Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

15 January  2020

SRI LANKAN RIGHTS & WRONGS

From time to time some in my email list ask me to remove their addresses from my lists. I decline or oblige as per my assessment of their duty to the Common publishing space. Many such requests come from those who are pampered by mainstream media.

Sugath Rajapakse & M. Niranjan asked me to.  The former worked with me at Air Lanka and the latter writes about Jaffna experiences. The strongest rejection came from Ravi Ladduwahetty on 04 December 2018:

[ i WROTE TO  YOU  TO INFORM  YOU THAT I HAVE  POLITELY TOLD  YOU TO STRIKE  ME OFF  YOUR E MAILING LIST AND  YOU HAVE, MOST HILARIOUSLY   IMPUTED  THIS AS MY FOLLOWING  THE PRESIDENT !!  CONVOLUTED  LOGIC AT BEST !!

 JUST AS  MUCH AS YOU  HAVE THE  CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT  OF THE FREEDOM OF  EXPRESSION, I  ALSO AS A MATTER OF  FACT, HAVE EVERY RIGHT  TO  BE FREE OF  YOUR  DIATRIBE  WHICH I AM THE LEAST INTERESTED  IN!  SO, PLEASE  DONT SEND THIS  UNSOLICITED CRAP AT  ALL.  AND PLEASE  DONT IMPOSE YOUR  SELF WITH YOUR  UNSOLICITED ADVICE !  IN SHORT, TO TELL YOU IMPOLITELY  AS YOU DONT GET THE MESSAGE  WHEN IT IS SAID  POLITELY , PLEASE DONT BE A FORWARD   LUMP !!!  UNDERSTAND ? !!  MATCH OVER !!    

RAVI  LADDUWAHETTY

MEDIA RELATIONS CONSULTANT, FREELANCE JOURNALIST  & INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT  ]

To my mind they are all ‘freedom’ attackers with Ravi taking the parallel position as LTTE leader. In his recent article ‘Nature’s fury’ published by Daily FT Sugath states :

[The Buddha, the Enlightened One, said about all conditioned things, “Bhikkus, in all conditioned things three characteristics can be seen, there is arising seen, ceasing seen and what is as is there changes from this to that.”]

I interpreted it as per the following Wikipedia presentation:

[all dharmas ("phenomena") arise in dependence upon other dharmas: "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist".]

Sugath precedes his reference to Buddhist teaching by the following:

[As we entered the new decade 2020, Australian bush fires were burning relentlessly causing enormous damage to property, loss of human lives and death of millions of animals.]

Some who did care about me but with whom I did not communicate regularly, wrote to ask whether we were ok. But this did not include Sugath even though he had common experiences with me through Air Lanka. Hence to me the effects of Australian Bushfires were inanimate outcomes that like orphans could be used to promote his own desire based writings. If the fire exists in the mind of Sugath – then the Report also exists. If there is pain for Australian Nature then such reporting becomes sharing which has the effect of losing sight of the damage – i.e. – ceasing to exist.

My writings that Sugath wanted to close his eyes to were largely about my experiences of various angles of the Sri Lankan war. The one that was closest in time to the rejection was headed ‘LTTE Deserters & Mercenary Parliamentarians’ and Ravi’s was caused also by the one headed ‘Rebirth time for Sri Lanka’.

Those who take outcome from one area and place it in another – largely to ‘show’ are effectively practicing plagiarism. One who has the experience expresses from to share her/his insight. That is ownership sharing.

In their tribute to Ms Srikanthaluxmy Arulanantham who was librarian of University of Jaffna, authors Kirupaimalar Hoole and S Navaneethan state:

[As archivist, she worked to ensure that students and other users could easily access the material they wanted, while leaving them serendipitous finds of local treasures during a general browse; as collector, she went around collecting the strangest material from this area that reflected the local culture; as a documenter, she maintained blogs of Tamil poems; and as educator she worked with children to develop their reading habits.] Colombo Telegraph article - Uniqueness Of Srikanthaluxmy Arulanantham, Late Librarian, University Of Jaffna: Librarianship Amidst The Ashes Of War

Mahesan Niranjan has commented as follows to the above authors:

[Many thanks for this piece. I have not come across her (or her work) before. Just looked through her blog — beautiful writings!]

Neither did I read the lady’s work. But without knowing about her existence – I did add my book Naan Australian to the library of the University of Jaffna – after I had knowledge that the Australian National Library carried included my book. To them it would have been part of the Australian experience.

But in my case – Mahesan wanted me to take his name out of my list!

I concluded that I was not ‘packaged and certified’ by those who had official status.

But the energy I expended to include Mahesan led me to appreciate the essence of Ms Srikanthaluxmy Arulanantham’s message – about the importance of Home Library – which my articles are to me. When we publish our true experiences the essence goes to genuine seekers beyond time and place boundaries.

Programs in Public Service are strong examples of experience based connections between causes and effects. Projects like human life - show the beginning and end. One who lives everyday – does not ‘see’ death and therefore does not ‘fear’ death. One who does not ‘see’ Buddhism but experiences Buddha would not make it relative through ‘foremost’ order in the National Constitution. The experience based law – does not show beginning nor end and therefore does not show relativity.

Australian fire is a natural disaster which has brought all Australians closer to each other than we were before. Likewise, those of us who shared in the pain of Sri Lankan Tsunami victims and War victims. To use outcomes without such sharing is abuse of ‘free space’ which is Common property and not orphaned property.