Entrance, St. Paul’s.

Duh

Wobbly Bridge, from the Golden Gallery, St Paul’s…

…and vice versa

I’m already wondering why I included this.

Side wall, V & A

Lucky shot of (Sellafield?) at dusk

One more from St Paul’s

Bath. Royal Crescent.

How many of the social constructs and social disparities around us exist for the mere reason that we believe them to exist? The same Englishmen who popularized the concept of appendicitis have an old parable which runs ‘give a dog a bad name and hang him’ which may be loosely taken to mean that we live up, if anything, to the expectations and reputation that society allows us.

So to finally get to the point, is the concept of an ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka a similar social construct? Does it exist simply because we perceive its existence? To answer these questions I thought it necessary to first find out what ethnic conflict actually means.

An ethnic group is, simply, a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of a (presumed, adds Wikipedia) common genealogy or ancestry. Needless to say, recognition as a group by other groups is often a contributing factor to developing this bond of identification. So, even before the concept of an ethnic conflict emerges, its clear that the concept of ethnicity itself owes its existence at least partly to our continued attempts to define various ethnic identities. In keeping with this idea, the concept of ethnogenesis or the process of creation of ethic identity may be either an active or passive one.

There is good evidence that ethnicity in Sri Lanka owes its existence at least partly to Active Ethnogenesis, the process where “persons deliberately and directly ‘engineer’ separate identities in order to attempt to solve a political problem – the preservation or imposition of certain cultural values, power relations, etc”. Such attempts are often said to be related to processed such as Language Revival or creation of a new language in what eventually becomes a National Literature – two movements that were quite apparent in the past decades in both major ethnically defined communities in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese and the Tamil. Passive ethnogenesis also plays a part, obviously; almost two millenia of it, if the National Literature is to be believed…

Having established that current ethnicity in Sri Lanka may to an extent be artificially constructed, it needs to be seen whether the perceived ethnic conflict is also a similar construct. To answer this question we’ll need to examine some theories put forward to explain the emergence of ethnic conflicts. Three schools of thought regarding causation of ethnic conflict exist: the Primordialist, Instrumentalist, and Constructivist models.

According to the Primordialist model, ethnic groups and nationalities “exist because there are traditions of belief and action towards primordial objects such as biological features and especially territorial location” . Prof. Donald Horowitz of Duke University, an authority on ethnic disparities, suggests that this kinship “makes it possible for ethnic groups to think in terms of family resemblances.”

The two main points of definition in this theory are biological features and territorial location. How valid is this in application to Sri Lanka? At first glance there seems to be a clear territorial demarcation. The 2001 Census Report shows that 76.6% of the Colombo District Population is Sinhalese, with only 12.2% Tamil, while the figures from Amparai are 39.3% and 18.8% respectively. What one should also bear in mind however, is that the population in Colombo is over 5 times that of Amparai. In fact, if the totals are calculated instead of percentages, one would realise that Colombo would have over twice the number of Tamil citizens as Amparai (272,583 vs 110,796)! Thus one may question assumption of a territorial demarcation, on the simple grounds that the vast majority of Tamils actually live in peaceful coexistence in the South of the country. The second aspect of the primordialist theory is the presence of biological features. This, too, can be seen to be more of a socially constructed concept than an actual one. The majority of Tamil citizens of Sri Lanka are no different in appearance to the Sinhalese. The very fact that cartoonists feel obliged to portray the classic Tamil with an ash-daubed forhead and a vetti for purposes of identfication – or even worse, actually label them as such – is proof that biological differences are at a minumum between the two groups. Furthermore, the criteria of using biological differences would make the concept a racial and not an ethnic one.

For these reasons, I think that the primordialist theory cannot satisfactorily explain any percieved ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. The second theory, which is the Instrumentalist, argues for the persistence of ethnic differences as the result of “the actions of community leaders, who used their cultural groups as sites of mass mobilization and as constituencies in their competition for power and resources, because they found them more effective than social classes. In this account of ethnic identification, ethnicity and race are viewed as instrumental identities, organized as means to particular ends.”

