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.

Bits and bobs

You know those times when you realise that you were wrong about fundamental things? It's a strange sensation. I think the mind takes time to adjust to it. Instead of acclimatizing and evolving ways by which it can deal with the situation, the brain goes in to overdrive. I don't know if it's always the case, but mine starts sprouting bits and bob of popular culture and oft-heard adages. 

"The best laid plans of mice and men..."..."I tried my best, but I guess my best wasn't good enough.."... "What doesn't kill you makes you stoooongerrr...", etc. 

It's like a constant cacophony inside your head, with things you always knew coming back to haunt you and tell you that you've gone and put your foot in it this time. The corny song verses are the worst, yurgh. They even come with the accompanying bars of music. After a point, you realise you need to tune out, or slowly go mad. 

Here’s to them

Of the long talks and the longer walks,

The gut-busting laughs and nasty on-dits,

The jokes that only they understood.

Here’s to love, the sort that surely must

Have engendered envy; the sort that

Sometimes is surprising is even allowed.

Here’s to happiness, sorrow, anger, lust;

Extremes, always, hardly tempered,

Hardly neutral.

Here’s to what was – here’s to what seemed

Eternal.

Here’s to the good times, the bad times, even the worst of times,

But always times,

Always tangible, like live wires, like electricity;

Never dull, never placid

Or painstakingly normal.

Things that make you question.

You can be in the middle of the most mundane, routine, regular day when an existential crisis hits you. Often, it's the strange, small things that make you question the validity of the life you live, or the work you do, the routine you have chosen to control you. This is all despite having made a conscious decision to adhere to that routine and disregard all the rhetoric on how you should give up your city job and chase your dreams all the way to Tuscany, on the back of a handsome, leather-jacket-clad stranger's bike :)

Small things, indeed, like a routine survey that questions if you feel content in the workplace and if it aligns with your long-term plans for life. Or like an in-the-middle-of-the-rush moment when you find yourself staring out of the windows of the city's tallest buildings, looking down at Colombo's twinkling lights and wondering how you ended up becoming something you had one day vowed you would never become.

Maybe "crisis" is too strong a word -- I think I'll stick to "wonderings," although, of course, that is not a word, per se :)

Thoughts over tea

Have been meeting some different types recently, due to some new developments in life. Quite a few of them work in NGOs and research organizations -- the horrors that well-heeled corporates shudder at. Low pay! Humanitarian aid! Run! :)

One of these is a tiny young woman who's currently involved in community rehabilitation in Jaffna. She sat across us at the table in that ragged canteen as we, a motley group of 20-somethings from weird and wonderful walks of life, discussed life, love and, well, boys, over hot tea and helapa. I freaking love helapa. She told us about her work in the North and about how words can barely express how beautiful the land is, and how interesting and open the people are. She's wiry and energetic and as she spoke with her hands flying and her eyes glittering (seriously), you could see how excited she was about it, how enthralled by the sheer awesomeness of the life she's living.

While a part of me was truly envious that you could be so in love with what you do, a part of me was fascinated -- what is it like to be so passionate about something? 

Fresh-faced

Still hope there
Still dreams allowed,
Seems a while since
That was a thing
To be.

I am cuckoo alone.

These few days...I have been feeling mildly psychotic. Psychotic not in terms of actual psychosis but in the sense that I feel my being is being slowly pulled in two dozen different directions at the same time, each requiring a specific, measured, and urgent amount of energy and success to be achieved. This feels like some noxious by-product of growing up and turning adult, and doing all the things "you're supposed to do."

Through it all, however, I have come to the happy conclusion that not only can you please everybody, including, very much, yourself, you also cannot count on everyone being as understanding about your not meeting expectations as YOU would be, were they in the same circumstances. All that 'be kind because everyone is fighting a harder plan' biz seems to be a bunkum in real life. I suppose it's more difficult to acclimatize to the fact when you generally make an effort to be "the understanding friend."

Also, success has suddenly become an internally-measured factor. Yes, let's just all open up about it -- for the greater part of our lives, success is as how the world sees you --parents, teachers, peers. If they are successful enough in inculcating their well-meaning ideas of how successful you should be, soon you absorb it in to your world view..and voila! Le stress!

Sometimes I wonder how some people balance. Especially those super mom types with irritating husbands and crying children and nagging in-laws and let's-meet-up-for-high-tea-at-Galle-Face-Hotel lady friends. I suppose they have learned the lesson of how to achieve enough inner peace and calm to manage life and all its madness. To think I used to laugh at folk who used that cliched phrase, "24 hours in not enough." Now I don't know if I wish there were more than 24 hours or if I'm glad because the requisite hours of rest allow everyone to shut their traps, including my inner psycho goddess. Who I'm sure is gorgeous and well-educated, but can turn in to a raving lunatic in constant PMS mood sometimes.

"My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect, and I, too, speak with with thee wisely and cautiously. And yet I am mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone."

The Madman, Khalil Gibran.

Ispot on, old chap.