I hate being elboobed..*.

thats when some large oily female sits next to you in the bus and excavates for change in her humongous purse, all the while digging you in the boobs with her elbow. She stoicly pretends she has no idea of the substantial mammary irritation she is causing, and the search for change, is followed by a search for a kerchief, or for that mobile phone etc etc . I used to think that, that sort were frustrated lesbians , but it cant be since it has happened to me so MANY TIMES! Guys are way better because 1) when they reach for their wallets they side swivel out of their seats and avoid too much contact and 2) you can hit them if you want...

* the term ELBOOB is copyright Urban Dictionary

knox never tried eating a kabaraya, I guess

"There is a Creature here called Kobberaguion, resembling an Alligator. The biggest may be five or six feet long, speckled black and white. He lives most upon the Land, but will take the water and dive under it: hath a long blew forked tongue like a sting, which he puts forth and hisseth and gapeth, but doth not bite nor sting, tho the appearance of him would scare those that knew not what he was. He is not afraid of people, but will ly gaping and hissing at them in the way, and will scarce stir out of it. He will come and eat Carrion with the Dogs and Jackals, and will not be scared away by them, but if they come near to bark or snap at him, with his tayl, which is about an Ell long like a whip, he will so slash them, that they will run away and howl. This Creature is not eatable."

Robert Knox from - An Historical Relation of Ceylon

crux s ....new from Yamaha

below is a pic of my new set of wheels. and this is a real bike at last. Yamaha Crux S to be precise. Ive never experianced something like this before .... this thing seems to have a life of its own and Im very bad at shifting gears... I practiced a bit on my road yesterday and the natives all took their kids indoors /stray dogs disappeared-

controversial letter...

The Most Reverend Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury

By telefax to: 44.20.7261.1765 and 44.20.7898.1369

Most Reverend Sir:

International Educational Development (IED) and the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers (AHL) write to express our profound shock over your comment of 11 May 2007 that “surgical military actions against terrorism should take place” in Sri Lanka. Besides evincing opprobrious ignorance of humanitarian law, this comment will surely encourage Sri Lankan President M. Rajapakse in his genocidal assault on the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and, in turn will forward the geopolitical interests of the United States and other international actors who eye the port of Trincomalee, the airfield at Palaly and the exploitation of resources in the Tamil part of the island.

Sinhala policies have oppressed the Tamil people from the day the British flag was lowered and the Tamils were taken by surprise when the new flag was raised featuring the Sinhala lion. Early protests by the Tamil leadership fell on deaf ears, and the Sinhala majority and their political leaders began an all-out assault on the basic rights of the Tamil people from that ominous day. After more than thirty years of negotiations and peaceful protests failed to improve the situation, the Tamils began talking of severing their area from the Sinhala part of the island and forming their own militias to protect themselves. In 1983, severely shaken by the 1983 massacre of Tamils by Sinhala mobs, the largest of the militias, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), began a full fledged war that, except for intermittent periods, has continued to rage. This armed conflict is fully governed by all applicable rules of humanitarian law, and the combatants in this war, as in any war, are allowed to have land, sea, and air forces and to carry out military operations. Our organizations have been involved with monitoring this war since we first addressed the United Nations human rights expert body about it in August 1983.

Armed conflict is not terrorism. People still have the right under international law to resist oppression and racist regimes. The right to use force as a last resort to achieve freedom and restore human rights is fully protected. What is allowed for Kosovans is allowed for Tamils. While we always regret when any situation deteriorates to the point of war, we can attest that the Tamils clearly had the right to use force long before they actually resorted to it.

The LTTE, the only current resistance force of the Tamil people, is not a terrorist organization. This does not mean that one is siding with the LTTE in the armed conflict or that one has to “like” the LTTE (or the Tamils for that matter); it merely recognizes the obvious -- a war has broken out -- and places review of that war properly under the humanitarian law regime. As should be patently obvious, terrorist organizations, unlike the LTTE, are not in military uniforms, do not carry out military operations using the instrumentalities and materiel of armed conflict, do not control territory, and usually do not even have an identifiable chain of command. We are well aware that the term “terrorist organization” has been applied to the LTTE by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, but this has been to forward a political agenda, is not in conformity with applicable humanitarian law and is clearly wrong on its face.[1] Many legislators, experts, and human rights and humanitarian law organizations, including our own, have protested this false, politically-motivated designation.[2]

We understand that some, if not many, are confused by the terms, in part because of the purposeful obfuscation by the United States in its operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo, and by its desire to be able to decide at will who is a “freedom fighter” and who is a “terrorist” based on its own interests -- as it has since World War II. We also understand that most ordinary people are intimidated by the labeling. However, we would expect that a person of your stature, traveling in a country at war, on a mission that you claim was to help bring peace to the island, would know better. Instead you contributed to the orchestrated confusion and, even worse, openly sided with the Sinhala in the Tamil/Sinhala war. This is reinforced by the fact that you did not visit the Tamil areas. We wonder if you even asked to.

Perhaps the worst outcome of your remark is that it fosters the notion that the Geneva Conventions and the laws and customs of war do not apply to this war and makes the dire situation of the Tamil victims of this war far worse. The government has clearly taken advantage of the lack of international review of this war using applicable humanitarian law to carry out serious war crimes with apparently no fear of international consequences: attacks on hospitals, children’s schools, churches, camps for internally displaced, villages and towns and aid workers; wholesale disappearances and murders of Tamil civilian; the denial of food and medicines for the Tamil civilian population due to blockades; -- to name a few -- receive little or no mention.[3] Those who dare ask about the fate of Tamil civilians are instantly attacked by the Sri Lankan authorities for supporting “terrorism.” The government of Sri Lanka has even backed the United Nations Human Rights Council and its mechanisms into a corner, making a laughing stock of them and threatening to destroy human rights systems carefully built up since 1948.

We are not aware of remarks you may have made privately to the Sri Lanka authorities, so it may be that you spoke candidly, if not forcefully, about the need to reopen all ground routes to allow food and medicine to all Tamils in the North and East or about the need to cease bombing civilian targets, or the need to call off the “white vans” that scoop up Tamils every day, or the need to allow full humanitarian aid to all victims of the armed conflict, or the need to allow proper monitoring of the situation, and other highly pertinent topics. We would certainly hope so. However, the fact remains that you made a highly offensive public comment for which the international community, especially the Tamil people, needs a full apology. The Tamil people were clinging to a ray of hope in their ordeal for their rights, but instead received cruel disillusionment. We also expect before your next “peace” mission to a war torn area you study the conflict well in advance, and bring along texts with the rules of humanitarian law.

We also send you a copy of our letter to the United Nations Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in light of the situation of Tamils. We are happy to provide other pertinent material we have submitted to the United Nations if you so request.

Yours most sincerely,


Karen Parker, JD
Chief delegate of IED to UN
Co-Founder and President, AHL


[1] Under current United States “definitions,” Ethan Allan and the Green Mountain Boys and, indeed, even George Washington’s Continental Army would be terrorist organizations and the Boston Tea Party a terrorist act.
[2] We note, that in spite of the repeated use of the term “terrorists” by Sri Lankan officials when referring to the LTTE, and the governments active role in seeking a “terrorist” label by other States, the government has not officially labeled the LTTE as a terrorist organization.
[3] Please note that under the Statute and Elements of the International Criminal Court, restricting food and medicines for the civilian population is part of the crime of extermination. See ICC, Rome Statute, Articles 7 (1)(b) and 7(2)(b); ICC Elements, Article 7(1)(b).

