The Life and Times of ALJUHARA

….ie  more of that rahu/ kethu/ aturu dasha crap

 

Its about two years since I last wrote for WOW officially and may I say I'm glad to be back. Quite a lot has happened in my life in these two years and you can be sure I will be updating you about it, in occasionally painful detail.

Now where do I start? .

I have a lovely young friend in office who studies horoscopes in her spare time. I mean it very seriously, its like you can have a Diploma in Mumbo Jumbo, supervised by a number of lecturers in various sub topics, the main one is the Astrology Diploma and the sub topics include stuff like Herbal Remedies, Exorcism, and Spells. (ok this may sound like Hogwarts to you but this is good old fashioned Mattakkuliya where she is studying this stuff from an ancient and venerable guru, the type who probably takes about half a minute to turn a yellowed page in his crumbling antique textbooks….using of course, a shaking, saliva-moistened old digit…) And she takes this very seriously and she is GOOD in this stuff if I do guarantee so myself.

Well about two years ago, after being bullied no end by me to read my chart, Sulakshani, for that is her name, told me that I would a) buy a land b) move out of my family home.

and c) become fat.

 

You may say this wasn't really a prediction, but rather a set of things I should do or would feel like doing, or as I prefer to think, things that I would subconsciously want to do once I had heard about the prediction. …however to me they were quite impactful, serious  things.And not really things you can do as easily as all that. Except perhaps the getting fat thing, but then would you want to?

 

Land is blooming expensive in this day and age and my salary barely keeps me alive from month to month, Ive been living in my ancestral (read:parents) home for the last 25 years and have established it as a comfort zone par excellence, mosquitoes, porcupines[1] and all,  and last but not least,  who on Earth wants to actually get fat because of your horscope?!?

 

Well, I began to sit around thinking what a materially useless life I had been having for the last ten years of working, although I enjoyed the work, there was nothing to show for it and although I enjoyed life I didn't know where I would live if I had to move out of this crowded nest…the more I thought about it the more I ached to have my own swamp, my own square feet, my own home to hang my hat in…this idea was followed by months of frenzied scanning of HIT Ad  and all the copycat adz pamphlets of rival newspapers…and week after week I had to carefully decipher what people wrote about their properties…I actually became pretty good at this " near the 122 bus route" sounded good, until you find out that this bus only passes through 3 times a day, the rest of the time you basically have to hitch hike on passing bullock carts, " peaceful country environment" means you have to walk 20 minutes to get a panadol and "close to the city" means your windows rattle every 7 minutes when staff buses go past. "in close proximity to the XYZ Balika VIdyalaya" had its own hideous implications which I leave you to figure out. And leaving all of that aside, the sheer price of these Sri Lankan "perches" was astounding. Translated into foreign currency Sri Lankan villagers were asking me sums of money per square foot which could have bought me good suburbs in many American States!…I was confounded! It just didn't seem to be something I could bring about…I went on a number of interesting and expensive land-spotting foreys and took lots of photographs of Kaduwela, Hanwella and romantic Labugama…up in these leech infested hills bordering onto Ratnapura, illiterate villagers continued to cheerfully gobsmack me with thundering quotes for their little (and completely deforested) plots of useless marsh land until I actively hated them. These people hadn't worked for this wealth, they had simply inherited stuff and stripped it, cut all the trees, eaten and of course drunk the proceeds and now were trying to rip me off royally by selling me denuded craters of slanted earth….but at the same time, man, was the scenery gorgeous, I could stand there all day looking around me…this was mother Earth in all her beauty and I wanted a small patch at least for my final resting place.

…and well, yes, I fell for one of the marshes, it is a very tiny modest little marsh, predictably treeless, although luckily bordered by rubber plantations and a distant river which they hadn't managed to pollute too much yet, in the salubrious surrounds of the former Sitawaka Kingdom, where long ago a king had boiled[2] a lot of monks because they would not absolve him of the crime of patricide…and yes I moved out of my nest, a big step for me, but since im 40 (for crying out loud, it was about time!)..

As to the getting fat part…Id say fat is a relative concept…I was probably fat to start with although with difficulty I am retaining my BMI within healthy limits to ensure that my diabetes dosnt kill me too quickly…But you know what? I kind of think Sulakshi does in fact know her astrology stuff quite well. Drop us a mail if you'd like your chart read too.J chandrika6@gmail.com

---

[1] This is a completely different story

[2] Or drowned, I cant really remember 

Photograph is a random pretty pic of a bathing spot in Thunmodera, Sri Lanka 

Zeeny and the Pola Cats

So my friend  Zeeny sterilizes stray cats. Regularly. Obsessively. And persistently. She is happy that I told her how to go get them operated. You just have to grab them, starve them a few hours before, and make an appointment with a vet and take them over and then look after them for a few days afterwards till they heal. And then no matter how much you grow to love them, you have to release them back to the pitiless street from where you got them because most people are not very willing to give street cats a home.

