Beautiful Dream

Beautiful Dream

Let me start with my current predicament.

Financially, I am not getting a red sent from this country.

In British parlance I am in subsistence existence!

The University Provident Fund I finished in nine months.

That was to buy two new computers and few accessories (a digital microscope which children in America uses, included) for academic work for the next five years which the University could not provide me, while working there.

Just like my children, I am cursing myself for coming back to work in this country.

I am going to mingle real life stories within the dream (state).

From the time of the terrorist attack, I get up at 3 to 4 a.m with a very bad dream, on daily basis.

I dream a lot but rarely wake up in the dream state or remember them.

After one month and two days, I had a lovely dream.

In a sketch it went like this.

There was a lot of commotion in a place near a tiny enclave where a rudimentary church / mosque was built for three kids of the priest.

The land next was vacant and a few villages had gathered around to built a temple for the five or six children who were refused by the priest mentioned above.

I got involved and said no more religious schools but common school for all!

The commotion could not be dulled and the higher priest of the above priest visited the place and relieved the underling of his duties and appointed another priest in charge.

By that time gathering was in hot tempo and was about to manhandle the new priest.

I was looking for a way out of the mess and for my luck army personnel with few trucks came in and dumped building equipments for the proposed new school.

In the thick of it, I proposed the new name of the school as Nation Building College (NBC).

Everybody including the army accepted the name but that did not let me off the hook of the mob.

For my luck a guy with money was trying to build a private sport complex nearby.

He was an outsider.

I hit a bright idea and told the commander of the team we will takeover that land and make it a sport unit for our NBC and the Army, Navy and the Air Force.

Presto!

In few seconds we were confronting the rich guy.

Army let me put the proposals.

Land should be divided into four units.

1. Number one for the owner for his bar and accessories.

2. Number two for the NBC Sports.

3. Number three for the Force’s Recreation.

4. Number four for me, the exclusive unit for playing billiards and snooker.

One table for me the other for the forces.

There was a little caveat.

I had to fund my table.

I woke up with a heart pain.

Now the life like incidents during the J.V.P 1989 insurrection.

I worked for a foreign agency at Digana and it decided to wind up its operation by knee jerk reaction to terrorist threats.

The decision was taken secretly with the connivance of the Auditor a Ceylonese crook. I was in the executive committee but I was not privy to the decision and I opposed it.

There was no redundancy protocol and I was clueless of both redundancy payments and any form of negotiations with the foreign agency.

Mind you the boss was Robert McNamara!

The decision was to move the Head Office to Colombo Hilton Hotel.

Fearing any mishaps to foreigners yes was my response.

We were to launch a satellite worth millions and the satellite was in my care.

It was safely moved to Colombo.

The computers and cars were moved to the hotel.

Fridge Freezers were given free to the pharmacists.

Furniture were left to idle and I picked a computer tables but not a computer.

Mind you my computer then was better than the unit computers they had for financial transactions.

We were detailed to look after the premise or the Digana Village.

I packed the family home and called all the others to my house with all the liqueur bottles.

We had plenty in the pharmacy with labels of medical terms (attached to hoodwink the auditor) tagged but none in my house.

Then the “Deasapremis” with over 80 guys visited me in the middle of the night.

One of my minor staff members who was a Deshapremi recruit to spy on me forewarned me of the impending scenario.

They collected our IDs.

I was asked to come to Colombo hotel.

I refused.

I called a round table meeting and said we have to negotiate with the big boss Robert McNamara, nobody else.

He came in double quick time from America.

I told the guys to contact young Dinesh Gunawardena and to prepare local protocols.

Dinesh never obliged (he was hiding in fear) and I had to fish through all the previous government negotiations and picked the best (mediocre) to put on the negotiation table.

Day came we had a lovely Kandyan ceremony with dances to greet the big boss.

No harthal or any unwelcome reaction from the minor staff.

No display boards of discontent.

I was the sole negotiator with two senior civil servants with me (one was a family friend) to keep records.

I prepared the best tea service I could muster.

After introduction and little chit chat we sat down to business.

As an opener, I asked him how much the cost of the plane trip.

He did not answer. I told him if he did not come, the money saved could have been put as a bonus for the redundancy payments.

Little Premadasa was giving (he never lived to achieve that objective)

Rs. 25,000/= was an offer for the poor.

Minimum for the minor employees should touch above Rs.100,000/=.

Rest should depend on the service contract and if possible double it.

What for you he asked?

Keep the rest of my contract as working but pay it in Dollars and Pounds.

In ten minutes negotiation was over and he was relieved.

He expected hard bargain (wouldn’t have come to Ceylon if it was easy)!

I said I am sorry we could not launch the satellite and told him probably Sonia Ghandhi was helping the local Sinhala Rebels to abort the satellite launch.

That was how Indira contributed including LTTE 

terror.

She hated of us of having a satellite before India.

That was the contribution of the Dehapremis who were rounded up and killed by Premadasa goons.

We could have had a satellite 30 years ago but Dephapremies ruined it.

Now after 30 years China is looking at the ground structure (30 years old) which was built by US AID for resurrection.

Can you believe it?

I immediately went to UK and was waiting for an interview and the day before the interview, I got a call that my son was ill.

I returned by the earliest plane and since then, never went to UK but to New Zealand subsequently.

One think I learned there was Unix in New Zealand.

The entire hospital systems in the two islands were linked during my time with the Unix System.

Before a patient arrives all the life history including criminal acts were laid free for inspection for the doctor.

As a habit I restrained all the criminals on their medical (drunk, drug abuse) conditions and handed them over to the police.

Can our system identify the potential terrorists using a computer technology?

I guess not.

I started leaning Linux at about the same time as a hobby.