ISABELLE VER.01

And so, since all stories must have a beginning, my life story probably starts with a wonderful ancestor, grandma Isabelle.
Now if that name makes you think of sweet, genteel colonial ladies with delicate fans, parasols and elbow length white gloves, partaking of “Tiffin” or groping tremulously for their smelling salts, let me bust the bubble because Grandma Isabelle was, well – different. *
I remember her looking sternly at me over her thick spectacles and saying “are you wearing decent knickers, child? Otherwise if the skirt goes up people will laugh- big shame, no”
I remember looking back at her blinking speechlessly and nodding humbly “yes, nana” ; I dare say your own grandma probably told you stuff like this too, when you were a kid, but the difference here was probably that I was 30 at the time, and had come to visit her, riding a small Indian Yamaha, without a valid license. …(gulp!)
And she boasted of language that could out-swear the hairiest drunkest Pettah naatami and was not afraid to use it. Words like thoe, yakoe, and bung, and rolled off her tongue with as much dubious ease as the lyrics of Shakespearean verse, Edelweiss and old Nat King Cole numbers…She conscientiously objected to the Dickmans road cripple who made oodles of money just by hobbling around the posh Prados passing through that junction, so she would spend mornings dutifully insulting him from her baloney for being such a low down parasite…
Grandma Isabelle was maybe a tad over five foot high and as light as a thistle but ate like a marine, and knew how to enjoy life to the fullest. I remember she loved anything packaged in England (peaches, tarts, wheetabix) for the same reason that children do, that its bright , flavorful and generally not locally available, and she would cheerfully guzzle chocolates, fig biscuits and apple tarts with a devil may care “to hell with the diabetes” attitude.(Blood sugar, predictably, didn’t dare to rear its ugly head and try cramping her style, because I suspect she would have told it to go take a hike)
My art, writing and sense of esthetics I believe I owe to her side of the family and she taught me, I remember, how to paint ostriches in the African Savannah. I can still mix the exact color of an ostriches butt feathers which are a “bluish greenish black with a slight touch of yellow in it for depth”.
It was later on that I actually learned that Colombo’s“Morotuwa” people are somewhat famous for the arts, (art, music, sculpting and writing ) and that “down south” people sometimes don’t really value this much because they are way more practical in useful talents like cooking and making broods of exemplary offspring…intermarry these two and there will always be gentle disdain from both sides about what the other cant do.
Grandma Isabelle’s favorite movie was “Colamba Sanniya”(Coming Sweet) which although I have never seen in my life, I have listened with delight to detailed accounts of, since I was 7 and thus can actually picture clearly in my minds eye, right down to the white scratch marks on the movie.
The hero was (played by?) Freddie or Eddie Someone who won a lottery as the story was repeated to me on torpid tropical Ceylon afternoons, which along with my love for ambul bananas, large Marie biscuits(no longer produced) and good Ceylon tea, makes me now realize how ancient I must be…it is classic 1950s style comedy about some village godeyaars** who win a luxury house in Colombo that they don’t know what to do with. Around the point where they start doing their laundry in the water closet, grandma falls into numerous staged microsleeps and I have to start prodding her for the balance.

Its tough when you have not much control over your life, and have to listen to “good” advice from people 40 years younger than you. So by 90 and definitely as part of a complex counter plan, Grandma Isabelle developed a Strategic Wheeze which she could produce when things weren’t going to her liking, such as when anyone suggested a healthful after dinner walk or any such physical exercise…or a visit to the dentist…monthly checkups… etc
She also had a distinctly selective and very volatile memory, something computer junkies would have called “Need Only Memory” because she remembered things only if they suited her, and otherwise resorted to a an extremely blank and innocent expression of pleasant non recognition which she had perfected down the years.
So questions like “ would you like another piece of angel cake ?” would be met by a carefully worded “ what angel cake ? did I just eat a piece?” which meant of course but don’t tell anyone I ll be having two. That face was also used when reminded of old correspondence she should be replying to.

I don’t believe Nana worried about death at all, even thought she was past 90 when it got her. Although she sometimes discussed passing concerns like globalisation, deforestation and whether young Tushi was having an unsuitable affair in her office , she accepted inevitable eventualities like illness and mortality with the calm don’t care attitude of a tattooed underworld thug.
In fact quite predictably, she went down singing and joking all the way and her last recorded words where actually a cracked old baila very loosely translated as “shall I tell you of the love I have for you? In the afternoon come to the bathing pipe-and ill tell you”.
Nana was a happy rebel in her age, like I am in mine. My mother is comparatively a very normal, mainstream and ladylike character and so is my daughter, so I guess this weirdness skips generations.
They say that each person will somewhere be duplicated in her ancestry or among her descendents, and if so I do wonder if I will someday have a pixie faced, happy go lucky tomboy of a grand or great grand daughter, who will write about me.
If so she’s forgiven in advance….

………………………………………
* This sort of explains me, but not fully
** Pardon the haughty colonial expression

domestic available -good credentials

Now you know how difficult it is to find a good domestic in Colombo. ..the paradox is that there are so many poor folks out there looking for a job but they just dont seem to get the right linkage..Kalyani is looking for a job as a domestic - she says she can look after kids , keep the place clean that sort of thing shes asking about 7,500/- a month (negotiable)
She has experiance working for a family in Bahrain, and lives in Kirrillewela , in her own house. Shes married and has three sons ,and she can only work as a daily help- from 8-5 pm
... you want more info about her please write to me

CRICKET IS EVIL

all about the bad side to Cricket
Wait a minute! There is one? Yup, Im afraid there is – just as much as there is a bad side to anything and I actually went deep into thought on the subject last Saturday night.
Have you noticed there is nothing like electricity cut to get one really philosophical? It’s the sudden withdrawal of constant media overload , that abrupt silencing of soap, sausage and posh car adverts and the compulsory return to nature which drags us protesting back to the stone age*, where hairy cavemen sat huddled around wood firelight worrying about what might be lurking beyond it - last Saturday this was excellently simulated in Kolonnawa and the resident mozzies found poor Al sitting in pitch darkness at 3 am in the morning in heavy humid torpor listening in horror to the distant rat a tat of something that just could not have been crackers (duh, we were losing according to sonny boy, whom I consulted for updates from his squeaky portable pocket radio from Pettah) .
Along with vague but serious anxieties that the country was being taken over by armed rebels, SMS-ed rumous that Colombo was under siege and that doomsday was nigh, I was also subconsciously formulating a solid case against cricket, and now that I have my broadband back I can actually put it into words and on line.
For a start, I might as well admit, shockingly, that I am not a cricket fan, and have never been able to sit still long enough to understand what all those guys are trying to achieve running about with little white balls. It looks like something that only mad-dogs and Englishmen would want to do and I cant for the life of me understand why anyone would continue to submit to this torture once the cloying mantle of colonial coercion had been withdrawn.
But they do, and not only the team (bless their cotton socks, they seem like decent enough chaps!) but the spectators-at least in my estimate 65 % of our population who are mad about cricket are willing to put career, family, romance, peace and indeed anything aside just to fixate on this game, not just while its being played but to watch the re runs , spend hours afterwards analyzing it and if that’s not enough they will read about it too in the papers and write home about it just in case anyone has missed a single ball .
Lets start with the effect on the economy:
So for a poor third world country if you do the maths ,the reason we are extremely poor even if we are a happy bunch ,may possibly be traced to the fact that we have more holidays than anyone else, and to the estimated effect of just one fairly interesting game of cricket on the local GDP
The mathematics works out like this 20 million people x 65 % x two working days =Rs 13 Billion (because the average manual laborer can make 500 a day and here I have taken minimums- if you are a doctor who earns 10000/= a day well, do enjoy your holiday because its expensive) Electricity consumed to watch and analyze the game – do get these horrible stats from the CEB but Im sure its nothing less than Rs 2 Billion-so total at a minimum 15 billion loss to the country from one game of cricket. Probably more than our politicians can swindle us out of in a month of corruption and being really immoral! (two working days comes from : 8 hours for the game, 4 hours for the drunken stupor afterwards + 4 hours discussing and anazlysing and another 2 hours writing home about it -like Im doing now . Also note Saturday and Sunday in middle class Sri Lanka, as many of you will accede, are days we often work harder than the weekdays )
Then there’s the effect on Family life.
The average couple returns from work , the guy takes to the tv cos its his day. The kids are running about unwashed, possibly in the process of developing the addiction, ignoring their homework. The mom of the house has enough steam coming out of her ears, to pressure cook a village-chicken. She will need to stay up till 1 am just to get the housework done and the rest of the family is in a trance, where you cant get a coherent response from them. Trust me there will be repercussion. I don’t need to tell you all of this – you see it in your homes often enough haven’t you ?
The effect on romance
Same as above. What was that saying again, when poverty knocks ,love flies out the window? Well , when poverty and cricket knock , homicidal rage sneaks in too. Hence the bashed televisions, women with black eyes and occasional suicides during cricket season-and this even when we are winning!
The effect on peace and camaraderie
Well, until Saturday I thought there was a positive effect on general peace in the country what with everyone gathering if not around the negotiating table, at least around the flat-screen at the same time, cheering in unison for the same multi-ethnic bunch.
This lovely thought used to bring a warm fuzzy feeling to me and a tear to my eye, not to mention an emotional twitch. But alas the effect is now irreversibly spoiled by the realization that there are probably unexploded ordinances in the canal behind our house, and that what happened last Sunday was just not cricket! So apart from the loss to the economy of my estimated 15 billion, the other lesson learned would probably be that one has to be more paranoid than usual during matches, if such is possible**….so cricket simply increases tension , if that is possible , for the already stressed sentinels who guard our perimeters…that’s a truly sobering thought any day.
But what about how happy it makes people?
Yes, indeed, and there you have it , this is probably why Sri Lanka although poor by economic standards may nevertheless be quite high on the unofficial Happiness Index. That is why I have decided to quit being so grinchy about it and try and figure out what its all about so that if I cant beat them, I can at least join them next time and share in the fun!

