THE NEED FOR A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE FOR REGULATORY AUTHORITIES

We have had a proliferation of enforcement and regulatory agencies in the recent past. These are supposed to exercise autonomous authority over specific areas of human activity.  While the current political structure is in a state of relative flux, these agencies have been given greater policing powers than they have enjoyed in a long time. Yet, as citizens, one wonders how effective they are and how well connected they are to the people, their aspirations and their grievances. 

There is a popular mantra that states that if there is monopoly involvement of an entity in any sector of human activity, then a regular’s role escalates rapidly in importance such as is the case with say, the role of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) in overseeing electricity, petroleum and water which are all monopolies in Sri Lanka. By implication, the role of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRC) is minimal because strong competition in the sector creates the conditions for self-regulation.  Yet the situation is not that simple.

These days, sector players have a habit of banding together for mutual benefit, creating de-facto monopolies in specific activities such as easy-cash for example. 

The issue I want to highlight with the above example is that the public is certainly worried as to the level of internal awareness of a regulator on the activities of their sector. I would like to think they are fully cognizant but if so, then why is there no mention, no discussion, no action on those issues? More to the point, where do they talk to the public on such issues?

The tired mediums of leaflets, posters, “public gatherings”, “selective engagement with civil sector organizations” etc. have been flogged to death and their effectiveness is near zero at present. The issue is worsened by the complete lack of citizen responsibility on the part of Sri Lankans where they will only get serious about “responding” when their comfort zones are violated. 

The key problem I perceive is that regulators have to either deal with single individuals with unique problems who have somehow managed to cut through a mountain of red tape and barriers to obtained knowledge of where to go and what to do to find relief for their grievances or they work with a few specific interest groups. This is so because the average Sri Lankan is clueless about most things that have a direct impact on them and are generally wont to stick their heads in the sand. In most cases, critiquing the social order or the market reality is something alien. As mentioned in a previous post, they hide behind politicians and hope they come good. Not so but they have yet to be given a strong reason to believe otherwise.  Therefore, iIn many cases, problems are never brought to the surface and remain hidden from regulators.  This is tragic because some regulators such as the PUCSL and the CAA are doing excellent work in restrictive arenas while some others simply do not have a strong public engagement strategy that aligns with the type of social human being one has to deal with today. 

In today’s world, near instantaneous stimulus-response requirements have rendered most perennial methods largely ineffectual. They are not completely outdated by standing alone those engagement techniques will fail. No one is really interested in digging through pages and pages of enactments, regulations, rules, guidelines. Most believe that anything that is not in 16 point fonts on a single page is pretty useless. They also do not believe that they should be sent to halfway houses to get their problems addressed meaning that telling them to hit the local DS office or PS office is guaranteed to rise their heckles more than anything else. 

Farsighted thinkers, regulators and civil leaders met recently to thrash out why consumer movements have failed and to
attempt to chisel out a solution to the problem

NO! What the public needs is for the regulators to be able to respond to them very quickly. They do not always need a solution. They mostly need to know that a person in authority has heard them and will respond to them within a reasonable period of time. In short, they need to be active on social media like the Pakistani drug enforcement authority and many others. It requires a mindset shift in how they engage and that requires three things a) no fear b) desire to respond quickly and c) a strong citizen network to work with. Within the current set up of these commissions, authorities, boards and agencies, that is difficult. The reason is not legislative but rather recalcitrance, a complete lack of awareness on the fact that social media has taken the role of convener of masses and the lack of sufficiently enabled staff to respond to the citizen at a high level.

  

Some of the more farsighted regulators such as the CAA and the PUCSL have taken an active lead to create such groups but to engage them, it is not sufficient to have pocket meetings. Institutions such as the one’s mentioned need to get online – and quickly.  If they do so, then I suspect that there will be a domino effect with every other regulator also having a highly interactive online presence and not merely an information dissemination website. The people will certainly be happy, have more faith in grassroots action targeting enforcement and the enforcers themselves more enabled to execute their mandate. 