People criticize us religiously saying that we are interfering with Gods plan. Or that we are accumulating bad karma and we should be childless in the next birth. But she cares about the cats. People who don't know her scold her and judge her and tell her that she will be barren in her next life. If you never had access to birth control, and you continued helplessly to have child after child after child would you be so judgmental ? Have you looked at a stray cat that has had kittens every six months for a few years? Have you seen how tired and haggard it looks?  You do not see the struggle that it goes through, to get food, with people chasing pregnant cats away continuously; you have not seen how much it suffers trying to protect its young on the street. Some people think of cats in human terms, and say that we should not interfere with Gods arrangement. They forget that unlike humans, stray cats or dogs do not have employment, and that they have young every six months if they are not spayed. Female stray cats do not have the support of their husbands. They also mate freely with their own siblings and parents and offspring and that leads to deformities.  Street animals are often neglected and diseased, and many cause road accidents and die, or steal food out of desperation and then are attacked mercilessly by people and left to die in terrible pain. I have seen female dogs with broken legs screaming while being gang raped because they happen to be in heat. Male dogs (and also clearly male Gods) don't think about these things, though as women we do. Often people like to ignore all these facts as they tell us about God's plan, or karma. Often I feel they can afford to be sanctimonious because then they don't have to spend time or money on spaying operations, they can just shrug and leave it to God.

A one-woman mission against stray overpopulation in Wellampitiya

Some of them tell us that they find homes for their kittens/puppies among contacts. But the truth is that because those homes are taken up by the animals that are bred, then there are no homes for the street animals who will continue to be neglected and unloved. Then some people say that they are animals of the forest and should be able to find food from the jungle. This is not true either because cats and dogs are domesticated animals and often there is not enough food for them in the cities, leading cats in overpopulated areas to forage among other species such as rare birds and rodents, to feed themselves. This is bad for the environment in the long term.

For all these reasons Zeeny will continue to spay the stray animals she finds and I will continue to try to find funding for it. Possibly both of us will be barren in the afterlife, but until then we are happy when we go to the pola and see the young females we have spayed living a carefree life without being gang raped, getting continuously pregnant or being chased with brooms or boiling water. 

For happy stories of stray kitten rescues search for Le Kittenarium on FB

The Little Witch of Modera

FAA AGAIN

So the next day I took the toy motorbike and gave to Nuzrath. I was feeling maybe that it was for his kid, Muad, but later I found that wasn't the case. 

Nuzrat didnt let me get away, he made me sit down and showed me how he had taken Amor's lost sock and sewed it onto the plastic biker guy, like a kind of body bag/straight jacket.
When Im doing this I have to undergo some rituals and I have to do some chanting , he  told me. And he had to draw a particular charm on a thin piece of copper plating which he stuffed into the stomach of the plastic doll. He had an ancient book with these charms drawn in it and he put on his glasses to look through this book. It looked as if the page corners were all worn out. He must have studied this book a lot.  

He also found ashes, they say from a crematorium.

In Sri Lanka there is a market for the ashes of dead people, which were unclaimed. So these may be ashes from some homeless person, or elderly beggar, which no one had picked up. They were used for black magic of various kinds. He had a supplier from the Modera Cemetery. He sprinkled the ashes all over the little doll, and also anointed it in a certain kind of oil that had been taken from a kind of rare lizard. I don't ever support animal cruelty, so I would not have allowed him to do this for me. But he seemed to already have these items in stock. Finally the doll looked and smelt really bad and he put it in a jute bag, which he was going to chant over 108 times.

He had a lot of strange little bottles in a cupboard in his office room, and I saw behind a curtain, he had small bottles of all sizes and shapes, with beautiful lettering all over them in a different language. It looked a little like Aladins cave, but without any gold. 

He showed me a strange wooden box that was painted and dusty. He took it from a compartment in an old cupboard which had an old black padlock to it. 

Do you know what is in this?he said. It looked like it may contain an ola leaf manuscript. It had a small catch on it and with some difficulty he opened the lid. There was something strange lying there, and slightly smelly too like fish bacon. I thought it was some kind of long animal like a sea slug. Or a piece of dried meat, but not dried to be completely solid, it was more like bacon, and red and brown colored. It was about eight inches long. 

This is a pilluwa. He said 

I had thought that a pilluwa was a dead person or a mummified corpse brought to life to do what the exorcist said..., I looked at him with the quesitons in my eyes.

A  mahasohon pilluwa is obtained from a special kind of person. It is the child of a pair of dwarves, and the exorcist keeps an eye out in the village if such a pair are to get married. Their child usually dies early.  Do you know how much we have to suffer to get this? How rarely this happens? The kattadiya has to identify these people. Has to track them for years. Has to ensure that the body is not cremated but is buried. Has to prepare for weeks before the ritual. He should be a person strong in mind who does not get easily scared.

He must find a similar assistant who is also very tough and brave. The assistant will prepare the offerings. Four kinds of demons visit during this ritual and if either the kattadiya or his assistant baulks, or shows the least amount of fear, they will smite them and turn their minds to fever and they will end up in the lunatic asylum after that. 