After all , cricket may be evil but that certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy it !!!
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
* Or at least the kerosene age
** and Im not going to even begin to comment about the international signed balls controversy because the gurus have already been there and done that. Do write in and give me al l the good reasons why I should join the leagues of the cricket crazy

ayyo madam

so Where exactly were these bombs? well, according to the testimoney of local Wellampitiya ear witness Kusumawathi* "ayyo madam honda welaawata api beruney. Light niwwe nisa unta tena hoyaganna barry vela , apey geval pitipasse wela ta vatilane bomba tika."
Losely translated – thank goodness we alive madam lights off so tigers not finding oil corporation and dropping boms on canal behind our house and we scared (to death ?)


* http://aljuharawrites.blogspot.com/2006/10/domestic-bliss-kusumawathie-files.html

3000 left, and dwindling....

Is the very move - relocating elephants in the national parks - aimed at protecting these majestic animals killing them? Kumudini Hettiarachchi reports on a visit to the
Lunugamvehera National Park where elephants appear to be dying of starvation.
Are elephants starving to death? Not outside but in the very place they have been driven to in the name of protection and safety - the Lunugamvehera National Park.

Several of the elephants, about 250 herded into the Lunugamvehera Park, under two phases of an elephant drive that began in 2005, may have died for lack of food, resulting in malnourishment and disease, The Sunday Times learns, after a visit to the area this week. What will be the fate of the remaining elephants, considering that the dry season is just starting?

"I saw three elephants dead in the park," says T.A. Ajith Kumara, 18, who lives just outside the
boundary, explaining that their carcasses were by the bund of the Lunugamvehera tank, in the jungle.

Giving a time period of one and a half months, just after the tank reached spill level, he says
others in his village have seen another eight or ten dead elephants.

Recently, the elephants were always near the electric fence, put up at the boundary, but they
are no longer here because wanajeevi (wildlife) people have cut a massive drain, he says,
pointing to a large swathe of earth churned up by bulldozers.

A long stretch of the park off the Wellawaya-Tissamaharama Road is now barricaded not only by the electric fence but also this deep drain. At night, the fence is guarded by wildlife
officials from temporary cadjan-thatched open huts. The fence is also hung with small kerosene
containers which are lit at night to keep the elephants beyond and within the park itself.

Ajith says recently he counted more than 150 maha evun and pataw (big ones and babies) one night, adding that some elephants had wounds and rashes and most of them were godak kettu (very thin).
"Some of them who used to come with babies later came alone, most probably the babies may have died," he says, explaining that wanajeevi people come in regularly to treat the elephants, when informed.

"Even last night, I saw a very big cow elephant with a baby that was thin and weak," says Ajith
while his mother and brother confirm that even wanajeevi people have mentioned that the
elephants do not have enough food in the park.
The elephants also fight each other, with most confrontations occurring between the resident
park elephants and those who have been brought in.

A short walk into the park through an opening in the electric fence left for the fresh-water
fishermen to have access to the Lunugamvehera tank comes as an eye-opener.

The land is already parched and this is only the beginning of the dry season which would extend up to the end of September. The only scrub left without being touched are those that cannot be
eaten by the elephants. The andara (thorny) bushes, the fodder of elephants, have all been stripped to the core.

Several kilometres away, in their home, with the main road on one side and the electric fence of
the Lunugamvehera Park on the other, husband-wife W.K. Anurasiri and H.G. Dayawathie are only too willing to explain the plight of the elephants while also pointing out that Wildlife Department officials are trying to do their best amidst many problems.

"Yes, the elephants don't have anything to eat and we have been feeding them kehel bada through the fence," says Anurasiri, blaming the shortage of food within on the people who are using the area as grazing grounds for large herds of cattle which add up to many thousands.

The cattle eat up all the grass on the tank bed, leaving nothing for the elephants. Then the
elephants attempt to breakthrough the electric fence and forage for food in the villages close
by. That's the problem in this area. When the electric fence is on, the thin and gaunt
elephants walk up and down along the fence looking for food, waiting for whatever we can give them, he says.

"We heard of the deaths of three elephants within about a month very recently. We need elephants. Do you know that in the Maha we cultivators know that it is going to rain in about six-seven days when the elephants get together and keep trumpeting for a while," he says, also pointing a finger at the fishermen who frequent the tanks inside the park for disturbing elephant habitat.

His views are echoed by many in the area including Kusuma Senarath Abeywardena, who runs
the family boutique along the Wellawaya-Tissamaharama Road, close to the park.

All wildlife officials The Sunday Times spoke to declined to confirm or deny whether elephants
were dying of starvation in the park.
What has gone wrong at Lunugmavehera? Is this a problem only at this park or is it reflected
elsewhere in places such as Yala and Wilpattu, where elephants have been driven and imprisoned? Should Sri Lanka continue with elephant drives to collect these animals from areas that are their birthright and then put them into parks where already there is a resident elephant population?

Several wildlife officials told The Sunday Times that the department maybe rethinking its policy about elephant drives in the light of new developments.

"What can we do?" questioned one, explaining that the moment there are one or two incidents with elephants, there is a lot of pressure from people and politicians to "do something" about it, with
strong signals that the elephants should be removed from those areas.

The Sunday Times understands that under the drive conducted last year, elephants from forests around the left bank of the Walawe, mostly Forest department lands, covering more than 350 sq km. were herded to Lunugamvehera Park which is around 250 sq.km. The park itself may have had about 100 elephants and around 250 have been added to this
number. There is a large number in the park but the spadework necessary to accommodate them had not been done before the drive.

While this may have already resulted in some elephants dying from lack of food, yet another
drive was done two weeks ago into the same park, where another 100 elephants were driven in from state lands around Pelawatte, north of the park.
The Sunday Times learns that another drive is to take place into Wilpattu soon.

The Director-General of the Wildlife Conservation Department, Dayananda Kariyawasam was unavailable for comment as he was in the field, both on Wednesday and Thursday.

The need of the moment is for the department to launch an immediate investigation to ascertain whether elephants are dying of starvation. If these majestic beasts are facing death and
disease for lack or shortage of fodder, urgent steps are essential to save them right now before
the dry season takes its toll on these hapless creatures.

As the guardians of a heritage that belongs to the whole country, the Department of Wildlife
Conservation has a responsibility to find out and inform the public of the wellbeing and fate of
the elephants that have been driven to Lunugamvehera, an operation which cost over Rs. 160 million in public funds.


In the throes of death. A long and belaboured
intake of breath, then an equally shuddering
exhalation. No massive struggle, just the
forelegs pushing the earth and the eye glazing over.

A giant has been felled. We were witness to a
heart-rending death - the death of a majestic
bull elephant surrounded by concerned villagers
on the dried up bed of Tammennawewa in
Lunugamvehera just before noon on Tuesday. The
villagers had covered the dying elephant with
large leafy branches to ward off the noonday heat
while bringing water in small plastic buli (cans)
to wet it and also pour into its mouth.

This was yet another death due to gunshot
injuries, the villagers told The Sunday Times
while a young woman carrying a baby sighed sadly
and said, "We are angry with elephants when they
crash into our chenas or home-gardens but very
sad when we see them drop like this."

She had put the human-elephant conflict in a
nutshell, giving voice not only to the situation
the men, women and children in the area are faced
with but also to the plight of elephants.
[]

The dying elephant close to Tammennawewa: Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara

During a day's walkabout in the area from which
elephants were driven into Lunugamvehera Park, we
talk to knots of people. Three men about to leave
on their bicycles looking for kuli weda are vociferous about the ali
karadara.

