The Printout

For Mr. Shantha Herath (Faculty of Business Studies and Finance, Wayamba University)

“A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.”
A Chinese Proverb

Rummaging through,
A file of old lecture-notes,
I came across it – a printout,
Of a front-page,
Of an assignment.

A flowery border,
Fencing a rainbow text.

A request, a rebuke, and resentment!

A smile, a signature and love!

The printout evoked memories,
As indelible as stone inscriptions,
As deep as life.

One day, I know, it’ll fade away
Into nothingness.

But not his kindness.

The Monitor

I saw the grotesque creature,
Lying placidly,
On the recently trimmed grass,
In our garden,
In embarrassing oblivion,
To the man-made reality,
That it didn’t belong,
In our garden,
Or in our civilized world…..

Its grey spotty skin,
Which thorns or pricks can’t puncture
Or jagged stones,
Cannot tear or graze….
And its sharp, serrated tail,
Possessing tremendous strength,
With which it whips away the approachers….

From a safe distance,
I stood watching it,
With a long pole in my hand,
With which I poked at it,
Every now and then….

For all its ferocity,
It lay passive, patient, and tranquil,
Like a real gentleman,
Never once resisting,
My cowardly mean assaults….

Soon I gave up,
My attempts to drive it away,
Realizing that,
I was but a spiritless coward,
Trying in vain,
To bring down a mountain,
With a fragile pole….

Before long,
It crawled away,
In magnanimous resignation,
Leaving behind for cruel cravens like me,
A silent lesson of patience!

The News-Presenter

When I saw her climb the staircase with grace,
My heart began to flutter despoiling my ease.
From where I stood, I clearly saw her excited, red face,
I was more excited than her, to talk about my case.

She tightly clutched the papers with trembling fingers.
How frightened she looked that moment in my memory still lingers.
And off her blushed face, my eyes I could never take,
It was all like a dream, from which I refused to wake.

With jealousy I watched all eyes fixed on her face.
They forever kept looking at her, those gazers so base!
She belonged totally to me, that I wanted them all to know,
They shouldn’t question my claim, she wasn’t mine yet though.

Mesmerized by her beauty, her I kept watching.
With her, my sweet girl, few girls could be matching.
Little of what she presented made any sense to me,
As I dived deeper and deeper in the Joy’s vast sea.

Now that, like a queen, she was descending the staircase,
I could closely watch her pretty, flushed face.
I don’t want to lie; she really wasn’t the best,
But she was my girl-to-be, and little mattered the rest!

The Last Rite

Said the chief monk, ‘It`s time
for pan wadeema now…’

We, her grand-children, drew closer,
As my father set right,
The upended cup,
On the white plate.

As the monks,
Seated opposite the coffin,
Enwrapped with a white-cloth,
Water spouted out,
From the porcelain jug,
Held over the cup,
By all of us.

It slowly filled,
And water brimmed over,
Into the plate,
Where it rested.

Water:
The ever-young, the ever-fluid,
The ever-abundant, the ever-lasting;

What has it to do with life?

I wondered and wondered.

The Cortege

“…Let the lamp affix its beam…”
Wallace Stevens -  The Emperor of Ice-Cream

The cortege left our home,
In undignified haste.

The coffin rested in peace,
On six uneven shoulders:
Two at the head,
Two at the feet,
Two in the middle.

The bearers, it seemed to me,
Walked and talked,
Sans the slightest semblance,
Of solemnity, civility,
Or propriety.

They teased us into spelling,
Two of the six,
And poked fun at me,
As I walked like a crab,
Under the unfamiliar dead-weight.

Amid jokes, laughter and fun,
No one even pretended,
To bemoan the departed.

What a grave affront to the deceased!

But, they were right, perhaps.

Grief couldn`t set up a hut,
Dig a grave or bear a coffin;

And the dead was dead.

Alternating between Occasional Sanity and General Madness

“….Your noble son is mad.
Mad call I it. For, to define true madness
What is`t but to be nothing else but mad…”
William Shakespeare – Hamlet

A new batch has arrived, the rag season has commenced, and the raggers are having a rip-roaring time. I remember a former student leader defining the term ragging, saying that ‘RAG’ stood for ‘Royal Academic Game.’ I also remember him narrating some anecdote about its origin. Whether he was telling the truth or whether it was some fancy false definition he himself had been gulled into believing previously or whether it was his own personal definition about ragging I do not know, however. Whatsoever might be the origin of the term ‘rag’, I must say, ragging has never appealed to me. For me it was never a pleasure to be ragged; whether it gives one joy to rag others I really do not know, because I have never ragged anyone myself( maybe I am boasting a little too much about my own virtues!)

Let me tell you a little about our rag season. During it, though I hated to get ragged, I remember, there were some guys (my batch-mates) who told me themselves that they enjoyed being ragged. They told me that they found it so absolutely funny that they looked on it as a wonderful source of amusement and that they really beguiled their time by getting ragged. There were also others who endured it simply because they believed it was sort of compulsory for them to experience it and that rag season itself was their induction into the university culture and the initiation of their university career. The majority of my batch-mates were of this opinion. Some others were, however, diametrically opposed to ragging like I myself was, but were scarcely brave enough to stand up to the raggers, those boisterous bullying seniors.

There was, however, one guy who flaunted his opposition and boldly fought with the seniors who tried to daunt him with their awful blusters. He alone refused to be ragged and to march in a line into the canteen where the process of ragging took place. So he earned the opprobrium of the seniors and the objectionable nickname ‘alaya’ (potato) and came to be regarded as an outcast, a sort of pariah. After the rag season, however, the batch decided to oust him from it as a potato. His cronies raised objections, but they were literally drowned in the collective cacophonous dissent of the (malicious) majority so to speak. Because he refused to be ragged and fought with those foul-mouthed bullies like a man, or because it was decided that he should be disowned, or because he happened to find a better education opportunity than what a government university could offer him, or because of all these reasons, or because of some other reason, he left the university.