The key, as Kumi Nesiah, a moderator on the National Consumer Movement FB page says, is to “attract people to the ethos of criticism” and paraphrasing what he says, “the consumers are looking for faith and for the longest period of time, they have been worshipping  at the alters of megabrands, consuming advertisements and thinking they are living high quality lives when in fact, they are driven, like mindless automatons towards mega-acquisition and mega-greed that feeds them debt and feeds the brands money”. The people need to believe and they must be given reasons for a belief either beyond or separate from market-ideologies or economic-spiritualties. The regulators, along with civil groups, academics, media people and politicians have a mega role to play in that and their presence online is mandatory. 

(If you are interested in getting involved, obtaining knowledge, highlighting issues, resolving problems, please send us a membership request on Facebook – National Consumer Network of Sri Lanka.  ) 

STOP BEING VOTERS AND START BEING CITIZENS: THE NEED FOR CREATING A NATIONAL CONSUMER NETWORK

We have been railroaded into living in a consumer society. This is not a good place for the citizens of a nation but it is where we are. Time was when most of what we wanted we produced ourselves or bartered for. We were piecewise content and groupwise satisfied. Then came this folderol about growth and we embarked on a mad journey to tie ourselves to marketplaces, buy beyond our need and live beyond our means. We allowed ourselves to be taught that all of that was a great good, a wholesome and satisfying existence.

Let us said aside the insanity of the “greed is good” slogan. We have something that tops that. It is called “debt is good”. Right? Yeah. Haha! Funny one … that.  

We have just 65 trillion dollars’ worth of useable cash in the word and the global debt right now is 57 trillion dollars and climbing at around 7 million dollars a minute and somewhere in the early part of next year, we, as a human civilization, will literally have borrowed more than we can physically cover with cash. So, it is high time that we stop attempting to hoodwink ourselves that we can “create wealth” out of debt as has been a major component of the mantra of mainstream economic theory.

We have been indoctrinated into believing that nutrients are food! 

The truth of the matter is that the belligerents of this world will have to increase the rate of cannibalization of earth resources to live a little while longer.  In that process, they will use every trick in the book, every manipulation that human negative ingenuity can cough up, every form of threat, every type of pressure to ensure that a select few, at least on paper, are going to pull through and survive past Armageddon despite the fact that “Armageddon” by its definition will wipe out all of us.  

Funny… that. Yet, while truth stares them in the face, they have already decided that they must now consume even the meager resources generally available to the large masses of people. They have decided that they must commandeer and control the food, the land, the water, the air, the medicine, the education, the rare earth metals, the fossil resources, the renewable resources and the governance of nations.

These actions speak of crazed minds broken away from anything human and blindly believing that everyone else’s death would ensure their life. Those “everyone” know better but they are in greater part to blame for their own misery. You see, that collective or the majority “we” have always been sold on the fact that those we elect have our best interests at heart. We believe therefore, that instead of taking a strong, collective stance on who flies and who dies, we will vote someone into power and let that someone figure that out. We figure that in the end, we will, willy-nilly, come out unscathed regarding not the simple stupid fact that we are part of the “everyone” already marked for death by that select few.

We must realize that no one in any kind of leadership position anywhere in the world is going to cut us even the slightest slack. We must stop being voters and start being citizens.

We must forget the various intergovernmental task forces, the leadership summits, the high level forums. As we all know, those have amounted to nothing and will continue to be less than relevant as problem solving tools for us as time goes on.

We have over 550 natural foods but our supermarkets and are small "elavalu kades"
carry just about 50 of them. Time we asked why... 

We, the people, must provide the solutions and the first part of that work is to prevent window-wash, eye-wash, shot-gun “solutions” from being promoted.  Those have political and business convenience at their root and they have failed us in the past. Miserably. We must be ready to drill down into the realities of unfair trade, unfair acquisition, unfair exploitation. We must be ready with alternative research and counters and proofs on the fairytale claims and blatant lies of vendors and manufacturers who routinely exploit people of science with money to “validate” their claims. We must be able to understand what sort of legal and regulatory relief there is. We must be aware of the ways in which we can engage directly with such frameworks and institutions. 

We must be, not simply active consumers which we are anyway, but also, very informed ones that can collectively discuss issues and come to collective agreements on solutions. We must be capable of moving beyond the voters’ mantras of “there is no other solutions”, “this is the only solution”, “it is either my way or the highway” and be clear headed, factually concise, science based, diplomatic, collectively mission driven and capable of understanding that there is, in most cases, more than one way of solving problems. We, the people, determining our own future, must be strong and collected towards third spaces, grassroots action, dialogue after action, engagement of authorities, regulators and politicians not as counters but as collaborators to ensure that we all survive.

