Alice Nona in La La Land

The James Webb Telescope has, to the delight of astronomers, found a parallel universe, a universe that had escaped detection by the Hubble. No surprise that this parallel universe has disguised itself cleverly and is revealed to be the land like no other, the Wonder of Asia that provides so much comic relief to Earthlings that they call it the “Joke of Asia”. But these snide Earthlings can’t put things in proper perspective. So Earthlings behold!

When that Obama fellow appointed the youngest person to get tenure at Harvard, Larry Summers, as his Secretary of the Treasury (we don’t have secretaries in charge of such grave matters as finance, we have seventh standard geniuses whom we call “The Honourable Minister of Finance”), Obama still had to appoint a Council of Economic Advisors despite having a top-class economist as his Treasury Secretary. We of course don’t need a superfluous council of economic advisors and waste public funds. Instead we did what was essential, we convened a council of clerics to advise on heritage sites because advice on unearthing our past glories was what the country desperately needed. The foresight and brilliance of the move has only now become apparent. 

Only now do we know that by studying the shards at ancient sites, our people will learn how to do without such Western conceits as cooking gas, petrol, kerosene, electricity and motorised transportation. Moreover, re-discovering how to write on ola paper will be a great benefit because the students can resume writing examinations that now cannot be held because the Government has no money to buy paper. Lest we forget, we did not have those Western inventions like inorganic fertiliser in those days when we were the granary of the East. 

Unlike the insolent Caesar who needlessly taunted the soothsayer by telling him that the Ides of March have come only to be reminded that they had not yet gone, our leaders pay proper homage to astrologers both in Kerala and in our country. Our only pre-appointment test is to ask the court astrologer candidates what would happen to them if they were appointed. To this, they provide the uncannily accurate prediction that if they were appointed, they would be provided state security at public expense, would be able to build hotels in archaeological sites, be appointed as directors of state banks, and predict the trajectory of the rupee against hard currencies. Our leaders then back up this priceless advice by periodic trips to the great temples in India invoking for themselves, but obviously not for the country, the protection and the blessings of the gods. 

Our leaders have also taught that uppity Lee Kuan Yew and his faux humility a lesson. Changi Airport, built with Singapore money and not with Chinese loans borrowed above commercial interest rates, competes with Schiphol for the annual ranking as the world’s best airport. The man, or at least his unfilial son, could have named that airport as well as every street and square as “Lee Kuan Yew Avenue” or “Lee Kuan Airport” but this ungrateful bunch have refused to do so. Unlike Singapore, we have not one but two international airports. 

The latest airport also makes it into the record books by getting ranked as the world’s least used international airport. But unlike the case of Changi, we give credit where credit is due by naming the airport, built with public money in the form of Chinese loans again borrowed above commercial rates of interest, after a former president. The first international airport is justly named after the man who laid the foundation for the country’s booming economy, widespread English language fluency, and harmonious love among all communities in the country. 

Imagine the shamelessness of the aforesaid Lee who allowed old colonial names to remain in place. Take “Napier Road” in the heart of the billionaire district. It remains named after the arrogant and brutal British general who reported his conquest of Sind to London with the Latin word “peccavi”. We are proud to be different. Consider the former Thimbirigasyaya Road. It is now named after the Chancellor of the Colombo University, who probably declined an invitation to be a fellow at All Soul’s College, to take up the chancellor post only to endure the humiliation of graduands ignoring him at his first convocation. 

The brilliant agenda behind the name change escapes many. First, people filling out this address in many forms and envelopes will be able to practice their skills in cursive handwriting. Second, in case of a detested Chola invasion, while the Google Maps lady is in the ICU trying to get her tongue untwisted as a result of trying to pronounce the name of the road, an elite squadron of kaputas can eject their hypersonic droppings and blind the confused invading force lost without Google Maps. Sun Tsu, Clausewitz, Napoleon together could not come up with a more brilliant strategy. 

A fly on the wall of a chamber where the Singapore cabinet meets will note with glee how Singapore fears being displaced by us as a centre of medical tourism. Can Pfizer, Moderna, the whole lot, match our fear of throwing magic pots into the Kelani River to beat COVID-19? The prime minister there must be berating his health minister that he was not able to stand on the Cavanaugh Bridge and throw a similar pot of magic water into the Singapore river. Even worse, they could not imitate our Health Minister, who in the company of a minister and the speaker drank a syrup, the recipe of which was downloaded from a cosmic website. Thousands thronged the premises of the pharma genius to buy his syrup and shunned the vaccine. Many died but so what? We can just shrug it off as a drug trial gone wrong. 

If there was something wrong with these, surely the GMOA would have screamed loud and clear. In the midst of a pandemic, a cabinet resigns and four ministers are soon sworn in. The Highways Ministry which has a large portfolio of projects and funds destined for Panama is filled by the previous occupant. But the health ministry is not filled. Hospitals are in crisis, there are shortages of life-saving medicines, but no health minister. Not a peep from the trade union doctor who presumably is undergoing knee replacement surgery after all that grovelling before the President. 

To those puzzled by all this, be puzzled no more as our healthcare mantra is borrowed from the play King Lear: “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.” So we must not disturb the sporting thrills, including maritime sports in the Maldives, of those who govern the country and have been told that they are gods. 

For those making a fetish about imitating Singapore, let it be said that there are commonalities shared by Lee Kuan Yew and our leader. Lee was famously unsentimental and he pushed through amendments to the constitution that benefited him. We too have unsentimental leaders. When grieving relatives were scraping the body parts of their kith and kin from churches, we had an unsentimental declaration of candidacy without anything resembling empathy for the victims of the tragedy. Now the cardinal, courting martyrdom, dares to suggest that the nutcases who blew themselves up were manipulated by a hidden hands in order to scare the voters into voting for someone who could crush terrorism. 