The story I narrated is a true one. And I still believe that he was cruelly deprived of his rightful inalienable privilege for university education owing to an obtuse practice introduced into our university system by some scoundrels with parochial political intentions. On another occasion, when we were the second year students running the ragging process, a girl frightened by the harsh treatments she received at the incipience of the rag season decided to quit her university education. After the rag season, a deputation of students paid her a visit at her home and tried to persuade her to return to the university. But she flatly refused to step into what she had felt as hell in the first place. Incidents like this superfluously reflect the deleterious consequences of this asinine primitive practice called ‘ragging.’ Also, they show that ragging is not always about getting some innocent fun as some people say. Undoubtedly, it is necessary that we preclude recurrence of such tragic happenings like these.

Seeking revenge
If you asked a ragger, ’Why do you harass your juniors who are like your own sisters and brothers?’ his first answer would be, ’Look! I don’t mean any harm to them…it’s just fun to tease them a bit…’But if you are sharp enough to penetrate that plausible answer you will see that it is not an honest answer. Maybe you are also clever enough to see the real reason driving most raggers to do what they do. As I believe, most raggers think more or less in the same way as does Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
“…I’m very proud, revengeful, ambitious
With more offences at my back
Than I have thoughts to put them in
imagination to give them shape,
Or time to act them in…”

Understandably, their desire to take revenge, for the ordeals they have had to suffer during their own rag season, on their juniors (because they cannot avenge themselves on their seniors) is the primary motivator for most students to engage in ragging. Because they themselves have been teased, harassed and maltreated in the past out of pure spite or for some other reason by their seniors, they seem to me to be in the persistent belief that their juniors  too must suffer the physical and mental anguish they themelves have experienced over their rag season. The protraction of rag season up to two or three months is a clear unmistakable demonstration of their motive.

The responsibility for the effective and smooth running of this cycle of revenge is often entrusted with the students` union that comes to rescue the raggers when they are charged with indiscipline and offensive behaviour and have to face disciplinary actions. There is no denying that the students` union renders an invaluable service to the whole community of students in ensuring and protecting their rights and privileges by leading them to remonstrate against the corrupt practices of those engaged in the university administration or any measures, taken by the university authorities and posing a threat to the rights and privileges they are entitled to. But in its sphere of operations, students` union is one of the main forces, rightly or wrongly protecting the raggers against the disciplinary actions taken by the university authorities with a view to deterring potential raggers.

Here, it must be stressed that some university authorities are not objective in the prescription of punishments and that they sometimes punish students on trumped up charges based on their personal prejudices without an impartial investigation into the alleged breaches of discipline. On such occasions students` union is obliged to intervene on behalf of the culprits.

Finding a partner
Another important motivator for guys to take part in ragging is to find a girl from the junior batch. Tradition requires that the man should be older than his wife. So the senior guys, possessing this conventional wisdom, have their eyes upon the junior girls. Clearly, there are instances where this traditional rule is simply thrown to the wind by some juniors forming love relationships with their own batch-mates and also by those deviants who dare woo their own senior girls (even during the rag season itself!) and form relationships with them. In the university parlance this second phenomenon is known as getting ‘lambet’, but how and from where this term originated is beyond my knowledge.

Likewise, courting or wooing a girl is called ‘washing’ in the jargon of university students. So amid all the cacophony, din and tumult taking place in the scene of ragging, many senior guys are busy wooing the junior girls, many of whom look to be extraordinarily pliable and are constantly smiling. Maybe they are practising one out of the sixty four spells they are known to possess and these poor doltish seniors have not a clue as to what their intentions are! There are some lucky fellows who succeed in their courtships, but the majority gets rejected once the rag season is over. In the university, however, getting rejected is considered as normal a thing as earning a ‘D’ pass at the exam (I learnt this after I had entered the university on the rebound with a broken heart!) In moat cases, a guy may mope for a day or two and will be his normal self soon enough. Unlike some teenagers, they will not want to kill themselves over a girl’s rejection.

I see I have digressed a little from the theme; but the point I want to make is that if finding a girl is their sole solitary concern, they can do that in a more pleasant, more effective way than teasing, harassing, bulling and yelling obscenities at the freshers who have just entered a milieu completely new and totally different from the school where they have been studying for the past 13 years. The question I want to ask them is: can’t these senior guys be a little more romantic and affectionate in dealing with the juniors?

Slippers, cheap frocks and cardboard files
In our university, during the rag season, the junior guys and girls should wear their respective uniforms as recommended to them by their seniors. A guy should wear only one pair of trousers and one short sleeved shirt over the entire rag season while a girl has to wear the same cheeththa frock throughout the rag season and tie their hair with pieces of black ribbon. They should both wear only rubber slippers themselves. They should each bring with them the same cardboard file no matter how battered it is as long as the rag season exists.
  
Their most noble seniors use the most abusive, most obnoxious terms in the Sinahala language (I had better left them for your imagination!) to address them. No matter how indecent their seniors are, they have to respect them and address them in Sinhala as ‘jeshta uttamaya’(noble sir) When they enjoin them (junior guys) to crawl around the canteen floor sometimes under the tables and over the chairs, they should follow their orders; they should stop as soon as they are asked to stop. No matter how prim and proper they are, their seniors constantly find fault with them. They have a knack for carping. If there is nothing else, they blame one for the way one looks at them. Sometimes they punish you for your mistakes.

One such punishment is that they ask you to play the heater (hetare gesema). You go to a wall and stand with your back to it, place your both elbows on the wall behind you and stretch your legs forward at an angle without bending your knees. The whole exercise puts intense pressure on your elbows as they press into the hard wall, which causes you to feel the sensation of getting heated in a few seconds. In fact, few seniors will be so inhumane as to force you to remain in the same posture for a long time. If my dear readers want to experiment this themselves, they may do it without breaking their backbones!

In addition to this, seniors ask new comers to do physical exercises-those that you used to do at the school in the Physical Education period. If you are too sick to exercise yourself, you can excuse yourself from it. But for that you will have to wear a paper on your shirt or frock displaying the name of some fancy vulgar disease from which you are believed to suffer. It can be a little embarrassing because seniors may question you about the origin and the symptoms of your disease. But it may be far better than over-exercising yourself according to the instructions by those whose knowledge about exercises can be no more than a donkey’s knowledge about the theory of Relativity!

In the lunch-time, girls have to feed the guys standing next to them and vice versa. Sometimes, a few lunch packets are unpacked and the contents are cast onto one big dollop .Then you mix it using your hand like a spade. And you feed your neighbour with that wholesome, highly nutritious food! Egg-sucking is an even more horrible practice and can make you spew up specially if you are over-squeamish. A boiled egg (with its shell peeled off) is passed around a table; each sucks it passes it to his or her neighbour who does the same and passes it to the next person and so on and on. And just imagine the plight of the one who has to eat it in the end!