As a trigger to action, here are a few questions that you might want to cut your teeth on for starters. Join us on the National Consumer Network of Sri Lanka (NCNSL) community pages on FB to discuss all of this further:

• All prices of most goods and quite a lot of services are “credit card prices”. These are inflated to the tune of 22% of the actual price. Now, if you pay them in cash, most sellers will offer you a 10% discount when actually they should be giving you a 22% discount. Who is taken for a ride? YOU! Why? Because you just don’t know and more importantly, you have been drugged by TV adds that have lied to you through their teeth into believing you are getting a zero interest deal on installments. Who profits? The vendor? Nah. It’s the banks! What is the Central Bank of Sri Lanka doing? Nothing. Do we want them to? Yes. How? Collective lobbying and diplomacy. Who strategizes it? We do.  Let’s discuss it.
• The amount of electronic cash that is being used for  transactions has skyrocketed in the recent past with such instruments as Easy Cash, SMS may-ins etc. They are set to become the preferred method of purchasing goods in the very near future. They are a huge bank. Who regulates it? No one. Who should? The Central Bank. Should we enforce it? Yes. How? Collective lobbying and diplomacy. Who strategizes it? We do.  Let’s discuss it.
• The biggest “growth” sector in the world today (including Sri Lanka) is health.  We have a proliferation of hospitals. Why? Because people are getting sicker now. Why? Because the air we breathe, the food we consume, the water we drink is poisoned. How should be stopping all of this? That’s the entire state machinery right there that needs to step up and do its job. Are they? Well, some of them are trying but are they able to move forwards? Not with the oil mafia, the agrochemical mafia, the gas mafia and the drug mafia. Do we take them on? Yes we do. How? Let’s discuss it.
• 4.    92% of the pediatric beds of urban Sri Lanka are filled with  children with respiratory diseases . Why? Because of the smog. Who should regulate this? The Central Environmental Authority. Are they doing their job? No. How can we get them to do that? We can go to courts, get a writ of mandamus and force them to do their job which they have shirked for years. Who is preventing them from doing it? The political machinery of the country. Do you want to vote for them again? No.  How do we get it through to them that we will no longer tolerate this? Let’s discuss it.
•  We used to have a Cosmetics, Devices and Drugs Regulatory Authority but now we have a National Medical Drug Regulatory Authority. Cosmetics are no longer regulated! Yet, they are the cause of more health issues than medical drugs. Why? Do we need this changed ASAP? YES! Can we do it? Of course – as a collective lobby. Let’s discuss it. 

Learning Music - Part II (Feeling to learn)

Now, no one can be taught to feel. That’s impossible. However, there is a roundabout way of getting there and that is by practicing love. And I don’t mean the crack-cocaine version of love that has spawned the book, film, poetry and quotable quotes industries but the real thing – altruistic love or loving kindness or metta. The Buddha is very specific on this point: “Practice loving kindness oh monks. One becomes clever by doing so”. Of course, he doesn’t use the word “clever”. Instead, he uses the word “Buddhi” stemming from the word “avabuddhi or avabodha” or internalizing or (you got it) - knowing.

Metta leads to feeling leads to knowing.

So, it doesn’t take much to figure out that by engaging everything and everyone with equal, unreflecting love, one acquires deep, insightful sensitization to the subtleties of their existence and from those stem the initial asha or desire to be one, or become one with one’s object of focus at any given point.For the purpose of this piece, those would be musical instruments and how they can be loved and how they can reward that love with the music they make with one and on behalf of one.

Yet, desire is not sufficient although it must form the basis of any instrument you wish to play. You need the discipline, the exercise, the peer engagement. Those are provided by the guru and the choice of the guru is crucial to progress. The Guru can be a) a physical human being, b) a book or c) experience. A person works best, a book is next and experience a poor last (one needs to bump one’s head on the lintel a few dozen times before one realizes that one is an inch taller than the lintel).