"We are awake the whole night because the
elephants, especially the young males come to our
doorstep. Last year one elephant charged the wall
of a hut and killed a woman," says A.G. Siripala very critical of the drive.

Adds K.G.A. Nishantha: "Even if a small child
falls ill in the night we are unable to take him
to hospital for fear of elephants."

The consensus is that kisi hevillak, belillak
nethuwa (without checking out), the drive was
carried out. While a majority were herded into
the Lunugmavehera Park, many were left behind and
are creating a bigger problem than what villagers
faced earlier, because now elephants are familiar
with the ali wedi and thunder crackers used to chase them.

According to U.G. Jayalath elephants from other
areas have been brought to the area and this has
caused numerous problems to the villagers
numbering about 70 families. Not only are W.
Gamini and M.A. Sirimawathi willing to talk to us
but also take us around their large plot of land
to show jumbo footprints. "Can't grow a thing
here," says Sirimavathi, adding that she met an
elephant face-to-face in the garden in the
gloaming and was so scared that she rushed into
their tiny hut and shut the door. "I didn't step out until the next
morning."
Come walk in the wela and see what destruction
the elephants have caused, suggests H.S.
Dahanayake relating an incident where the
previous night his neighbour had to leave his hut
and hide in the bedda because an elephant very
nearly pushed the hut's wall down.

Most of these villagers have also helped in the
elephant drive. D.J.S. Weerasuriya gives details
of the drive. "The elephants were rounded up from
areas such as Ridiyagama. Madunagala and
Suriyawewa and brought close to Lunugamvehera in
August 2005, when the drive had to be called off
due to heavy rain. Then in August 2006 it was
initiated once again and about 350 elephants were
rounded up and led to the park. But about 175,
among whom are about 45 thaniyas ehe meha vuna
(the loners moved away)," he says giving the
final verdict that the drive was a 99% failure.

While those days the villagers had to contend
with only about four to five elephants now they
have to deal with a large number, he says.

M.K. Gunapala who keeps vigil in his tree hut
high up, protecting his melon crop against
elephants, says after about 6 in the evening
people are frightened to get out of their homes.

All these complaints and grumblings are from the
area elephants were driven from. While it is
crystal clear that the drive has not solved the
problems the villagers had with elephants, it
seems to have aggravated the issue. While most
villagers lay the blame for a "failed" elephant
drive squarely at the door of the Wildlife
Conservation Department, others claim wildlife
officials are doing their best in a difficult situation.

Those in the fifth colony warned us against going
to the next village, the sixth colony, as my
colleague was in khaki slacks. "People may
mistake you for wanajeevi..they are waiting for
them to come," said U.G. Jayalath.

Leaving recriminations aside, what needs to be
done is damage control and implementation of
effective long-term remedies, not only for the
protection of humans but also of elephants.

THE HECK WITH THE JONESES

A while back I happened to change channels and stumble an episode of a foreign TV reality show as they are called, and what do you know, these otherwise brilliant and beautiful young people were agreeing to the most disgusting kinds of torture in order to win a prize.
Some of them had to eat sausages made of living , squealing beetles which sprouted bitter liquid when they were touched, or munch and swallow clumps of furry caterpillars, or huge chunks of four day old rotten fish with the maggots crawling in it. All this to pass through stages of this game which meant higher levels of loathsome torture and a possible grand prize of so many USD -With the amount of retching, vomiting and sheer suffering going on I ended up wondering if I should SMS Amnesty International (-not to mention PETA: after all- how do you think the poor darned caterpillars felt being chewed to death on Candid Camera? ), and would I do this sort of thing even if someone obviously really sick offered me a million dollars to do it?
I figured finally that it wasn’t the money really (you really cant get very far with so many USD in USA-they have a real high COL), these kids had taken on something and wanted to prove themselves, that they can do this , that they would win this – and stubbornly did not want to back out of the series of tortures arranged for them.-because they didn’t want to lose face.
Well , have you ever found yourself going though something really uncomfortable, miserable and downright painful , just because it was the done thing ?because you wanted to prove a point? Or because your loved ones or peers expected this from you ? This all sounds quite Noble and Meaningful and its probably how man got on the moon (big deal) but at the end of the day its also the root cause underlying some less glamourous institutions ranging from FGM, bulimia, body piercing and widow burning, to of course, the taking of ones own life when all else fails…in other words , perhaps sometimes it would be actually safer and less fatal, to say “Heck ,no” if you don’t want to do something, in spite of what the people at office think. …

I hail from a family of non conformists. No, its not a cult, but it does mean we have most of the time lived our lives the way we please, and are often thus inexplicably happy.
We gave up worrying about public opinion a long while back. So our actions and reactions in life are not governed by such worries as “Chee lamayo what will the neighbors say ?”(or for the word neighbors, you can safely substitute: “ relations” “classmates” or “people in the staff van” etc)
Before you get me wrong here, this does not mean that we run naked through the streets *or drive without third party insurance or sit around doing any of the hyper embarrassing things that drunk people do when they lose their inhibitions; it just means we have a family code of not letting world opinion interfere with our decision making and how we find happiness in life.

Its extremely sad to me therefore when I see so many of my lovely friends suffering in life , not because they believe in something , but because they will worry about what the neighbours/relations/co workers or what have you are likely to say to their decisions.

Take local marriages. I know you’ve seen them too, the sad examples of obviously mismatched people dragging through years of misery because they cannot gather the courage to end it decently and face the brief publicity involved . They grasp desperately to the excuse that its “For The Sake of the Kids,” as a stock reason to continue with a gloomy limbo of emotional imprisonment, until the kids themselves turn back in their mid thirties and probably choke with guilty amazement at the prolonged anguish they have unwittingly caused.
I suspect too, that this is again nothing but a stock excuse, because people who live together through years of arguing, screaming and cheating- “for the sake of the kids”- hardly ever take to more constructive ways to stay married, such as marriage counseling, therapy or alternative arrangements (heck – even swinging-) because again even those words have certain stigmas attached to them…
Finally since adultery is fairly well accepted socially (by the guy population anyway who keep it a well guarded secret) this becomes the first and last resort and you don’t need me to tell you there is a heck of a lot of it going on…
There is of course a positive and limiting factor in public opinion: 21st century man doesn’t run round naked, copulate or defecate on the streets and that is good. But in practice has it ever prevented dastardly crime or any of the atrocities that really matter? Have terrorists or dictators or underworld killers ever actually thought twice before they lobbed a hand grenade and killed people, on the lines of “oh goodness what will mallika-anti think if this is traced to me ?” Highly unlikely – but neither probably would they like to be caught picking their noses on State TV – that’s just so not cool.

Perhaps then, its time to non-conform. To take a step back and think – this is your life .You are finally responsible for how happy you are, you can make it happen, you can decide how it goes and since these are not the dark ages there is some measure of freedom of choice.
You wont be burnt at the stake in Town Hall just because you decided to walk away from something that is making you miserable. Quit worrying about the opinions of the people up the road –chances are they have their own problems to sort out and would probably want you to be happy anyway.
Or at least not another messy statistic.

……………………………………………………………
*Not a good idea anyway with all this dust and pollution
Authors note: Non conformity, in general, should not result in damage to self either.-so avoid doing things you see on the Jackass Movies-some of those guys don’t have teeth, and you can imagine how they lost them . One wonders what else they don’t have.

A PAGE FROM THE PAST

Al’s Diary 2006 April 10th
I confess the idea of a New Year in April has always vaguely befuddled me and no matter how old I grow I somehow seem to live in general ambivalence towards the idea. It doesn’t actually register as a New Year, no matter how much it should. Sure, there’s the heat, the tedious spring cleaning involved, the pilgrimages to visit hoards of obscure relations Down South (although they are lovely people , its tiring and this is supposed to be a holiday). And there’s that horrible raucous bird ….but New Year?

Well,ok, I’m not really breathlessly looking forward to New Year much; let me be totally honest with you. Its one of those times of the year where my inadequacy as a housewife really shines through, where my non conformity actually embarrasses me and the happy complacent spiders in my mahagedaera loom larger and hairer in their misplaced confidence that I find their intricate traceries of web-design actually esthetic. This is not the case, I don’t. It’s just that finding a broom and covering the furniture with sheets is so tiresome…

IN fact I confess I don’t know how to make perfect boorees in the Kavum or paint those wonderful patterns on the floor, and I haven’t done any shopping, in fact I don’t even have a pot to boil the proverbial milk in. I don’t like coconut milk its difiicult ,whine whine (ok-Very Bad!)
In fact compared to all regular housewives , I think I exist as a benchmark , a role non model against which you can all actually look really good set against! You good readers should be pleased that set besides me you all stand out as paragons of cleanliness, virtue and downright good habits , every last one of you !