The ritual has to be carried out in the jungle near the cemetery. At a certain time of the month when the moon is a certain level, the ritual has to be initiated. The corpse of that child has to be dug up and kept on the ground. The incantations have to go on for hours.

The first demon to come takes the harmless shape, of a hen with some small chickens. The assistant has to throw rice grains at this hen and they will eat it and go away. Then a huge cobra slithers up hissing. The Assistant must not be afraid of the cobra, the chanting must go on, and an egg is given to the cobra.

Just one egg..? I said taking this all in.

Yes one egg. Then in the middle of the night an elephant comes which is pretty scarey. Elephants are not nocturnal so you know that these are demons. The elephant too has red eyes and is drooling. He proceeds to ruin the whole locality, charging about and roaring. The kattadiyas have to stand their ground and when he seems tired, they have to throw a piece of banana plant for it to take. Then it carries that and goes away.

Finally, Mahasoha himself comes.  He is so hideous with his jaws open that that is all you see, his lower jaw scraping the earth, and his top jaw blocking the sky. Between them the entrance to hell. He spends a lot of time screaming and destroying the area, and then when he becomes quiet we have to give him a live chicken.

I didnt like that part of the story because Im dead against animal cruelty. But I guess most people didnt care. 

Finally when it is all over, we can animate the corpse and it sits up and tries to extend its tongue and lick the gurunanse. 

At that point he must take a sharp knife and cut the tongue off. The Pilluwa is the tongue which is taken and preserved. The rest of the corpse is simply reburied. 

Are you sure you want to do this?Nuzrat checked with me a couple of times as he was going through the rituals. They were taking a lot of time and he took breaks from work every couple of hours. 

I'm sure about it.

There is no turning back from what may happen. He warned

Also, I cannot be sure what will happen. It might be nothing much. It depends on the position of his stars too and these days they are fairly bad. In fact they are aligned towards an accident of some kind. But do you know this is an evil thing you are doing and also you are making me do this. We will both suffer. Do you understand that?

Nuzrat insisted that he would not take payment from me.

Because it has to be clear that I am doing this because you asked me, and because you are suffering some kind of injustice. I should not be benefiting from this evil. If I benefit from this, my life will be negatively affected some other way. I have a wife and family. I don't want there to be any bad effects on them. I am only doing this to help you because you said you were so desperate. 

And another thing. said Nuzrat...I want to tell you. I received a message last night while I was in a trance. It is information for you. Are you these days in a secret relationship with a married man you care about?

This caught my attention and I sat up and stared at him, in horror. 

I started thinking hard about what he was saying. How could anyone know about Saki and me and how could I answer this question? I didn't deny it.

Do you eat meals sent by someone? Someone is poisoning you, to make you both break up. To make you hate him.

graphic source https://lakpura.com/pages/devil-dance

The Little Witch of Modera

Chapter One 

CHUBS

What would drive a man to cut off his dead lover's head?  Its not easy. That is the thought running through my mind as I race to meet my writing deadline at the Weekend Financial Review.

I am frustrated.

"No, you cannot interview the wife, because she is just too tired to talk anymore," says my editor. I stare angrily at him down the phone. I can picture him running around the office with his sleeves rolled up and his collar awry. He has nice grey eyes. He does not take leave, even on his birthday or on Ramadan. He goes home at 2 am, after everyone else has left the evening shift.

How will I write my piece on the Midway Murder? All I can think about is this buff sexy ole cop dude who has now hung himself in the middle of the jungle.  He had annoyingly taken the mystery with him. A mystery that has this entire island talking.

"How do you know the wife didn't have something to do with this?" says my mango friend Faa, in the middle of feeding her cats, in a rather manky dressing gown. Through the WhatsApp video, I can see them plowing restlessly through her house, on her laundry, on her countertops, on her washing machine, in her armchairs, under her bed. There seem to be cats everywhere, but there were only four at the last count. I told her not to increase her population of animals, but I know the next time she sees a kitten or some geriatric dog she will feel sorry for it. A crow popped its head in at the window and cawed raucously for food. Faa has named it Rasta.

"How do you know- she must have got fed up with this old bugger messing around with the girl and she must have done something. Like a hooniyama," said Faa.

Hooniyama is the Sri Lankan word for Voodoo. There is a God in charge of this process, named the God in Charge of the Village. I'm surprised at her because Faa is a Muslim.

"What kind of hooniyama can you do?"

"Anu knows we should ask her, there are lots of things… that can be done" says Faa, evasively. I feel that she has already consulted Anu and is not ready to discuss it yet. Faa was creative in thinking up ways to discretely torture her husband when he annoyed her.

This is interesting. Why didn't I think of this before?

As a journalist and an ex-wife myself I can begin to imagine the drama behind this murder story. And feel enraged for us all, the dead man, the murdered other-woman and the grieving wife and children. No one plans these things they have a way of happening. Well, sometimes wives plan things. But we will come to that later. I need to finish my article. My petrol tank has corroded and Im without transport too, which is bad in the middle of a pandemic. I have to get through all of this without getting this damned virus and spreading it at home. 

