A Voice from the Silent Majority

To get from university to my house I have to take a minimum of 3 busses no matter what route I take. Each day I travel by bus, I lose about Rs.5 – Rs. 15 thanks to beggars. Statistically I meet a minimum of 1 beggar each day during my return journey. Since I go to university early in the morning, in crowded busses I don’t meet any on my way to campus. (this is the time I meet pick pocket guys, so I have constantly touch both my trouser pockets to make sure my purse and phone are still there.)

Beggars come in various shapes and sizes and but usually with the same old story. Some have incurable diseases, others have a big family to feed, and some have just lost their job, these are the common stories. Some have hideous and scary skin diseases that people would give him anything to make him get off. There are also the singers. They get on the bus with some instrument and drive us to the very edge of insanity by singing something which is so out of tune. (Now I know how Asterix a.k.a Suura Pappa and Obelix a.k.a Jim Pappa must’ve felt when Cacofonix a.k.a Kaako Pappa was singing) And beggars even threaten and insult people when they don’t give money. (And all people just let them do it).

Then there is the occasional English speaking beggar. He is usually a security officer or a clerk who lost his job at some government institution. (Well that is according to them.) Sri Lankans think that if somebody can speak English that person has a better social standing. It is this thinking that this beggar wants to exploit. They hope that English will help them to convince people of their story.

The interesting thing about most of these people are that they have the strength in their arms and legs to do something useful to the society other than living off our hard earned money. (Well I must admit that they also earn money through hard work, gosh getting in the right bus with the right amount of people and then yelling away is hard work.) But I guess they earn more through begging than they earn through some other job why else would they resort to begging.

Once a beggar with a very different story boarded the bus I was travelling. This was a young guy dressed in denims and this guy went on to elaborate how he didn’t complete his schooling properly as he got addicted to drugs, and how he was rehabilitated after getting caught to the police while stealing clothes. (At this point I was thinking ok now what is he coming to?) Then he asked the people for money saying it was their responsibility to give him money to stop him from going back on to drugs. (Man, what the hell?) I just couldn’t help laughing.

Until recently I was very careful when giving some change, and never ever gave money to kids because I’m of the opinion that if they go for easy cash they will never know the importance of education which is the only thing that can bring them out of this mess. But a question from a friend made me rethink about the whole thing. What if all these beggars resorted to stealing?

NOTE : While doing A/Ls one of my teacher’s said of a professor who actually lived for about an year like a beggar and then wrote a book about it. Those days I thought the man was nuts, totally jobless fellow. But here I am writing a blog post about them. (But these days I am having a vacation so I have to say that I am a bit jobless)

Sri Lanka is one place where change is looked as something that is always bad. We see so many protests, hunger strikes, petition campaigns that it has become part of our lives. The situation is further worsened due to people who try to exploit this natural resistance to change within Sri Lankans for their own hidden agendas.

Not all change is good, and change for the sake of change is also bad. But we need change to move forward as a nation. Before changing anything else we need to change our attitudes.

One such attitude is that ALL PRIVATE EDUCATION IS BAD. This discussion has come to centre stage again due to talks about a private medical faculty in Malabe. Education is something that is always good, education is not only about learning a profession or a skill but true education is about opening your mind up for new ideas and broadening your horizons. The government universities can only accept a limited number of student and the facilities and resources are also limited. I myself is one of the lucky few, fortunate enough to enter one of the government universities. But what of the others who couldn’t?, should they serve us for the rest of their lives? Well I don’t think so.

People always ask “What Will Happen to the poor?” But look what’s happening now it’s the poor and medium class people that suffer. All the rich kids go abroad and learn whatever they want and the medium class students don’t get to do what they want. So the only option to them who don’t get selected to the local universities and still want to study is doing either IT, Management/Business or CIMA/CIM (Because those are the most popular private education options available). But that might not be what they want.

Ask your self would a child who always dreamed of becoming a Doctor or an Engineer all his/her life and just missed entrance to university by 0.01 marks wouldn’t they be happy to learn what they truly desire even through private education? Wouldn’t private education available for an affordable price right here in Sri Lanka help them?

The real issue is about selection. If all who get 3 passes at A levels are entitled for private education at this private Medical Faculty it would be very unfair for those who studied all those long sleepless nights to get through. (Coz I know that most who fail put a lot of effort in the wrong direction to fail.) So the criteria for selection should be an A level result which nearly missed entrance to medicine, and people with the capacity to reach a knowledge level as that which is required to enter a government university.