All I can hope for then is that this time will pass very quickly and I can sink back into the pleasant idyll of a somewhat musty but homely house and happy but un-bathed pets and my usual hobbies and pastimes…as soon as possible! This is not to say I wont be happy this year…my happiness has never really depended on what season , area or circumstance I may be going through…happiness is not , I figured , something someone out there can bestow on us, or some circumstance can arrange for us.
Happiness is a state of balance and its something you decide you will afford your self regardless of the things you don’t have and the problems you do…its when you realize, not that your bottle is half full or not empty, but when you take it in your hands, hold it to the sunlight and simply marvel at what a gorgeous achievement of aesthetics a glass bottle really is in the first place !

So my friends, in spite of the spiders and the heaps of newspaper and old bottles that I have to lug, the serious expenditure I will have to incur on oily rubbish I cant eat, and the general embarrassment of not being able to afford to paint the old home….in spite of all of this, the traditional New Year will, I know , be a happy one for me because very simply I’ve decided I’m going to be happy.
And I do hope you decide the same too! :-)

Al's New Year Clean Up List 2006

• all truce agreements with spiders have effectively expired
• last years stringy underwear goes in a bonfire
• the first aid drawer needs an overhaul .no matter how life saving they seem , all fungicidal tubes with an expiry date before 2002 need to go
• only 12 pairs of footwear to be retained for daily purposes, the rest will be bagged and sent under the stairs with reference numbers ….

THREE QUOTATIONS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

Last week I got an anonymous SMS, which went as follows:

I AM MARRIED AND HAVING FAMILY PROBLEMS .I AM LOOKING FOR A LADY TO FULL MY LONELY LIFE TO A COMPLETE SUCCES. EVEN I HAVE ENOUGH MONEY, LIFE IS BORING.

Well, I know what youre thinking
1) if that were my husband I would use a large pineapple on him, and 2)rotten grammar!

either way it sure got me wondering …what is complete success?

Well, Im a great one for self help books. From “ Men are From Mars” to the “Seven Secrets of Success” and the Unofficial Guide to Corporate Success, you name it, its sitting in my bookshelf gathering dust and acting as a refugee camp for egg carrying ants during the rainy season (and what is it with ants and old books, TV remotes and CD wallets? You turn around for a few weeks and suddenly the little beggars are hauling in a large collection of messy white larvae, and if you disturb them they collectively project a truly self effacing aura of surprise & damp apology and start running around)… … I must have spent an absolute fortune on self improvement books which I havnt read, or like in the case of "MEMORY BOOSTERS -ten tips to a popwerful memory", cant remember who I lent to..

Yoga , Karate and Belly Dance CDs sit gathering dust in my CD Racks and my daughter has warned me against any more meditation books ,sternly pointing out that if I invested that much in X FILES SEASON NINE , at least SOME ONE would find happiness…

If that’s not enough guidance, there’ s free advise, unloaded on the unresisting computer user daily :My email inboxes , for example are permanent repositories for such newsletters as “The Weight Loss Game Plan” “How to Catch and Keep Your Man” and “Size does matter, increase yours!”which promise you happinss around the corner ,if you just could possibly reach that ideal level…

With all this good advice, tips tricks and guidelines all over the place ,you wonder how people can be as disgruntled , dissatisfied and downright disturbed as they are in this modern age and indeed I too have given this a lot of thought. If statistics are anything to go by, it would appear that some Sri Lankan’s actually find lasting happiness by uncomplicated straightforward means such as being regularly drunk, beating women or animals and giving into road rage. Or adultery:

Personally I don’t “have” a lot of things that are perceived as success in society. I don’t have a house, a car, a man or even a steady dog (two of them left because they got tastier stuff nearby and one got rabies)…I have beautiful children but because I could not afford a committed lawyer , I did not get custody of them. I do have a cool job but most of the time Im crippled by inexplicable insecurity about if I deserve it..and so go through life apologising for myself, it is a thought provoking list.

So am I successful? Has something stuck from reading all the gigabytes of good advice Im exposed to ?Am I happy? the answers are worth examining.

Im a whole lot happier than the bloke who sent me that message, and I have never been happier in my life, not even when I had all those things viewed as critical Success Factors.- I was comparatively miserable then because I never appreciated their value, took them for granted and generally didn’t even notice anything remarkable about them. I know, I now value what I do have. For example:

I have wonderful children…all around me ,not just mine, but every where I look, small eager ,powdered , dusty kneed, pop eyed, bursting with curiosity and potential , those sweet miracles of the universe.Like puppies and kittens,they represent years of potential happiness in watching them grow.

I still have some of my teeth, in spite of the fact that maintaining them is taking a sizeable chunk of my salary monthly. I look down at my toes and think “ gosh those appendages are thirty five years old – they don’t look that BAD!” I mean imagine gloves or socks you have used for thirty five years around the clock. The human body is miracle and a evolutionary success fine tuned over millions of years- and we just never notice.

I have sunlight, each morning I wake up and marvel at the beauty of this country, things that we usually just don’t seem to notice or appreciate. Waiting for the bus last Wednsday I watched the local troupe of languars dash cheekily across power lines, clowning furry black bodies against a haunting back drop of a totally amazing giant orange globe of rising sun, and this mind you was in Wellampitiya twenty minutes away from Central Colombo. No one saw them, I guess everyone else was concentrating on how to be a success that day….for me if the sun shines the day cannot be bad .

There are thirty six million colours around me. :As Im writing this article Ive had a long tiring day and Im enjoying a small square box of pineapple juice the kind you can get in any grocery for 22 rupees. It’s a lovely bright yellow and red marvel of modern packaging and there are luscious looking beads of dew on the outsides. Have you never looked at one of those packages closely? True they are the products of commercial strategizing but are they not beautiful all the same ? Would not ancient man have stopped in his tracks if confronted with such art , but don’t we take it for granted like all the other beautiful things in life we don’t bother to notice?

So I have to admit (touch wood) at last and at the ripe old age of thirty six, I have finally got what I want in life. And incidentally I have not clawed my way up some symbolic co orporate ladder, back stabbing hapless fellow humans along the way, married into a rich dynasty or won any thing larger than a 50/- sweep ticket , in my life.

I have in fact , as my good friends know, been steadily creeping my way down the proverbial corporate ladder, and yet, I have what I want, or maybe its just that I want what I have and that’s what makes all the difference…Perhaps someday I will write my own book to tell people how it was done but for now there are three lines I have always lived by and probably always will:

“ Everything can be taken from man, but his power to chose his reaction.”
By Victor Franknyl, a survivor of Auschwitz
“You cannot give someone happiness without having some of it rub off on yourself ,”
Mother Theresa (I think)
And of course, from the sunscreen song –
“DANCE – even if you have no where to do it but in your living room!”
…………………………………………………
The author recognises that she owes her happiness to a wonderful and supportive family & ex-in laws and a few good friends. She is no expert and the above are simply personal observations and in no way actually guarantee to bring success into readers lives. But do give them a try…

AL’s SINISTER SILENCE EXPLAINED

In case you are wondering what happened to poor Al Juhara, these last few weeks, here’s the whole sad story: The last month, my dear friends, things fell apart.

That is to say, years of avoiding doctors like the plague, staying stubbornly clear of all those much advertised medical check up retreats cum therapy sessions, or in fact any product or service which even remotely proffers any sort of health benefit…suddenly took its toll.

And so with the onset of March madness, there I was hit suddenly and simultaneously by backache, headache, toothache and allergic reaction not to mention manic depression plus the odd touch of candida ,(on top of the usual list of dandruff, halitosis and intestinal parasites which I have long come to terms with and am treating symbiotically* )- ie you name it – I was hit by it!

And serves me right you may say.

Pretty much anything to do with the whole medical process totally revolts me. Saying that hospitals are claustrophobic disinfectant smelling nightmares to me, a mere step away from mortuaries or asylum, and doctors particularly the handsome ones, basically give me the creeps, would be quite understating my stance.

