Appreciation is too old-fashioned when you are done with a heart-felt work. I do not appreciate when I finish off a warm literary reading; I need a retrospect-break. And appreciation is something I hardly succeed in a good work.
In the first innings - online rush through though - I could feel its dedication to Ying, and you had mentioned it in the next mail.
The second innings - offline go through - I am not an avid poem-reader, nor a poem-connoisseur, it's just that I felt something of the poem in me. True, the geographical phenomenon, you cannot simply forget; we can't claim for Oak to chirp like Red Robins in August Springs. But still experience rises above all.
I stroll along with your last lines in a long placid and an unwind road. Yet I am too fragile to touch it when the two lives 'drift apart'. At the end of the day, in the end of the world, somewhere, someday, and some place, we have to drift apart, and that's it – drift apart…
It takes me back to our good old days of Somathilaka Jayamaha's 'Piyaman Keruwemu', when you 'walked hand in hand through the woods'. When we had this song for the first time, you were still bigger - a very big brother - to me, the big kid. We could not foresee ourselves; you are delivered of these lines, me pulsing over them.
When the roads in your poem scream stories on 'relent rendezvous', my memories pan back to me guru pare. Its nature-beings cannot come out with the trysts. But my brother has a worry, as the roads scream the stories on 'relent rendezvous'; they are 'stories soft' nevertheless.
And what else, when it's Omar Khyyam, I see, in the music to heart, movies to mind and so forth? And night beckoning with cloudless skies silently sneaks off into dark hand in hand with my beloved cantos in Selalihini Sandesa.
In the starry starry night, you spare the Oak that lived for its years. A Red Robin feeds the spirits into Oak. The big elephant plays with its own trunk. An aged plays the harp by the lake. No wonder, I see the giant Oak chirping to the Red Robin's tune when Paulo Coelho - drawing closer from somewhere – calls up on an 'I' who 'sat down and wept by the River Piedra'.
And now in the retrospect-break, I can grope around for his silhouette against the pale sky: my brother's memories of a spring.
¶ 11:50 PM
An excerpt from my diary.
Sunday, February 29, 2004
My history’s long looked forward episode gets going tomorrow. The countdown comes to close
I let myself sink into the deckchair fingering them lovingly – the documents I need tomorrow. My heart slightly throbs over tomorrow proceedings. The coming rag season and the unfamiliar horde. My senior wants me not to take these things in a serious note. “Feel like you own the place.” The advice never slips my memory.
I will enlighten the darkness someday. The night is slowly drawing on.
Well, its back in 2004, and now its 2006 - two years gone by. When I am saying my University life is a paradise, I am not talking with a forked tongue, as I am always warm towards happy past. And now being in the edge of the Varsity completion, I feel indifferent over the things. Although we as University students may have been able to go through the past papers in the best possible manner, I can bet on that nobody of us could ever claim for a solid answer to the question as to what we are most enjoying in our university life. We got plenty of it and obviously vice versa.
“So you are going to mount her dude,” I wake up into the reality. All the way in 154 route, has been a dream. Getting down to see the maroon bordered placard bearing large gold coloured fonts, in the midst of towers in the campus premises – all these fade in and out. I am 60 seconds into University lane entry, yet my mate’s unhurried pace gets me into a state of slight annoyance.
I respond positively to my classmate turned batch-mate.
This is where many of country’s best thinkers strolled along – the path I have to follow for another three or four years. Having completed one of the initial academic strings one could ever survive in life, I am now about to ride the success willing to put up with forthcoming incredible hardship – cramming notes, getting busy with assignments and theses etc. The much-longed, long-awaited episode is yet coming right up.
With the documents we have to rush into the department where they tackle administrating affairs. The receipts are issued hurriedly to the tune of less than 300 bucks each. We got to pass the time in the long queue of boys perspiring and girls glowing.
The rag season peeps in with no prior notice. I am ordered to stop at ‘thel bemma’ (loosely translated as ‘oil wall’). As my trial had been tried for three days, I am patching them together.
Day 1:
Senior: Hey man, where are you going?
Me: To University of course.
Senior: What did you say?
Me: To university.
Senior: Who call this a University? It’s not a university, you pighead. You don’t understand these things at first. You will know them when you mature – like us. Now this is not a University, got it?
Me: Yes, yes.
Senior: Don’t say yes. Say ‘agreed’. Now this is Batagaha langa maha vidyalaya. Me: Agreed.
Senior: Ah, you got it. Now you can go.
Day 2:
Senior: Hey man, forgot to ask your name.
Me: ………
Senior: Now where are you going?
Me: To Batagaha langa maha vidyalaya.
Senior: You pighead, don’t you even know where are you studying? How did you get through A/Ls? Batagaha langa maha vidyalaya is now elevated into Kelaniya Madhya maha vidyalaya. What’s it?
Me: Kelaniya Madhya maha vidyalaya.
Senior: Ok, now you can go.
Day 3:
Senior: Hey how are you?
Me: Fine and agreed.
Senior: Where are you heading?
Me: To Kelaniya Madhya Maha vidyalaya.
Senior: Aiyo, who taught you these things? This is not a school. This is a respectable place. You should call this a University. This is called
Me: Yes understood and agreed.
Senior: Ah, that’s it. We should always be here to teach you rascals all these stuff.