What this means in our context is simply that ethnic discrepancies are a creation of economic opportunism. Although I think the Instrumentalist theory cannot be applied with confidence to the origin of a percieved conflict in Sri Lanka, it may be a valid reason for the continued identification of Indian Tamils in particular as a distinct subset of our population. The ‘community leaders’ in question would naturally be the CWC.

However, as far as the Tamil or Sinhalese Communities as a whole  are concerned, it would be too much of a generalisation to state that a divide exists as a ‘means to particular ends’. Indeed, Prof. Anthony Smith of the LSE argues that the Instrumentalist approach is chiefly associated with the ethnically motivated activism in the USA during the ‘60s and ‘70s, where a clearer link between division and motive can be apprehended.

The final theory is the Constructivist approach. Unlike the other two theories put forward to explain ethnic divisions, this third fits closer to the situation in Sri Lanka. In essence, it’s related to what Prof. Benedict Anderson of Cornell defines as the ‘Imagined Community’, i.e., that “a nation is a community socially constructed and ultimately imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group.”

The best example for this concept is the apparent differences created between the Hutu and Tutsi communities in Rwanda. The two groups concerned, as with Sri Lanka, were physically very similar in appearance. The only clear cause for conflict based on an ethnic identity can be traced to the period of Belgian Occupation of Rwanda, when the two communities were issued identity cards based on ethnicity, and differences of this nature which were “codified and established” by the Occupancy were used as motive factors in the Genocide that followed.

So all in all, I’m arguing that the idea of an ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is best explained by a constructivist theory, and is therefore only as tangible as the very parameters by which the distinctions between the groups are defined by the academia and general population.

Thus far, it is clear that the (a) concept of ethnic differences as well as the (b) concept of an ethnic conflict on Sri Lanka are both based on social perceptions, and not on any hard rules of discrimination.

The final question is whether this perception of ethnic differences and the perception of the existence of an ethnic conflict has indeed given rise to a true conflict in Sri Lanka. In my opinion, it has not. The events that occurred in 1983 would have been a minor riot that disappeared in the mists of history if not for the depth to which it was analysed and interpreted both in academia and by the population as a whole.

Any country that gives its population a diverse ethnic identity is bound to have incidents of this nature occuring between the percieved ethnic groups. For example, an occasional Sinhalese may be unfortunate to get assaulted in a Tamil-dominated neighborhood in Great Britain or Canada. That does not mean that an ethnic conflict exists in either country. The only difference with the same thing occuring in Sri Lanka is the connotations that we give it in the enviroment that we have created in our minds eye.

To agree that there is conflict between ethnic groups in Sri Lanka would therefore, as in Canada or the United Kingdom, be tantamount to making a grossly unfair statement by the vast majority of people in all these countries who live in peaceful coexistence. We have never experienced anything similar to the Genocides in Rwanda or the segregationism in the USA prior to 1964. Almost all Sri Lankan Sinhalese and Tamils are more preoccipied with their day-to-day activities than with the fear of what atrocties their ethnically different neighbors may commit if they turn their backs on them for one instant.

Sri Lanka has no more of an ethnic conflict in existence at the moment than any other multi-ethnic country. From another viewpoint, it has no less of a conflict either.

This is why it is dangerous to fall back on the label of an ‘ethnic conflict’ in our context. Because, as shown above, the end effect is only as good or bad as the idea that gave rise to it. We do not have an ethnic conflict now, but, given the continued perception that we do, it is possible that we may follow in the footsteps of Rwanda, whose ideas of Constructivist Ethnicism we may imitate.

The dangers of this need scarecely be overstated. In 1950, the UNESCO recognised that a similar danger was posed by the concept of race, which it dealt with in a seminal article titled The Race Question. The minds that collaborated on this noted that the concept of race “created an enormous amount of human and social damage”… and  “deprives civilization of the effective co-operation of productive minds.” However, a solution that was proposed was to: “drop the term ‘race’ altogether and speak of ‘ethnic groups’.”