Conclusion
Rag leaders often argue that the process of ragging helps make bold self-confident undergraduates, that it creates unity and solidarity among the batch mates despite their gender, social status, religion and race or language differences, that it awakens their latent creativity, that they learn to respect their seniors as they go through it, and that, through all these, it makes them more perfect men and women; this argument, however, is not without some element of truth in it. But they deliberately leave out the element of hypocrisy inherent in the ragging.

And I am deeply opposed to ragging because it is totally discordant with the libertarian aspects of university culture, which I most admire, even if the rag season lasts only for two or three months. In my opinion (maybe I am wrong and a little too egalitarian!) no senior student, be he a batch rep, a student leader or a self-appointed rag leader has any right whatsoever to dictate a dress-code to the juniors even if it is only for the ease of identification and for a relatively short period of time; no dull-witted rag leader has any right whatsoever force any new-comer to participate in the ragging against his or her free-will; no senior student has any right whatsoever to marginalize any junior student just because he or she refuses to be ragged.

There is another thing which I should disclose in spite of the embarrassment it may cause to certain parties. After the rag season, these more perfect, more creative junior students go to administrative offices and faculty offices only to address peons therein as ‘Sir’ much to the embarrassment of the lecturers who sometimes happen to overhear such conversations!

The process of ragging certainly has some funny aspects; that may be why some students exclaim, ‘Ragging is loads of fun!’ and enjoy getting ragged. Some others opine that it is wonderful in retrospect. To a certain extent, I have felt this myself. But in retrospect, very few things can be disturbing or horrible. Personally I hail ragging as primitive, barbaric, inhumane, cruel, mean, and degrading and firmly believe that it should be deracinated as soon as possible. If the total extirpation of ragging is out of the question, then I suggest that the degrading aspects of it be totally eliminated while ensuring that no student, male or female, gets ragged against his or her will.

The Confession

Now I am a patient, an invalid confined to a bed, whose sheet and mattress stinks with my urine. A couple of months ago, I suffered a stroke which left me paralyzed. Today I feel like a breathing corpse. If only that stroke had taken my life without leaving me to this endless suffering in this stinking, squalid room! Maybe, I am destined to suffer more. Sometimes I think death will not be half as dreadful as this miserable life I spend as a bed- ridden invalid. Nevertheless, there are times when I dread the Unknown which I will have to explore sooner or later after death has released me from these mortal agonies. The Mysterious Realm which is believed to be lying beyond death might perhaps be little better than these terrible sufferings. Apart from those natural human fears about the Unknown, however, I am also suffering from a terrible sense of guilt dogging my every thought. The painful consciousness of a past error gives me even greater pains than this bedsore, which no medicine can alleviate let alone cure! Now I want you to hear my sad painful story, and I wish to make a clean breast of it, before death can have me in its relentless grip.

It all happened even more than three decades ago when I was a sturdy, middle-aged man. But I can recall the details of it as vividly as if it was just yesterday that this tragedy took place. Then I was working as a clerk at the Zonal Education Office, Narammala. I had six children, three daughters and three sons. At the time, none of them was married. My elder son, a rice merchant then, had a big rice mill. He had employed several guys who performed the laborious task of boiling and drying paddy on the basis of daily wages. Nimal was one of those guys, employed at my elder son’s rice mill.

We were a respectable family in the village. My late father who was a stern confident man inspired the villagers’ respect. At the time, literacy was not nearly as high as it is today. Education, free as it was, was still limited to wealthy influential families. So the majority of villagers were illiterate peasants who just lived from hand to mouth. It was small wonder, therefore, that the fairly literate families like ours could command their respect whether we deserved it or not. Besides, I had land of about twenty acres inherited from my father, which yielded a fairly large crop of coconut. He had also accumulated a fortune of around 100000 rupees by the time he passed away. I know you will scorn at my reference to a fortune of 100000 rupees, because today even small children know that amount is scarcely a fortune. But it was then more than 30 years ago, before the price level had begun to skyrocket under the influence of inflation. Then it was fairly accurate to call such amount a fortune. My late father was a money-lender, not quite unlike that usurer ‘Sherlock’ in Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice’, a play I would still love to read though I can hardly manage to read anything today. I can still quote some lines from it.

           “I am a tainted wether of the flock,

           Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit

           Drops earliest to the ground”

Let me quote another excerpt from it.

                      “And I beseech you,

                       Wrest once the law to your authority;

                       To do a great right, do a little wrong

                       And curb this cruel devil of his will”

I have digressed a little from the story that I am narrating. But you may see that like many of my peers, I am still a worshipper of that literary genius, Shakespeare, and pride myself on being able to quote him so accurately.

My position as a clerk at the Zonal Education Office was rather enviable even among the people who were not so poor. Nowadays I know few people wish to become clerks, but again times were different then. I always tried to live up to the reputation that my late father had earned. I wanted my children to follow my steps and preserve the tradition without tarnishing our family’s good reputation. Moreover, we were from a high caste, so I hardly mingled with those poor villagers from low castes; nor did I want my children to do so. But what I failed to realize was the extent to which they themselves wanted to follow my sound advice. Now I wonder if they ever wanted to follow my judicious advice and whether they just nodded their heads in reluctant approval while totally dismissing my advice in their intercourse with people for the simple reason that they were too decent to contradict me, their bigoted, self-opinionated father.

These days I often hear my elder son say ‘Caste is nothing next to wealth and social position.’ But those days, caste signified a great deal especially when it came to marriage. The parents who overlooked such matters as caste and creed in their children’s marriages were disowned by their relatives. Or maybe I thought so. As I have already said, I wanted my children to follow my steps, but did they really want to live in the same way as I wanted them to do? Or did they just listen to my advice for no other reason than that I was their father who had begotten them and brought them up? These are the questions that I today ask myself, having been confined to this smelly room, this filthy bed. I sincerely doubt if I ever can find answers to these mind-boggling questions. However, now I know my youngest daughter did not want to follow my advice. But I also know that I have seen the truth rather too late.

