Public debt - Sri Lanka is not bad actually

I wrote a couple of years ago that Sri Lanka's public debt has resulted in every Sri Lankan citizen being indebted to the tune of Rs.200,000. Sure sure, the per capita income of Sri Lankans from a statistical perspective is rocketing upwards, so much so that we are now supposed to be a middle income country. Let us casually ignore the fact that the large majority of poor live in abject poverty and that the small minority if rich live in fabulous opulence. The nation is in impossible debt compared against its Purchase Power Parity (PPP). Well, it seems as if other nations are far worse off than we are.

Lets do a bit of comparing shall we?

How much money do we have in the world? Well, even guesstimates vary on this but,  we currently have about 5 trillion dollars of physical cash and approximately 25 trillion dollars in "dits and dots" - checking accounts which can be quickly accessed. Forgetting about vague money such as money market funds and long term deposits and adding savings and deposits less than 100,000 dollars, we have about 60 trillion of enabled cash across the world. That's about it. Nothing more that is useable. Nothing.

Global public debt is currently growing at an eye-popping 5.14 million US dollars a minute and currently stands at approximately 55 trillion US dollars.

Here are the forecasts according to "The Economist" (Global debt clock figures)

What does that mean? lol. Well, it simply means that we are in debt to 91% of the total available funds in the world. Within a year, we will jump that limit and be truly spending more than we have - unless of course, we try to mint ourselves out of trouble, do as Zimbabwe did and end up as Zimbabwe did. Except that we wont have a dollar or a South African rand to save us.

Sri Lanka is in debt to the tune of USD 55 billion and per capita debt is USD 2,500. Terrible eh?

Here's how Sri Lanka compares to other nations: You can see a "popularly debt ridden country" in Greece and the rest of the "popularly stronger countries" in the table.

Bottom line? We are staggering under debt, and we feel it. The rest of the world in being mowed under it but doesn't give a dime (save Africa... funny? not at all, but, lol, anyway). The reason they give for saying Japan or Singapore is "cool" and we are "uncool" is because of some weird-assed metric that says they have "better fiscal management", "have the capability to repay",  "earned the trust of creditors" and such la-di-dah. Well, when sub-prime mortgages failed in the USA and I daresay, leveraged investments in China will fail pretty soon if they don't watch it, everyone knew that the "trust" developed by highly indebted nations were a Chimera - a manufactured dream. It only needed the failure of broadbased nuclear debt to fail for the whole darn pack of cards to come crashing down. So, good people, while we earnestly prattle on about wealth creation, we are all - without exception - only capable of debt creation. In that it is not just Sri Lanka but everyone else who is doing terribly. 

The world is insane. The so-called "developed" countries, especially so.

Ho ho ho. Happy New Year to all!

Thank you for the music

Making music is easy when one is making it for one’s self where the effort resolves into a simple matter of self-gratification. Making music for others is tougher since the effort assures that everyone else rests in peace while one rests in pieces. Making music for one’s self and others is an exercise that is fraught with deadly danger at every turn. There are only two outcomes of this last. Either everyone ends up shattered beyond repair or everyone ends up more more whole than they ever thought possible. Very few attempt it. Of those that do, just a fraction succeed since the effort is unique; the way is arduous; and the attempt multiply threatened by constant internal soul searching and vicious external critique. Trying it is costly for it is voracious in its needs.

It feeds on universal love. It is smoked in the thrill of wielding multiple skills with rare excellence. It is soaked in panache. It rests on identifying simultaneously with oneself and everyone else. It requires one to be the conductor, the first violinist, the soloist, the rock guitarist, the jazz lead, the timpanist, the front man, the head administrator, the marketing director, the food inspector, the management guru, the secretary general of the UN, the counselor and the clairvoyant. It mandates infinite resources of patience and restraint. It insists on a mental quietness and emotional stillness that is comparable only to the vacuum of outer space. It determines its relevance to life only if it achieves that lack of resistance that in only possible for wet ice sliding on wet ice. It is the sort of effort that Superman would call super human.

Every once in a while, as each normal generation gives way to each normal generation, each nation, uncharacteristically, coughs up one such individual. That individual makes everything in that nation look… (I am searching for a word here).  That individual makes everything in that nation look… (for lack of a better word)...ok. 

Incomprehensibly, Impossibly, Sri Lanka coughed two up at the same time.  

Sanga and Maiya as they are fondly referenced made it all happen for our nation as they made it all happen for themselves. They did what is seemingly impossible to do – play multiple parallel innings both on and off the field. Exercises of great valor, great forbearance, great understanding, and great compassion – against other cricketers, with other cricketers, against the odds, with the odds, against corrupt politicians, with corrupt politicians, against bad administrators, with bad administrators – orchestrating a two decades long symphony of concord despite every desire on the part of every influencer for discord.

And they did it for themselves for us, and through us for themselves. 

They made each individual in our nation sing because it seemed right to do so. They created the enabling environment for it through their varied orchestration with the cricket and outside of the cricket. They made it possible for stranger to smile at stranger, for enemy to slap enemy on the back, for husband with wife and two children he cannot feed feel less disabled, for wife with two kids and an alcoholic husband to bear the past and look forward to a future less painful, for two kids to forget the bombs they lived through and resolve for a tomorrow where the only bombs they have to deal with are those hurled by the lesser being with the greater power.  Impossible though it seems, this… is so.

And they did it not because of super human capabilities but rather because of abnormal simplicity.