Half a century down the line, it’s clear that this concept itself creates as much confusion if not “social damage” as the one it originally sought to replace. So much so that The Third World Quarterly (Issue 6) of 2004 published an article by Dr. Bruce Gilley arguing against using the term “ethnic conflict” on much similar grounds to the UNESCO committee of 1950:

“Despite a boom in studies of ethnic conflict, the empirical and conceptual justification for this field remains weak. Not only are claims of surging ethnic conflict unsubstantiated, but the concept itself is problematic. The concept tends to homogenise quite distinct political phenomena. Making valid causal inferences about ‘ethnic conflict’ is nearly impossible as a result, a shortcoming reflected in the un-robust nature of the literature on the subject. For both practical and normative reasons there is a good argument for abandoning the field of ethnic conflict studies.”  (Abstract)

To conclude, I believe that ethnicity as well as the concept of an ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is based to a very large extent on perception. However, the inevitable spiral of positive feedback that will result in a true ethnic conflict occurring here will be promoted more than any one factor by the very acceptance that an ethnic conflict exists in Sri Lanka. And on that day, the dog will be hung for the bad name we ourselves gave it, so many years ago.

The trouble obviously, is that we humans are discriminators, dividers and classifiers born and bred. Long before the day that Aristotle began his misguided essays into taxonomy, we’ve been trying to dismantle and separate things into distinct components. Why? Maybe because the very basis of intelligence lies in the division of our external world into the ‘Me’ and the ‘Non Me’. Or maybe as aide memoires, for artistic elegance, or maybe for the simple joy of cleavage into portions. From atoms to society, its all been a question of ‘split ye then all that splitteth until it bloody well splitteth no more’. All justified, of course, in the name of Progress, or even better yet, Discovery. Perhaps the greatest discovery in store for mankind will be that it is sometimes better to leave things be.

Two years since the pride began. Two years since millions all over Sri Lanka suddenly began to gather and transport everything from pillows to medicines to dry rations, in lorries, vans, three-wheelers, even motorbikes. Collect goods, give their time; to people whom they never knew existed twenty-four hours ago. Two years since a man walked into a pharmacy in Kandy saying, “Give me everything they need”. Two years since the night when boys stood all along the Galle Road with makeshift hazard signs, giving directions, pointing out detours. Two years since one of us said, “Screw this exam. I’m going.” Two years since we ended up in a refugee camp past Karathivu, and heard an STF corporal describing to an LTTE cadre how he’d brought a small girl down from a palmyrah tree onto which she had got thrown, using an old saree. Two years since eight of us treated three hundred people in three hours, dressed wounds, gave out everything from antiasthmatics to scabies lotion. Two years since a small boy in LTTE uniform served us tea, and the mess seargent at the STF camp near Kalmunai gave a speech, after cooking us the greatest dish of noodles I have ever tasted.

Two years since the disgust began. Two years since men snatched chains from the necks of drowning women; since corpses were molested; since the forensics team at Galle found marks of strangulation on a cadaver. Two years since gangs looted shops; insurance companies refused to pay shopkeepers, and a stranded tourist paid a thousand rupees for a phone call. Two years since anxious families paid corpse-hunters many times as much for the recovery of their dead. Two years since there were refugee camps at Ampara divided by race, with countless sinhalese in supply trains trying unsuccesfully to get to Paanama – the only ‘sinhalese’ village affected in the far east - and refusing to hand over goods to the common depots. Two years since a mosque at Kalmunai began collecting unused clothing exclusively for muslims refugees. Two years since men would only give directions to storage depots in exchange for something; a twenty five litre water can; a tube of savlon… Two years since the day caretakers bgan to pilfer foodstuffs, officials began to pilfer money, and the government began to pilfer foreign donations.

So what will I remember if I light a candle? Two years later, I cant even recall my motives for doing what I did that week. Maybe I wanted to help. Maybe all I wanted was a change. Two years since, I find that I cannot judge anything, or anyone. The pictures are meaningless; the stories feel unreal.