My current husband keeps trying to be funny with me but I told him to stay one meter away. 

An advert at a local Kovila in Hanwella saying they do not do Mantras or Gurukan, which is another word for Hooniyam, but that they do other things. 

Flying fist, noble heart

An appreciation of Grand Master Hassan Khalid founder of Fei Quan Do International

 

It was with the greatest sorrow I heard of the sudden passing away of our beloved martial arts Master the Grandmaster Hassan Khalid founder of the Fei Quan Do international school of karate in Colombo. He passed away last Thursday at a ripe age of 72 with nary a warning of his departure and having lived life to the very fullest. A couple of days before his sudden passing he had been conducting training as usual at his Wellawatte class.
I remember him from years of attending his karate classes in Dematagoda and Wellawatte, after my quest for personal security and independence, brought me to train in karate. In the first place I had always been inspired by the 70s film Kung Fu featuring David Carradine which introduced me to the silent and noble beauty of the Shao Lin tradition. Grandmaster Khalid's philosophies were very similar too, with more of an emphasis on internal mastery, discipline and effort rather than of crushing enemies or giving the ego-free reign.  I remember the first day I went to his class and was terribly worried as to what to expect, but he called new students to the front and made them feel welcome and very at ease. I also remember a lot of humour bandied by long-suffering Master Khalid where he compared our earnest side kicking to the clumsy slow actions of dogs pissing on lamposts...this still has me giggling even now...

To be frank, I was hopelessly lazy and slow, not to mention uncoordinated, but Master Khalid was immensely patient with us matured ladies and gave everyone a chance. (Thankfully ladies were allowed to do the easier form of push-ups so that their knuckles would not get scarred etc.) He was very motivational, not only in training martial arts but expounding the deepest philosophies collected from a long and eventful life of travel around the world as a mariner, prior to his opening of the School of Karate. Sometimes his training was quite exhausting but took us to levels of strength, courage and discipline that we did not know ourselves capable of. His training was with the purpose of mentoring a fully rounded and balanced person. Along with his success as a trainer par excellence, he also balanced a wonderfully large family of eight children and always spoke lovingly of his wife's good qualities. His noble mindset was that he was not interested in accumulating money, but wanted only to do a good service to his students and to be a breadwinner to the last. So he kept the class fees very reasonable and would often waive the fees for less privileged students.

 

Master Khalid was a shining personality who always lived life to the fullest, training and inspiring thousands of students not only in karate but in the other aspects of how to live a good life and find happiness. He himself was the epitome of strength, decency, integrity, tolerance, liberality and so many good human qualities apart from being a fearless karate pro, deft with his fighting skills.

From him, I learned, no matter that I was in a society that intimidates a weak female that I can be self-confident and unafraid. I remember telling him at the time that I was probably one of the few women who had a chance to occasionally use some of the fighting tactics we learned when I had to administer some punishment to a pervert in a bus. However as always advised in karate, I did not go pushing for fights but have always used it more as a confidence booster which I sorely needed, as well as to actually avoid conflict. Personally, I think that every young girl should train in martial arts to give them the confidence and security to face this world, especially in the light of various recent happenings. Karate training is also one of the best work-outs you can have today, which is why Master Khalid was extremely fit and full of life until practically the last day. I know that he would certainly have loved what he did and been happiest as he was allowed to keep doing the work he loved till the last.

Though he is no more, we will continue to be touched by the magic, charm and vitality of his inspiring personality and we will always have our Grandmaster in our prayers. We are honoured and enriched to have been his students. 

The Life and Times of ALJUHARA

….ie  more of that rahu/ kethu/ aturu dasha crap

 

Its about two years since I last wrote for WOW officially and may I say I'm glad to be back. Quite a lot has happened in my life in these two years and you can be sure I will be updating you about it, in occasionally painful detail.

Now where do I start? .

I have a lovely young friend in office who studies horoscopes in her spare time. I mean it very seriously, its like you can have a Diploma in Mumbo Jumbo, supervised by a number of lecturers in various sub topics, the main one is the Astrology Diploma and the sub topics include stuff like Herbal Remedies, Exorcism, and Spells. (ok this may sound like Hogwarts to you but this is good old fashioned Mattakkuliya where she is studying this stuff from an ancient and venerable guru, the type who probably takes about half a minute to turn a yellowed page in his crumbling antique textbooks….using of course, a shaking, saliva-moistened old digit…) And she takes this very seriously and she is GOOD in this stuff if I do guarantee so myself.

Well about two years ago, after being bullied no end by me to read my chart, Sulakshani, for that is her name, told me that I would a) buy a land b) move out of my family home. and c) become fat.

 

You may say this wasn't really a prediction, but rather a set of things I should do or would feel like doing, or as I prefer to think, things that I would subconsciously want to do once I had heard about the prediction. …however to me they were quite impactful, serious  things. And not really things you can do as easily as all that. Except perhaps the getting fat thing, but then would you want to?