Gurus do not happen by chance. They become a student’s guru, because a student feels sufficiency in desire. Many students make the mistake of going for instruction to a great guru (and paying through their parent’s noses for it) believing that excellence is a necessary outcome of surface association. Not so. Teachers might “learn” you an instrument but gurus don’t. Gurus won’t. Gurus can’t. Regardless of what you pay such a one, if a guru sees no sufficiency in desire, she will merely teach you well. Remember therefore that even if you consider such a one your guru, the guru won’t consider you his disciple as Musila found out to his detriment. 

Now, a lot of people, mistaking greed for need, lust for desire, thanha for asha, believe that learning is a process of acquiring something one lacks. Actually, it is the collateral outcome of a tripartite association, an engagement, a fornication if you may - between a student, a teacher and an instrument. In Asian traditions - all the way from what is now knows as the mid-east, through central and south Asia to the far east, students humble themselves and bow before both the teacher and the instrument for without such devotion and humility neither will look their way nor feel for them nor feel with them. Contrasting with the arrogance of the present day “student” and “teacher” where it is all “me” and “you”, all big or small, all hit or miss, the best of students finds the greatest of teachers every time and seek merely to pay homage at their feet. All else that follows is incidental.

And that which is incidental is a factor of a student’s own sufficiency and rises from the three-way associative engagement mentioned above. If you are sufficient, then you would already know what I am about to tell you. You will go to a teacher for six different types of sansarga (copulation/engagement). Drushti or sight tsansarga (this is first and one goes to a teacher merely to be thrilled by the sight of him, the voice of him, the way of him, the perfume of him). Next, Shabdha or sound sansarga (you have graduated to actually hearing what she has to say). Next, Ghanda or iva or olfactory sansarga (you instinctively know what he is going to say before he says it since you are now capable of literally and figuratively smelling him). Next, Kabali or taste sansarga (you go to her to be fed, clothed, sheltered and to bind your rasa to hers). Next, sparsha or touch sansarga (you need to physically copulate at which point the teacher gives of her own blood to the disciple) and finally, chiththa or mental sansarga (the two are physically removed from each other, but the disciple only needs to think of the guru and will instantly obtain the solution to any problem that vexes her).  

Truly, then, you know what you have studied with the guru. Truly you will believe, as Barenboim tells the young Lang Lang, that you can create a crescendo on a single note although in theory that is impossible. Truly you will believe, as Horowitz told the 14 year old Berenboim to believe - in the power of the will of a knowing musician. Truly you will know, not the clinical mastery of speed play nor the beauty of subtle ornamentation nor the technical wizardry of tricking out - and tripping up - the metronome but of the force in you, the sensor, the knower, the seer, to unlock the potency – and the poesy - of a single note. 

Learning music - Part I

We were young then. My friend Nishadh and I. He was a mere esraj visharadha at the time and I was merely a guitar player. Decades before musical fusion became a distasteful fad, the two of us would interleave the sounds of the esraj and the guitar because their tonal qualities and auditory outputs seem to fit well together – especially if the players were soused in alcohol. 

This exchange was in music and Sinhala so I will keep the music and translate the Sinhala to English. Although both of us were classical exponents, at those times, we would play the lighter pieces together. That night, we were at the tail end of an hours-long session of tunes fueled by booze that in turn was cross-pollinated by our two instruments in harmony when Nishadh played the opening notes of “Muhudu pathula” the famous song from “Muhudu Puththu”.  I promptly plucked out a compliment in C minor. At one point in that exposition, Nishadh reached out to the higher C and did something with that note that I thought was impossible to do with the esraj or pretty much any other instrument. He seemed to create the illusion of actually playing the C, C sharp and B (C flat - in eastern music there is a universe of difference between B and C flat) all at the same time, magically transforming the entire flavor of the tune. I stopped playing in utter shock but still had enough presence of mind to indicate that he should repeat it. As he redid his bit of musical skulduggery I changed the guitar response into a rapid mix of B to C bends and C to C sharp hammer ons on the A5 string interspersed with open E6 staccatos with the effect achieved by stopping it with the chiquito on the 5^th to get the E harmonic to ring out. It was his turn to be astounded. As it ended, I burst, “what you just did machan… that… is the mark of an ustad”. He says, “… and your trick completed it… that… is the mark of a master”.