Was anything real? When I sat down to write this, the first thing that came to mind was a child’s hand which I sewed up while he screamed, in a makeshift clinic near a row of wells - all that remained of a row of houses - on the east coast of our country. I have never been there since. I hope someone removed the sutures. I gave his father a piece of paper with the date on it to show the next medical team, but i’m not sure whether he understood me. Two years later, I’ll never know.

Arundhati Roy writes stirringly, and she writes truth. The sad thing is, when we build temples to truth and beauty, we exclaim and despair too often over the realities of the world in which we live.

War was never fair. Fairness to human values is a tautology in the context of any war; it never stands upto close scrutiny. But this does not mean that war is never necessary. It was needed when one mad Corsican tried to destroy European culture in the name of a new French Republic, and it was necessary when another mad Aryan tried to wipe out an entire race of people, and his own diseased brethren, in the name of racial purity. Closer to home, it was needed when princes from South India invaded our own country a thousand years ago.

But it was never fair. And not being fair, it has no place in the temples of truth and beauty where all artists pray. And therefore, no writer, I think, will ever find it in themselves to say that any war was a good thing. Perhaps they will say that the men and women who fought in wars were brave and good and true. But never war as a whole.

Therefore what I’m trying to argue is that a writer’s word – a good writer’s word – is probably not the best thing to go by when trying to build an unbiased perspective on the justifiction for any war. Furthermore, they express themselves so bloody well that you end up agreeing with most of what they say, whatever they say. And with war this is dangerous. Most Germans realized that Goebbels was a fanatic propagandist only in retrospect.  Hitler himself probably converted more Britishers with Mein Kampf than Goebbels ever did. George Bush, for all his critics may say, is pretty good at that kind of thing too (his main advantage being president of a country that trusts anything said on TV that doesn’t have a laughter track). In the other corner of the ring, the same can be said about Michael Moore. What all these people have in common is that they’re all so bloody good at convincing people. Ditto for Roy.

I’m certain that Arundhati Roy has no hidden agenda to her activism. She clearly writes from her heart. But since her heart seeks truth and beauty – rare commodities in any war – she will always be biased against any violent conflict.

As far as Iraq goes, the western coalition went to war based on greed and untruth. And long after the world awoke to the magnitude of those mistakes, it continues what seems a pointless and baseless struggle.

On the other hand, Saddam Hussein and the old Iraqi government have done things to its people for which men like Pinochet, Saloth Sar, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe were reviled and punished. Should he therefore be left alone as they attempted to do with Pinochet? And what did people say about Great Britain while Pinochet walked free? 
 
However to add another twist, no one tries to invade China for doing the exact same things, specially to the natives of Tibet. But again, does this mean that fairness requires us to turn an equally blind eye to everything that is wrong in this world?

The quotation that follows is not one I agree wholly with (it’s by another very good writer, after all!). Its purpose here is merely to buttress the general point I’m making, that there are always “more things on heaven and earth, than we ever dream of in our philosophy”:

“Your poet,…  …your minister, your essayist, is not a man of affairs. He is completely unsuccessful almost invariably in the realms of banking and business. Being unsuccessful, it is beyond me why his views on economics and politics should be given the slightest attention”

- John Phillips Marquand, The Late George Apley

Mind you I don’t pretend to know the answers to the problems that I’ve raised. Maybe none of us ever will. I believe however, that if we were looking for answers and not merely for ideals, then the heart of an artist may, in its way, be as bad a place to begin as the heart of a banker, a fanatic or a dictator.

And thus, as Roy herself quotes in her beautiful speech, “You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train“.

Most unfortunately, the Sinhalese word for the color orange also stems from a fruit, because although our oranges were green, we had coconuts that were orange. All, however that Englishmen knew about coconuts was the fact that theirs were decidedly green. And thus when the first Ceylonese that the above Englishman made small talk to, casually mentioned that something or the other was the color of ‘thambili’, the visitor naturally assumed that the host meant something green.

And so came about a period of blissful ignorance where both parties actually meant to say orange but were understood to mean green.

