Musings :

Confusions galore or unity in diversity?

by Padma Edirisinghe

Why are news always or inevitably bad news?

Funny Q. Why are news always bad news? I decide to answer it myself.

You don’t give publicity to a statement like this - “The mighty Greece with such a glorious past is back on its way to regain the effluxed glory”. Nobody is interested. But flash this on the newsstand, “Greece once so brilliantly on top is now bogged in poverty”, everyone is Ahhing and Oooing on the downward path of the once stupendous Hellenic kingdom.

Coming back to our own land someone attempting an eulogy on the blazing rise of media in our country, will inevitably put in this falsehood, “Till the Britisher and all the sophisticated media mechanisms landed on our shores and even till the local scribes began to imitate the Suddas in this field, there was no media in our island”.

Ignorance

This is in ignorance of the role played by the village well. Or at the village well. Not at all shameful to admit is the fact that culturally we imitate the huge sub-continent above just bewildering us with its size. But we never pause to fractionalize what areas do it. Or even if we do, we limit it to the aesthetic field and forget the social field. This is regarding the timidity of the women. Here I am closing my eyes to the women who bare it all on the Indian screen exposing outsized breasts and thighs to titillate the male audience. Sorry. I cannot answer the q. as to how media gets connected to all that nudity. I come back to the main point now.

That is the varied roles played by media then and now and who are the main participants. No. I am not going on to trace the historical antecedents. In fact, I must confess that I am not sure what I am going to do with my pen this time, sorry, with the computer. But a hazy picture gets drawn in my mind. That is the beautiful replica of princess Pabawathie reclining by the village well. Any Easterner, authentic or otherwise, knows this story.

Just think of the irony we are facing as that of learning not only our Jathaka tales, but all our ancient history from a follower of Jesus and best part is he is not making a mess of it either. Nothing remarkable about that in this world getting internationally into either a mess or Gods given land trough. Count the number of European Christian writers on Buddhism. They just eulogize it.

Hips

Now to get back to the mainstream. Where does the hunchback or Kudee or Notredame, sorry, of India, place the replica of Pabawathie to get the Indian folk to talk about it? No. It is not “folk” so much but the Indian village women.

Yes. The Doothayas or messengers of the palace who carry the gold-hewn replica of Pabawathie very intelligently concur on the fact that the village well is the best place to display it. Here the women would arrive with pots on their swaying hips and gaze at the gold hewn princess and back they would rush to the hamlet and tell others all about the amazing sight. More and more would come till short sighted Kudee or the hunch back spoils it all by slapping the golden princess. This dramatic act brings in more and more audience. What is the moral of this tale? Leave your posters where women gather most as the village well, the Co-operative store, the children’s health clinic, where bus routes collide, at bus stands and railway stations. What about newspaper dissemination? At the lowest ebb.

Our women are an educated lot and can easily read the newspaper. But now they don’t. In fact one of them told me that she has given up reading the newspaper and watch TV because the papers throw her into further confusion.

“Earlier there were only two big parties fighting each other but now there are so many combinations. You don’t know who is what and which….” She held her head in her hands to demonstrate the confusion.

“Nona. Aren’t you confused?”

Confusion

“Why not. From recent times my life has turned into a hot bed of confusion. In fact just now I am confused about two things. One thing your addressing me as Nona. That is a Portuguese word and most of us hated them as daredevils of imperialism but every woman who thinks the lesser of herself addresses the other as Nona. The odd job man in our house who stoops to anything for a bit of cash, we revere as Mahaththaya”

“Really? That is news to me”.

“His name is Robo Signor. Robo I can understand as it can be short for Robert or Robo but Signor, in either Porto or Dutch means Signor or Mahaththaya.”

“Huh !Huh!”

What is more, these days I am reading a book that confuses me further.”

“Huh!”

“The author’s aim is to show that a certain event that plays centrepiece in that book was not staged in the area it was supposed to have been staged but in a complete different area.. The d..nest thing is he could be 90% correct.” (Why cannot females swear?)

The lesser nona gave me some good advice.

“To confuse more people translate that book into English. Then that readership too will got confused.” “Huh. Just like the shortsighted Kudee who got confused by seeing the princess she so carefully looked after in the royal chambers standing in a shameless posture by the village well. Anyway, it is a good idea. The hitch is that I have already thought of translating it”.

“Good for you, Padma Nona”.

“Only Padma is intrinsically Sinhala. It is an Indian name”. I myself try to solve the riddle by stating that all our ancestors have come from India”.

Truth

“Huh!” utters the other, the confusion disease infecting her. I cry after her a bland truth, that is that the world is getting internationalised enough as to drive everyone crazy or just divinely omni. Just decipher that.

The last is GOOD NEWS, my dear apppochchi. Appocchchi, now is replacing Thaththa (given even in Buddhist stanzas) is said to be of South Indian origin. Appa, you know the origin, I guess.