Afterwards we were quiet for a long time, just cradling our instruments, sipping drinks and looking out into the patch of greenery at the back of my home.  By the by he breaks the silence, almost in  soliloquy, murmuring “we can be taught to play 12 or even 16 notes a second on a string but we can never be taught to believe in the power or the possibilities of a single note. We have both been students. We are trying to be teachers now. We must always remember that we cannot teach someone to do what either of us did today. They must know it for themselves”. I murmured back, “technique can never stand-in for understanding, nor theory for practice, nor lust for love”.  We finished our drinks. The magic was both complete and replete. We put our instruments away and safely walked out of each other’s lives for the next twenty years. Such, then, is the potent energy and magic of a single note of a single song.

 It is a good story that, despite the fact that it is true. It is also a good Segway to discuss the idea of learning music or anything else for that matter. Sure we’ve all learned a thing or two as human beings and flogging this topic seems to be slightly silly because most people know what learning is without anyone having to slice it, dice it or define it. Or…do they?

Well, I thought I did until I was taught, quite by chance, that what I knew about learning was precisely dick. I learned of my inadequacy because I did something I rarely did as a teen – look up. Straight at the TV where Amaradeva was saying “to know music, you must have, in that order, asha (desire), siksha (discipline), abhbaysa (exercise), sathsanga (the company of those on the same journey as you) and guru (teacher –either a person, a book or experience). If you fail to acquire even one of those, you may learn things but never know them. If you have them, you never stop knowing and never stop expanding the types of things you gets to know”.

That was a blinding brilliant bolt that sparked into life the very sinews that bound my body together. That day I realized the difference between learning (igenuma) and knowing (danuma or danima). Learning was a clinical, mechanical, hit-some-miss-some effort whereas Knowing as Amaradeva said it required one to feel (danima). I realized that up to that point, be it chess or math or music or speech, I had been feeling nothing and merely learning so, small wonder the only feeling I had was “low” and the only way I knew how to deal with it was to keep my head buried in some novel or other for extended periods of time. 

The tough thing is "to feel". Can it be taught? Well, no... and not no neither. :) Part II will explain.

The teaching of music

Back in the day, I would amuse people by telling them that I could teach someone to play the guitar in ten minutes. Since a lot of people mistake skill development as learning and long term oversight, adjustment and direction of coursework as teaching, their amusement is justified. They are, of course, very welcome to their understanding of teaching, and, I might add, their take on it all is a very commonly held opinion. For them, there is a very large music teaching industry that has sprung up with droves of students corralled in tastefully laid out premises choked with instruments, furniture, teachers, managers and administrators. They are welcome to put themselves or their children through years of toil and turmoil within those torture chambers that pass for music schools.

But no. That is not teaching by a long shot. A great teacher understands that there is a fundamental, critical difference between a person who wants to play an instrument and one who wants to merely learn it.

To play an instrument, one needs something more encompassing and proximate than the mere ability to create nice sounds on some weird looking contraption made of strings, keys, tubes, drums, skins or combinations of those elements. One needs to have the desire to consort with one’s instrument. One needs an untrammeled, unbounded, unreflecting joy bordering on reverence at its mere proximity. One must thrill with ecstasy at the mere chance to make some sound  - any sound - come out of it.  One must cease to see it as one’s instrument of choice and understand it as one’s object of adulation and see the potential it holds to make one whole. One must love the idea of the instrument in one’s life and one must be brave enough to think that it can become one’s whole life.

Related post: The appreciation of the classical musics

The recognition of a future disciple:

A great teacher of music knows how to recognize this desperate desire, this hopeless longing on the part of a student to love and be loved by a guitar, a sitar, a piano, a violin, a basoon, a tabla, an ektar, a flute. Such a teacher seeks that desire in his students…seeks it…seeks it…whether asleep or awake, every single moment of every single day for it is a rare thing indeed.  He hunts for it in the eyes, in the hands, in the hearts, in the minds of those who come to him for instruction.  He desperately hopes, longs, desires to see the desperation, the longing, the hope in a student. If such is found, then the teacher knows he has found a disciple and not just a student. He knows  that his cup is then made fuller by an eighth.