Things went swimmingly until the first Temperate Orange (fruit) arrived.

Then the Ceylonese clustered around this wonder, and with one accord, chorused “Thambili!” (colour), much to the consternation of the Englishmen, who worried whether the sun was finally getting the better of them.

“You silly chaps! This is not a coconut (thambili)! This is here is an Orange (fruit)!”

This, being said to a race recently persuaded to believe that orange meant green, elicited instant dissent:

“Nae, Nae! Thambili (colour)!”

To shorten a painful story, the worried natives brought their guests (whose judgment they had already begun to deeply mistrust) to the nearest king-coconut grove, and directed their attention to the first orange (colour) coconut that a White Man had seen. And the Englishmen, in their haste to make amends, said exactly the wrong thing to a race of people whom they had previously led to believe that orange, the colour, means green.

“Mehe thambili orange paatai neda!”

Thus were sown the first seeds of discord. After a man has tried to tell you that green is actually orange, apologizes, and then says what he really meant to say was that orange is actually green, you  realize that you will never be able to trust him. You begin question his judgment and motives. You openly call him a liar.

We all know where this ended. The mistrust that took root that day eventually bore fruit in 1948, when we finally saw the back of the biggest breakdown in communication since the naming of the Kangaroo.

Thus ended this sad tale of human blunder. However, lest the future forget the lessons of its past, lest past mistakes be repeated in future folly, an Emblem was created by the Fathers of The Nation bearing the seal of a Brave and Unified Land, Standing Guard Forever over the Distinction that Green and Orange are Separate Things.

- – -

n.b. A friend has suggested on reading this that the whole issue with Britain and Oranges has been a universal picking-bone, and not merely confined to Lanka, citing the Orange Men of Ireland and their struggle to obtain Home Rule as an example… inferences are not compulsory.

Lady, if I were Paris, you’d never have seen

Whether I even came or went.

And the Odyssey would never have been

Since Supernovas are silent.

Since thoughts make hay in the hardest rain.

Since battles begin in belief,

To me you would have remained

The face that launched a single ‘if’.

And the people just went on talking.

Now, being new to this circle, I had been under the impression that we were taking Dubya to the cleaners on bombing Iraq because we cared about simple everyday things like the death and misery it was causing. About the right a country has to stand up for its values against aggression from without or within, however worthless that aggressor may claim those values to be.

Of course, if things were as simple as that, surely, we ought in rights to talk a little about what happens in Sri Lanka itself. But whenever the thing comes up, it gets dismissed with a witty quip or an irritable shrug. “You see, Mahinda is one idiot, Ranil is another. In fact, I think Prabhakaran is the smartest of the lot, no?” This generates a refreshing round of laughter and some nods of approval (Or a ‘lol’, depending on the setting). These duly received and noted, we move on. To greater things. So things weren’t as simple as that. And I pondered mightily on how this might be, and came to realize a great and wonderful Truth.

We weren’t criticizing the President of the USA because he outraged our sense of decency. We were criticizing him because criticizing the President of the USA  made us feel cosmopolitan.

When we berate him, we are momentarily of His country, He is our president, and we can give Him the hell He deserves because we are His people. And not have to gripe about some boring joker in a national kit and a red shawl, or a terrorist leader who looks more like the Hindenberg with every passing year. That would be, in a word, embarrassing.

The first Movies came with John Wayne. People wore blue jeans and dreamed the American dream.

The first LPs came with Elvis. People danced the night away and dreamed the American dream.

The first PCs came with DOS. People played Doom and dreamed the American dream.

And now that CNN is here, people discuss Iraq and dream the American dream.

The trick will be, I think, bailing out before Iraq becomes passé, just as everything else did.

This mindset, with a vocabulary that includes “humanitarian effort’ and ‘slacktivism’, are rapidly becoming the quintessential tools of today’s Cosmopolitan (I would like to write more. But I fear a few narrow minded people might consider what I write to be a criticism, and not a rational explanation, of our motives. And since I’m also getting rather late to leave for a private performance of Beckett’s Breath by a beloved and talented member of our close-knit circle of like-minded intellect, I shall desist. I have been late for these on two occasions now, and I cannot live with the scowls. I cannot).