The only people brave enough to make such things happen for all are those who can reduce the noise into a few, clear, unambiguous truths. These two engaged the world through a simple modality where they valued value, honored honor, trusted trust and suffered fools not at all. These things they espoused and were synonymous with. These are precisely those things that irrelevant politicians yell from off of any and all podiums but know not the meaning of or care less about. Other than, of course as  conveniences to addle the already addled national psyche.

And they did it with a rare skill. It is easy to rant, rave, sulk and pop rivets. These two chose not to. Rejecting reactive responses, they endured with patience, compromising themselves not one whit and thereby took a path reserved exclusively for the daring.

For years, these two men cared enough for this nation to face death at the hands of the political bull, the administrative braggart, the cricket ball and the terrorist bullet. Threatened by friend and foe, so-called friend and so-called foe, they cared enough to dodge them when it best suited the nation and face them full on when occasion called for it. They did it for years, simply in order to lessen the collective emotional burden of frustration that we, as a nation, seem to have been born with.

We appreciate your commitment to our wellbeing. We love you for it. We know it was never easy. We understand the pain. We share with you the many disappointments and the few moments of euphoria but more than all of that, we share in your consistent commitment to quality human effort for collective good.  We know and value the effort you made to make the whole nation feel whole about the whole nation. When you go back to you and yours, know that we want nothing more for you or from you than that you live the rest of your lives in song as you have made song happen for us under impossible circumstances.   

Thank you both for the music. 

Art for art and other relative inadequacies of written and symbolic languages

(This is a middling length piece so I must apologize in advance for its length. In my defense, all I can honestly say is that the subject is too thrilling to be tweeted :) If you do deign to read through, look not too badly at the person who put you through it but rather, think of the piece itself as a fugue where a short phrase is introduced in one part and taken up by others. Can essays do that? Can an essay be for the sake of an essay? Can one exist in its own receptacle? Its own little cocoon? Is it possible that it's sole purpose it to serve itself? Whistler thought he could do that with his butter-fried, symphonic, butterflied paintings . On the other hand, should essays be toned, colored, etched, sculptured, built into the fabric of societal relevance? Pirsig thought that they should with his hard fought, inescapable, tortured, logic.) 

Who knows...here goes...  

REPEATING FOR EFFECT. THE EFFECT OF REPEATING...

Recently, at a gathering of a group of highly talented Sri Lankan creative artists, a plenary turned to unpacking the cliché art for art’s sake. Or, what mathematicians call the Pushkin paradox and what aesthetes call the never ending debate.  It was thrown into the mix with the best of intentions since it is a sure fire guarantee to stimulate conversation but, oh my! Oh my my my my my! But I felt for that panel.

They  all  had a few years under their belt and had probably gone through this same debate more than a few times in their lives. Still, they steeled themselves and did admiral battle for the sake of discussion. Art for art or art for society...mmm? It was excellent, insightful and elicited much enthusiasm among the older members of the group. The younger people in that crowd remained studiously silent. Half of my mind was resting on them at the start and as the arguments progressed I gradually let my mind be invaded by that silence and allowed their disinterest to wash clean the noise in my head. You see, they didn’t give a rat’s bum either way.  If the situation of that discussion was otherwise, I would’ve high fived the lot of them.

Let me very quickly outline the paradox. It is quite well known to logicians but not to too many creative artists. Indeed, the paradox might not be relevant to them at all. Why should it? The phrase is tailor made for a fight and most artists love a fight, wherever and whenever one can be located *grins*

As we all know, this phrase is not unique to art. It has been used in other areas of human effort as well. For example, “War for war’s sake”, “killing for killing’s sake”, “sex for sex’ sake” are also frequently seen popping up in conversation.

Now, in all of these, the first use of the word is specific to the subject being referenced. The first “Art” in the phrase “Art for art’s sake” for example, is semantically simple – it relates to creative aesthetics. This is similar to the first use of “War” – relating to political aggression, “Sex” – relating to the biological act, “Killing” – related to the termination of life. However, the second use of the word is undefinable for it relates not to the effort but to the basis for that effort. The basis for effort, be it art, war, murder or sex can, and usually does, dependent on the distance from earth to mars, the time of day, which way the wind is blowing, the health of a person’s digestive system, how many roads a man must walk down if the total number of available roads is less than 42 and so on...

So, since one part of the phrase is completely and utterly dependent on a specific framework of reference and the number of such frameworks of reference is infinite, the phrase is essentially nonsensical. An unresolvable and undefinable semantic best used to practice the art of hoofing useless things into the dustbin. Massive debates have ensued and huge volumes of work generated because of an inability to understand this fairly simple paradox. Both my law of infinite disagreement “The number of points that a group of people disagree upon is geometrically proportional to the number of ways available to frame the problem” and my law of uselessness “The usability of a volume of work on a nebulously framed subject is inversely proportional to its size” are quite applicable to these types of phrases.

Later discussions with the younger guys in that group indicated that they instinctively understood this and I got to high five a few of them. If this gut feeling on their part is any indication, then the universe of the future is one mad phrase less. Thank you very much.

LEARNING WAYS TO SEE AND SEEING WAYS TO LEARN...

On to something more relevant. Something more real, kickass here’n’now.  Something about the meaning of a piece of art and how to arrive at it. Something about its creator and that creator’s mindset and approach to life.