 

Land is blooming expensive in this day and age in Sri Lanka and my salary barely keeps me alive from month to month, Ive been living in my ancestral (read:parents) home for the last 25 years and have established it as a comfort zone par excellence, mosquitoes, porcupines[1] and all,  and last but not least,  who on Earth wants to actually get fat because of your horscope?!?

 

Well, I began to sit around thinking what a materially useless life I had been having for the last ten years of working, although I enjoyed the work, there was nothing to show for it and although I enjoyed life I didn't know where I would live if I had to move out of this crowded nest…the more I thought about it the more I ached to have my own swamp, my own square feet, my own home to hang my hat in…this idea was followed by months of frenzied scanning of HIT Ad  and all the copycat adz pamphlets of rival newspapers…and week after week I had to carefully decipher what people wrote about their properties…I actually became pretty good at this " near the 122 bus route" sounded good, until you find out that this bus only passes through 3 times a day, the rest of the time you basically have to hitch hike on passing bullock carts, " peaceful country environment" means you have to walk 20 minutes to get a panadol and "close to the city" means your windows rattle every 7 minutes when staff buses go past. "in close proximity to the XYZ Balika VIdyalaya" had its own hideous implications which I leave you to figure out. And leaving all of that aside, the sheer price of these Sri Lankan "perches" was astounding. Translated into foreign currency Sri Lankan villagers were asking me sums of money per square foot which could have bought me good suburbs in many American States!…I was confounded! It just didn't seem to be something I could bring about…I went on a number of interesting and expensive land-spotting foreys and took lots of photographs of Kaduwela, Hanwella and romantic Labugama…up in these leech infested hills bordering onto Ratnapura, illiterate villagers continued to cheerfully gobsmack me with thundering quotes for their little (and completely deforested) plots of useless marsh land until I actively hated them. These people hadn't worked for this wealth, they had simply inherited stuff and stripped it, cut all the trees, eaten and of course drunk the proceeds and now were trying to rip me off royally by selling me denuded craters of slanted earth….but at the same time, man, was the scenery gorgeous, I could stand there all day looking around me…this was mother Earth in all her beauty and I wanted a small patch at least for my final resting place.

…and well, yes, I fell for one of the marshes, it is a very tiny modest little marsh, predictably treeless, although luckily bordered by rubber plantations and a distant river which they hadn't managed to pollute too much yet, in the salubrious surrounds of the former Sitawaka Kingdom, where long ago a king had boiled[2] a lot of monks because they would not absolve him of the crime of patricide…and yes I moved out of my nest, a big step for me, but since im 40 (for crying out loud, it was about time!)..

As to the getting fat part…Id say fat is a relative concept…I was probably fat to start with although with difficulty I am retaining my BMI within healthy limits to ensure that my diabetes dosnt kill me too quickly…But you know what? I kind of think Sulakshi does in fact know her astrology stuff quite well. Drop us a mail if you'd like your chart read too hanwella7@gmail.com.

 

 

 

 

---

[1] This is a completely different story

[2] Or drowned, I cant really remember 

Sins of the Fathers

COVID19 as a manifestation of the divine feminine

Finally, we are forced to stay in one place, in one quiet time period and to think. 

Finally, we can reevaluate the rules that we were born into, the reality that we were made to accept was true. A hidden disease is destroying average people like you and me in hundreds, in thousands, it is unstoppable. Collective human intelligence is losing pitiably when pitted against an invisible spherical microbe. Thousands of years of faith, belief, aesthetics, religion, scientific advancement, medicine, technology, commerce, wealth,  ancient wisdom, and modern homo sapien cunning- all bow humbly to a radiant microscopic red sphere with a halo of horns. Advanced white man, who thought he was in the same mould as God, is brought to his knees, the richer and prouder he is, the more terrified. Brave soldiers in medical gowns keep falling in the face of this onslaught. The rest of human society are suddenly aimless like drugged zombies, clawing pathetically for toilet rolls.

A few people already knew that something like this could happen, and they understood why. They tried continuously to warn us. But society was too set with its "bullshit rules": layers of false beliefs that hold us back. The lies our fathers told us. Conditioning brainwashed into us. The mantra repeated in every social group,..demanding that children grow to adults rote learning more bullshit, for them to aspire only to work as slaves for a system that locks them into a mindless cycle of work, consumption, relationship, marriage, responsibility, drudgery, sickness and debt, only for them to force their own offspring in turn to slave for the same system in an evil and foolish generational cycle... 

It starts with "Go forth and multiply." 

The words of an invisible supremacist male creator in holy books of 70% of humans belonging to the major world religions, telling the naked ape to procreate and in effect implying that planet earth was his to dispose of. 

Mother nature, in contrast, visible tangible to anyone who looked around, or ever breathed her oxygen or ever ate of her produce, a nurturing long-suffering female, exhausted from weeping, raped continuously until she could take no more. 

