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| Sunday, 5 February 2006 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Different shades of independence by Aditha Dissanayake In a speech conveyed through his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, the King of Britain said on February 4, 1948 "After a period of nearly a century and a half during which Ceylon was that of a colony in my empire, she now takes her place as a free and independent member of the British Commonwealth of Nations".Words of joy or words of awe?
"Are you independent?" he asks me when I climb the wooden stairs and enter his study at No. 133, Dharmapala Mawatha, Colombo 7,filled with paintings some of which he had done himself, framed sayings from the Kalama Sutra, and books neatly arranged on shelves all round the room, among which I spot Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, (having read the novel he had moved on to read Da Vinci's biography which had made him realize how infinitesimal he himself is, compared to this great inventor). But in terms of aviation, he is at gps: N.06'54.76"E.79'51.57". Yes. Because, though he has ceased flying his own home-made, unusual aircraft now, he is still a pilot at heart, and he still provides the global position of his home. To return to the question "Are you independent?" when I struggle to find a coherent answer, he answers for me. "Not a hope. We are all interdependent." No one, Dr. Wijewardene believes, can be independent. Everyone is interdependent, for example, on his or her parents and spouse, for love, affection and help. 'Right at this moment the two of us are interdependent. You are interdependent upon me to propound all this nonsense. I am interdependent on you to write it down". After laughing over this statement Dr. Wijewardene continues. "Fifty eight years ago we did not attain independence. We simply changed from being a part of the British Empire to becoming an interdependent component of the global habitat. Today it has become a case of them buying our tea and we buying their whisky". Then comes his next question. "Do you know what the emblem of the Colombo Municipal Council is?" When I shake my head to say no, he makes a face to show his disappointment and reminds me "Adams peak and a coconut tree. In my youth we could see Adams Peak from Colombo. But not any more. And how many coconut trees do you see in the city today? It's a tar and concrete jungle. There are slums, or rather to use the coarse word, mudukku everywhere." He pauses and asks "Aren't we in a mess?" I sigh in relief. Here is a question I can easily answer. 'Yes. Fifty eight years after gaining independence we ARE in a mess". Who is to blame? Science. Dr. Wijewardene believes the scientists in our country have failed. "We scientists are overly interested in wearing our caps and gowns, which are only appurtenances of erudition. All these qualifications and awards are not important. We must know how to adapt science to suit our environment, our people, our country". So, what can we do? Dr. Wijewardene's mantra is simple. We should become non-dependent on the "essentials"; food, health and energy. "We can grow all our food" says Dr. Wijewardene, "because we have lovely land" and explains that, instead of depending on imported fertilizer we should move towards natural methods of farming. Even though the harvest may drop at first, while the soil restoring organisms return, he assures, with his experience it will pick up again. And, while on the topic of agriculture, when I ask him about his great invention, the world's first two wheel tractor, the Landmaster, he shakes his head and dismisses it as something "inconsequential", because after he was brought down to earth by a Professor at the University of Harvard who had told him point blank that all he had done was to "have mechanised the buffalo", he had begun to see mechanisation of agriculture as a mistake. Moving on to the topic of health, Dr. Wijewardene explains that Ayurveda is one of the most appropriate methods of healing for our country. Because Ayurveda, unlike Western medicine, emphasises "Wellness". He recalls how he had encountered a "bare-footed" doctor in a village in China who was paid by the villagers for keeping them healthy. If they fell sick they stopped paying him. This is what we too should promote. Today we pay for a fortune to the drug industry to reverse "illness" when what we should pay for is to preserve "wellness". Dr. Wijewardene laments that we have chased the "Vedamahattayas" from our midst and finds ourselves content when a doctor with a Western degree in medicine prescribes a large number of pills to be swallowed for the rest of our lives. Talking about being non-dependent in the area of energy he says we don't need to have big, imported fuel plants polluting the country. All we need to do is grow our fuel, because oil and coal are both fossilised biomass. Why wait billions of years until the trees turn into oil when we can utilise even the dry zone to grow our own fuel? "We can grow all the country's fuel requirements for the next hundred years". Calling himself a "small revolutionary" Dr. Wijewardene says he is as non-dependent as an individual could be. He doesn't "go for the standard thing, which is often designed and constructed, wrong". If he needs a plane or a helicopter, he makes it himself. Pointing to pictures of fourteen unusual aircraft he asks 'Do you know where they were made" he taps his desk with his finger. "Here. Downstairs, in my garage". Recalling the days when he used to fly in his home-built gyroplanes and helicopters, he says once he made an urgent landing on the grounds of the Town Hall. When a policeman walked up to him and said, he should not land there (methane Helicopter banna ba) he had driven the aircraft home, on the road. Later, when an enquiry was held, even though he could have given an excuse like "due to engine trouble" he had decided to tell the truth. He had landed there because he was flying close to home and he had needed to use the toilet. When the Director of Aviation had remarked that other pilots made it to the airport, he had simply responded, 'when you got to go, you got to go" thus bringing the enquiry to an end. Dr. Wijewardene says flying is a marvellous experience because when you look at Sri Lanka from over 2,500ft you realise how beautiful our country is- the finest on the tropical belt. "People say we don't have resources. Bull..... If we have a clear objective, clear goals, we Sri Lankans can achieve anything we want". Coming from Dr. Ray Wijewardene who epitomises the lines of Tennyson in Ulysses '...all experience is an arch wherethro/ gleams an untravelled path, /To follow knowledge like a sinking star/Beyond the utmost bound of human thought" who can argue with this statement. |
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Awe! Thinks Dr. Ray Wijewardene, Chancellor, University of Moratuwa,
skilled in three engineering disciplines, Aviation, Mechanical and
Agricultural, and a Doctor of Science (honoris causa) from the University of
Moratuwa. His thoughts right now are centred round the meaning of the word
"independence" as we celebrate the 58th anniversary as a "free and
independent nation". 