One of the panelists, Shehara De Silva spoke of playing a neatsy li'l classroom game using Picasso’s Guernica. I had used it a few hundred times myself in classrooms and was pleasantly pleased that great people like Shehara saw its potential as teaching material as well. It is a powerful drama that grows bigger, more intricate and more intense as you spend time with it. Or so the art buffs of this world would probably tell you. *winks*

Pablo Picasso - Guernica - made to prove the adage "missed the wood for the trees" 

She spoke of taking it from classroom to classroom and asking the kids to describe what they saw and how the little ones got the horror depicted therein while the older and older the kids were the more and more interested they were in individual components of the painting thereby missing the wood for the trees or rather, the suffering for the light bulb. There is of course the case to be made that younger children cognize human emotion better than the intricacies of other interrelationships between people, objects and animals but wait, Shehara's experiment proved something far more dangerous, far more sinister. It showed how education systematically conditions us into breaking apart big things to “solve” them as smaller things. It teaches us to break an apple down into the fruit solids, the moisture content, the nutrient percentages. It tells us that those are the things that define an apple when in fact the only definition worthy of an apple is as something tasty to eat or something that is useful for clouting a bully - on the noggin - from a distance.

A child would in all probability see how the elements in red define the horror in the painting and proceed to wash the whole of it in red

We are educated out of the truthful simple joy of  savoring the instinctive idea of an apple and instead given tasteless facts to digest. We are systematically blinded to root realities and thereby, that basis of truth required for creative effort is cauterized in us. Year on year, as we progress through our process of education, we are weaned away from constructive activities and instead, focused on the endless debates of Pushkin’s paradox. We are gradually coerced into contrived creative effort that replaces actual creative effort.

This is similar to being told to stare sightlessly at 3D stereograms to see that elusive image hidden 3D deep in a cacophony of visual noise. Lets unpack that a bit folks.

Since we’ve all done this many times, before reading further, indulge me. Take a look at the following 3D stereogram. Do the usual, relax your eyes, unfocus them if you like. Look in, look out, look sideways. Make it your ultimate goal in life to "get in". Let the 3D image pop out and see what it shows you.  (Don't read on until you get it btw). 

Now, all of you probably saw the hidden message but how many of you saw the words in the stereogram itself? *evil chuckle* “get over the frogs, hover frog” is poetry my man. How about the tag line at the bottom? How kewl is that eh? But you missed all of that because you were told to look for something else right? Because I told you to look at it in a particular way, you obeyed. If the roles were reversed so would I! Ah well… there you have it… 

Believe me, it is far easier and far more creatively honest to see the pain in Guernica than to torture some hidden meaning out of the juxtaposition of a lampshade, light bulb and paraffin lamp blazing down on a maddened horse.

In fact, if you really want to know why that painting became and what it really means, all you need to do is look at the horror of Picasso as a human being and the horror he visited upon his near and dear and ravish his interpersonal relationships into giving birth to his supposed fine art.

 DETAILING OUT THE PLAN AND PLANNING OUT THE DETAIL...

But there is another side to all of this. In some cases, a greater set of intrinsic linkages are necessary to appreciate the counterpoint. A more multifaceted approach required to see the meshing of seemingly unrelated harmonies. 

Take a look at Salvador Dali’s Sacrament of the Last Supper below. It speaks a forceful message of this world and the next. It is probably as famous a portrayal of this event as Da Vinci’s. To all intents and purposes, that is all there is to it and that is all there should be to it.

Or is there something more? Some, hidden message in there perhaps? Well yes, there is something more to it and no, there is nothing hidden in it at all.

Dali contrived the layout with the so called golden ratio in mind. The massive dodecahedron in which the characters are framed showed this purpose and that message is as hidden as the lines on one's palm. The use of that supra-ratio (phi) is seen in the slicing and dicing of the various component parts of this picture and the said slicing and dicing is as important to Dali’s Sacrament as it is irrelevant to Picasso’s Guernica.   

Is this an important message? Is Dali trying to tell us more than the fact that like all beings inhabiting a human body, Christ too would eventually have to have a last meal, black hair turned golden by what we can surmise is the wash of sunlight, seated Japanese style for a Biblical time's version of fine dining with no plates, one glass, two halves of a single loaf, at a 20th century conference table covered with pagan era parchment, in the company of 7 humans, 1 Ringo Starr, 2 yodas and 1 R2D2, all of them ensconced inside  a 21st century CEO's glass cubicle? mmm? Well that depends on perspective.

If you are a fan of Adolf Zeising who argues over 457 pages in his “Der Goldene Schnitt”  that the golden ratio is the most artistically pleasing of all proportions and the key to understanding all morphology including human anatomy, art, architecture and even music, you can think, yeah baby! 

Me? 

I think Zeising is a crank and merely note that there is a vague case for his stance although I choose to let it escape me. For me, the real importance of Zeising’s work is that J.K.Rowling used the title of his book to name that fast moving little golden ball in Quiddich the golden snitch (*heh* now you know!). The painting itself, well, what can I say? I’ve used it for years to teach of the connections between math and art.

The two golden spirals meet at the cusp of the painting and determines the placement of the two apostles in the foreground

Closer to the point, is all of this required to see this painting for what it is? An arresting, wonderful evocation of pastel shades of sunlight encapsulating and telescoping, yet breaking apart and setting free an infinity of positions, possibilities, events and geographies through which we can wander in wonder? A middling behemoth 8 ¾ feet by 5 ½ feet hanging on a landing at the Washington National Gallery? A sensory assault so powerful and so intense that it persuaded me to duck down under the arches on 4th street and smoke a joint so that I could absorb its full flavor over 5 ½ hours? 

Short answer? Yes. Long answer? YESSSSS! 

