One does not seem able to get away from tsunami talk. It’s still the major topic of conversation, the major concern in print media and TV. Snail mail letters, even e-mails from abroad are full of it. All this is no wonder, considering the magnitude of the disaster and consequent relief effort.

We’ve passed the one month mark and observed, as a nation, a minute’s silence remembering the almost 50,000 who lost their lives in this country of ours, and thousands who were injured and rendered homeless. The thought in everyone’s mind, and hope, is that relief is going fairly and squarely to all displacei persons. We saw visions, in the midst of the destruction, sorrow and bereavement, of Sri Lankans being Sri Lankans first and last in this disaster, and harmony invading and pervading the rebuilding of the coastal areas and, in extension, the nation.

But no. Ugly partisanship, mostly of a political nature, has, we hear, crept in. A driver I know, a man who keeps to himself and is never given to careless talk, spoke quite knowingly of discrimination creeping in to government relief efforts.

I must emphasise here that I report what I have been told. I have not gone around and seen for myself how things are done. I am not judging nor speaking first hand. I intend to just pass on what I have heard, and some things I mean to mention were specifically requested to be included in this column, this Sunday.

So that is what I intend doing today: give voice to other’s thoughts, opinions, fears, ideas, suggestions.

Discrimination

As I was saying, the car driver of few words said that in the deep South (he named Tissamaharama and Hambantota), there is crass discrimination in the distribution of food and amenities. There is a more dangerous happening, he says his cousin told him, after a recent stay in those areas, driving foreign aid givers around. The Muslims and Tamils are being asked to go away, subtly, by members of a certain political party. It’s with an eye to future votes, building up a vote base. It also seems to be a tit for tat business, South doing what the North did to minorities. Ethnic cleansing for one party’s benefit. People of the various races live together in amity, helping each other at paddy harvesting and house-building and other neighbourly activities. This has been proven over and over again in the villages and towns of multi ethnicity. But no, political parties of the rabid, megalomaniac type resort to ethnic cleansing homeland nonsense where Sri Lanka is for all Sri Lankans from north to south, east to west. So if the Tigers claim a homeland in the north, unjustified and unrealistic, then other groups call for homelands of their own.

The non-equitable distribution of aid is serious and needs unbiased authoritarian investigation. There have been Tiger complaints about this, but then we know how those brethren always pounce on any fact, imagined and concocted most often, to score points against the government.

New housing

At a poya day discussion, the importance of one’s surroundings, the environment or milieu one lives in, specially that in which children are nurtured, was agreed to be of prime importance in character building, personality moulding.

And so the contention of the learned monk conducting the discussion session that the cultural milieu should also be given due consideration, not merely the housing. A solid rural sort of environment should be assured in the new housing complexes being planned. Totally against was high rise flats for fisher folk. Also, the question as to how feasible it would be to implement the housing free zone of so many metres from the shore. How would holiday makers like to have to cross roads and walk a considerable distance to get to the golden sands and blue waters from their hotels? How far would a fisherman tolerate being distanced from his boats and drying nets and the sea he harvests?

The danger of the tsunami is now a strong consideration, but majority opinion is that previous housing and hotel sites be retained and reconstruction carried on with speed. The need is for early warning of any impending danger from the sea and winds. People to choose where they want to live — in their previous sites or safer and away from the beach. The government however announced recently that the buffer zone will be made a reality. We are not in a position to comment.

So the people in sil who were discussing religious and even removed-from-religion matters noted that the culture of our country had to be retained in the new, contemplated housing complexes. Trees needed to be grown so birds would make their dwelling alongside humans. Playgrounds were essential. Also of particular importance would be the construction of places of worship, in mixed communities the vihara, mosque, church and kovil completing a beautiful village or township.

White skinned vultures

Another point of discussion was unlawful religious conversions of tsunami affected children.

This is totally unfair and very ugly exploitation of a tragic situation, comparable to recruitment of kids to swell rebel/terrorist armies.

Along with this there is loud condemnation of Buddhists who attack, even burn churches. Let’s admit it: there is provocation even though the methods of protest adopted are far too severe and criminal. A fire or attack is noticeable, seen by the many, fully reported. Conversions are under cover, surreptitious and in a manner of speaking worse as they are so sneaky and take over children’s minds and thus children to an alien religion giving them an alien culture, almost like indoctrination or brainwashing. A church can be renovated and rebuilt. But a mind aberrated is irreversible. I don’t here say that the Christian religion aberrates. Not at all, but conversion through coercion, however mild, is an aberration.

