Quotes with comments as 2021 fades away and 2022 takes over

 

2021/12/31

 

Today is the last day of the year. An obvious clichéd statement but must be stated as 2021 dies in a couple of hours and 2022 dawns.

Cassandra, reclining on her couch with no cooking to do – no gas and no desire to get blasted by a new cylinder – looks back at the 365 days gone by and the 366 to come with mixed feelings. Hunger and anger tear her guts and heart. Looking back her major emotion is rock bottom disillusionment, because most of the woes we people of Sri Lanka sank under were man made: Economic downturn; reduced crops and heartburn to farmers; bombs in the kitchen and consequent deaths and injury to the innocent. The persons who principally caused these by action or advice are detested and those who by their silence or votes abetted the crimes, cursed. That is the tragedy of this wonderful country – once bountiful now fast depleted. Cass will not name names – too long for this column – but they hatefully pass before her third eye, most fat bellied with self satisfaction on faces and fingers coiled around ill-gotten gains. It was patently obvious that to many, getting a buck or two on the sly was worth lives of innocents lost; starvation and national bankruptcy. New Sri Lankan rupees flow out of CB machines exacerbating the dire inability of us Ordinaries to contend with the soaring cost of living.

And the deniers of truth; the tall tale tellers, the crazy advisers – legion in number – sycophant themselves to the Mighty Powers. The wavy haired elder, the ‘Ala gone’ one and even a police officer covered up, by inanities, the gas company directors’ blatant lying, blaming gas cylinder connections and home cookers, while they manipulated for quick profit the composition of the gases in cylinders. Mr Waves, speaking on reduced harvests, asks us to grow vambatu and what else. Where? Cass spits on all of them, never mind her neck being guillotined.

Other writers, more objective and competent, will comment on events of the year that’s ending in a couple of hours and divinatory prophets (plenty available) will forecast the year to come. So, Cass decided to cull some quotes and comment on them paradigming them to suit the Sri Lankan context. So here goes.

Quotes

I wish our farmers, particularly, will take the Buddha’s advice and turn away from lamenting and burning effigies and will become wise and demand what they need. Or else they may quietly fade away and their paddy and vegetable lands given to greedy land seekers approved by the Soubhagya Government. The Buddha noted that “The Brahmins had no cattle, no gold, no wealth. They had study as their wealth and grain.”

Our farmers may have passed higher grades in school than many an MP, and constituted the backbone of the country; respected by us for their dignity, integrity and hard work. Now with the foundation of their farming success taken away by presidential decree, they shed tears; their families go hungry and they give up cultivation, even their lives. And those who advised doing away with chemical fertiliser, insecticides and weedicides bask behind presidential protection.

The original Cassandra was of the 5th to 4th centuries BC, when Greek civilization flourished with nonpareil philosophers. The present-day Cassandra quotes them.

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others.” Pericles. This invites another quotation – from the Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/Stand in the desert….

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains.

Oh yes, we have plenty of modern vast white elephants which impoverished the entire country and we bear the brunt even now, of China cooperated sites to blazen forth a name – not Ozy but Mahinda. Derision substitutes admiration and sycophancy. A persistent question that bothers Cass is why the Chinese, who are our friends and benefactors and all that, are not asking that seaweed company not to demand its pound of flesh from Siri Lanka that has no dollars. Also did the Chinese ambassador visit Jaffna with an acquisitive eye in the name of helping poor Siri Lanka?

So true what Pericles said. Once leaders go – either deposed or to the grave – they leave behind what people think of them. History will record them and future generations judge them, notwithstanding their names atop buildings and on roads. The least said the better of such in our country as of now and the very recent past.

This Christmas season, positioned for all to see the gaping gap between haves and have-nots in this country, is no longer serendipitous. While the fat folk from the House by the Diyawanna winged their way across oceans or to Little England here in SL, some even chartering planes like a family group to receive blessings from South Indian gods, the poorer could hardly scrape one full meal a day, due to expense and gas bomb threat.

A good thought for both groups was said by Democritus in BC years.

“Happiness resides not in possession, and not in gold. Happiness dwells in the soul.”

Even babes in arms know how much wealth has been accumulated by many in power through foul means. They seem happy and live luxuriously. But retribution will surely come to them. At least they live under the cloud of fear of discovery of their crimes. They better keep this saying in mind:

“Depression is a cruel punishment. There is no fever, no rashes, no blood tests to send people scurrying in concern, just the slow erosion of self.”

Many an Ordinary bemoans the fact that utter corruption seems to make those who resort to it happy, living the good life. They groan – no karma, no punishment. Who knows whether they will pay even in future lives? But philosopher Cass says – Not to worry. Their thoughts alone must already be torturing them. Hence the younger corrupt seeks more and more of the good life and the older scurries to this kovil and that seer. Depression of mind compounded with fear is a terribly terrible punishment and occurs as day follows night.

Those who tear their hair about injustice can take solace from Heraclitus’ pronouncement: “Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.” The Buddha said it simpler: Anicca vata sankhara – Impermanent, alas, are all formations.”

Rumours or mere murmurings float around about change being inevitable, but change in how things are as of now. We see marches and hear protests and predictions that change will come soon. We Ordinaries want change but abiding by law and order, in the proper way and if its change of government, through elections. Socrates’ wisdom comes in here. He pronounced:

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building new.”

That’s good advice for the rising JVP and the ranting SJB. Do it the proper way and change, nay eliminate for goodness sake, the cloak of corruption that shrouds this island of ours. Uproot and fling aside corruption. To do that, catch the corrupt, extract all their ill-gotten gains and add to the country kitty and then punish the rogues severely.

Even the government in power can take Socrates’ advice. They can change themselves. The President who carried the majority people’s hopes for a better country, can start the change by drastically reducing and changing the Cabinet. A golden opportunity was given him to right so many wrongs and get the country on a path of recovery minus all the Cabinet garbage and crooked bureaucratic high ups. But please no more sackings due to adverse comments by those who know.

And finally, a warning to such as Cass who criticise, with the best of intentions but can and will be misunderstood as flies in the ointment who deserve elimination. Personal proof: She, in another guise, was a columnist in a newspaper, not of Upali’s. She received an email with names of the richest politicos in SL. That was during the Yahapalana Government. She included some names in her column with the distinct comment that she could not believe Aiyo S to be rich. But his guards – probably his presidential secretariat – pounced on this. The man himself would have read Sinhala newspapers. Result: The Ed wrote to the columnist that her weekly column was being discontinued on orders of ‘higher authority’. Worse can happen like getting the brain needled by insertion of a sharpened rod through the ear. Sure, horribly painful death sans gunshot or scuffle. Consequently, Cass takes to heart the following: ‘There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self –satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep.’ – Meg Greenfield.

On that cautionary note which is taken as a New Year resolution by Cass, she wishes all her readers a much better 2022, starting with hope and continuing with contentment and ending with this land of ours much improved, cleaner and more concerned about the less well to do.