Kiribath and mala bath

Thursday 14th October, 2021

Milk rice or kiribath has a positive association for all Sri Lankans, who consider no ceremonial occasion complete without it. However, it also serves as a medium of expression for those who are consumed with negative emotions such as hate and anger, as evident from some events we witness from time to time on the political front. On Tuesday, many Opposition activists were seen eating and giving away kiribath in some parts of the country; they were ‘celebrating’ the recent price hikes, of all things, in a bid to tease their rivals and gain political mileage.

People’s right to engage in peaceful political activities cannot be questioned, but it is doubtful whether the kiribath-eating events struck a responsive chord with the resentful public. What the Opposition backers’ ill-conceived action signifies is that the polity is so divided along party lines that politicians and their followers are even ready to stoop so low as to derive some perverse pleasure, or kaalakanni sathuta, as it is popularly called, from the miseries of fellow citizens; they make a show of their chutzpah, hoping that the collective suffering of the public will help them gain political traction.

The SLPP leaders also derived a great deal of perverse pleasure from people’s suffering while they were in the Opposition although they did not go to the extent of eating kiribath in public.

From 2015 to 2019, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, would cynically ask the people who were facing numerous problems including economic and security issues, having voted for the yahapalana government, ‘Dan sepada?’ (This unkind, rhetorical question implies that one has got one’s comeuppance.) He would rub their noses in it until the 2019 regime change.

Now, the boot is on the other foot, and the government has had a person arrested for asking ‘dan sepada’ from the Moratuwa Mayor following the latter’s arrest over an incident at a vaccination centre.

The practice of eating milk rice as an expression of elation at others’ loss or misery, however, is not of recent origin. In May 1993, SLFP politicians and their backers, it bears recall, distributed kiribath and played raban in the aftermath of the assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa. In so doing, they only demonstrated their incivility, and unwittingly endorsed the crime the LTTE had perpetrated. It may be recalled that in 1989, the UNP supporters ‘celebrated’ the extrajudicial execution of JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera, in a similar manner. Many were the people who ate and distributed milk rice on the roadside upon receiving the news of Prabhakaran’s death in 2009.

In a country, which is not blessed with statespersons, it is only natural that political leaders and their henchmen do not scruple to outstep the bounds of decency in furthering their interests. There is hardly anything they do not cash in on. So, Tuesday’s kiribath-eating events did not come as a surprise although they left a bad taste in many a mouth.

The government ought to realise that burning resentment is welling up in the polity, and it has to make a meaningful intervention to ameliorate the people’s suffering.

It is time the people and their so-called leaders wised up to the need to sink their differences and join forces to fight the pandemic instead of trying to settle political scores. Unless a concerted effort is made to prevent the prevailing health emergency from getting out of hand and causing an exponential increase in the death toll, the possibility of which cannot be ruled out, many people will have to partake of mala batha (a simple meal served after funerals) instead of kiribath.