As regards constitutional amendments, the 20th Amendment could not have been passed without support from some opposition members. The photographs of these opposition members suggest that they took time off from their day job in an abattoir to drag the rights of Sri Lankans into the abattoir and slaughter them with the same indifference as they do cattle, ignoring their piteous screams for their lives. But it is unfair to single them out. How about the mass of patriots, most of whom have renounced any pretence to be ethical, who endorsed the loathsome amendment?

The worthy whose name adorns the main airport bequeathed to the country, his widow who taught Sri Lankans how to queue, a lesson in discipline that serves the current generation well, a daughter who for 12 long years did not learn how to tell time, a corpulent son, naturally appointed by his sibling, Princess Punctuality, as the Tourism Minister which was his entitlement because of his parentage. The patriarch famously encouraged members of the Burgher community, which produced the country’s best architect (Bawa), artist (Keyt), judge (Gratiaen) and the internationally famous author of the Booker of the Bookers, “to bugger off to Australia”. 

Not as uproariously witty, one of his many spiritual heirs, the retired admiral refers to certain communities as “remnants”. But fortunately like a prudent tailor, the President has not thrown out these remnants and instead have put these to good use. Coming from a community that had its property destroyed, its children murdered, it adults slaughtered, individuals from these “remnants”, a former governor of the Central Bank and a former senior economist of the World Bank, have been recruited to use their expertise to rescue the country from its economic crisis. 

No match for the Economics Nobel nominee, the ex-CBSL governor for his discovery that no economic problem is ever unsolvable if there is access to a good currency printing press, the son of another remnant, Tharman Shanmugaratnam is still a senior minister and the minister in charge of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Widely respected, his advice too could have been sought. But the country’s economy was rescued by remnants? Banish the thought! It is a pity that the worthy seafarer and his two dismissed windbag colleagues who won’t know the difference between the Paris Club and the Capri Club do not demand that this work be referred to the original advisory committee.

After Rotterdam, the Singapore Port is the busiest port. We cannot allow this tiny dot in the Malacca Straits to occupy this position. Our Colombo Port, run by a worthy with a reputed fondness for gold chains, has become good at welcoming a ship laden with toxic chemicals, turned away at other ports, which promptly sinks causing an environmental disaster. Our leaders exchange triumphal fist bumps because of the foreign exchange potential of a damages claim. Then by seeking a fraction of what can be claimed, in exchange for some inducements, a nice message is sent to vessels bearing toxic waste and chemicals about the country’s famed hospitality and welcoming culture. Wholesale destruction of marine life? Who cares, the next great extinction is on its way.

The other international port in the South provides rich material for a case study at the Harvard Business School. A boatload of chanting monks inaugurated the opening of this port built with Chinese loans, again non-concessionary commercial loans above normal interest rates. Fortunately, the boat did not have a Titanic like incident by kissing the massive rock that blocked the entrance to the harbour and which the brilliant engineers who designed the facility did not notice. A paltry sum of $ 30 million is borrowed, this time to blast the rock, and be ready for the armada of vessels waiting to sail in. But foolish sea captains bypass the port. Millions to pay off the Chinese loans but no business. Aney, what to do?! 

Even though the loan to the Chinese was in the hundreds of millions of dollars, this was still beer money to the uber rich Hong Kong Taipans, the casino kings of Macao or Temasek Corporation in Singapore. Invite them to pay off the Chinese loan in return for a 30-year lease where they could build a ship servicing and repair facility, or set up an industrial park like the Suzhou Industrial Park like the one set up by Singapore in China, or an integrated resort as a playground for Arabs, Russians, and Chinese. 

But our leaders are mindful of history. Just as the Chinese had to cede Hong Kong to the British for 99 years after the defeat in the Opium War, wasn’t it right to cede thousands of acres of the heartland on a 99-year lease to the Chinese? In a nice historical irony, the leaders of our country must have been stoned to the gills on opium when they signed off on the deal. In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king they say but maybe this is too harsh. Who is to say that the clear eyed and widely read then leader was not trying to resolve the vexing Human-Pangolin conflict with one fell swoop? 

If he can be faulted for one thing, in that he did not accompany his gift of territory to the Chinese by begging, (one must always beg, not request from China) that China open a branch of the Wuhan wet market in Hambantota. That would have rid the area of vipers, cobras, bats, rats, frogs, scorpions, thalagoyas, kabaragoyas and last, but not least Salty the Crocodile and his mates. 

But hark what is that sound? A song? I recognise it. When included in a 60-man delegation to the UN, some of us had gone to a musical at Broadway after the High Commissioner’s jaw was dislocated. A musical about being miserable. Most of my colleagues there with me were asleep, the result of too much single malt scotch paid for by our grateful people, but I was awake and I remember. This song is now being sung in all three languages. I hear the lyrics clearly.

 Do you hear the people sing?

Singing the song of angry men?

It is the music of the people

Who will not be slaves again!

When the beating of your heart

Echoes the beating of the drums

There is a life about to start

When tomorrow comes!

 I found the song on YouTube. A protest song is now being sung in support of Ukraine. Not a good sign at all! That Chinese guy, I think his name is Confucius said, “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one.” For the protesters here, the penny has dropped. Before my passport gets impounded, I’m fleeing the parallel universe 

to Dubai. 

https://www.supremecourt.lk/images/documents/SCAppeal10405FINALpdf.pdf