The COVID pandemic rears her head like an enraged female creator, come back to destroy for the purpose of creation. A divine feminie to cross the eras of masculine energy that promises to ruin planet earth.

For look at how differently the virus itself treats men and women: even in affluent societies which handle the pandemic more systematically, many more men die, their lives are disrupted and desperate, pointless male pastimes such as war, sport, politics, night clubs, pubs and serial adultery are the first to grind to a halt. Then there is a reversal of status at every level. The higher and more advanced the countries the more the sheer death. Countries which profited from dead things like black gold are soon to bow to agricultural economies for food when paper money loses meaning. Suddenly the humble farmer, the creator of food, becomes a shining warrior against starvation and factories of toys matter no more. Countries regret that only 2 per cent of their GDP was spent on health, while humans know that health is the greatest wealth. 

Consider the backdrop: There were long-standing human population statistics that the apes in their conceit chose to ignore. Each day 380,000 humans are born, and only 130,000 die of all causes. So each day the population of the Earth increases by 250,000 greedy naked humanoid animals who seek to consume, destroy, and exploit nature, all other species, and each other. So even if the virus kills 250,000 people A DAY for the next year it will still not be able to right the balance. But it might do just that anyway. 

Because although the virus itself will have to work itself out naturally, its repercussions among the broken cogs of society will kill many more from unemployment, malnourishment, poverty, hatred, war, suffering, suicide, abuse, violence and neglect. Many of us will continue with lives that are more like living death. Is this what you wanted, our father?

And how did it become right for humans to multiply so indiscriminately, and to grab whatever they could for themselves and burn the rest of it? What ideologies are to blame? What makes this insane and unchecked human reproduction acceptable? Religion, tradition, culture, politics, capitalism, patriarchy- all playing together in a powerful tightly knit structure but now all bowing cowering to an enraged mother nature who has had enough. 

And yet this is only a minor tantrum, typically because she is female, raging in retaliation from centuries of abuse, directing her violence randomly and ineffectively. 

For her to have been most effective she could have come up with a plague which rendered the ape infertile, but no. Sadly, there is a real possibility that with social systems broken down and women lacking access to contraception, an extra three to nine million of unplanned pregnancies, including unsafe abortions and maternal deaths, could result from just the first set of lockdowns worldwide. Thereby leading to more teeming human suffering. 

So this time the tantrums of the divine feminine will probably not completely destroy us.

But we have been warned, this is only the beginning. 

Silver on the Palm Leaves

Its the 7th of April 2020 and Im writing from a beautiful Island named Sri Lanka inside a curfew, which is different from lockdown in that people actually get arrested if they are caught walking about, in theory. However, in a strange way, rules only seem to apply to people who fear the rules. Anxiety is for those who accept reality in its macabre extremes, and within each of us there is the capacity for suffering or for calm entirely based on the reality we see. Even now there are people on Facebook who order 5 kilos of pork and lots of cooking oil and seem to be well-stocked for a party at home. In my house, we are barely eating. We have enough food to last us about ten days and I find that it helps not to think beyond that. I believe the Buddha said that seven days well applied is enough for a human to attain arahathood and then nothing would matter. So finally now is my chance- and I would have three days to spare. I find myself incredibly mindful of things now. Mindful of the last bit of pepper, since the Government will not be importing any more and is turning Chinese ships away. Their plan has been to make us self sufficient in agriculture or something like that, something I've always supported. I hope I live to see this. I don't know if I will live beyond the stocks of Insulin I have since I'm a diabetic and even the food we have managed to stock up such as rice, pasta and potatoes is absolutely what diabetics should not be eating. This morning I woke up terrified that I would become blind. 

I cannot justify why I imagined that because I am certainly more careful about managing my diabetes now than I was a month ago! 

TO be honest, I have not hated this condition because it made me appreciate the food that I am allowed to eat, like veggies and greens and red rice, and it kept me away from the kind of junk food that Donald Trumps seems to like eating, which many people cannot seem to stay away from.

Back to having Diabetes in the middle of the Pandemic, well I don't know where I will get my next bit of Metformin so it should be interesting.

these are interesting times and if I stop writing a number of things could have happened - who knows maybe my keyboard needs repairs. There sure as hell is no place available for so much as replacing a mouse these days. One has to be mindful of everything one does, even if it is typing too fast.

Here is a photo from a hotel in Tangalle where my husband and I had a lovely escape a few years ago. Its not very posh, but then neither are we. At least we can marvel at the beauty of the sea. It was a happy interlude. It would have been happier if we could have shared the expenses but since he was unemployed for the last 15 years it was me who paid for most of it. I have written a book about him which you can read one day. 

The Strange Case of ALJUHARA

 - sometimes – because of a name, lives touch.

Because of a name, lives connected in strange ways. What's in a name, you may ask? Ever since I divorced and changed my name at roughly the same time Im prepared to admit there was some effect definitely. Underworld criminals probably swear by their aliases and their lives depend on them. So do singers, actors, artists and writers, don't you think? Madonna Prince and Shakira would probably project quite the same image if they were called Bandaramanike. Or would they , who can say? Well Sri Lankans are probably one bunch who spend a lot of time and money (on drunken astrologers) deciding on names for their babies and they say there is a serious reason for that. Your name can decide your life.