With pleasure and anticipation he will proceed to bring the disciple into his fold and give him shade. He will know, in the first instant of contact with such a one, exactly how he should be taught to woo his instrument. In just ten minutes he will be able to make his disciple cry out in wonder “oh my God. My God. Who would have thought that such beauty could ever fall in love with a guy like me? Who would have thought that such a gorgeous thing would allow me to embrace it and call it my own?”. Ten minutes it all it takes for a teacher to see the entire life of a disciple laid bare before him. 

The great teachers of this world subsume their egos and live only to thrill at the sight of their charges carving out a life for themselves in the company of an instrument that they too loved and married into in a different time, in a different way.

From there to the end of a never ending journey, is the joyful engagement of the teacher and the disciple living and existing for the betterment of the one. The discipline, the exercises, the special little tasks serving merely to tighten an already firm and affirmed love affair between the disciple and the instrument.  

This by no means indicates that a teacher will ignore or marginalize the rest of the students. However, with them, there will be a sort of clinical, twilight relationship. The love of a teacher would not be lesser but that teacher knows only too well the egos, the parental pushes, the peer pressures, the educational goals that drive them to class. Certainly, the teacher will instruct them. She will remove the debilitating agents and conditions be they parental zeal, indiscipline, emotional vapidity or iffy love affairs and make sure that the coursework is completed, the exams sat, the “distinctions” obtained. She will dismissively wave away the thanks with a “you did it, not me”. This is a terrible state of affairs all too common in our time but not actually a great big disaster. 

Great teachers emerge from such skirmishes relatively unscathed but bad ones? Their lot is darker. Forever debilitated by ego overdrives and personality clashes, they must suffer the psycho-emotional backlash of insisting that it has got to be their way or the highway. They must deal with violating their students' minds, hearts and bodies and being mentally and physically shot to death by them – literally and figuratively. 

The recognition of the future teacher:

Now I said that the identification of a disciple will only fill an eighth of a great teacher’s cup because, in my experience, they would be lucky to find four disciples in their lives and even if they do, their cup would only be half full. I have a reason for saying this. Even among disciples there are a rarefied few who can become teachers in their own right. These are a teacher's successors. These are the ones that every great teacher yearns for. The great ones they can never seek or want but can only pray for and wait for.

Those come neither for instruction nor for learning nor for playing. None of that is important to them. In lives past they’ve been there, done that and all of it is the merest technicality, effortlessly remembered, mastered, discarded. Only such a person can be taught to teach and not merely to play. Such a one comes filled to the brim – with emptiness. Such a one is full of the lack of desire and bursting at the seams with lack of ego. Such a one can touch an instrument - any instrument - and see in the sounds, a cocooned sampling of the entire universe. Only such a one can achieve that miraculous ability to teach because she is completely cognizant of the fact that she is empty. And empty, she gets plenty. Continuing to want only empty she can therefore distribute plenty in endless bounty.

Such a one can teach brilliantly and such a one can perform any instrument brilliantly. If by some chance, such a one graces a teacher, the teacher would take her… to feed and nurture with the teacher’s very blood. Over years, the teacher will empty herself into such a one in a way she never could with a disciple whose skill set and mindset are limited to singular relationships. Removed from relationships, there is only the certainty of union. Of such magical connects were the great gurukulas (teacher-teacher bloodlines) born in the east, especially in the centuries long aesthetic traditions of India. Such ties are not easily explained in words. Having been privy to them as a growing child, I truly know that it is impossible to unpack them casually. Those unions are complex and only fully understood by such teachers and such students.

That is why Ustad Allaudin Khan gave his school to Ustad Podiappuhamy the universally accomplished multi-instrumentalist/ singer/dancer/teacher and not to Pandit Ravi Shankar the sitar playing disciple. That is why Ravi Shankar couldn’t really impart universal absolutes to his daughter Anoushka. That is why Barenboim the conductor/pianist/activist/humanist/advocate is a teacher and Barishnikov the dancer never was and never will be. 

The myth of mushti:

This connect is rare. Many a great teacher has died and their spectral knowledge buried with them for a successor never made her existence known. Never into the teacher's orbit wondered the next in the bloodline. He had to be content with teaching disciples to do... not to teach. Of all the tragedies that a teacher must live through – and there are many – that…is the greatest. That... is the most agonizing. 