Every family has at least one recalcitrant child. In our family, unfortunately, that recalcitrant happened to be my youngest daughter, Priyani whereas my second son, Wimalasiri, now a senior lecturer in Kelaniya University was the epitome of obedience. How is it possible that two children, fathered by the same man, brought up by the same parents under the same circumstances, living under the same roof, studied at the same school, receiving the same advice, being accepted and treated in the same way can be as far different from each other as day is different from Night or Fire from Ice? Why I repent today is because I wanted the other five children of mine to be like Wimalasiri. That each child was unique in his own way did not cross my mind until all was gone and I had little choice but to regret my irrational desire.

Priyani was the pet of our family. Maybe she was surfeited with affection since she was the youngest and the loveliest. I, a very punctilious father, a sort of domestic martinet, did not pamper my children, but deep in my heart I loved each of them alike. For them, I always had tender fibers in my heart, but I often chose to dissemble my feelings and play the role model of a strict father. I did so because I wanted all of them to become highly educated, respectable citizens of our country. Does every child of every strict father necessarily become highly erudite respectable citizens? Is being a strict father a necessary formula for producing a good intelligent child? Maybe I should have asked myself those questions some thirty years earlier. I also wanted to pride myself on being the father of such respected children……

Priyani, from her early childhood days showed a stubborn streak. Not that she was a very bad child, but she was a bit too strong-willed. Maybe she had inherited such qualities from me. As she grew older I found her exceedingly incorrigible. Since I wanted her to become a good, obedient, intelligent child, I punished her over-willful acts. I wished from the bottom of my heart to marry my three daughters off to wealthy

influential families from superior castes. Decidedly, it was their character which would be the key for them to be connected with such families. Unlike today, education itself did not count much for a girl in that traditional society where women were supposed to rear children and attend to household affairs. I, a worshipper of established traditions, wanted to instill such ideas into their minds since they were able to understand something. I had scarcely any problems with the other two, but Priyani often tended to disagree with me. Oddly enough, I had no such dreams about my sons and just hoped that they would live up to the reputation of our family whatever might happen. Yet I did not want them to go astray either, so I caned them when I found that they deserved that, but not as frequently as I did so to my daughters in general and Priyani in particular. When I punished her for minor offences, she refused to eat and locked herself up in her boudoir for hours. It was my genial wife and her two elder sisters that eventually coaxed her into taking food. Though I was rather severe on her, she always sought my company when I was home, calling after me ‘Thaththi, thaththi.’ Whether she resented my harshness when I chastised her I still ask myself.

Priyani, a sixteen year old at the time, was prettier than both of her elder sisters. She was friendly with men and women alike. So I and my wife had few reasons to believe that the things were not the same as they did appear to be. Priyani also spoke with the guys who worked in my elder son’s rice mill. When my sons were away and I was at the office it was my wife who oversaw the operations at the rice mill and Priyani helped her. Her sisters were a little too shy and reclusive. But Priyani was an ebullient, confident extrovert. Maybe that was the bane of her life.

When rumors began to circulate that she was having an affair with Nimal, I was furious. ‘How can I let her be married to him, a guy from a low-caste family?’ I asked myself exasperatedly. Besides that, he was not half as educated as Priyani who went to the central college. ’An illiterate beggar!’, that was how I described him to others. Directly I heard this news I asked Priyani if that news was true. But she resolutely denied having any affair with him. Yet it was not easy for her to fool me who was four times as old as she. A seasoned man, I knew smoke could hardly arise without a fire. Angry as I was, I pretended to have believed what she had said. I told her that she was yet a child and that she had to focus her attention on her studies rather than romance. I also told her that she was too young to think about such matters. It, I emphasized, was for us, parents to think about such things when she had reached the marriageable age. Yet, I was determined to discover the truth of this rumor for myself. I resolved to watch her more closely from that day on.

When I realized that I had guessed right, I was enraged, and hit her hard like a madman. I even hit my wife whom I accused of condoning her wrong behavior. My rage had so maddened me that none of them escaped my wrath. That day our house assumed a funereal air. Priyani looked devastated, crying her heart out. Next day I did not go to office and waited till Nimal had turned up. Burning with rage, I walked over to him, and slapped him hard across the face. Yelling at him, I used my favorite phrase, `illiterate beggar’ to insult him. I was so full of wrath that I would have killed him then and there had my elder son not intervened and disengaged me from him. Needless to mention, he was dismissed right away. He walked away, an accursed loser with his shoulders bowed. Never did he return to the rice mill…..

After a lapse of three or four days things seemed to have returned to normal. Priyani was no longer wailing over her dismissed fiancé and seemed active and cheerful helping her mother. She was friendly with me too though I had begun to be rather too laconic following that incident. Deep in my heart, I was happy thinking that the storm was over and all that was a thing of history now……

There is always the calm before the storm. This I forgot choosing to believe rather optimistically that every dark cloud has a silver lining. On that fateful Wednesday while I was working in the office, I felt a severe headache, and told my chief that I was indisposed. A suave, kind-hearted man, he granted me leave as soon as I had revealed my necessity to him. ‘Go to Dr. Wijerathne’, he advised,’ or else you will fall sick and won` t be able to come to the office tomorrow’. Oddly enough, I never was able to go to work the following day. Leaving the office, I went to the dispensary, situated at a walking distance from our office. The physician prescribed some medicines and asked me to rest since he had diagnosed symptoms of fever, beginning to set in. But things so happened that I never got any opportunity to rest or relax that day.

As soon as I arrived at the Narammala bus- stand, I saw a Wariyapola- bound bus pulled in. Already a few passengers had taken seat. I seated myself on a front seat and leaned back, watching the people hanging around the bus-stand. There she was! It was not too difficult for my sharp eyes to make out her, who came strolling towards the same bus hand in hand with that pauper, Nimal. Never ever in my life had I felt angrier. That I was ill never crossed my mind. I sat bolt upright, got out of the bus, and marched towards them. They, being intoxicated with romance, did not notice until I was right under their very noses. When they did notice me, it was too late for them to retreat to a hideaway, so they stood statue-like with their very feet stamped to the ground.

Before I could speak out anything, my right hand whipped her hard across the face twice or thrice. Such was my diabolic rage which compelled me to hit her that I felt my whole body tremble. Gripping her by the wrist, I yanked her towards the bus and climbed her into it. Sitting beside me, she cried all the way home. At her weeping I hardly felt any sympathy with her. The more she sobbed and wept, the angrier I felt. Once we were home I hit her even harder and blamed her in the loudest tones possible. As usual she ran into her room and locked herself up. For more than an hour, I heard her muffled sobbing.