One Christian religious dignitary is supposed to have pronounced that God was punishing people who burnt churches or showed resistance to Christians. Well, the only reply is how could a kind and good god kill people in such great numbers including innocent children and Christians too. Also as the monk who was leading the discussion observed, how does this Christian God have jurisdiction over Buddhists, Hindus and followers of Islam?

Cooking utensils

Stands absolutely to reason. The earlier rural symbiosis will function again with advantage to all.

I know Lorna Wright will be insisting on building good kitchens and toilets. A good kitchen is a boon to the housewife and will benefit the entire family with better health. The harried woman also has a space for herself. She should of course be made aware of recycling of stuff such as pol kudu, Lorna says, and fuel conservation

There is now a chance for vocational training, Lorna says. As consultant to the Vocational Training Authority she stresses that successful vocational training is on the job and with money available. Both these are in supply post tsunami. So get young men and women trained in vocations such as carpentry, masonry and repair jobs of all sorts and give them a helmet and uniform, at least a T-shirt With a logo to confer thatvaya they desire. Teach rural women to grow medicinal herbs in their new house gardens, orchid growing and poultry rearing being rather old hat.

Memorials — will they proliferate?

One agitated woman phoned to say there was a memorial being constructed which would be a stupa larger than Ruwanveliseya. "What a colossal waste of money" she moaned. Advice from me was to check with a monk known to be on the planning team. Yes, a memorial to the tsunami dead was contemplated, but it would be low key, the monk had told her. Let us not have memorials of all shapes, sizes and hideousness, like clock towers once rashed themselves all over the land! We had Buddha statues being erected on all our hill tops. Useless! There is no need to scatter statues of the Teacher.

The Sun God

So he appeared. Many are the experts who declare he is not the original but a very closely resembling double. Cannot be a clone since the technique, even to the Tigers, is not yet perfected and known. Many are the analysts who say that the man seen in the newspapers recently is too fat to be him; why didn’t he talk and let his voice be heard; why did we see only one side of the face. Now all this, let me insist, to save my neck, is what others said. No sir, not I said, he said, yes you sir, he said as we used to intone as kids playing some game, the name of which 1 sadly forget now.

Music

We delight in the trilingual song with the theme WE SHALL REBUILD telecast over Channel I and Sirasa. It is soul stirring, rousing, apt and topical in theme. The combination of three languages is fine and love of country that is obvious in the singers is inspiring. If only rabid and greedy for money and power politicians and ex-terrorists would emulate the singers!

Nimal Mendis, excellent and internationally well known musician and composer of Master Sir fame, very soon after 26 December composed a song — lyrics and music both. ,.,.At the moment we are very busy recording my Tsunami Sri Lanka song both in Sinhala and English. Just spoke to someone in London (from Paris) who is attempting a recording in Tamil. It is being recorded in Australia too. The Sinhala version will be recorded in Colombo in early February by Varadatta Aravinda, who is a nephew of Rohana Baddege. Translation was done by Dr. Vicum Perera, published Sinhala poet and mathematician who lives in the States. In fact in my opinion,- the Sinhala translation is better than my English lyric." That last is typical of Nimal Mendis, ever modest. He is one who loves his country Sri Lanka, and believes it belongs to all the nationalities living here.

Foreign-dwelling Sri Lankans

In one of my previous articles I wrote about a couple of Sri Lankans living abroad who have, immediately they heard about the tsunami, gone out of their way to help. One mother writes she was having an idyllic family Christmas holiday with her boys home and being like what they were as kids, when the news broke of the devastation in Sri Lanka. She says she cried every time the TV camera focussed on a child: dead, lost, orphaned, weeping. Her elder son promptly dispatched a huge cheque and her younger was the one who drove eight solid hours non-stop to hand over to the airlines 60 boxes of medical supplies from his university medical faculty where he is student. She hopes to come over to Sri Lanka in the summer along with a couple of KG teacher colleagues to give psychological support to traumatised children.

You, reader, are doing or have done much, I am sure. I haven’t. Did help but not half enough. Oddly, I like to focus my charity on a known-by-me target. There are lots who were safe from the waves but still suffer and are in need. I do hope the politicians, specially the vociferous ones, have helped from personal funds. Charity is not really drawing from a government fund or ministry and then magnanimously, with a great deal of show, presenting persons with whatever. Let there be true charity of heart at least, and concern for the people and their needs, with no thought of personal power or gaining clout.