And yet, to the ego-warped idiot who senses recalcitrance on the part of a teacher to “show his all” this reluctance is seen viciously and disastrously as a “hiding of knowledge” or “mushti”. He little realizes that it is his own inadequacy that is preventing the sharing of something he is not capable of absorbing as happened to Musila in the presence of Guttila. In the modern world, with a dilution of the bloodlines of the greatest teachers of this world, the Musilas are many and the Guttilas few. 

The relevance of the classical music

Music of any sort can make us forget. Or remember. Or grow. They can also make us gag, curse and flee. Which of those kicks in depends on when, where and why a particular music was made and when where and why it was listened to.  

Like all art, music is a reflection of times, places and people. Let us call this the situational triad. So when the triad of the composer and that of the listener are close together, the reason why a music came into being and why it is heard have a great chance of congruence. This “why” factor then, speaks to the listener in terms of vicinities, proximities and histories. Obviously therefore, the closer an individual is to those temporalities, geographies, societies that are mirrored in the music the better the individual will understand it.

These days we rarely hear mention of the two great classical music traditions of our world. These forms that originated in Europe and India and commonly called Western and Hindustani/Karnatic respectively seems to have been substantially removed from the current global musical aesthetic. If they had made like the Dodo and become extinct, there would be no great cause for alarm and no big reason to comment on its passing expect perhaps as a part of world history. To understand why this is so and, by extension, to figure out why they persist if they do at all, one must visit, at a very basic level, what music means to all us in terms of the tune, the beat, the harmony, the symphony, the cacophony.   

The term “music” is simple enough to understand and refers to the various man-made or natural sounds that pleases large groups of people. However “a music" or musics in the plural have a far more spectral and complex meaning. This is because musics pull in not just the tunes, beats and harmonies but also many other social, temporal, emotional, psychological and systemic factors. Combined, they can redefine random notes (or yowls or shrieks, screams or bangs or bursts or thuds) as music (death metal anyone?). 

Now, the classical musics are so named as much for their psycho-emotional, psychosocial situational fix as they are for their systems. These are both, to a greater extent, old. Old, simply because they have not changed. Situationally and systemically they have progressively ceased to mirror the changing world and so, they have gradually violated the fundamental reason for the existence of a music. That which they depict is becoming rapidly forgotten. Those systematic methods of tonal and harmonic commentary on the world that they constructed and solidified over centuries are being overrun by alternative systems that better reflect the urgencies, turmoil, poesies, societies and politics of the day.

Removed then, from the proximate cloud of time that surrounds today, the classical music systems and their times have to be viewed much like a historian would approach the past. They do not come naturally for they have no immediate referral to the present. So, essentially, the appreciation of classical music is an acquired taste if people are not deeply sensitive to histories. That is the case with the majority.

A condition of the modern world is that it forgets easily because it is assailed every day with many things to remember. Yesteryear for us is telescoped into a matter of days and lasts only as long as the next superlative idea or tune or regime that forces itself into our consciousness.

In contrast, classical musics were created in a historical setting that changed slowly. For western music, this change occurred over hundreds of years and for Hindustani/karnatic music over thousands of years. Cooking slowly, they reached incredibly complex and subtle levels of creative expression since the situational triads out of which they grew evolved and changed but slowly, complexly and subtly. Because of this parallel development, the peoples of the past understood those musics without really having to try for they were integral to their living evolution. To understand, contextualize and validate what they were hearing, they brought hundreds or thousands of years of historic remembrances to bear.  Yet, to a world where systems change overnight, where impatience is a virtue and speed of change is a value, such unhurried, millennia spanning complexity and subtlety are irrelevant, boring and unfashionable.

Many, if asked, would say they love Enya’s Gaelic ballads. The same would wonder if you’ve lost a few upstairs if you ask them what they think about the 2^nd movement of Beethoven’s piano concerto number 5. Why do I compare these? Well, simply because  the tunes and the harmonic juxtapositions are similar. The former uses 200 vocal overlays to get an effect that the later uses 200 instruments to create. The overlay trick is familiar, proximate and fully understood by most. The orchestra? Very few get it. Similarly, every Sri Lankan would recognize the basic tune of a Goyam Kaviya but blank when asked about Raag Gara played around the fifth although the tune and lilts are identical.