That night it rained heavily as strong howling wind continued to blow, drowning the otherwise annoying croaking of frogs. A muffled howl of dogs reached my ears, as I lay on my bed, too keyed up to sleep. That howl, and hooting of an owl gave me a premonition of a calamity to come......

Next morning coming out of the room, I observed an overcast sky, bleak surroundings and a garden flooding with rain water. I walked to the well stepping sideways to avoid poodles. Taking the pail in one hand, I peered into the well only to see the saddest spectacle I had ever seen in my life. My daughter` s still body was afloat on water. She was wearing the same dress that she had worn the day before. Her body floated on the water with her face downwards. I was so shocked by that horrific scene which greeted my sight that my hold on the rope did loosen, letting go of the pail which plunged down into the space and made a hollow sound as it hit the water. My wife, who was coming towards the well to fetch water, might sense that something was terribly wrong. In my mind` s ear, I can still hear her wailing, her lamenting for the lost child….

In her small boudoir, on her table, we found a short letter she had written shortly before she had committed suicide. In that letter, I can remember, she had written something like this, “…..Thaththi, I hope my death will serve to preserve our family` s good reputation….” Having read this letter, I, who had cried on few occasions before in my life, wept like a child. My poor child had sacrificed herself for the sake of our family` s good reputation!

My wife never blamed me, nor did my children. To all others, it was just another tragic event. They might forget it once her coffin had been committed to the ground or even earlier. Even for us the mourners, time did not cease to commiserate with us, and life ran its usual course despite the vacuum which her lamentable death had left in our lives and was never to be filled. But I knew they (my wife and children) secretly hated me for my cruelty. I knew they hated me just as much as I hated myself….

Today all my five children are living in clover, holding respectable positions being recognized by the society. Their spouses are from affluent, literate, influential families of superior castes. People respect them too. Except a passing remark, Priyani is hardly ever discussed by them who seem to have forgotten all that. All those painful memories seem to have been buried deep under the sands of Time. But I believe they, my wife and children still hate me just as much as they used to do in the past or even more. I have always been a good husband and a dutiful father. Or I think I have been one. But, my wife, will she ever forgive me for what I have done to her sweet, innocent daughter? And my children, will they ever forgive me for what I have done to their gentle, affectionate sister? And Nimal, who was stopped from even attending her funeral, will he ever forgive me for what I have done to his loving, innocent fiancée? Even if they were all to forgive me, could I ever forgive myself for what I have done to my poor, naïve child? 

Reminiscence

For ELTU, Wayamba University

“A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.”
A Chinese Proverb

As soon as I stepped in,
He came towards me,
Beaming at me with an affectionate gleam,
In his eyes,
In a flash of recognition. 

Waving the magazine,
In his right hand,
He spoke before I could,
‘There was a poem a by you
in the magazine today,
so I reserved it for you;
here it is!’

For a moment,
I stood speechless,
More moved by that simple act,
Of kindness,
Than by the excitement,
Of seeing myself in print.

Now I no longer glory in it,
And see it not as a good poem,
But as a piece of mush,
Written in a moment,
When infatuation overcame,
My sense;
Perhaps wisdom of age or something else,
Almost as potent,
Has diminished its literary value,
While time and termites have had
Their respective tolls on it.

But his kindness engraved,
On the metal plate of memory,
Remains indelible,

Forever.

Procrastination

I always expect,
To begin life from tomorrow,
With brilliant plans,
To move mountains,
Or thwart rivers.
I constantly hope to do,
The harder work tomorrow,
Spending today,
Or the precious priceless present,
For easier and less important tasks,
Demanding little labor,
But giving me greater fun.

The necessity to study,
Brings sleep to my eyes,
And pains and aches to my limbs,
Making me prefer respite to work,
And sit opposite the television,
Or listen to music.

And the day wears on, the night passes,
Tomorrow becomes today,
All too fast,
And procrastinators like me,
Re-postpone life!

Liyawunu Sithuwili: A Collection of Poems by Tharindu Weerasinghe

Liyawunu Sithuwili(Written Thoughts) is the first anthology of Sinhala poems by the engineer poet, Tharindu Weerasinghe. Prior to this, we read Candlelight, his maiden anthology of English poems. For Tharindu, an amateur poet, Candlelight is a stupendous literary achievement. We sincerely wish for this anthology to be as much successful as Candlelight or even more successful than it.

Tharindu, while being a software engineer by profession, seems capable of making time to ride the Pegasus; also we see that the angel of Inspiration does not refuse to visit people who can ill-afford to sit writing at a table from dawn to dusk or to burn the midnight oil, and spend most of their time sitting at a computer, browsing Internet or reading IT literature.

Writing poetry, we know, is not an easy art to master; one must devote oneself to it if one is to master it. Maybe, once in a while, a good poem is written with a few strokes of pen and without much effort being made. But, on most occasions, it is persistent writing, frequent striking off and continuous rewriting that give birth to a good poem. That is why, the Nobel Laureate Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, writes in Adam`s Curse:
“A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet, if it does not seem a moment`s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
 Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world."

In the poem, ‘In My Craft or Sullen Art, English poet Dylan Thomas also describes the throes of composition. His craft or art is sullen because, words, like marble, are resistant material. Tharindu, while devoting much of his time to his profession, has been able to surmount all those hurdles and has continued to engage himself in the sullen craft of writing poetry. This anthology is the fruit of his tireless efforts.

The poem, ‘Amme…’(To Mother) is one of the finest poems in this collection. In it Tharindu writes:
“You (mother), who get up, having awakened the Sun,
(And) kindle the hearth every morning,
In spite of the fire burning in the heart,
When will your mission be over?”

I beg Tharindu`s pardon for my loose translation, because I believe poetry, as English poet, Robert Frost, famously remarked once, is what gets lost in translation. This poem also reminds me of Robert Hayden`s Those Winter Sundays, a poem about a loving father, wherein the poet asks:
“What did I know, what did I know
Of love`s austere and lonely offices?”