From medical laboratories, where I pantomime realistic torture scenes, to X ray rooms and agonising about how radio active I am becoming over time, down to the pharmacies where I am prepared to spend ages bullying staff for the cheap SPC version of anything – and last but not least, the emphatic and long standing declaration of hostilities I have with the insurance people , the entire process is a hassle I conscientiously try to avoid as though my life depended on it. …

There’s rustifying….

That’s one word which should be in the Oxford Dictionary if it isnt already, it means waiting hanging about wasting time. You stand in one long, thought provoking queue get a chit, stand in another, find out it’s the wrong one, go back to another, get your blood drawn, another to get your results, and another to channel a doctor and this is all mind you in the relatively hassle free paying section. And then how about all that waiting ? So tiresome, so much so that last week I was wondering if I could channel the ENT specialist while I was hanging about waiting for the orthopaedic surgeon. And perhaps check in on a gynaecologist too, on the way out….but I saw the cashiers looking at me in a bit of a strange way so I refrained myself from going too deep into this request….



….There is embarrassment. … .

Mammograms and ECG’s are humbling blouse-less episodes involving mammary compression and welt forming suction cups respectively. Have you any idea about that half circle shape you see in a mammogram? Well it’s not a cross section of your erm, assets, it’s a compression gone through on a horizontal axis, which they get by pressing you between two freezing metal plates till there is only two inches of space. Get it ? Truly the stuff of sadism nightmares…However people who have been to a proctologist have even worse things to say…

And there is lots of pointless arguing…..

Consider this real life dialog I recently held with an obviously unprepared call centre executive in my medical insurance company:

‘Good morning, I’m calling about my latest claim for policy number 123123, my name is XYZ”

“Yes, ma’am, how can I help you?”

“I submitted these bills in September. Why have they not been processed?”

“Hold on a moment, ma’am while I check…. (Pregnant pause) um, these are for vaccines, ma’am, we don’t reimburse vaccines…”

“Excuse me! That’s the Human Anti Rabies vaccine. Its not something we take for cosmetic reasons. It’s a Post Exposure Emergency Measure **IT was an emergency requirement … I had to spend twenty five thousand on this, and if you don’t help us out in life and death emergencies like that what is the point in having a policy ? I might as well suck up to my Rich Aunt in Liverpool….”

“Um hold on ma’am…let me check…”There was a REALLY pregnant pause this time, and the sound of flies buzzing.. after which she asked me the most blog-worthy question I have been asked this year…“Umm madam, were you showing symptoms of the condition at the time .In that case I think we are allowed to reimburse….”

Here folks, my usually fairly well flowing reserves of presentation English totally dried up, and left me speechless as in most really good opportunities I ever get to defend myself. Which was most disappointing because in retrospect I wondered if I could have mentioned to her that now I come to think of it, there had in fact been a Little Frothing….

To be honest, I am quite broke now and would admit to almost anything if it would help the claim….

……………………………………………………………………………



*maybe that’s why Im single. Or maybe it’s an oxymoron and Im not really technically single. You decide

** Yup, I know the jargon, I tell ya

Crowing about Pocky-Part 2

What followed was about 40 hours of wild and total chaos. Pocky’s condition improved exponentially and he gorged himself on papaws and salmon, which he naturally had to expel pretty soon; crows either have short digestive tracts or this one was so starved that whatever he ate went right through. Pretty soon my bedroom was covered with a series of artistic streaks of half digested muck which I did not want to analyze. My bed, carpet and walls, in fact any patch of room I did not cover with newspapers and polythene was liberally decorated with half formed guano. My monitor and keyboard were favorite areas as well as the dressing table where Pocky would land near my deodorant collection and preen in the mirror.

At some stage in the proceedings Mom reported on me to Thaththi and he mercifully adopted a “Wait and See” approach since it was a bit late in the day to worry about germs. This meant if anything went wrong (or wronger than it already had,anyway) I could probably look forward to a humbling lecture on how I should be more responsible and not Do Nonsense like this etc. The rest of the family came by to see things for themselves and were rudely judged by Pocky.
The Persian cat gave me a long silent look I wont forget and stayed beyond a radius of 30 feet from my bedroom, for Pockys entire stay.

Within 24 hours Pocky had learned two tricks. To come when he was called, and sit on my mouse pad if I tapped it(perhaps it looked friendly and familiar like an helicopter launch site?) and the Silly Cotton Bud Trick: Cotton buds were to Pocky what a red flag is to a bull- you showed him one, he would take it as a personal challenge, and grab it from you, yank it angrily out of your fingers and place it on the ground. Then he would give you a beady-eyed look as if challenging you to touch it. If you did try to touch it, he would hold your finger very threateningly in a strong black beak and push your hand away. But there was a glint of mischief in the beady eyes that spoke of smiling inside.

This then, is why it has been outlawed to harbor crows, their intelligence is incredible for something that bird-brained, and I believe uncharted, I’m sure if they had opposable digits these little black suited gentlemen would be running the show. This was a wild crow that could not possibly have known a word of human, let alone English and here he was answering to a silly name I had given him within a matter of hours.

The worst challenge was catching hold of him for long enough to force-feed the tetracyclin as per the six hourly course. This was an exercise in guerrilla warfare that took about 2 hours for me to win, and helped me lose a lot of weight since it involved me stalking, crouching , pouncing and missing around my bedroom. Pocky did not want to have a bitter powder shoved down his throat and freely expressed his disgust in no uncertain terms. From the strangled objections it was pretty obvious that I would soon be hauled in by the Wellampitiya Police, not just for harboring a crow but for general breach of peace, environmental pollution, and if Pocky had his say, animal rights violations too.

48 hours of this was the giddy limit. SO two days after I had rescued a weak droopy lump of crow on Greenpath, I opened my windows in Wellampitiya and told Pocky he was free to go.

The croak he let out was definitely something like “that’s more like it” and out he flew like a large relieved black torpedo. Characteristically he did not disappear at once, but sat down on a banana leaf outside my window (prudently just out of my reach in case I changed my mind ) looked hard at me, sideways, and burst into an earnest and elaborate monologue of cackles and caws.

It definitely included an element of grudging gratitude in it, hidden among possible indignation that this was Wellampitiaya I was releasing him in , which was probably an affront to a Colombo 7 crow; I can also safely assume it was something in the lines of “So long and thanks for all the antibiotics!” or he could have been warning me about the plots my cats were hatching, or telling me to go easy on the deodorant- I do wish I had an interpreter.

Either way, within a minute, he was soaring off into the wild blue yonder and I was sitting in a really smelly room, feeling sorely dumped.

Pocky may have left me in favor of freedom but I have sweet memories, which I treasure, of two days spent hiding a little black suited refugee in my bedroom. And now whenever one of them comes and sits on the branches outside my window, I cannot help but smile and wonder if he’s telling me that a friend is going to visit – or if its Pocky come back to see how I am…

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Got more endearing crow experiences? All furry, feathery, even slightly mangy stories about Sri Lankan fauna are welcome at : www.colombopetrescue.blogspot.com

My Darkest Secret

Its been up on two years now but the guilt of it has kept me silent so far. Even now I will not tell you who I am, for your author, dear gentle reader, is guilty of having broken the law, violated the penal code and /or acted unconstitutionally to boot and what’s worse now intends to crow about it too!

The cause of this was a beady eyed, near comatose bundle of black feathers I found on Greenpath , one Monday evening last July on my way back from work.

This creature was later named Pokey and he*was ill; birds of his feather had gathered around thoughtfully and were noisily discussing their intention of putting him out of his misery. Hint: this would involve being summarily pecked to death because they did not want to leave you to the cats. They obviously give a lot of thought to this sort of thing, crows.)
Well, you know me, I cannot walk past a creature that desperate, with my eyes wide shut- so I called up a passing tuk tuk , demanded a polythene bag from the surprised driver and placing the uncomplaining black mass in it, hired a lift home.

My Wellampitiya Vet and I have an excellent understanding: he maintains a straight face and does not burst out laughing or screaming hysterically when I bring the latest case in – and I provide him with lots of useful On the job experience. This was no exception.

Pokey was examined closely , his wings flexed , his rigid, gnarled claws forcefully unwrapped, and his throat shed light into with a good torch, after which dear ole Dr Perera decided that the paralysis could be treated by modern day anti biotics. He showed me how to take a “karala” and divide it iinto eight parts one of which I was supposed to administer at 6 hourly intervals.

So there was I saddled with a limp, dying crow, a 3 day course of tetracyclin and a cardboard box which I hastily requisitioned from the nearby supermarket.