Here, the mathematical references are not only evident but necessary to understand the sheer scope of the “wonderful evocation of pastel shades of sunlight... yadi yada yoda ” within the mathematical order where it resides and through which and by which it moves. That knowledge expands one’s appreciation, intensifies one’s feelings and enhances the colors in one’s emotions.

ART FOR SOCIETY'S SAKE AND SOCIETY FOR ART'S SAKE...

The same goes for Albrecht Durer’s famous engraving Melencholia or Ennui. Scientific and mathematical symbolism is peppered all over it, overarches it, envelopes it. There is no need to second guess the meaning of the work – the notion of “thinker’s block” is what it is all about. The mathematician cum magician Martin Gardner does an admirable job of extracting the essence of it: “Unused tools of science and carpentry lie in disorder about the disheveled, brooding figure of melancholy. There is nothing in the balance scales, no one mounts the ladder, the sleeping hound is half starved, the winged cherub waits for dictation while time is running out in the hourglass above. The wooden sphere and curiously truncated stone tetrahedron suggests the mathematical base for the building arts. Apparently the scene is bathed in moonlight. The lunar rainbow arching over what appears to be a comet may signify hope that the somber mood shall pass”. 

Hum! Heh! Well... sure! The only thing that interested me was the magic square at top right. It is a 4th order square commonly known as a symmetrical square. Cooky thingy. Durer switched the two central columns of the classic square (with no damage to its properties) so that the bottom two figures depict the year the etching was done -1514! This is 2014 so it is the 500th anniversary of the etching. Ah! Joy!

That darling little cherub would ask me - hey you! Is that all you got from this masterpiece? me: yes that is all.  

cherub: Is that enough for you?  
me: Yes, thank you very much,  
Cherub: Really?  
Me: uh-huh. The way it is positioned and the way it has been used, I can transmogrify the square, its artistry, its design elements, its magic and its histories into any and all elements in the engraving and any and all interrelationships in it as well. 
cherub: But...but... as Martin Gardner said, arn't any and all elements and interrelationships quite visible in it without you having to do any transmogrification?  
me: sure. But what's the fun in that? If I were to look at this the way you want me to, I would simply be looking at art for society's sake. My way, I can look at it in terms of art for art's sake.  
cherub: (outraged sniff) art for art's sake? 
me:sorry, art for math's sake. duh. 

DEIFYING THE UNDEFINABLE, DEFINING THE DEITY... 

There is a quote I rather like. This is from Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance.  Pirsig is not  only a perfectionist but a very rigorous thinker. Just like Isaac Newton, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell who consumed 379 pages of the Principia Mathematica to prove the seemingly mundane quantitative fact that 1+1=2 , so too, Pirsig meticulously designed the entire book to lead up to this one seemingly mundane qualitative fact. To me, personally, this one is very special.

Here is how it goes: "And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good - Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?" Indeed no! my friends. From here to eternity the answer to that question is a resounding, reverberating NO! What artistic endeavor we choose to promote to eternal life as a thing of beauty whose loveliness never decreases is entirely up to us as individuals, no?

The problems arise when we attempt to justify our sense of "this is right, this is good, this is beautiful, this is eternal" to third parties. The debate on art for art is just one of many tricks we use towards that end. The debate is killed at the get-go by the sheer inadequacy of mediums of communication  even to hold it all in - let alone express a single part of it. Artists feeds on others and others feed on artists - sometimes. Artists feed on art and art feeds on artists - sometimes. All of us feed on society and society feeds on us - sometimes. Then, the rational solution to Pushkin's paradox simply seems right.

Pirsig? Well he is simply - right.

In this little chit-chat, all I have done is highlight the variety and variousness of thought and executed a series of small brash strokes that serve only to put a little light and shade into a firm-lined two dimensional tapestry. There is nothing transformatory here at all but perhaps, it is marginally edifying. Something that might result in a bit of widening and deepening of a well known, well trodden terrain.

SO GOES IT WITH GOD.

Depending on one’s mood of the day, mathematician, poet, musician or cinematographer, the import of little things in big aesthetic effort have a significantly transformative quality to them. Not in terms of collectives but at a highly personal level. This is probably the only type of transformation that creative arts are ultimately capable of. Like Shehara’s counterpoint to an IRA massacre during the conversation – was it the Kingsmill massacre she was referring to? I am not certain. No matter. It took me back six years, to a windswept churchyard in Sligo, Ireland, in the thick of winter, staring down at a grave. Thinking about what old Joe McGowan, one of the most knowledgeable of Irish historians, had been telling me a few hours earlier at the mansion of one of this dead man’s lesser known mistresses. Two, mistresses actually. From one very famous Irish family. Proving that he wasn’t really a very nice man.  Cold hard fact, clinical and effective, from Joe. Unbeknown to him, he transformed my reading of those times in Ireland and one of the more acclaimed of its many actors. I brought up in my mind the lines “My arms are like the twisted thorn, And yet there beauty lay; The first of all the tribe lay there And did such pleasure take; She who had brought great Hector down And put all Troy to wreck”. I buried those lines with the man who wrote them, cast a cold eye in life upon his death and took my leave of those times and climes. You see, truth is adamant, be it viewed through the eyes of logic or the eyes of art and both logicians and artists … sometimes fail themselves in that respect.