Why do you call your self "aljuhara" some people ask me (or actually they say mokoda bung mey aljuhara case eka?" or something like that) and its only now after almost  two years of writing this column under a myriad of different identities that I'm getting the chance  to  tell you the background about my pen name, and of course…. you can count on this being another schizoid story…

Years ago I watched a movie called "Jewel of the Nile" which the child in me thoroughly enjoyed. If I tell you that that was my favourite movie, it may describe my character to you. Playful, dreamy, fun loving, and not very serious, someone who believed in happy endings.  It had all those ingredients of a dream romance, there was the lovely scatter brained novelist lady, Joan Wilder ( with perfect legs and a tiny red nose), a heroic dashing action man, (played by Michael Douglas, bless his white cotton socks) and a vile but charming villain( predictably Arab) and also an absolutely amazing character, the actual "Jewel" (which is what the words al juhara mean) who is a Sufi. The adventure, danger and romance in this story leave him completely untouched but mildly bemused and the best picture that comes to mind is of him sitting peacefully deep in meditation on top of a speeding train while people are rolling about fighting near killing each other a few carriages away. I totally admired that cool aplomb and that's the character  I wanted to be although of course the child in me was completely fascinated by the romance, the action and the adventure of the story.

Another part of me completely delighted at the life of Joan Wilder who seemed to be having my dream job, and being a beautiful lady writer who actually gets paid and gets to go places to carry out the job she loves best. Ah, such a lucky creature, what an inspiration I would think. So when it came to choosing my pen name, there I had my two favorites and the rest of course you know- my best comic writing comes out under the nickname of aljuhara and sometimes I write under my own name (serious stuff) and even more serious stuff under a few other nicknames one of which is Joan Wilder. For all these I have booked the usual internet presences such as gmail, Face Book and a blog here and there.

About a month back I received a mail to my "Joan Wilder" email from a female telling me her name was Joan Wilder too and asking me if I was willing to sell the email account. She also asked me out of curiosity how come I had this email. A lovely chatty direct way of writing she has and so I thought she was a US school girl somewhere and replied that long ago Id seen a movie I really enjoyed and these were characters in it who I had related to, so I had taken these nicknames.

What she told me next was so amazing that I had to do a lot of research to check if it was the truth and now since Im satisfied with the answer, heres the email for you. 

hi Chandrika!

Thanks for writing. you live in Sri Lanka, eh? When i was little, in school, a long time ago, i did a long report on Sri Lanka -- then Ceylon -- and remember feeling that it was a special place to me. I've never been there. I live near Boston, Massachusetts.

well, here's a story for you…. My friend, Diane Thomas, wrote the original screenplay for Romancing the Stone. It was in 1980-1 or so. We were roommates just before she began writing it. I moved to NYC and she moved out the beach in L.A. - Malibu -- and committed to writing a script. She worked on it for a year on an old Ibm electric typewriter. At the end of the year, she gave it to a friend in the business who gave it to his agent. A week later, the agent phoned her up and said he'd sold it to Michael Douglas for $250,000, which at that time was the most an unknown writer had been paid for a script. So there were articles in the newspapers about it.

After the movie was released and did so well, Diane went on to writing more screenplays, including having a three-picture deal with Steven Spielberg. I spent the summer of 1985 with Diane at her then beautiful house in Malibu. at the end of the summer, I went back to NYC and she was going to come visit me for two weeks. A week before she was to come, she was killed instantly in a car crash a mile from her home. She crashed into a tree at the side of the road. The car was given to her by Michael Douglas as payment for her helping to think up the sequel to Romancing the Stone, which she had refused to write.

So. she named the character after me, although the character herself I see to be based on a combination of both of our lives at the time we were roommates.

warmly,

joan

If you are curious now, and you haven't seen or cant remember the movie run along and borrow it, because it will be great fun now just as it was then!( warning not in front of the little  kids because there are one or two very steamy scenes too)  but remember too that this was written by a city waitress based on the lives of two struggling student journalists and while it  led to  a magical interplay of character, fantasy  and tom foolery resulting in a movie which delighted millions around the world,  the happy story has a sad ending for the writer, who  died as mentioned in a car crash in the dream car she received as payment for her talent.  ( Didn't Hercule Poirot once say "Beware of the day your dreams come true , for then you will have nothing more to dream about  ,") A part of the romance lives on in my new friend who is the character behind the name, and is a talented, graceful and very young looking grandmother with three children and two grandchildren, living in Boston . Life is bittersweet we know and names make people, and sometimes make people meet for better or for worse….

Or maybe its just destiny finding an excuse...  

The Pusheekat Diaries

Greetings and warm regards from Purradise.