How much do we owe our parents for what they do for us? How few of us do ever thank our parents for those austere and lonely offices of love? Maybe, both of them had the same questions ringing in their minds as they wrote their poems. However, in Hayden`s poem, the underlying theme is remorse whereas in Tharindu`s, affection and gratitude meld with each other to make a wonderful poem. Tharindu, we see, is the luckier of the two.

The poem, ‘Kamaraye siti Makuluwata’(the Spider in the Room) reveals that Tharindu is a keen observer of life in the environment around him. Notwithstanding the beauty and the architectural intricacy of the cobweb, the spider has woven it for the sole solitary purpose of catching a fly or some other ill-fated insect. In this instance, the danger concealed in the veneer of beauty unveils itself to the poet`s sensitive eye and feeds his muses.
In the poem, ‘Numbha saha Mama’(You and I), Tharindu writes:
“You are the drizzle,   
In the waterless desert,
I`m the oasis,
Enlivened by that rain.”

Again I must admit that I am hardly a good translator; as I am not satisfied with my translation, let me put that stanza in its original form.
“Nirudhaka katharata wata
Niliwassa numbha…
E wahi podhen pana labu
Kembima mama…”
Tharindu`s lines remind me of the song, ’Paalu andhuru mulu ahasa mamayi’ sung by Pandith W.D.Amaradeva. This is a very sweet love poem where the contrast of images chosen by the poet tells us a wonderful story.

In the poem, ‘Suwandha’(Fragrance), Tharindu, the philosopher, says while fragrance of flowers is spread in the direction of wind, the fragrance of humanity is spread in every direction. It is possible that he has drawn inspiration from the classic, Subashithaya to a certain extent. The religious influence in his English poems is just as prominent in his Sinhala poems.

Tharindu`s view on one-sided love, as he says in the poem, ‘Eaka parshaweeya Premaya’(One-sided Love) is that it is a tuneless song with only the first part written. Because I myself have had profound experience in that area, I do agree with the poet!

In the poem, ‘(Maroo) Dharu Pema’((Killed) love for children)-I cannot help but add brackets like in a sum-Tharindu takes up a dilemma. When something is neither right nor wrong or is both right and wrong from different perspectives, we call it a dilemma, which, we, nonetheless, prefer to circumvent rather than solve because it`s mind-boggling at its simplest. We cannot blame the woman for abandoning the children unless we prefer to see them being harassed by her husband or their father. At the same time, that a mother abandons her children is blameworthy by any moral standard. It is this complicated reality that Tharindu wants us to understand in this poem.

The poem, ‘Rata giya Ugatha’(The Intellectual who went Abroad) is about brain-drain, a common occurrence in Sri Lanka today. There is brutal candour in Tharindu`s lines. The poem, ’Noothana Highannage Kaviya’(The Modern Beggar`s Poem) carries sharp wit and irony. Tharindu, the satirist writes:
“Don`t give me a rupee or two,
At least, I want ten rupees;
(Otherwise) when my phone has been reloaded,
What remains for me to spend on the lunch?”

Today`s beggars are far richer than they used be and are, in a sense, sophisticated. Beggary in the main cities, it is said, is as lucrative a profession as politics. So it is little wonder that beggars are scarcely satisfied with a rupee or two. After all, they too must be feeling the sting of Global Economic Downturn!

Tharindu`s poem, ‘(Thawakalika) Samu ganeamak’(A (Temporary) Farewell) alludes to University of Peradeniya, perhaps the most romantic of all our universities, of which many a poem/song have been written and to the idyllic landscape of Hanthana. In truth, the four years we spend at the university are one of the loveliest periods of our lives with extremely poignant memories. At the end of those four years, when we must part from our friends and acquaintances and leave the familiar landscape behind, naturally, we long for staying a bit longer there. Sometimes, the guys of the outgoing batch must bid temporary farewell to their girls from the junior batches. Tharindu`s poem captures the essence of this painful reality.

The poem, ‘Pebarawari 14’ (February 14) is a sharply ironic poem about the commercialization of romance while the poem, ‘Apata apa nathiwella’(We have lost ourselves) is a gloomy depiction of the moral degradation in the country, owing largely to the ethnic strife in the North-East, which is, fortunately, drawing to a close now.

In the poem, ‘Dinak mata mese sithuna-Mama mese liwwa…’(One day it occurred to me (and) I wrote (it) like this…) Tharindu sketches a caricature of the paradox called ‘Man’: the God and the Devil, the genius and the fool, the saint and the beast, the king and the beggar, the hero and the coward. I believe it is the poet, Alexander Pope who gives the finest and the most perfect description of Man, the paradox:
“....Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast;
In doubt his mind and body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks to little, or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself, abus'd or disabus'd;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all,
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.”
Essay on Man

The poem, ‘Wesmuhunu’(Masks) is a philosophical poem. We know how often we must wear masks to cloak up the strong emotions like jealousy, fear and anger boiling in the cauldron of our heart and threatening to explode out. Viewed in that light, even the saying that face is the mirror of one`s soul is barely a truth. And Tharindu`s poem, ‘Gami suwa’(Comfort of Countryside), we find, is a kind of pastoral poem, studded with wonderful images from our countryside.
 
Speaking of Tharindu`s poem about (In)gratitude, we must remember what Dr.Johnson said: “Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation, you cannot find it among the gross people.” If we do expect gratitude from people whom we happen to help, believe me, we are in for disappointment almost every day.

The poem, ‘Wiwahaya’(Marriage) is a short, philosophical poem, shedding light on a bittersweet reality. To prove the truth of Tharindu`s poem, we can find ample evidence from our neighbourhood, our workplaces or from the society at large. Tharindu`s talent as a budding lyricist is obvious in the last few poems in this collection. Maybe, we will be able to hear the songs written by him in the near future.

Liyawunu Sithuwili touches upon a wide range of themes such as romance, filial love, religion, nature, war and peace, morality, philosophy, science, social issues and so on and so forth. The poet, philosopher, humanist, naturalist, moralist, patriot, dove, judge, policeman, social critic, jester and satirist in Tharindu, we find, at work in his poetry at different intervals throughout this collection. Despite his super-busy schedule as a software engineer, Tharindu has managed to continue his bilingual literary career. And we see he has done an excellent job. For fans of Sinhala poetry, this is a literary treasure of immense value, because from the first page to the last one, it makes an interesting reading. We sincerely appreciate Tharindu`s creative/literary endeavours and are happy to encourage him to keep up his literary work.