I am at left, taking my leave while leaving my take

(This is a small personal dedication to the American painter James Abbot Whistler and the Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde. The two of them had an acrimonious relationship. Whistler was a leading proponent of "art for art's sake" and the perfect counterpoint to Wilde who was the diametric opposite of that school of thought. I am grateful for the newspaper battles between these two formidable artists which were later published as the "The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler" if I remember the title right. I spent many joyous hours as a teen reading these over and over and the human touch to their rarefied worldviews that came to the fore in their very public battles was a real teenage joy. Incidentally, Whistler never liked Ruskin or his protege Turner *winks*)

The giving of the gift of vision

When Newton re-quoted  John of Salisbury saying "If I saw further, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants" he was referring to the thinkers who went before him. The phrase is more apt when we look back upon our teachers.

Many people have said many beautiful things about them. Teachers have been painted and scaped in every color imaginable, sung of across the infinity of harmonies, sculpted, etched, smelted and woven into every theme, every sub-plot, every aside, relevance, margin and nook of the vast organ that is our collective consciousness.   And rightly so, for they water, cool, rarefy, light up and feed us all. Very few things trigger thoughts that are universally accepted to be beautiful these days.  These days, any agreement on anything is either contrived or forced and we live poorer for the fact. Still, all is not lost. We have our teachers. Along with friends and lovers, they wrestle for the top spot in overall wonderfulness and stark, raving awesomeness.

That concord of beautiful thought, that unstinted verbal adulation, that unrestricted and unreflecting deed that is triggered within all of us at the mere mention of a teacher has a common denominator. Not love. Not joy. Not adulation. Not gratefulness.

Respect.

It is a funny word, that. A tricksy thingy that is liable to whack you between the shoulder blades if you don’t watch how you deal with it. Yet, a very robust word I surmise for it has withstood use, misuse and abuse. Is it very similar to teachers in that respect. Regardless of how it is viewed or how it is used, it has a great capacity to absorb the many definitions proposed for it by the empiricist, the individualist, the narcissist, the humanist, the rock star, the politician, the actor, the writer. 

Of all of these, the one I like most, and the one that fits teachers best is not a definition per se, but rather an activator, a key if you may to unlocking the intricacies of that word: “We respect someone not because of what we see in them but because of what they make us see in ourselves”.  

Truly. 

That they have done for us all. For all eternity, the likes of them shall do for the likes of us. This is why we, at least in Asia, deify them. This is why we go looking for those feet to fall at. As great friends, they give what is difficult to give; they do what is difficult to do; they endure what is difficult to endure; they reveal their secrets; they keep one’s secrets; they do not abandon us in misfortune; they despise us not for our loss. 

Let me set aside for a moment the death play of so-called teachers and so- called students whose primary goal in life seems to be to shoot each other. In these times, through no real fault of either, “education” places these non-teachers and non-students in situations of contention. I will rather, in the face of that next person who says unto me “I am your teacher, bow thee down”… bow down.  Regarding not that he is terminally ill with a deadly disease all too common in our time. Kneel, not because she is a murderous necromancer who takes pleasure in killing and copulating with the dead. Kneel even though he is dead and can only teach others how to die. “Kneel” I shall remind myself as I do so, but not for that animal in human frame. Rather, kneel before the symbol of what he should represent. Kneel at the feet of the woman she should have been. Kneel before this abomination in supplication to all those teachers who have toiled for me, fed me, comforted me, held me, healed me, died in me and knelt before me to weep tears of blood and sacrifice themselves at the altar of the living dead…just so that I may…see.

And then… they die. And you shock at the thought that indeed it is true. And that which was so good has predeceased this very ordinary you. And you milestone your demise across each tombstone of their continued existence. And insist that that which blew so true must wind as best it can through the doubtful instrument that is you. 

And you set aside their daily IT fare and make your students eat catastrophe theory for he spooned you multiple cusps as a teen. And you loop the andante variations of K331 incessantly in your mind for she made you see Vienna as a child. And you speak about Reimann and his hypothesis instead of prepping your student for the O/L for he taught you to look beyond infinites for answers to finites instead of prepping you for your O/L. And you sing of the streets of London on the banks of the Ohio for he showed you that geographies are relative. 

And… what then? 

Well, you meditate deep into the jungle night on the living hell that is the fate of every teacher… seeking, unseeking, seeking… not for the next doer among her clutch of pupils eagerly feeding their egos and the desire to acquire her skills but rather for the next teacher who… unfound, found, unfound… unkempting, hooliganing, hooting with laughter, bangs out the melody of life between the side of a dumpster and the lid of a garbage can with her left hand while her right traces the Vitruvian in rubbish.

This is for all my teachers:   

I was born in storm of roses and thorn

into murk made of mixture of sorrow and song

and felled to a ground to feed from a soil

full of serpent in turmoil and tiger in toil

But her dark eyes sliced through the fear to the fall

past a mind milking madness to a heart held in thrall

and cheating my destiny of sequential living

she fled with my soul when life wasn't looking

to stop me....

to stare...

for now and forever,

into dreams made of rhythm of moonlight and heather...

to mesh me in breeze tossed in scent soaked in starshine

misted with gossamer and dusted with firefly...

to feed me on tunes made of tremble and sigh,

as earth whispered her love to the sea and the sky...

