All the country's a stage...

I went to watch a play today, and found myself thinking. The customary announcement "ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the national anthem." rang out and, like well-trained automatons, we rose. No one sang of course, who does that? The hall was dark, but everybody would hear and know that you care and that you're actually standing because of some sense of patriotism, and not because everyone else is doing it and you don't care enough not to.

As I listened to the well-done instrumental version of Sri Lanka Matha, almost literally twiddling my thumbs, the thought popped into my head that I had recently read some raging rhetoric on how language-biased our Sinhalese national anthem is, given that many Sri Lankans are not Sinhala-speakers. This hadn't really made an impression on me and I had instead felt sort of vaguely offended and pro a multilingual Sri Lanka Matha. 

That day, in the dark, I tried to imagine I was a Sri Lankan Tamil. Born speaking Tamil and surrounded by Sinhala-only renditions of everything ranging from administrative machinery to my own national anthem.

 Then I tried being a Muslim, born speaking that dialect of Tamil that Sri Lankan Moors speak. For a second, I felt vaguely uncomfortable, like something I didn't know existed within me had shifted. Then the moment broke and I thought to myself that if I were the sort of "tolerant Colombo Tamil" I know, I wouldn't have wasted a thought on it, I assumed.

The most startling realisation for me was that I didn't know, and couldn't quite imagine, what  it is like to be the other, Because as gung-ho as we all are about national integration and unity, mainstream Sinhala thought points at everyone "else" to be the "others". That is why, I think, even the thought of a multilingual national anthem seems mildly preposterous to many of us, and is casually shoo-shooed by most "tolerant Colombo Sinhalese".

...and all the men and women merely players.

I also realised that I didn't know why I was standing. I believe it was out of some love I feel for my country that I definitely wouldn't term "patriotism", but instead a sense of home that is unshakably bound with Sri Lanka.

For the rest, I wonder why they stood. I also experienced the passing thought that if I didn't want to stand up for the national anthem, for whatever reason, I should be able to do so. I felt though, that if I did, I would be looked at quite askance by all the tolerant folk filling up that darkened auditorium.