The next challenge was to smuggle said refugee into our house without my father noticing.
My father is the serious, strict, Decision Maker person at home, the king of the Castle so to speak, who gives a lot of thought to possible calamity in life and solidly disapproved of anything with feathers on the basis that “they can have all kinds of dirty diseases” and this ,mind you , was in the seventies, decades before bird flu was even invented, and in spite of the fact that he grew up practically on a farm.
This therefore had to be a quiet back door entry kind of thing and so it was that I managed to sprint my unresisting secret up to my bedroom before the gate man could even turn around, and shut the door firmly against inquisitive family members to take a deep breath and really think about what I had just done.

Im a working girl, out from 9 to 5, and I have a small carpeted bedroom about 8 by 10, a very peaceful feminine pad furnished in pastel pink décor with lots of stuffed Disney characters- and now I had a large heavy rude black bird convalescing in it. Just how rude he was I was about to find out.

The first dose of tetracyclin was a breeze because I d found a needleless syringe and mixed the dust with honey, and Pokey was not expecting this , neither had he enough strength to object. Down the hatch it went, with a bit of feather – rustling.
And within an hour or two , it was working ! The listless doomed look was replaced by a suspicious calculating look, the head stood alert. Even the feathers were glossier. It was one of those good moments in a pet rescuers life.
It was also when the problems really started because Pokey began expressing his opinion, in a harsh and unlovely tone, probably listing his constitutional rights etc …

7 or 8 hours and two doses afterwards, Pokey was visibly transformed from being a limp beaten black heap of feathers with an obvious death wish- he was now walking around in his cardboard box bobbing his head critically up and down like a hygiene inspector, testing his wings for flightworthiness and emitting short , rude judgmental test -croaks which sounded anything but grateful.

The challenge was now to get him to shut up, because I was not supposed to harbor crows in my bedroom. Leave aside the penal code and the neighbors, my dad would have a fit. My mother came around as she usually does on her evening -bringing-the-tea-walk, and I opened my door about three inches and had a bright chat with her after which since she knew the funny look on my face was anything but innocent she began pushing very gently at the door and saying sad things like ‘ is something the matter? I know you are hiding something. Im your mum. You can talk to me, you know,” that sort of thing.
Subterfuge was pointless here so I pulled her into the room and shut the door firmly – subsequent conversation went something like:
“You can’t hide a crow in here, darling.
“ I know”
“Puthey, First of all you’d better own up to dad,”
“I know , but he wont approve,”
“You don’t seriously think you can hide a crow in here? You know it might be conceivably possible to hide a man, but a CROW?””
“It’ll get better in a few days and Ill just put him out. Will dad notice ,do you think?”
thats a dumb question if any -would he notice all the raucous shrieks, flapping and thumping and the steady build up of guano on the windows –let me think, YES!

at which point, and as if to prove a point Pokey chose this moment to burst noisily out of the cardboard incarceration he was supposed to be quietly recuperating in , emit a loud Jurassic Park type caw, and go for a preliminary test flight around the room which ended in a loud and negative thump as he connected with the window pane.
Mom was right about this. It wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.

Next week: A crows got to do what a crows got to do:shit!


* Neither the vet nor I ever did find out if it was a he or a she , but I prefer to think of all crows as masculine: Compared to other regular birds, they are dark, solid and make a lot of noise and .
its obvious they are discussing politics or cricket.

Letters to the Pet Rescue People

occasionally we get a real gem which we must share

Dear Eva,

i am a resident of Kandy, now living overseas for the past 8 years, i was in kandy late last year & found all these stray dogs, which is a real threat to the safety of children & others
i am sure you guys are going this not for the love of animals. but to get some money from from stupid NGO. all i can say is,if you need money to live "GET REAL JOB" & leave stray dogs to be dealt buy the council...the health & safety of people come FIRST before Dogs..
its sad to see that you & your NGO do not have the respect for the humans, that you have for DOGS....

Amila

a CURIOUS tale if any

for those of you who do read papers the link is
http://www.dailymirror.lk/sections/supp/w@w/060207/17.asp
others - I just reaslised that I have not posted this .Enjoy...


Curious* was discovered by a local garbage dump, weak, hungry and crooked, one soggy July evening in 2005 . Numerous unpleasant incidents with our growing menagerie mean, that we try not to see or hear stray orphans as we walk or drive around the streets of Colombo, but this one hit my eyes, solidly and firmly although it probably measured no more than three inches across at the time, from nose to ratty tail tip. This bug eyed, quizzical looking vision of a blurred orange ball with a string on one end, would not leave me. Curious was destined to be my favourite.
Mentally and physically Curious is slightly handicapped, possibly mildly "autistic". Just like with humans, in the animal world too, this happens occasionally but we see hardly any instances of such because cruel laws of the jungle dictate survival of the fittest and shrewdest and even they never get a second chance. Curious it would appear, was supposed to. Add to this the fact that he had lost his mother early in life , and you understand why he is twice blessed , doubly lucky and a symbol of hope in a world gone wrong.
Curious lives his life at a tilt of about 23 degrees, and so probably is the only one among us who actually sees the world as it really is. This is due to some obscure spinal deformity which makes him slant his head quizzically when he's walking about or sitting thinking. To the every day rat or ghecko he must appear an extra sinister and calculating predator, but we find it extremely endearing, probably because we know that he would never think of catching or killing any thing, far less eating it: Curious is the closest feline domestica ever came to being a practising vegetarian, and prefers papadam and cheese buttons to chicken. In fact any crackling sound will inevitably cause him to spring off his perch and come sniffing thoughtfully around.
Curious has been in one or two very narrow escapes.There was the day, which we will never forget , when he went looking at his reflection in my loo and fell in. Yours truly is a working girl who goes out at 7 am and returns at 6 pm, so that drop involved a lot of dog paddling, raucous screaming and commode water ingestion until he was discovered in the early afternoon by the daily help and another generous philanthropist, who put his hand in and fished him out, shampooed him with warm water and Sunsilk shampoo, and wiped him down amidst yowling protests, with one of my tea cloths, whilst admitting that there were, in retrospect, not many people around he would do this for…Curious survived this episode unscathed but with a respect for water closets.
Curious is not interested in the usual singing and serenading competitions that Tom Cats spend much of their waking life thinking about. He is no threat to Patchy (the local princess) and would not know the difference between one end of a female cat and the other, and probably would not bother finding out. As far as she is concerned, he is the epitome of genuine unselfish love and companionship and sits near her on cold evenings, quietly watching the funny humans cooking and arguing about who finished the good curry powder.
Curious accepts life good naturedly, although he does not understand it.
For some weeks he would experience hunger, and look curiously at his food , not realising that the actual consumption thereof would relieve the pangs gnawing his innards, but with the vague idea that some kind of participation was expected of him.
We had to fend off the rest of kittenkind and favour him a bit until he got the idea….
Curious lacks balance and will regularly fall on his backside and look miffed about it. We thus never throw him out of the front door , but place him carefully on the front carpet if we need to de-cat the living room. He is the only cat I know to have missed a fridge, by which I mean he tried a running jump from a table to a refrigerator two feet away and missed it to end up falling short and going down scrabbling half heartedly at the door, again to land on his rump with a audible burp.
Curious is a cat, an ordinary cat and nothing like an ordinary cat. HE was discovered among garbage and yet he has enriched our lives more than many expensive diversions money can buy. He has taught us not to take things for granted and yet to accept some things with grace, even if you cant understand the reasons for them. He's one of the reasons I cant find employment abroad, apart from my attachment to my children and my book and DVD collection and the fact that I love Wellampitiya.
I cannot think of anyone but myself taking care of Curious, and it would break my heart to have to let go of him.
So who's the dependant one, you wonder?
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* also fondly referred to as MANTALThere are more abandoned orphans like Curious featured at www.colombopetrescue.blogspot.com and we hope you will stop by and spare a minute for them. Well, more than a minute if possible?

What Men Really Want

see? I told you they dont care if your eyebrows are trimmed or not!