With respect:

For the late Upali Munasinghe who made me see as Euclid saw; for the late “Vassa” Vaseeharan  who showed me that all catastrophes were not terminal; for the late Mrs.Niles who felt the music with me upon the keys of a piano; for the late Brigadier Eustace Fonseka for showing me how to sing a guitar;  for the late Kumudu Lal Pinto who taught me how to teach;  for the late Mrs. Eileen Prince for proving the violin; for the late E.C. Gunesekara who inquired what jungle I hailed from; for Malcolm Eustace for the irrationality of numbers and the revelation that most human beings cannot be expressed in the p/q form either;  for Lionel Stapes Gunaratne for who defined discipline by the stillness of a pair of knees, for Mrs. Dharmasiri for the possibilities of mischief in the use of language; for Mrs. Manel Munasinghe for making me understand that there was a difference between water and H2O; for Robert McLeod for introducing me to an Epson computer by forcing me to chart the slip curves of a bursting dam, for Lakshmi Jeganathan for the drama in the word; for John McHool for showing me the difference between a voice and a whistle, for Rohan Thiyambarawatte who made me see that soil is a science and badminton is not; for Marmo Somarmo for the insight that language learning and hypercard were not irreconcilable, for Arjuna Parakrama who threw the rule book back at me and showed me its fundamental irrelevance for a team captain; for Kim Thet Oo for proving that one didn't need space suits to treat anthrax, for Richard Simon for showing me that when confronted with guitar sludge one note is sufficient to make one’s point, and, for all those many greater souls who toiled into the night, sweating tears of blood so we could see.

Salute to the bad onion

Discards are the stuff of life me thinks. That is, if each wasted animal managed to trash himself in a dumpster someplace. Now, if other people have thrown one out with the garbage then that’s a little sad. Not for the discard, he knows a good thing in the form of a bin when he sees it, but… it just boils down to the fact that trash is something quite a lot of people have a serious problem dealing with and they solve it by tossing it out and letting other people have a go.

Fine. Admittance of incompetence is greatly appreciated good people.

Trash, human or otherwise, is for other people to deal with. Fine. So we have a multi-million rupee business in dumpsters and related paraphernalia not forgetting the human beings involved in it whose supposed contribution to life is primarily as a statistic for the number of blue collar workers who are not yet jobless.

Secondarily, of course, they collect your garbage. Eh? Did I get that right? Is there actually a sub-stratum of human beings who go around collecting other people's discards? I wonder. Its always “garbage disposal units” in the plural but “trash collector” in the singular. Even the bloody machines that work this industry are “disposal” thingies. Not the human beings. They collect your trash.

I should try to interview one of these blokes. I don’t think anyone has ever done that. You hear of a “garbage workers union” any place let me know. The results of a chit-chat should be interesting. Although I guess it won’t make any more sense than interviewing a psychotherapist. That particular animal also collects other people’s garbage. Well not exactly. He provides each gunk filled gar-bag with a dumpster but calls it a couch. And he earns millions too. Come to think of it, why not interview the garbage as well while I’m about it? What does it feel about its fall from being one in a clutch of great tomatoes of which it was the only rotten one through the fault of its stupid farmer, its fertilizer, its pests, its picker, its packer, its distributor, its purchaser? What’s its take on everyone making gourmet dishes outta rotten tomatoes and selling them at heart-attack prices to people who would be better off with a heart-attack or haut-indigestion at the very least? (You absolutely must try the rotten tomato bouillabaisse at this gorgeously cozy little place I discovered darling. It’s absolutely out of this world. I’ve been having the runs for a week now and in fact I’m running even as I speak luv. Oh?   *giggle* Oh yes. I got the man to install a phone in the throne room. It is such a necessity for people with discerning taste in food like us you know?).   Blah.

How does it feel like to be that breathlessly anticipated child that once its born doesn’t look, taste, feel or cook quite the same as every other? I think I know the answer. It will say “thanks but no thanks, no interviews thank you very much, gotta plane to catch and a date with a dumpster, er.. the grocery store is just around the corner so talk to the tomatoes if you really feel the need to blab.”

I think I will sit down on this curbside, next to a dumpster that may or may not contain a dead body and wish that I were born mad.

The Spirit of Giving II - The Statistics

About a year and a half back, in the post “The Spirit of Giving”, I mentioned that Sri Lanka is a nation of givers.  Well, apparently hardcore statistics also seem to indicate that as well. In this year’s World Giving Index (WGI) that has just been published, Sri Lanka as a nation ranks #9 overall in a survey done across 135 countries. Averaging the rank over the last five years, it comes in at #8.

The survey was conducted to determine the spirit of giving of a country by asking what percentage of people in a nation a) helped a stranger b) donated money to charity and c) volunteered their time.

The highest and lowest percentages for a) helping a stranger is 79% (USA) and 22%(Cambodia), b) that for donating money is 91% (Myanmar) and 4% (Yemen and Georgia) and c) that for volunteering time is 53% (Turkmenistan) and 3% (Yemen).

Myanmar and the USA top the overall rankings with a 64% overall generosity rating. Myanmar ranked #1 in donating money and #2 in volunteering time but was not that keen to help strangers coming in at #63. The USA is #1 in helping a stranger, joint #5 for volunteering time and #9 in donating money.  Myanmar’s high rank in giving time and money might stem from its Buddhist traditions despite the country being under the yoke of a military junta for decades and the #1 ranking for the USA in helping strangers and its good showing in the other two categories maybe a testament to that country’s tradition of welcoming any and all and the spontaneity of its people to quickly help someone in trouble despite general perceptions of the nation as a whole being a selfish capitalist bear.