- – -

(on this one,  jokerman acknowledges the assistance of manshark, who isnt a genius or anything.)

The spaces between are utterly dark”,

You say, and almost begin to cry again…

Smile. This is supposed to be an Amusement Park.

And nothing i have brought you; the candyfloss, the coke,

The conversations; can make you put away those claws.

Christ, what else do you expect from a bloke?

You arent drowning, you know. Stop clutching at straws.

We’ll simply have to weather out this universe.

Stick side by side. Stuck side by side with cotton-candy lies.

Every last one of us. For better or for worse.

You. Me. Even this Dynamic Bloody Ribbon Device.

The Three Magics are the foundation of our attachments, the force behind our yearnings, everything that we cannot explain about the people whom we love.

The first of the three is hot and strong and confident. It gives you absolute conviction in the rightness and the success of whatever that you lay hands to; it tries to move mountains, and sometimes it does. It makes you believe in perfections; it makes you trust in absolutes; it tells you that you will live forever. It makes a heart go boom, makes you punch walls, hug pillows and skip in the streets. It makes you utter the corniest lines with the greatest fervour: ‘even if you dont want me, you’ll come around, and i’ll wait for you to… because i’ve got enough patience for the both of us…’

It is the fate that befell Icarus, the ‘touch of sun’, the Indian Summer. This magic, the earliest magic to dawn, is Sun Magic, and it can tear down the laboured work of generations in a single stroke of frenzy. Sun Magic hurts people with its escapades because it is the most selfish of all the magics. But one day, this magic meets a thug called reality in some dark alley of ambition and has the living crap beaten out of it, crawls away into a corner and dies. Because, for Sun Magic to work, you must really believe in things, and you can never really believe in the things that once let you down, second time around. Then the rushes of blood stop going to your head as often as they used to… but somewhere in everyone’s past, there’s always a time that they “used to think that way”.

As Sun Magic leaves you to grow and learn and hurt, another takes its place. The second magic is a magic of charm.

It is the magic of the look, the dress, the hair, the smile, the move, the combination of it all. The particular arrangement of entities that make you look thrice at someone who walks into the room. Sometimes it is just the way a name sounds. The way a voice touches you somewhere inside. Puppies have charm. Rumpled hair has charm. It is the gentlest of all attractions, but it holds you with gossamer that is impossible to break away. It has all the silent insistence of the tide at night; it is Byron’s lady who walks in beauty. If you’ve heard a song called Moonshadow, that is charm. It will never be as bright as the sun, never as forceful in its ways, and yet it captures your imagination and moves you to madness in ways that the sun never could. Charm is Moon-Magic, it rises into the darkness of your sunset, wins your heart, fools your senses, and waxes and wanes. Moon Magic is Maupassant’s Mathilde; the sensation of the soiree, drunk with joy, dancing the night away in, jewels borrowed from a friend.

When Moon Magic finally fades, with the closing movement of your mad sonata, the last of the magics grows strong. This is the magic of secrets and laughter.

Laughter is illogical; its origin or purpose cannot be explained, and yet it exists. The best of friends have this magic in them; the twinkle of merriment you catch in a person’s eyes; the glitter of mischief you look out for and love. Something inside makes you chortle hysterically over little conspiracies, and create words that only the two of you know the meanings of. Something makes you remember people for nothing more than the huge laughs you’ve had together; makes you thankful for the many times that laughter kept the tears away.

Twinkles and glitters, secrets and laughter; all this is Star Magic; the last, the least, the best. It is the best because it never leaves you; yet is last and least because while the moon and sun hold court in your sky, you never know that it is there. But it is… and when your suns and your moons finally forsake you, it prevents your skies from emptying, and keeps the tears away.

