How much further?

How much further are we going to slide down this slippery slope O people of the Pearl? Our economy is in a shambles, our currency more worthless than it has ever been in the History of the country, we are borrowing money from Bangladesh, disease is rampant and out of control, The figures of deaths and infections released are obviously wrong, we have always had a reputation for producing terrorists and now we have unleashed one into the peaceful environs of Aotearoa – New Zealand!

A specimen (I hesitate to call it a man) who arrived in 2011, has been a confirmed “person of interest” (in the mind numbing political “correctaneese” of NZ) with ISIS connections, who could not be kept locked up in jail any longer (he has been in jail before), due to the prevailing laws has been roaming around in society. The name cannot be released according to NZ law, and he is currently known as “S” in the press. This 31-year-old has apparently been under constant surveillance (the cost of which could probably have fed and clothed a village of lower income people) and he finally concluded his “studies” (one assumes he came to university at the age of 21) with stabbing six people within the one minute (a person every 10 seconds) it took his surveillance team to get to him and shoot him like the proverbial rabid dog that he was, in the aisles of a supermarket. We have subsequently found out that his name is Ahamed Adhil Samsudeen, there seems to be some doubt if he arrived a radical or was converted in New Zealand.

There will be royal commissions appointed to inquire into the causes, the police personnel involved will have therapy, counselling, and years of recovery but the damage is done. Hopefully the law will change, and such scum will be locked away forever when detected but that is doubtful in this ultra-liberal and SO politically correct society. We Sri Lankans are now branded forever as unreliable elements of society. Sure, all these years our CVs have been rejected without interviews based on our names, only jobs such as supermarket workers, taxi drivers, mechanics and accountants running our own practice at best, have been available to the majority of us. Subsistence living with little possibility of owning boats (in the city of sails that is Auckland) and living in the “posh” suburbs have been our lot. This does lead to frustration and disillusionment and even suicide, (there is a high percentage of suicide among Lankan youth in NZ) but this is the first time we have actively been involved in mass murder or attempted mass murder.

Most of us are thankful for been allowed to live in a peaceful orderly society. We can have aspirations, particularly our progeny can, to higher standards of living that should come when the subtle but effective racism in society is relaxed with the realisation that foreign doesn’t mean dangerous but we have suffered a huge setback. Some of us got calls from our workplaces (since we are working at home due to the lockdown) to find out if we had been at the location, this is customary in Aotearoa, but we wondered if the real reason was to check if we had done it! Now that is an unkind thing to think of our workmates who called with the best intentions at heart, but those thoughts do flit through your mind in these circumstances!

So, we go on O people of the Pearl, it seems that Kuveni’s curse will never leave us and we are doomed to dream, aspire and then have our dreams and aspirations dashed on the hard rocks of the sins of our ancestors.

Driving Elephants

One a lighter note, I saw a set of rules the other day for “driving elephants”. I nearly split my sides laughing at the image of a Policeman approaching a mahout riding an elephant with a breathalyser kit in hand to check if he is drunk while driving his elephant. The possibilities of what can ensue range from the comical to the bizarre! A rather untimely end to the test equipment, crushed underfoot by six tons of elephant to the possibility of an elephant chase with policemen either on horses or possible a police elephant corps. By the way, elephants are nervous around horses and this fact combined with a series of ridiculous inclusions in this set of rules made me wonder who had drafted them. It must be an academic who has never handled an elephant under conditions of work or even a Perahera. Or possibly an NGO lunatic with this huge unutterable LOVE for elephants based on sinister motives like killing off pereheras and such “Pegan” rituals.

No sharp pointed metal objects to be used on elephants, no night work (so no pereheras) is some of the more bizarre inclusions. A henduwa or the pointed metal object that is obviously referred to is individually built for each elephant and is made to measure. The henduwa is very rarely used as a goad, it is more a form of protection for the human should they be attacked, and the hook is used to pull the elephant away if it gets too close to another elephant or human who could be nervous of the former’s company. Elephants are animals, although I know many elephants that I prefer to certain humans I know, and they respond to their instincts, how on earth does a 80kg human keep safe in the company of a 6000kg elephant without some form of protection? Why don’t those who drafted those rules demonstrate how they can be implemented under practical circumstances for around one month and not just a few minutes.

Some of the rules like limited hours of work (although it should be specified from 7am to 11 am before the sun gets too hot) and time spent in the water (again with at least two hours with the elephants’ spine under water and lying down) and not just standing around listlessly in ankle deep water as in Pinnawela the ill-famed elephant orphanage, are good and should be implemented. Regular veterinary checks are good too. Two years maternity leave is a must but then again will only apply to elephants under the exemplary care of the vets in Pinnawela. I am not being sarcastic here, the breeding programme in Pinnawela deserves much more kudos and recognition than is given to it. Then again where in the Pearl do people who are good at a job given recognition?!! I don’t think there has been a case of domestic elephants outside Pinnawela falling pregnant (except for one blatantly fraudulent case of an owner trying to pass off an illegally captured elephant off as a calf born in captivity), for at least 20 years.

However, this is a start made in 1993 actually, with a set of rules (much more sensible than the balderdash that has just been drafted) making it to a Cabinet paper which died a natural death in the archives of what passes for a parliament in the Pearl. A start that one hopes will result in some of those elephants condemned to a life of unutterable boredom and mind-numbing lack of TLC been released to people who will treasure them and above all have the knowledge to look after them and stop another age-old tradition dying out in our already semi-destroyed society.