Survival of the not so Fit

Survival of the not so Fit

I have a window of opportunity to voice my opinion.

I will lie low once the election is declared, according to the statutory requirement of the bizarre J.R.J. concoction or addiction to politrics (not politics).

I hope the Election Commissioner will not fall prey to the wrong interpretation of the judiciary and having a PC election to elect local drug mafia to run the unfair ground realities.

My conviction is that we need a referendum to nullify the need of a referendum to change the clauses.

Better still abolish the constitution, lock stock and barrel and form a simple constitution to represent citizens not the individuals of political parties.

The current piece is to pen down how I survived and still living in this country.

It is all due to my instinct.

Never trust a policeman or politician in this country.

The first survives on helping the politician to lie at lib and go scot free on all wrong doings.

The latter obstructs the judiciary to function independently.

One good decision won’t make the judiciary exonerate of its wrong doings and excesses in the past.

It has long a way to go.

It has not done enough.

The loop holes should be closed for the good governance to succeed.

In a country where thugs run the Tuition Institutions and the Garbage Industry to become rich so that they become presidential aspirants shows how deep in the gutter we all are without exception.

This piece is about me not them.

I learned the good behaviour and not to lie in a Catholic School.

I was told by the Sinhala Teacher that I have a bright future and he never specified it.

He came in a national dress and after three months of training in English he wore a trouser one day and disappeared the next day.

He introduced me to Kumaratunga Munidasa.

The English teacher said the taller the bamboo grows the lower it bends in an idiomatic sense, if ever I succeeded be nice to the less fortunate.

There was a bit of doubt in her voice, and she sensed her time was out and the private school was taken over by the government.

Then there was a sports master Tommy Arther who introduced me to the sporting sense “what matters is participation and not winning by any means”.

Then there was a teacher by convention but almost a priest by soul who tried to convert us to Christianity, who failed miserably to answer our barrage of questions about the god and his creations.

I was thrown out first and from outside I was instrumental in formulating more difficult questions and all non Christian were thrown out in one block.

Fortunately we did not have a Muslim in our class.

Then our maths teacher (husband of our the English Teacher) was so cruel to my fellow beings and one day I took a set of books from another student and landed on the back of the teacher as he was returning from the back of the class to the front.

I quietly came to my desk and nobody in the class said who did it after one week of investigation by the teachers and the rector, and the culprit was never found.

Next of my antics would have come to criminal ends and fortunately for me, the school was mixed with the Convent (governments failed mixed school strategy) and one of the young male teachers who was our class teacher was caught (I went on a bogus errand to see what he was doing) by me admiring girls legs and back side from the corner of our class which was separated only by a screen.

That appalled me and I decided I would not set foot on this school again and stayed at home.

I did not say why but my father would have sensed that I had done something wrong, since in an unrelated incident I hit one of my class mates and dumped him in the gutter in front of the Convent as a punishment for uncapping my cap with a flip.

Of course my father had to buy a police cap with straps, which I never wore on my way to school.

I used it as a football.

The first person I ditched out was E.W.Adhicarum.

He was a Pali scholar but not a scientist.

He was never a philosopher he claimed to be.

I was fortunate not to have a good science teacher and I started reading collection of English books with some scientific notions from my father's collection.

Then the Sputnic went up and a future scientist (not a doctor) was born.

I came to a Buddhist School in the city.

How I entered there was another story apart from my sports records and Sargent of the Cadet Team.

Cadet and Scouting were alien to me.

The first thing I learned or introduced were vulgar and street terms and four letter words in the city.

Kandy city was no better then.

Teachers were horrible including Bumi Putra whom we managed to chase  out of the school.

Of course he stole the intellectual property of the Pali Department and published them as his own.

J.R.J’s one of the early and first actions was to close the Pali and English department in one go.

His aim was to destroy the Peradeniya University which stood up to his step motherly treatment.

Creation of U.G.C and restricting grants was his ploy to stunt its growth.

The next I ditched out was Abrham T Koover, a rationalist with Indian roots.

He had a seminar in Kandy.

I too was in attendance.

I got one of my friends to ask a question.

Are you sure of your father was the question.

He said I am sure of my mother but not the father.

Then I got up and asked;

How can you be a rationalist, if you are not sure of your father?

This was below par attack by me and he was hooted out of the auditorium.

I think a philosopher was born at that moment but without credentials.

Dishing out current politicians and BBS is chicken feed for me.

How did I chose medicine for career?

It was a pure accident and not a design of my own.

I actually threatened to leave the anatomy block one day and never to return again and it was the lady professor with motherly attitude, changed my decision.

I think she should have left me to be my own, without taking somebody else career post by me.

One day after passing the ‘O” Level with some distinction including mathematics, applied maths and biology we were asked to gather into a class room vacant.

Our class teacher and few of the ‘A’ level teachers addressed us and told us’ those who want to do maths go to maths room and those who want to do biology remained seated.

It was abrupt and without any counsel.

I was dumbfounded by the attitude of the teachers.

I thought to myself, the easy way to enter into the university was biology.
There was another reason a guy whom I hated joined the maths class.

I got him out of my cohorts.

The aim was to enter the University and nothing but.

I was the only one who got in from my class.

In passing I must relate a story related to me by one of my class mates one year after my retirement.

He said I was very good in soft ball cricket and they would try all their best to avoid me getting into the school team (as a newcomer from the neighbouring village).

I told him that one can get me out in three balls and cricket was not my game.

I have a very big blind spot in my left eye and it is getting bigger by the age.

That is the reason I do not drive a car now.

I would kill somebody one day.

But I am sure somebody else will kill me during Esala Perehara. 

I won’t visit Kandy till it is over. 

Thankfully I got a backache now trying to pull a rubber hose pipe.

That will keep me out for 10 days at least.