The tradition of giving is high in Britain, Australia and New Zealand as well. Ireland’s Celtic culture is probably behind its top ten ranking (#4). Many South American nations rank in the middle (#30s - #90s) along with most Middle-Eastern countries excepting conflict affected regions which rank lower. Most African nations rank lower along with nations of the former Soviet Union. Cultural bias based on regional geographies  is perhaps seen in these demographics. The highest ranked Muslim Majority country is Indonesia (#13) followed by Iran (#19) while most others rank in the middle range. Why this is so could be an interesting anthropological exercise since Islam ranks giving quite high amongst its human priorities. Perhaps other regional or denominational factors affect the ranks. The four nations with a Theravada Buddhist tradition, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Thailand rank high (#1,#9,#11,#21). Japan and France are both ranked at #90 with their ranks for helping people at #129 and #134 respectively so if you are in either of these two countries, it would be best to know that you are pretty much on your own!

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The high rating for Sri Lanka was largely due to the fact that it came in at #3 in the “volunteering time” category with 50% of the nation doing so and ranking just 3 percent points behind the leader Turkmenistan.  It ranked #40 in helping a stranger with 56% of the nation doing so and #17 in donating money with 56% of the nation doing so. Sri Lanka’s overall rank of #9 is against an overall percentage of 54% of the nation's population living in a “spirit of giving”. The highest percentage for Myanmar and the USA is 64%. Further, Sri Lanka is way ahead of other South Asian nations excepting Bhutan (polled for the first time this year) which came in at #11. The next highest ranking is for Pakistan at #61.

Overall it seems that people are far more willing to throw money at charity than invest their time for no personal gain. Surveying other statistics, the lowest rankings for donating time or money is around the 3-4% mark with that for helping a stranger at 22% indicating that overall, people are more inclined to help a stranger than engage in other charitable acts. Additionally, it seems as if the escalation of global youth unemployment rates has negatively affected the “spirit of giving” of this demographic which should be a cause for concern for our future. Natural disasters in a nation are seen to marginally spike up the giving element whereas conflict in general seems to have the opposite effect with regions that are in conflict scoring lower. However, Iran, which the world believes to be in general turmoil ranks #19 indicating that it is a nation that is capable of high levels of generosity and perhaps, also indicates a general level of peace with itself. On the contrary, a general stinginess of spirit is seen in developed countries such as France (#90), Japan (#90), Sweden (#40), Germany (#28) etc.  Sri Lanka ranking this high also lends credibility to the claim that it is basically doing just fine although various political agendas seem to claim otherwise. In fact, in the post-conflict era, Sri Lanka has shown marked increases in generosity across the three areas polled.  

Special action for special children with special needs - A bouquet for the Department of Examinations

Things are bad…

Children with special needs...or those who are disabled or  perhaps, differently abled.  Kids who face more than the average challenges of school goers are called various things. That is, if they are called anything at all.

In Sri Lanka, any impairment in children that is physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional or developmental or a combination thereof is by default, left unacknowledged, ignored or wished away.  Those disabilities that cannot be hidden are reluctantly acknowledged via embarrassed silences on the part of both caregivers and those the kids come into contact with. Few, very few, will look at these children and see potential, identify excellence, determine possibilities or understand equal-or-better societal relevance. This in turn, creates both physical and attitudinal barriers that simply results in compounding problems for these children.

Quite a large majority of parents primarily and teachers secondarily have been guilty of this ostrich act to the lifelong detriment of the variously challenged children they either bear or guide.  While these attitudinal negatives rooted in cultural and social astigmatism hurt kids in many areas of engagement, in the world of academic endeavor they can be disastrous.

Under exam conditions in a free education system that is geared to eliminate students from it, the academic challenges are universally acknowledged to be daunting. Put a mentally, physically or emotionally impaired child up against such a system and the perfect enabling environment is created for disabled children to give truth to the lie that they are unable.

Actually, things are not so bad… 

Very fortunately, the National Evaluation and Testing Service of the School Examination and Results Brach of the Examinations Department of the Ministry of Education seems to think so too.  A little known fact is that for quite a few years now, they have had a strong, fair, transparent and very inclusive system in place to support impaired children to do their very best at the national examinations. Expert panels are set up every year in urban centers island wide to assess children with special needs and determine the best way in which to mitigate the negative effects of the additional challenges that they face.

Additionally, and unexpectedly, quite a few government and semi-government schools have taken it on themselves to pay serious attention to the requisites of special needs children. Their commitment is long term and seems to be driven by strong buy-in to the fact that such children have a very important and significant role to play in society. While some, such as Ladies’ College and St.Thomas' College have full-fledged learning support centers or special needs units, many have the capacity and the process in place for early identification of such requirements and the ability to channel the children to institutes and individuals who can bring out the best in them. Further, as far as I am aware, no child who requests admission to a local school is penalized for disabilities or refused admission based on such disabilities.

I cite this as a reason why local schools have a greater grasp of the larger, more inclusive environment of the learning universe as opposed to international schools where, apart from Alethea College which has a special needs unit that supports impaired children including those with Down’s Syndrome, most others actively refuse admission to such children or, pay lip-service to their needs if they are diagnosed after admission. Many consider such children an irksome additional burden. This underscores the widely held view that international schools give admission to children who are capable of achieving high academic goals regardless of the system or the quality of education and rejects those who need to be engaged with significant effort in order to ensure that their best abilities are recognized and developed. Even the few committed special needs people working at international schools find it tough to obtain even the smallest concessions for children with impairment.

Well actually, things are brilliant… 

Here is my personal experience of this system and I am going to name a few of the names I know because I think it is very important that excellence is acknowledged.