 

It is I, Peachy the 23^rd, descendant from a long line of regular backyard cats, distantly related to Serious the 48^th, who was a rather foreign I hear having been brought into the country on a Portuguese galleon in the time of the Kandyan Kings. Knowing her character though Im sure she was not really formally imported, but just scooted into the ship kitchen when no one was looking and got locked accidentally in the provision cupboard, only to be discovered and let out  in a hot nightmare of an island named Ceylon…cat habits, just like Hewman habits, die hard. Cats habits actually die harder. Trust me.

 

Well, Im Peachy, or anyway that's what they named me although I am actually gray and white with yellow eyes. My mistress is a woman we nicknamed Ally, who writes letters to the weekly papyrus- Hewmans like to sit and look at these flaps of crackly  white stuff for a long time, whereas we just like to scratch it to shreds, or pee on them- even though in many households, we get our dinner on them. (If dinner is too drippy the papyrus melts and we have to lick the floor…boring.)

 

I have been keeping a series of notes on life which Im happy to share with you in your own language thanks to this friendly lady heuwman who has volunteered to translate from the Mewish…

 

Anyway here I am talking to you good Hewmans and explaining all about us catpeopple.

 

For a start,  for example,it's a myth that we have nine lives, please get that our of your heads. We are just as mortal as any other animal, we just look a lot alike so its easy to replace us – that is probably the foundation of this silly misconception.

We are delicate. Really.

 

Then there is the myth that we like eating rats.

We prefer sardines or salayo. If you look at this objectively for a minute you will easily realize that in the natural state there is really NO WAY for a cat to catch a sardine, so this means we need an intermediary. That of course is you, my dear long suffering host race…

 

To make sure that you understand what we want from you( fish, a hot lap or cow secretions) and give it to us(- unconditionally-), we have spent hundreds of years evolving a system of mews, purrs , fur explosions and quiet thrumming vibrations which those of you who are cat-sensitive will understand even subconsciously and the rest will positively hate. (Unfortunately there seems to be no middle path although we are working on it)

 

In return we provide good examples of stress free living.

It is known that spending as little as ten minutes with your cat is good for your heart ( unless of course said cat has done something under the sink- in which case it might be not so good) the truth is we show you Hewman people how to relax, how to not bother, and how to totally accept ourselves (and you of course)…

Now how bad can that be?

………………………

Next week: Diaries of an ordinary Sri Lankan house cat.

The Pusheekat Diaries

………………………………..

by Pushee.

 

September 30

 

I cant believe it – the year that seemed to have just started is now three quarters complete. Im older and –wiser, I think: Ive seen so much in this time.

Patchy decided to Expect.  .It made her young and frisky again. We were all expecting with her, but since she is an indecently old cougar way past reproductive age with a wound down biological clock….the catlet she got was actually rather dead. So she lost it and of course resolutely and determinedly as mother cats are supposed to, she spent so much time looking for it and mistress Ally had to console her and explain why the baby had had to go in a small cardboard box.

Our kind hewmie family  tried bringing another substitute catlet from a woman in Kotikawatta who has 160 dogs and 40 cats. This woman is amazing and spent some time explaining how she lived her life for the animals and how she worked like a machine and cooked 25 kilos of rice a day.

I personally thought it was a bit creepy when she told me about 160 dogs in cages ..and cats too.

Let me emphasize this :cats cant live caged, it's a fate worse than death as far as we are concerned. The thought of it makes me want to gnaw my legs off personally.

But to be incarcerated WITH dogs around , now that is concentration camp stuff. Let me change the subject somehow…

 

 

October 2

Ms Ally was crowing about two things she had done today. One was eaten bulath for the first time in her life (goodness knows what possessed her) and the other was to get bitten by a freshwater leech. I don't know the gruesome details but I think we should all be thankful for small things in life, such as BLOOD COAGULATION. Its scarey when you have blood that dosnt obey this principle, and oozes on and on and doesn't dry even when it hits the floor; her bitten leg smells so WEIRD my ears went back suddenly. How did she get a leech bite in red hot Colombo? Well, Ms Ally is always going off looking for land, and since she has no money to really buy any and dosnt really do the brokering thing either; I suspect that this is the closest she gets to  "budget tourism" taken to a new level of stingy…I know she loves this wild island, although it brings her grief. She can't even find a committed man here, generally I think because most Sri Lankan guys don't like cats and she has too many.

ETB is ok though, he generally leaves us alone and grudgingly feeds us with the belief that this will help his future prospects…

Did you KNOW by the way , that leeches are one of the FEW mindless, spineless annelids that care for their young , by carrying them around and feeding them? That we found on the interweb when she was trying to read how to stop the bleeding and that makes you stop and think. "Leech"is such a negative word for a maligned invertebrate who really doesn't hurt you, just takes a little blood and they are used in medicine for amazing procedures to do with keeping blood circulating . You knew that but did you also know it actually looks after its offspring giving it food and transport and protecting it like mammals do-  though it dosnt have much of a brain? .  One wonders how they got such negative publicity. But now you know what they are good for!