Mannar, first in silence, then playing music like normal. There was no security at all. They flagged us over but that was just to ask for a ride.
Media is a bit of a vulture business, it sorta feels good when you’re near the flesh. As horrible as the tsunami and war were, those were periods of great meaning, and attention. Election also, I suppose that counts as a natural disaster. Now that meaning (and traffic) is gone and it feels rather lonely. I suppose that’s callous, but that’s kinda the way news is. I travel to get that high again, but it’s not exactly the same. It’s nice, I mean, I like it. It just takes some getting used to. Not having the constant spikes of death and chaos. My mind is still twitchy, nervous, wandering. Perhaps I’ll visit Thailand.
lol, good post! :)
I’ve begun to not give a damn too… there’s no point boiling our blood over stuff we can’t quite comprehend, let alone change! ;)
lol, passive hell-may care- sri-lankanism, it’s gotten to you too!
Enjoyed reading this…so Indi!
That my friend is the soul and heart of being a Sri Lankan.
You finally come to the point where you don’t give a damn. Wait a few more years and even the elections will becoming something that you don’t give a damn about :)
i recommend reading “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein. She talks about how governments in small, under developed countries like SriLanka need and manipulate disasters and situations like the Tsunami, the war and the elections.
Have you actually read what she writes about Sri Lanka in that book? Where exactly are the hotels that were built on the land expropriated from displaced people?
It’s one thing to write lies from the comfort of Toronto; quite another to recommend it us who know they are lies.
if the war hadn’t restarted, tourism development probably would have happened differently.
Naomi Klein is a dirty liar who has never stepped foot in Sri Lanka.
Naomi Klein is trying to be Chomsky with 100th his intellect. The books is a grand exercise in anecdotal economic shock therapy.
Not to mention Naomi Klein who, like much of the anti-globalisation movement, market themselves on the same basis…
U mean u dont get money anymore… lol
I never got money. There is some ignorant caricature of people one disagrees with as being these straw men stuffed with money. It is actually possible to have different opinions
Well, that is not just an ignorant caricature.
Probably doesn’t apply to you, but for some unnamed people that is not far from the truth.
Money in its various forms is the great motivator.
Of course, everyone denies this and find ways to internalize the hypocrisy.
Indi, Do you actually go back and read your own blog? You will see how deluded you were to think the script had a different ending. A few months ago many people were prepared to bellieve incredible things due to prejudice, fear, hate etc, so by no means you were any different. Well meaning people have a hard time not being manipulated by malicious agendas because we mistakenly think our higher purpose alone will shield us from being used.
Damn. Did they break you this easily?
Chomsky? Ah. I like the old man. Must be the greatest apologise-for-every-fucked-up-thing of all time. No wonder Arundhati Roy likes him.
Why can’t they repair the entrance to the ground of the CID?
And so the great cycle of apathy starts over again.
Better titled “How I learned to stop caring”
But please don’t end up like 99.9% of the whiners out there, who are good at complaining and doing nothing about it.
Indi, why complain. You have American and Canadian citizenship, you can leave, you don’t have to conform. It is the people in Sri Lanka who have no choice in the matter, who have to cultivate the don’t care attitude.
My, my, the rantings of a has-been who never was. Mahinda’s got style, I suppose compared to you he does. Nimal’s eyes are a bit too far apart? Takes one to know one.
You loved the blood and guts of it all? LOL like you were there at the cutting edge, ever. Why didn’t you join the army? Why didn’t you die for your country? No, you just hung around Barefoot with all your other stoned-out spoiled mummy’s boys eating kottu and drinking arrak.
I’m with Prasad, take your Canadian and American citizenships and get back to the Americas. Take Sarath and Gothabaya back there too.
It’s early days yet. The hype about the “new” Sri Lanka will dissipate into a big fat nothing. You’ve done India, what next for one as illustrious as you? A big black hole with any luck.
Someone should order more troll repellent.
I find it ironic that some people cant see past their own fixated opinions to realize that they are the very things they criticize. Irrespective of whether you think the someone else’s opinion is wrong or even false, if you cant take the time to find out where that opinion comes from and look at the bigger picture then you don’t really know what you are talking about do you? and that’s when you resort to shallow slander.
Natalie, it’s not that I meant to insult you by casually dismissing Naomi Klein’s work. I do believe her argument is more shock and awe rather than actual substantiative analysis. If you’d like i can certainly write a lengthier critique of her work.
Please do. At a minimum, take what she says about Sri Lanka, including about land being expropriated and given for hotels and analyze it.
These people live in countries where all the infrastructure has been built, the trees cut, the minerals exploited. What their earlier generations did, we cannot. They want us to live in poverty so that they will have exotic places to visit and poor people to be charitable to. That I can understand, but outright fabrications to support these harebrained arguments? That is beyond the pale.
Why should anyone care what a liar like Naomi Klein has to say? It’s disgusting how you’re trying to promote her book.
Let me put an end to this Naomi Klein thing… Natalie, before the tsunami, Klein had a house in Galle. A lot of people (including The Way of the Dodo, Jack Point, and RS) wanted to drill her in her toilet. But this toilet was too small for that… Then there was the tsunami, and after it the toilet, along with a lot of other things, were in ruins. So Naomi had to rebuild the toilet. Dodo, Jack, and RS all wanted a bigger toilet so they can have sex with her in it. But Naomi, being the bitch she is, saw what they were upto, and rebuilt the toilet exactly the way it was before the tsunami. So now these guys are pissed… While these guys waste their time talking about her in places like this, Naomi’s having a threesome with Chomsky and Arundhati Roy. Maybe you can join it and make it a foursome.
geez. bite me. remind me not to have an opinion that doesn’t agree with the general public. though i haven’t even voiced an opinion yet.
@zion… Everybody lies.