Almost everybody admires it. There’s no getting around the fact that it can claim for the absence from violence and other forced goings-on. I remember one or two lecturers offer security to us, especially girls, if they encounter any violence in the evening. To be frank, the rag season turns out turbulent and is much scoffed at in the Hostels.
Magazine ‘Blink’ is an ESA brainchild. I was an initial editorial member of it, but later could not turn up at meetings due to various reasons.
We feel the surrounding clouded over by gloomy smoke and eyes getting wet. The day we are gassed is still fresh in the mind, when Kelaniya is kind of trespassed by Police. The only hilarious thing in the tragic warpath is the exchange of teargas bullets. Police dole out bullets to us a staggering number of times merely to get the treatment returned, consequent on a considerable number of injured cops as well. We are on the fence over the rank and file just carrying out the commands coming from power owners as well as power brokers.
Freedom. Liberation. We play upon these in the green meadows adjoining the Gym. Most of the time, we engage in relaxed chattering on the benches nailed to the earth. Students are here for relaxed get-togethers with issues ranging from literature to POP music.
Every Thursday, you get a chance to grasp a bit of Yoga at Gymnasium. The most sought-after privilege in the Gymnasium apart from cards and caroms must be the tinted glass cinema offered to you gratis. Through the tinted glasses, you catch a glimpse of the range of trees and in their shelter the couples having their break – love and making love.
Unlike Peradeniya and
If you get fed up with all these, you still have a choice - lending library or reference library just a short trip away from Thel bemma. To be an early bird for the exams, there is hardly a better place than these libraries.
The paradise however is short-lived when I accept a part-time appointment in the private sector run newspaper. Although, I am not in a position to breathe the fragrance any longer, it still turns out to be a paradise of memories.
What he said was quite consoling quoting
I had the thought but did not dare tell my mate that
Surprising enough, when I am handed in the memory images of the journey for Galle Fort, once made with my long time colleagues. I can’t remember which year. Through the pictures, I have a sad pulse nearly making me into tears. How far we have changed! Zooms in the nostalgia upon thinking Galle in its present! ¶ 3:36 AM
23 year old Indika, a J'pura Medical Faculty first year graduand was on the way to his aunt’s, when the waves suddenly wanted to settle on his destiny.
“We wanted him to come up to my sister’s place as we were already there for the vacation. But he had some previously arranged assignments. Not even his mates were with him as they were busy cramming. He had to face the destiny alone.” Voices a sobbing mother Prema.
The favourite of his mum, Indika used to assume kitchen duties whenever he is home for the vacation.
Alone and solemnly did Indika become the prey paving way to his fellows to have a second thought. Duminda Nagamuva, Inter University Students’ Federation (IUSF) convenor did not hesitate to have a chat on volunteering work experience.
A Norwegian delegation once visited an already IUSF gearing place just to inform them that the delegation is confined only to repair the tidal wave hit things of the schools.
“In that case, they only had to repair a door and a few number of desks, which were hit by Tsunami. Our people had wiped the dirt away from the schools.” Duminda says.
Indika’s mates expected something more from the Norwegian delegates.
“We have sufficient funds to do the minor repairs of the schools. The foreign delegates should do the other things such as building libraries and laboratories. It’s of no use to get the schools to the previous state. We should try to get them into most modern status.”
What the delegation did was to examine and videograph the present condition and? Yes and they vanished.
“It’s all right if Norwegians get the undeserved credit. But they should have done more important.” Chatumini, a Peradeniya final year says.
Meanwhile, LTTE did not fail to threaten the students Ampara and Kalmunei. The principal of R U M Balika Vidyalaya of Samanthurei could not help requesting the students to halt the work.
“No sooner she asked us the LTTE trespassed and threatened. She wept bitterly when we came part of our way leaving the school. She expressed her gratefulness though she was helpless before LTTE threats.” The students recollect their experience.
The university students’ volunteering work included cleaning the rubble in the schools and painting them in order to give them a fresh look and perhaps a fresh environment for children to learn.
Most of the residents’ confession was on the absence of any education ministry official to look into the affairs. The university students in this case have been a source of inspiration to them.
Matara Rahula principal also confesses of the absence of the ministry officials till January 28th.
He was called on by an Education Ministry official, though quite late on January 28th to order the school be closed because of the 100m buffer zone issue.
“You did not come here when we wanted you. These university students have done all the clearing up the schools. Now we open the school anyway.” Education Ministry official was just dumb on Rahula principal’s response.
He has also mentioned about the University students’ involvement in clearing up and the late arrival of the education ministry official, in the logbook. Rahula was among the first schools, which started on Monday following student led Sramadana campaigns.
The university students however argue that the school is not within the 100m buffer zone. They smell of some other plan.
THE GOVERNMENT WANT TO CLOSE SOME SCHOOLS.
“It is this plan they are working out hiding the things behind Tsunami.” They say.
But either university students or school trade unions alone cannot get the responsibility of the schools. They have to nod at government’s plans, but government seems to be ignorant of building other schools in place of closed schools.
One university student recalls how Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadiragamar’s wife joined them in sramadana work.
“Not only minister Kadiragarmar, but his wife also talked with us and inspired us. We don’t know her exactly, but what she did was important. Most of the people are appointed to various head posts, but they do not dare visit these areas.” He says.
The university students express their surprise at the foreign minister’s wife’s arrival while the education ministry secretary’s impractical plans in an airconditioned room.
They do not want any name. Even the university they come from. The work – that’s what they want to complete.
¶ 4:06 AM