Ally’s Day Out…:in Pettah

In search of stimulation yours truly takes to investigative journalism in the streets of Pettah…

Pettah is therapy to me. It’s a dirty, noisy, colourful hippies paradise of low priced marvels from China, India and goodness knows where else, brimming with cosy multi-lingual camaraderie, an absolute kaleidoscope of cooking types and an absolute conundrum of contrasts. I find strangely, in spite of the incessant noise from vehicles, loudspeakers and those cheesy beeping alarm clocks and bamboo bird cages, that it is a place to meditate , to be at one with yourself, to recharge those mental batteries. It’s a crossroads and a hub and some of the richest chaps in the country spend their working days in happy and unhygienic squalor in its tiny winding streets.
Its where I go to recuperate…

The people are so friendly…it could be because they have just lifted someone’s wallet or side lights or groped a passing damsel but those Pettah chaps all wear permanent and decidedly moony smiles. You stop to ask directions and there will be people bending over backwards to help you out and sell you something at the same time if possible. …if you’re out there alone and in tight jeans you will get a lot of very fervent compliments.

Its multi-ethnic ….Religions are represented simultaneously. From the gaudy little glass statue boxes inside tuk tuks and buses, to the eating joints (and I bet the drug dens too,) they have rows and rows of colourful symbols, gods and saints of the major religions hanging out side by side. Joss sticks, funny sweets and candles are presented to them equally. Pettah people like to insure them selves fully, to ensure prosperous businesses and personal safety and that’s probably why they are tolerant of each other too.

The food is awesome…- its cheap and it tastes good too. Not only that - its pretty obvious form the way they prepare it that if you actually survive it your immune system is running at peak performance and now isn’t that something to be thankful for? There are mounds of oily red blobs which scream “diabetes are us”, sugar encrusted yellow balls, rings and squares, not to mention stuff that looks like concrete debri from a demolition site,* dates, raisins and all manner of tropical fruit – can you believe that so many colours are actually edible?? (This is why I so totally approve of ethnic diversity! More choice in food and in guys!) Samosas , peanuts and mangoes with chillie powder and those joints where you drink out of aluminium and wipe your hands on squares on yellow typing paper…and don’t let me start on the waday..

The stuff is fantastic…. Phones, Aluminium kitchenware, Wedding Cards, Trouser Materials, Umbrellas ..whatever you are looking to buy has its own Street… Im not a thread buying person, in general, I go for the gadgets, and Pettah sells the weirdest things that run on batteries And cheap too and everything is multipurpose. Ive just brought this “battery less bulb less torch- and I’m reading the box which says “no need any power no environmental pollution low noise and good health” if those aren’t enough reason to buy it , further benefits are that “constantly using this health torch it can benefit your palm (!?) arm, shoulder and blood circulation so as to let your hands relax and make the brain clever improving hand & brain co ordination and promote memory” all that for 100 bux? Where has it been all my life? This has to be paradise! (hey and it lights up in the dark too, now fancy that!)

In conclusion then, whether you are searching for calm in the eye of the storm, cheap crockery or the higher meaning of life, head for Pettah; and of course, hold on to your purse, it could run off on its own!!!

http://www.aljuharawrites.blogspot.com/
* I’m told that the word for it is “Aluwa”

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

But hello, some of us prefer oxygen…

And so pretty soon itll be Valentines Day. And let me warn you smug, settled twosomes out there, as you wait in anticipation of that sickening waist thickening box of chocolates or the bourgeois frigid roses imported from Copenhagen,which could single – rosedly fund a meal for twenty five local IDP’s….. – that I’m about to attack your comfortable bubble of contentment, and rather rudely at that.

And lest you conclude that I am commenting with the jaded attitude of someone who cant get into this rosy state, let me declare that I have been there, done that Ive reached that stage where I actually find it funny(thats Ally for you) which could be why, the last time someone extremely suitable gathered up the courage to propose suit to me, I actually burst into helpless laughter and had to change the subject in case he took offence. (You can be sure he didn’t do it again)
Its not that I have any thing against romance, its just that there are so many excellent reasons to remain in blessed singledom, a FEW of which Im going to list below:

Benefit Number One : Peaceful Slumber.
My slumber is now truly peaceful and unruffled since the date around four years ago when I last extricated myself from the deep and emotionally charged partnership I was in . It is now only broken occasionally by comparatively desperate insomniacs who are in the thick of intense and committed long term relationships and thus on the verge of suicide / self mutilation and/ or serious damage to property due to some profoundly convoluted argument stemming from a basic disagreement as to who should take out the garbage. So I refer to my otherwise redundant MEN ARE FROM MARS Manual and groggily read out a few basics before I turn the bedside light off and lapse back into happy oblivion. IN case of further disturbance my Nokia has an excellent function which silences further calls from any particular number so that I can view them with detached fascination the next morning and speculate clinically at the varying occurrences of attempted contact, 2 am, 3am 5 am etc.
Let me blow my trumpet a bit here, but I admit to higher levels of EQ and a good telephone voice – both of which combine to result in me being something of an agony aunt to my friends and contacts, although some of the advice I give would definitely not be sanctioned by the Samaritans or even the local Police come to think of it (“so what, hit him back!” or “ Why not adopt a cat – TODAY! Or : “Hey you need to watch BORAT it’ll take your MIND off things…”)
But what does one do when faced with mind-boggling conundrums like:
Aunty Al, shes driving me nuts, she smashed the Flatron today…. Or,
Aunty Al, I love him but I don’t like sex …or
Aunty Al, I think she’s having an affair with a tuktuk driver ,what do I do ? or
Aunty Al, I love her but she doesn’t like sex…and last but not least-
WOTS A G SPOT *


Benefit Number Two : Sheer Independence :
Guys this is one for you. You can work late, get sloshed, get delayed or get laid and you don’t have to explain it to anyone. You can fill your USB drive with hardcore pornography and you don’t need to justify it. And you retain rights to your phone and gmail inboxes. Holidays are something you can actually look forward to, where you RELAX , not drive someone around to in law dinners.Have I given those committed family dudes a slight pang here….?

Benefit Number Three No more faking it
Lets be honest about this girls, we love them but we need only about a quarter of the actual physical intimacy they do. The rest of the time we have to not just grin and bear , but fake it convincingly and there’s the worry about what would happen if we don’t. The onus is on us to get them to stick to one supplier and it gets harder with the years. And then there’s all those mysterious female conditions that happen when you are um, sexually active. Face it lots of those weird funguses and Itises not to mention having to depend on those horrid fattening daily supplements are undoubtedly the by product of all that sweet loving .
Darned if you do, darned if you don’t.


Benefit Number Four. Less Pollution.
Its kind of complex but please bear with me. All this loving means you’re expected to get hitched and then society expects you to procreate. Its odd, because there are about a quarter million orphans in this country alone, who need parents, and there is nowhere in the Constitution that says you are supposed to add to the population. But you go do the I DO thing and all the neighbors- and old wives and new aunts and the lot of them, mostly female , can think about is, “what no kids yet?” So you submit to that pressure. Please don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against kids , precious darlings, its just that I wonder why its so totally compulsory to reproduce once you are mated, almost as its imperative on any one in romance to get hitched, regardless of whether you can provide comfortably for them or even have any idea of the real meaning of what you are about to do.
The results, of this social pressure, who honestly look as if they wish they had never been born, can be seen each morning in Colombo, freshly powdered and stuffed vertically and sometimes horizontally into smokey windowed school vans and buses.( Ive since figured that dusting them with talcum powder is a sort of friction reducing thing to make it easier for them to claw their way out of the buses when they reach school..)
Then there are the “luckier” lots who are piled onto over crowded motorcycles, I often speculate on how they chose which one should be at the back of a bike seating five…do they draw straws, or is it that just by co incidence its always the little girl in the family- And how do you think she feels about more siblings?
In conclusion – is it just me or would it seem that the less love there is, the more peace and happiness there will be all around?

So there you have my complex and admittedly somewhat unfeeling theory about how Valentine is ultimately responsible for the traffic in Colombo, but, as an afterthought, please don’t let that cramp your style. Be there, do that, and, as they say in the Sunscreen song, “throw away the old bank statements but keep: your old love letters!” the reason for that is, of course, they may be harder to come by in future…
See, some people are actually figuring out that Valentine’s Day isn’t actually compulsory.
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For true malcontent, google for “alt.suicide.valantines day survival kit”, and order your “HATE IS GREAT” and “SCREW VALANTINES DAY” T Shirts, although I would personally draw the line at bombing the Hallmarks outlets- since after all, although I think love sucks , I do support peace!
* This is rather besides the point I admit. However it wins Ally’s unofficial award for the Single Best Text Message of 2005 and I just had to include it here.