Shoes and such like

As you well know it was curiosity that killed my proverbial ancestor and should also kill me. But killing us cats is not that easy - we have nine lives.

It was, however, every easy and very sure that cats and others were killed some time ago, taken off in white vans and - abracadabra zoo zoo! - made to disappear.

Now with that menace erased and freedom of speech and right to information assured, news and info are flying around freely. A friend who seems to have an open sesame to gossip, emails me some of it and I lap it up - cream to this cat.

The latest bit was that while a minister of the previous government, a very sporty one, sported a pair of shoes on which he had spent a hundred and fifty thousand rupees, the son of a another minister of the previous lot wore a pair that was much more expensive.

There was a picture of the father holding the hand of the son with the expensive shoes and walking forward with others agape at the shine emanating from the youngster's footwear. Menika looked long and hard at the cartoon which accompanied the article about the shoes and did not quite recognise, or feared to put a name on the tubby figure. It looked quite like one who got wifey dear hitting him with a chair once long ago.

But no naming was done or will be done. It was bad enough that anyone's son would wear a pair of shoes that could very well build a house for a poor man and his family to shelter from rain and sun or a village road be repaired so that hundreds could travel easier.

This feline may like her creature comforts like all felines do, but not to the extent of creature comforting herself in the face of so much deprivation around.

One thing for sure. Yahapalanaya, though heavily criticised now, will never permit such personal extravagance, not by censoring people but treating unbridled extravagance as anti-social and making one who indulges himself or herself excessively in his or her lifestyle stick out like a sore thumb unlike during the regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa where everyone who was someone indulged in profligacy.

Extravagantly expensive shoes won't take you far. See what happened to Mahindananda Aluthgamage who wore a pair of costly shoes that was noticed and commented on by his boss Prez Rajapaksa. See what happened to Imelda Marcos with her three-thousand pairs of shoes.

Education abroad

Another email doing the rounds asks how a certain ex-minister educates his children for so long in foreign lands. How does his income, perks included, stretch that far is a question asked. Menika does not know the number of children this minister has or where they study but she certainly recognised the accompanying picture.

He must have lived for long abiding by the announcement he made that a family of four could live on Rs 7,500 a month. Remember? Maybe he lived that way and saved all he got to educate his children. Or else ... There lies the secret! There was a time when parents had to send children to universities abroad since Sri Lanka's seats of higher learning were closed; closed by the socialist group of young persons who said they were making things better for youth and the poor.

Their method was to close down universities, schools, even hospitals and of course shops and businesses.

Their power was so great that a scribbled note to close down or be shot dead had people closing down very obediently. They were Pol Pot-ish.

Bring down the educated, get the elite in paddy fields, uproot plantation tea, grow manioc instead. Mercifully they were defeated, even if it meant rivers ran red and tyres were difficult to come by.

So if you had a child of university age in the 1990s, it was collecting every cent and borrowing more and sending the progeny out to a foreign university. People of this type - dutiful sacrificing parents did not steal. So money was hard to come by, but come by it did.

Otherwise your son or daughter was in danger of becoming an uneducated ne'er do well or conscripted to the JVP. The situation was worse in Jaffna; i.e. danger to young ones of being ensnared as a fighting cadre though the university over there never closed down.

We suppose parents who collect money from the time a girl child is born and endows her with a substantial dowry sits back satisfied they did their duty by her once she is married. How much more the satisfaction that one sent a child abroad and got him or her educated.

There was no elitism; it was not only the rich who sent their children abroad. Even middle class parents with no savings sent a son or daughter out from the strife torn island of two insurgencies - South and North - instigated by radical Sinhalese youth and militant Tamil boys.

Thank god, we live in so much better times! We still have perverse politicians of blue who think of only themselves. But there is hope for the future. So this cat licks her paw and settles down to a snooze.

- Menika