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| Sunday, 6 February 2005 |
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Letters from Los Angeles : American life Nishan is a little boy of four whose parents live in Castro Valley, a suburb of San Francisco. His dad works for a bank and Mama works in the county hospital as a medical doctor. His little sister Polly is 10 months old and is now bent on climbing the home staircase on all fours, with her grandma sitting ready, on the step below to catch her if she misses her step. Nishan attends a private school for kids from Year one to Year 8 - i.e. he can attend both Primary school and Middle school in the American school system. He could have entered the Public school just adjoining his home but his Dad preferred to send him to private school. One reason for that is that the majority of children in the private school are children of fellow professionals from abroad - Indians and Arabs mostly-and they have a shared culture in America, however diverse their origins were. "They must build up an identity," said Mr Perera, when I spoke to him, "separate from the vast mass of others." His wife however feels that her son would benefit by associating with all sorts of people, as she does in her job in the county hospital, where treatment is available to anyone, and even if you have no health insurance, no one is turned away. The American school system is the melting pot which cooks everyone into the typical American, but with slight shades of colour depending on whether you have been underdone or overdone. "I had free education in government schools in Sri Lanka ," she said "and it was good enough to bring me here." This issue is however a moot point i.e. as to whether you wish to send your child to public or private school. These days all the Los Angeles papers are talking of various aspects of Sri Lankan life after the tsunami. Everyday there are a couple of features on the life of the ordinary people in Sri Lanka and on the ordinary people from USA who have gone there to help those in distress. Quite a few of them are Sri Lankan doctors and nurses. Schools have been carrying out relief collections through children in areas as diverse and far apart as Connecticut and California. The appeals made by ex Presidents Bush and Clinton have been heeded. However a feature headline which struck me in the Los Angeles press was "Amunugama Bashes The Media" where it is stated that the Finance Minister had conveyed his disappointment about Sri Lanka not getting debt relief at the big Tsunami Conference in Jakarta though it was the "most indebted of all the affected countries." There is also a consistent feature in the Los Angeles press referring to the lack of a quick solution to the problem of the displaced, who wish to return to their original homesteads and get away from the refugee camps. The ministers who have been interviewed have been presented as being unable to answer the question as to whether preventing refugees from going back to their original homesteads is like "the bull butting the man who fell from the tree" in the words of one of the refugees, one Marcus, who has seven perches of land on the landside of the railtrack at Paiyagala, but who is uncertain whether he can go back to his own property and rehabilitate himself without further delay. "Another tsunami may not come for a 100 years and the government will take another few years to decide what to do" The staff writer for the Los Angeles paper quotes the famous verdict of John Maynard Keynes, the economist on long run plans. "In the long run we are all dead." Nita commutes between LA and Denver, which is a couple of hours an airplane ride . Her company which used to have an office in LA closed it up in the course of their "reorganisation," the euphemism for reducing staff, but she remained as working from home. In every company there is regular shedding of staff. Oracle a software company is preparing to shed 6000 employees after merging with its emerging rival People Soft. That means 6000 families affected. We have natural disasters and they create their own ones. Not that USA does not have its fair share. Its either a tornado in the midwest or a hurricane in the south east or a snow storm in the northwest or an earthslip here and a flood in the centre. But her life is enlivened by these commutes. Little Polly though she is 10 months old is keen on finishing her climb up the carpeted stairs right to the top where her 4 year old brother awaits her. Her grandpa now watches lest she rolls down the stairs since grandma can no longer stand the strain and tension. Nishan jumps on her Dad who is recovering from his exertions on Saturday morning making the milk feeds for the kids, frying the bacon and eggs and arguing with his office mate on the telephone. "Dadda I want you to give me a piggy back ride!" and with a silent groan Dad gets up from his bed. Little Polly had been placed in her play pen on the ground under protest and she is now pressing buttons on the toy musical instrument worked by battery. "That's how soon they get trained to live in this technological jungle," comments Mr Perera. The kids revel in Spider Man, Superman and Spider Woman and the reality of technology's claim to transform human life is the earliest of the religious tenets that are taught in their catechism. "Who made you? God made me." Question and answer in the kindergarten is replaced by "Who made me? Technology made me." The new holy trinity for little Jack and Jill is Superman, Spider Man and Spider Woman. As we drove past the famous Hollywood street where the sidewalks have the names and footprints of the illustrious film stars, there were real men and women dressed like Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson or the Super and Spider Gang in their make believe clothes, waving away and being photographed with real people. Life is always an illusion or Maya and I have no doubt that the Maya of technology as being more powerful than man is one of the explanations for President's second presidency. How could Kerrey have offered an option for the war, based on technology, in the form of peace based on belief in man, when that would have meant abandonment of the religion of technology? Or more easy to understand the religion of science, which has always claimed to have overthrown God. We were already in the embrace of that illusion of the almighty power of science in our own country till the tsunami struck and smashed all those thoughts. |
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