These three magics, then, are the taproot of all our impulses. Every silly, stupid, illogical thing we do is them. Magic separates us from the automatons, gives us something more to live for than survival. And magic also builds what they call The Gap. Adults are rational people. And rational people are naturally afraid of perfectly illogical things that work perfectly well. And this is why the people who hold strongly by each other also hold  strongly by the Three Magics of this world. That is why the strongest promises are not sworn on bibles or blood, but on the Moon, and the Stars, and the Sun…

… and so, there are only three kinds of Magic; they only exist between people; and anything else that they tell you is a lie.

asthma is something that i never really understood. we’ve got drugs to prevent attacks from ocurring, and drugs to treat the attacks when they do occur, and also plenty of advice on how to use this multitude of medication and what and what not patients should  avoid. but still, we cant cure the problem. nor do we know why some people wheeze upto puberty and then stop altogether, or suddenly start wheezing and itching ferociously at thirty-something after three decades of perfect health. we dont know what makes people wheeze when a cat walks into a room, although not a single cat-hair has still come their way. we say there’s a ‘psychological element’ to asthma, but when we get down to it, we really dont what the hell to do about it anyway…

…with all this at the back of my mind, it wasnt a very useful fifteen minutes for either of us. all i could tell him was to increase the frequency of the drugs he’s on right now, and promise to try something else if that didnt work. more like polishing a shoe than prescribing (try brushing a little harder.. if that doesnt work, we’ll try water-polish) .

then he told me about his sister who also used to wheeze, until a priest at their church prayed for her in public when she was about sixteen years old. and she’s never been troubled by asthma since. now coming from most other people, i’d have laughed this off. but thilak is as solidly rooted in reality as uri geller isnt, whch is why i began to think about the whole thing a little more.

at this point he dropped a second chew-toy on my thoughtplate: have i ever watched that show on TNL where they have a faith-healer from india, he asked. of course i had. Paul Dinakaran’s Heal-’em-All Show, i call it. well, he says. what about all the people whom they cure? is it for real?

- – -

i was about to set my face in a particulaly damning sneer and take the whole show to the cleaners when i remembered this girl who’d turned up at the neurology ward about two years ago. i think the whole asthma-business had shaken either my ego or my belief in medicine just enough at that point (i’m hoping it wasnt my ego anyway) to make little old things suddenly significant.

there was a girl in neuro at kandy, who couldnt walk. for all the world, it was clinically a classic lower motor neurone type of weakness. only problem being that no one knew what exactly the condition was; she just couldnt walk. then, nerve conduction tests were performed, and to everyones surprise they turned out to be perfectly normal. a period of skepticism ensued, first regarding the reports, then the girl herself. was she shamming?

no, she wasnt shamming… she really couldnt walk.

at which point the story gets significantly less medical, because one MO who was working in the neuro ward also happened to be a skilled hypnotist. i know this sounds rather arcanely unreal, and i havent any idea where the hell he learned hypnotism from while practicing medicine. what i  do know is that you know where this is going, so to cut a long story short, he got that girl to walk, albeit rather unsteadily at first, after a few sessions.

i’m beginning to wonder exactly how much of disease is bound to our state of mind, and how little we know or care about these things… i’d almost gotten to the stage where i would pronounce anything outside current medical knowledge to be quackery and worse besides…

yet, there is such a thing as hysterical paralysis. i myself experienced sleep-paralysis once: a frightening condition when you wake from deep sleep and find yourself unable to move or speak at all for a period. as i said, there is a mental element to asthma. people get all the classic symptoms of gastritis without even tissue-level changes to the stomach lining. anxious people get an intractable, troublesome diarrhoea that has nothing to do with infections, and theres what doctors call APR (sin. athey payey rudaawa), technically and rather ineffectually named fibromyalgia and left alone as psychogenic…..

…so if a certain type of inexplicable alteration to a mindscape can produce disease, can another type of change bring about its cure?

and is causing such an inexplicable change justified in being called a miracle?

- – -

so i told thilak that honestly, i didnt know if its for real. part of me’s still hoping he doesnt suggest we go for the next faith-healing rally they hold, before changing over to a trial of salmeterol…