May 1, 2009

While riding to the campus,
Along the familiar road,
Running through,
The familiar landscape,
I saw:
Fellow cyclists,
Riding fast to their destinations;
The cycle repairer,
Patching up a punctured tube;
The welder, at his wayside hut,
Soldering the broken handle,
Of a new tricycle;
The blacksmith sweating,
At the obstinate bellows,
To fan the cheerless blaze;
The shop-keeper wrapping,
A loaf of bread,
In a piece of paper;
The collies scattering,
The cut coconut husks,
Over the concrete ground.

It was just the same,
That I`d seen on April 30, 2009,
And I`d see on May 2, 2009,
If I happened to ride,
Along the same way.

The same mould!

Time, the old tedious old fool,
Had forgotten the importance
Of International Labour Day.

Coup de grace

The bonfire greedily engulfed,
In its baleful flames,
Acres of harvested paddy-land,
Where heaps of hay,
Stood in amorphous pyramids,
Over the stubble;
Wreaths of thick black smoke
Lazily spiraling up
Formed an unnatural mist
Over the entire milieu,
While the unmistakable odour,
Of burning hay,
Hung thick on the wind,
Fanning the fire’s fury……

Dismal news about a singed snake,
Dying a slow, painful death,
Was spread faster than the fire itself,
When it was beginning,
To be extinguished,
By the same wind that’d been stoking it.

We, the curious villagers,
Stood in a semi-circle,
Around the burnt cobra,
Squirming and writhing,
With deep, inexplicable pain,
And watched the  pitiable plight,
Of the dying serpent,
‘It’s beyond cure now!’, declared,
One mature peasant.

As the fault-finding women-folk among us, the watchers,
Attributed the snake’s pitiful plight
In sibilant whispers,
To its karma in a previous life,
A more practical, kinder man,
Hit the dying snake on the head,
Much to the disgust,
Of the false, hollow-hearted sympathizers,
Who exclaimed in unison, ‘Ayyo!’
‘I did what I thought was right!’,
Answered back the remorseless hitter,
Before going to fetch some kerosene,
To incinerate the carcass……

Contradiction

 

 For Thamara Niranjali

Whenever I tell you,
‘Dear I have a poem to show you…’
I see your big brownish eyes,
Begin to gleam with boundless delight,
And a lovely smile leap to life on your lips,
Reflecting your deep fascination,
And your vicarious joy
Over my literary success.

I’m in turn enthralled,
By your insatiable desire for my poetry,
Mirroring my mad love for you,
Which compels me,
To think to myself,
‘How’s it possible that she loves
My literary works so much,
While she herself says she doesn’t love me?’

How can you help loving the clouds
While you love the sky?
I’m puzzled at the contradiction,
How can you help loving the night
While you love the stars?

Death

The kerosene lamp,
A small bottle of pesticide,
Fitted with a tin ipia and a wicker,
Lit the living room,

Where the old man,
In the throes of death,
Lay on a torn grimy rush mat,
Spread over a limp coir mattress,
Upon a shakier bed,

Placed against the white-washed wall,
On the cracked cement-floor.

The burning wicker,
Fast sucked the shallow pool of oil,
And cast huge, ungainly shadows,
On the white-washed walls,
Which looked like the minions of death themselves.

The howling of invisible dogs in the streets,
Along with the ominous hooting of an invisible owl
Hung on the cold, nocturnal wind,
And brought home a dark presentiment,
Giving shudders to his wife, son and daughter,
Surrounding his bed.

He opened his eyes and coughed drily,
And the glow of the lamp suddenly brightened,

But it shrank into flicker,
As the dying man closed his eyes.

The pale light grew dimmer and dimmer still.

And went out.

Against the Infinity

Darkness is greater by far, I think,
    Than light can ever be;
More eloquent is the silence,
    Than the words can ever pretend to be;
It shakes the world, the wind,
    That we neither hear nor see;
Alas! The tall grass grows taller still and wither,
    Unknown to the deaf blind lea.

A serious menace to the right to survival

While the majority of Sri Lankans are preoccupied with the political pranks of the country`s doomed opposition in the afterglow of the military victory gained by the ruling UPFA on May 18 this year by the elimination of the LTTE leadership, the issue of climate change has been practically sidetracked. In fact, in Sri Lanka, except for a couple of articles, published at odd intervals by several authorities on the subject, it never seemed to be deemed to be a matter to be reckoned with. Whenever this issue was taken up for discussion, for most Sri Lankans, that it could potentially wipe out entire civilizations from the face of the earth always sounded more like a gloomy prognosis from a Science Fiction by a highly imaginative writer than a scientific truth.

However, in an interview with The Nation on August 2, 2009, Environment Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka reveals some important facts and findings while highlighting the importance of working collaboratively to stave off the danger of global warming. According to him, it is a worse disaster than the colonialization itself as it can potentially imperil the very survival of the entire humanity not to mention the tenuous 20 million Sri Lankans priding ourselves forever on our proud 2500 years old history.

Basically, climate change disrupts agricultural production from time to time with droughts and floods occurring out of season causing the world`s agricultural food production to decline which may possibly give rise to famine specially in the less developed countries(LDCs) and to a lesser extent in developing countries like ours. In addition to that, it can potentially displace millions of people all over the world. In Bangladesh, one of our SAARC neighbours, alone an estimated 20 million people will be displaced within this century due to climate change. Also, the rising temperatures can cause glaciers particularly in the Polar regions and elsewhere to melt, which will in turn lead to rising sea levels. The rising sea levels will then submerge the low-lying islands. If the worst comes to the worst, unless we are drowned, we might be literally burnt to death by the same good old sun that keeps us alive. This is not stuff from an SF. It is a mere scientific reality of cause and effect. And we already see the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Therefore, without doubt, we have to contribute to keep the temperature levels from rising. But, there comes the problem of ethical dimension of this issue, because, at the moment, it is the developed world that is principally responsible for the green house gas emissions that result in global warming. It is they who burnt so much fossil fuel and practically littered the atmosphere with Carbon Dioxide (CO2). The developing world`s contribution to it is almost negligible. Therefore, should the developing world pay for the disaster brought about by the erroneous industrial practices of the developed countries that now advocate a grand theory of ‘sustainable development’? Practically speaking, the answer is ‘Yes’, because, although our contribution to global warming is almost insignificant, we are not going to be able to evade the consequences of it unless we can afford  to pack up and go to live in another planet, say, Mars! Still, essentially, it is the developed world that must play the major roles of financing the possible remedial measures in recompense for their deleterious environmental practices. Be that as it may, at the moment, we must try to emit as little of greenhouse gas as possible, because, as the occupants of the Planet Earth, already, we are stakeholders of this issue and our individual choices do matter.