You see, it is not important to know. This is as it should be. It is really not relevant anymore to most. Therefore, if the classical musics persist, they do so despite of society and not because of it. They are an aberration, an anomaly. Those who enjoy them are not the elites. Rather, they are the misfits. These misfits can place those musics within the climes, times, and peoples from which they sprang. They can tie their own minds and experiences firmly to the “why” of the composer and therefore, much like a historian would, they find in them great quality, great empathy, great reasons to forget, to remember, to grow. To them who take on the arduous task of unpacking an aria, goes the same salute that goes to the majorities who effortlessly move and thrive with the tune of the times. 

For the many that live now who are sick of our times, it would be worth their while to visit those musics… at least to forget this tough, miserable, kickass we call the here-and-now...if not always to grow. 

To the floating voter: You must make sure that you kick both Mahinda and Ranil out of politics

This is a brief missive by my friend Asoka Abeygunawardhane. 

High time that the voter ensures that these two geriatrics spawned by the corruption engines of the post 1977 era are sent out to pasture with as honorable an exit as possible

The Presidential Elections held on 8^th January 2015 was a key political crossroad in the recent history of Sri Lanka. With the ascent of Maithripala Sirisena to the Presidency, the country breathed a collective sigh of relief. Many members of the losing party could hardly believe their eyes at the result. Now, seven months after that even, the General Election is upon us.

If by some miracle before the election…

• Mahinda Rajapakse publically states that he would act within the Maitripala Presidency in the same manner as he did during Chandrika’s reign, or, if he publically states that he would act the same way D.M. Jayaratne acted during his tenure as president, then it would be opportune for you to vote for the UPFA.
• If Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledges the leadership of Maithripala Sirisena, steps down and hands over the leadership of the UNP to the president, then, it would be opportune for you to vote for the UNP.
• If the JVP publically states that it will not sit with the opposition and decide to join a national government, then, it would be opportune for you to vote for the JVP.
• If none of the above seem likely, then, preserve your valuable vote by not using it. Do not go to the polling booth. Or else, spoil go there and spoil it. 

However, none of these have happened.

The first thing that should be clear is that the country’s need is not of ranil Wickremesinghe’s “Aluth Ratak” nor Mahinda Rajapakse’s “Anaagathayata Sahathikaya” nor Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s “Hardhasakshiye Sammuthiya” but rather, Maithripala Sirisena’s “A compassionate maithri governance – a stable country”.

One the one hand, Ranil Wickremesinghe made it eminently clear on the 7^th of last month that he was not interested in building “A compassionate maithri governance – a stable country”. In short, he is not at all interested in making Maithripala Sirisena his leader. All that the UNP wants to do is to make use of him to further their own ends. Their primary goal is to sell Maithripala Siresena in order to win the elections. They wish to then completely ignore and marginalize him and work as they wish to. Therefore, one of the paramount desires of the undecided voter should be to prevent Ranil Wickremesinghe from becoming the prime minister.

On the other hand, who would have thought that the defeated ex-president Mahinda Rajapakse would be contesting the general elections so soon? That is not something that could have occurred in the normal course of events. However, it happened. So, can we hope that he will now deign to work in the shadow of Maithripala Sirisena as his chief disciple? That is farfetched to say the least. Therefore, there is a justifiable fear in the minds of the undecided voter with respect to Mahinda Rajapakse being elected prime minister as well.

Surveys have shown that as things stand no one will get the 113 votes for a simple majority but that the UPFA will come out ahead.

Then, what would happen is the establishment of a national government with the UPFA and the UNP. Its’ prime minister would be a senior of the UPFA other than Mahinda Rajapakse. Whoever that individual is, he would be capable of being Maithripala’s right-hand-man over the next five years in the push for “A compassionate maithri governance – a stable country”. The next leader of the UNP would get a good start by acting as his left hand man.

Fortunately for us, Maithripala has shown us that he cannot be pushed around and has now single handedly taken on the task of governing the country.  As part of his advocacy efforts with Mahinda Rajapakse in the lead up to the elections, he sent a strong letter firmly stating that even if the UPFA obtains 113 seats he should not take the premiership.

• Therefore, we should put our trust in Maithripala Sirisena and fearlessly vote for the Alliance.
• If we are in some doubt about this, then we should assist Maithripala Sirisena by either refrain from voting or by spoiling our vote.