The same is true for all other professions, which may be offered privately.

So to me the idea as a whole seems good if executed properly. And as always these are my thought so obviously open for debate.

It really hurts when you sometimes really look forward to something and plan for something which is not in your control and when that thing goes wrong. You feel that you wasted a lot of time and effort for that. Well leaving all serious things aside, cricket matches tend to lead to this outcome a lot.

When I was young I use to hurry from school hoping and praying for my school van to move faster to get home quickly to watch the cricket match on tv, and then when I get home I find out that there is a power cut, or just when I turn on the tv a wicket falls (this happens a lot when I wait a bit too long to go for a lecture at the university) or the opposition are well set for a victory. (Oh the feelings of disappointment)

Last Sunday was a perfect example for what I call the curse of the spectators. Me and a couple of friends went to a friend’s place in Deniyaya after finishing the dreaded exams. All of us are avid cricket fans. So after much effort we managed to find a color tv and an antenna and a booster (just in case) to watch the World T20 finals.

Then when we got to Deniyaya we spent over two hours moving, rotating the antenna around to catch Channel Eye properly. One guy watched for the quality of the channel while others moved it. Phrases like “than onna hariyagena enawa”, “aiyo onna aaye upset una”, “thawa poddak oya paththata”,”naa oy oya paththata neme anith paththata” came constantly out of the quality controller’s mouth.(it was only later we found out that the match was being telecasted on rupavahini which has far better reception than channel eye, in outstation areas).

All along we were discussing on the strategies Sri Lankan team should take to win the match. We all agreed that batting first would be the best thing to do, and decided any score over 140 would surely be defendable because our bowling was very good. We talked in length why Chris Gayle won the toss and decided to bowl first in the semi finals (gosh wasn’t he stupid?). And specially about Dilshan and his performances. (we also formulated a few theories on how he managed to be so consistent)

By 7.30p.m. we were already with food, couple of mega bottles, water and all the other little things.

What Happened : Sri Lanka batted first made 138 and still lost the game.

A classic case of the spectators curse.

I am one huge movie fan. I am one of those guys who go through all those reviews and critics and trailers trying to find out which movies to watch. Then after watching a movie that I think is great I scan the reviews and critics again to see whether there are others like me who think the same about that movie.

As of lately I have seen a flood of superheroes coming to our lives through the silver screen. Now Hollywood is a multi-million dollar business so they won’t give all these Super Heroes if they didn’t bring in some heavy cash. The superhero movies are doing so great that even spoofs are coming on to the big screen.

So think about it how do all these superhero movies do so well in Box Office? How do they create a buzz? Most of all how do they get so many viewers? What do all these “Super Heroes” have in common?

Well may it be the wall crawling Spider Man or the high flying, x-ray visioned Super Man or the knight of darkness Batman they all have one thing in common, yeah you guessed it THEY FIGHT CRIME.

Today we live in the fast moving, ever changing, highly competitive 21^st century where we sometimes have to do morally questionable things (which are not illegal by the way)to be competitive, but deep down inside we still have the ability to distinguish the RIGHT from WRONG, the GOOD from EVIL. Well it is this thing deep down inside that keeps our humanity intact. We still remember those bedtime stories our parents/ grandparents used to tell us. Remember those stories about the mighty kings, Robin Hood, William Tel? Wasn’t there a time we wanted to be like those legends?

Well now, we have grown up we have accepted reality, and most of us lack that courage to be the man who changes the world. But still somewhere within us we still want to be that man, who fights the corrupt system, deals with the people who we think bring unfairness and evil in to our life. This is where the super hero comes in. He’s that man come to life. That’s why we love those super heroes so much.

Why are most superheroes masked? Well you’d say that it is to protect their privacy and to protect their loved ones from coming to harm. But just think of it this way, isn’t it easy to place our face within that masked face. With a masked face it is much easier to fantasize ourselves as the super hero. We forget all our problems, those misunderstandings at the work place, the exam that you have to sit for which you have not yet studied, we forget about all of them embrace our dreams. For a brief period during the movie and after that (just think of the times you fantasized in your alone time about various parts in movies) you are helping people, changing the world and most of all feeling satisfied with your self.

Well this is why I think Super Hero movies are doing so well today, but then again I am no Psychologist or Social Analyst so it’s open for debate.

PS : and if u are wondering who my favorite super hero is well it’s the Batman.