Dark Days

When I began reading,
The chapter ‘Dark days’,
In ‘Little Women’,
I felt a deep distressful dolour,
Embosoming my childish heart,
Over a heart-rending tragedy to betide,
In my nimble imagination,
With the dismal title,
Poignantly suggesting little Beth’s death….

The allusions to scarlet fever,
Severely shook my naïve imaginative heart,
As each word seemed to confirm,
My unpleasant surmise,
‘Oh! God! Don’t let the little dove die!’,
Deep in my heart,
I made silent but earnest prayers….

As death began haunting,
The sick child’s bed,
I nearly cried,
Touched profoundly,
By a little girl`s complaint,
Real but among the pages of a book;
More than Jo herself,
I was troubled, distressed….

But when the chapter ended,
With little Beth beginning to recuperate,
I felt a great sense of relief,
Replace my deep distressful sorrow,
And asked myself,
‘Could Jo`s happiness have been
greater than mine?’

(Beth and Jo are characters from the famous novel, ‘Little Women’ by the American authoress Louisa May Alcott)

Caprice

A wave reached the good kind shore,
    And passionately French-kissed him;
A moment they both lay on the floor,
    Before she tore her(self) from him.

A Firefly

“All the fireflies in the world
are gathered in our yard tonight….”
Lisel Mueller-Cavalleria Rusticana

Gathered in Mueller`s yard, the fireflies last night,
Held their first World Summit;
A serious talk they held on climate change; then agreed
Illegal migrations to limit.

Stranded accidentally on a cobweb on home flight,
An attendee confided this to me;
Alas! Little else could I learn before a spider took him
Whom we`d been too absorbed to see.

A Lesson in Calculus

For Batti(Chathurika) from Faculty of Applied Sciences, Wayamba University

Outside the glass window,
We watched the sheets of rain,
Bathing the lawn,
And the hedgerow beyond it.

Inside, we were in the shallows,
In the sea of mathematics,
About to embark,
On a long, arduous voyage.

Our captain, a sweet, plump girl,
Assuaged our fears,
And had us steer clear,
Of the rocks where we sailed.

The turbulent billows,
The angry wind,
Could hinder but not stop,
Our passage;

Affectionate threats, gentle warnings,
Along with tender scolding,
Took us to our destination,
In the nick of time,

Safe and sound.

Picking Eraminiya

Along the wide bunk,
Partitioning the brook from the paddy-fields,
We shuffled on through the dense sedge,
Peppered with thorny Nidhikumba brushes,
The grassy, prickly robe,
Of the plump bunk.
 
Bordering the land,
Over the narrow stream,
Like sentinels,
Stood a row of Temple trees,
The mute witnesses to the birth of Time.
 
We forded the shallow brook,
Where the briery Eraminiya bush,
With its rash of green and scarlet nuts,
Lured us out of our way.
 
I, the taller of the two,
Held down the wiry, springy branch,
Scuffing the softer skin on my palms,
For my dumpy friend, the nimbler picker,
To pick the ripe nuts.
 
He swept the nuts off the thorny branch,
Into a Habarala gotuwa,
Teetering on a scrawny Pila tree,
Teeming with dry prods.
 
The grazed skin on my palms and forearms,
Smarted and bled,
But I held it down,
With grim determination.
 
As soon as we`d harvested enough,
I let up my grip on the prickly branch,
And let it spring back.
 
The teeny nuts tasted sour-sweet,
On my tongue.
 
But I warned myself
Against  surfeiting myself with it,
For I already knew,
It was an efficacious emetic.

Disappointment

I stood leaning,
Over the tall sloping desk,
Which the newspapers were fixed to,
Flicking leisurely through them,
But rarely stopping to grasp,
Any piece of news or feature,
With the desire to meet her,
Lying uppermost on my mind……

My untamed eyes darted themselves,
Down the narrow road,
To scan the turn,
And see if she was coming up…….

Moment by moment,
As time sprinted,
I waxed more and more impatient,
While my hope for her arrival,
Gradually waned,
‘She’s unlikely to come today!’
I concluded,
After about an hour’s dither,
And my heart felt crushed,
Under the weight of the dead hope,
And live despair…….

Contrariety

I watched him receive the much coveted award,

    For the best lyricist of the year;

A stocky old man with a pock-marked sallow face,

    Who, I guessed, to seventy was extremely near.

A plain, unhandsome, old man he was, I observed,

    An amorphous robe was his dress;

So, than his peers, clad in richer attire,

    I thought he deserved much less.

But, then I remembered roses on thorny stems,

    And stars sparkling in the dark skies;

Ugly combs where the honey remains stored,

    And uncut diamonds of many a different size.

Truth dawned on me that exterior can belie,

    What is deposited in the innermost core;

That, this beautiful man, I’d shallowly judged,

    Over the ugly garb he wore!

Soap Opera

When the clock marks eight, their faces turn bright,
And before the magic-box they all gather.
The remote in his hand like a magic wand,
Son looks at himself, the father and the mother.

There comes the daughter, with a glassful of water,
Looking for a cozy chair to sit.
The seats are all reserved, as the early comers deserved,
Sitting in the parlour well lit.

The ladies look glamorous, but never too amorous,
Excellent Sinhala do they speak.
Well-dressed gentlemen, wealthy businessmen,
Of corruption they rarely reek.

Being so entranced, off the screen they rarely glance,
Too engrossed in the drama are all.
From the lovely screen they so badly want to glean,
The words of wisdom that fall.

'The half-hour past, the names of the cast,
Now on the screen appear.
Ecstatic are the children, delighted are the parents,
Even the cat looks happier.

The mother looks so serious while the daughter is curious,
They discuss what will happen tomorrow.
'The trailer is too short', the son voices his thought,
And they all now look forward to the morrow.