'Bola Bassanawa' - a lowly survival tactic

By Afreeha Jawad

Ah!.haaaa....... you know what the trendiest behavioural pattern in town is? Its called 'Bola Bassanawa' - which term badly, fails to match its parallel in English. That's nothing new because many of such terms are strongly spirited only in the native lingo.

Getting back to my central theme - 'Bola Bassanawa' just in case many...some...no, I believe just a few whose ignorance of it would be as dark as night - its literal meaning apart, means cunningness personified and tactics resorted to in such endeavour could be the meanest of the mean - again a reflection of a crude, third rate lowly background.

Colourless personalities always resort to this kind of 'sending marbles down other's throat' and the usual tactical measures adopted may range from offering a chocolate, sweet or whatever from one hand with the Wilkinson blade in the other.

Pressure thus is carefully applied on one cautiously enough with seemingly no hurt to the other party, assuming the next person has not understood a bean - this being the most hilarious side to the tragic/comedy.

For instance a phone call is a sure way of dislodging a conversation. Never has there been a kind soul than the one that will walk up to you and tell your communicating partner of a phone call on the other side.

Another way of conversation dislodge is to tell one of the two interacting that someone from some other department had come looking for him or her. 'Aney may oyawa accounts eken hoyagena aava'. - all this is said while smiling with you from one year to the other - typical Lankan deceipt. So we see how people increasingly are taking others for fools today in this exercise of sending marbles down others throat assuming others to be naive. I thought it was only politicians who did so.

Looks like now its a top down flow with politicians becoming excellent role models in this.

Ah! that reminds me of what someone had to say about how this tribe take to such 'enterprising' endeavour.

While the politico is quick to issue a job chit to a client, he, the politico will do a double up and tell the guy at the other end 'look, one chap is coming with a letter from me. Don't respond.' Two weeks pass - no response. Back again the poor guy would go to the MP who would smilingly offer him a seat saying, "Sit, don't worry, he told me he will take you".

Week upon week of frustration followed by months would put a lid on the client's wild goose chase.

To mean the crudest in the most indirect yet kindest of ways being the style of all this type of deception - businessmen and diplomuts.... sorry.... diplomats assuredly are 'professionals' in this game of in sincerity.

I remember my father laughingly recall how at a party when the bitterest of coffee was served, one in that 'lieng abroad community' told the host following a back pat' Oh! the coffee was lovely."

In the business world, the hospitality industry is all about such deception. However distasteful a guest, whom stewards, in star class hotels refer to as 'Gaysa' 'Yes, Sir, come Sir, Sit Sir' is showered like confetti even beyond limits of endurance.

At the time of writing someone said laughingly, "You know, many women will out do men in 'Bola Bassanawa'."

It was certainly not difficult to agree with my colleague because womanly wiles is a strong facilitator in the art of deception. But than come to think of it, living as we are in a unisex era why make wiles only a female preserve?

Now, now, now lest I digress into gender and sociology, my pet topics. Let's leave it aside and get on to economics which is more relevant and more closer to the intensity of deception as time goes on.

Keeping politics, business and diplomacy alive is the art of deception with the global trend being more towards intensifying economic interests both at individual and national levels.

Eternally someone is trying to 'send marbles' down some other's throat needless to say politics, business and diplomacy warranting much lowly manipulation, scheming, intrigue and deception. The progressively increasing economic drive therefore increases such characteristics that keep spreading throughout the global social whole. You may have heard more than once this middle class expression "minissu tharaha karaganna honda nehey" - showing how important it is to 'get on'.

To arrive at such I wonder how many marbles you'll have to keep sending down I don't know how many throats!!

Yet puzzling indeed it is to think, will not the other party get to know what this deception holds out for him?

By the way that ever fighting duo - the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are almost non-existent. The younger ones know exactly which marble to send down the old lady's throat, when and how. Not that the mother-in-law is unaware of it either. The modern mother-in-law is also a product, conceived, born and bred under liberal market surroundings where the marble game is at its height.

Yet getting the northern supreme to swallow a southern marble - that's where the crunch is!

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