My child had a significant attention disorder related to absence seizures resulting from a traumatic birth that caused loss of school time during the crucial primary school years when fundamental concepts are taught.  Development of both academic and social skills was impaired as a result. Luckily, she was at Ladies College where their learning support unit (LSU) was constantly on her case ensuring that she had minimal negatives resulting from her condition. A series of exceptional teachers such as Ms. Wyomi, Ms. Joanna and Ms.Avanthi worked with her over the years, gradually managing to wean her completely away from the LSU. Most importantly, Mrs. Alawwa, the sectional head at Ladies College who knew her medical condition told us about the efforts of the Examinations Department to help students such as my daughter even out the playing field at the upcoming O/L exams; the school got us the forms and we sent in our application through the school and parents and child were called in for a personal interview to their offices.

There were about seventy families and we were lead into a specious hall. The kids were treated like little princes and princesses by the staff and served with refreshments and tea. Sharp on time, the Commissioner General of Examinations Mr. Pushpakumara and his senior staff addressed the families, outlining the program, with the Deputy Commissioner Mr. Jayasundra explaining the rationale and the case-by-case treatment of each applicant and the need to understand that they were merely removing additional barriers to sitting the exam and not helping them to pass and the fact that there was no need to compare the concessions given to one child with those given to another. One got the feeling that meticulous planning had gone into the execution of the interviews.

The interview process - driven from the top with the most senior officials taking the lead

• The children were given a brief writing task and then four expert panels, each with either a deputy commissioner or higher, a special needs expert and two other staff members conducted the one-on-one interviews. The Commissioner General himself headed up one of the panels. 
• The most severely impaired children were taken first followed by those who had come from a little distance away from Colombo (having missed their appointments at the regional interviews). 
• The entire proceeding took place in full view of every applicant. No time limit was set for each applicant and everyone was allowed as much time as needed to state their case in as much detail as they wish to with as many supporting documents as they wanted to share. 
• Those who needed specific types of equipment were provided with it and those whom the panels determined needed readers or scribes were identified. Many of the children were granted extra time. Some were even allowed to have the parent sitting next to them at the exam.  If a request by a parent was deemed to be irrelevant or unrequired, matters were explained patiently and thoroughly so that the issue was clear in their minds and the request revoked by mutual consent. In comparison, for London exams for example, it would be difficult if not impossible to obtain even the slightest concession for an impaired child. Even a bit of extra time would be a tough ask and getting a reader or scribe a near miracle. Allowing a parent to sit with a mentally traumatized kid is never going to happen.  Proof yet again that the international system is simply overrated and even more skewed towards competing for exclusion than set up for inclusion where challenged kids have to perform despite the system under conditions that would wipe out a normal child. 
• The rigor of the review process and the experience of the panels were such that anyone who was there to obtain an unfair advantage for a child was very quickly identified and gently but firmly rejected.
• Clear instructions were provided to us on how to make use of the facilities offered to the children on exam day and we were informed that the invigilators at each center would be informed prior to the exam on each special needs student and the particular requisites for them. Oh, by the way, that won’t happen at a London exam. We were also told that the scripts would be marked by a special team who are experts in special needs and understand capabilities regardless of any aberrations in the specific answers provided. Once again, at international exams, this won’t happen and people who have no clue about challenged students mark the scripts presuming they are part of a supposedly equitable knowledge testing environment where in fact, the opposite is the case. 
• Through the four hours that it took to conduct the personal interviews, the entire staff, from the lowest to the highest gave us the feeling that they were there to make sure we were in the best possible frame of mind, constantly weaving in and out of the seating area to attend to our slightest need.

Quite apart from the fact that the program was at worst equal to the best such programs in the world and at best was probably far far superior to most of them, that which struck the strongest note in our minds was the remarkably human touch of these senior officials and the lack of even the slightest high handedness in the way in which they engaged the children and their parents. The children, especially, were treated with respect and addressed as equals. None of the international systems have given me even the slightest indication of similar treatment despite all of the brouhaha over equal and inclusive treatment that they tout to any who care to listen. Given what we saw at the exams department, since my wife Manju teachers at a leading international school, we felt that all of that was so much gas.

Phrases such as “පුතා දැන් A නවයක්ම අරගෙන එන්න ඕනේ හොඳද” or “දුවට දැන් බයවෙන්න කිසිම හේතුවක් නැහැනේ? අම්ම ලඟින්ම ඉඳගෙන ඉඳියි ” or “බලන්න පුතා, මේ light එක වෙනුවට අනික් එක පාවිච්චි කෙරුවොතින් වැඩිය හොඳට පෙනෙයිද කියල?” were heard regularly coming from the highest of officials throughout the interviews. None left without a grateful smile on their lips and as the day went on (we were among the last few), I could scarcely believe my senses that such an exceptional program could exist within the echelons of officialdom or that such insightful, competent and committed officials were still to be found within the state machinery. Having been touched by their concern, their care and their meticulous attention to detail, we came away feeling proud to be Sri Lankan.  In a system that shuts children out, they are doing yeoman service to bring children in. These are exceptionally enabled human beings and they do our nation proud. Salute!

…and yet, things could be better…

There were only about 70 children there. In Colombo, I believe that this is but a fraction of the number that could have made use of the world class services provided by the department but as mentioned earlier on, the larger percentage of parents and teachers refuse to open these doors to their children. Teachers like Ms. Alawwa of Ladies or the teacher from St. Thomas’ who I saw at the interviews accompanying the families to better explain their cases before the panel are in a minority. Perhaps greater media exposure could be given to the program and even parents could play a part in spreading the news as Mr. Jayasundara pointed out.

I am trying to do my bit….