Ode to a conversation

Eight thirty.
One morning. Monday.
Sadness.
An incised heart ,
A Scrambled -brain
with crippled feet
ambled upon.
Go back.
Go away.
Flap
your wings
Go.
Do not cross.
No entry here.
Words tossed.
a wave-rib cracked
an amber  heart died
again and again.
Crawled back.


12/12/2016

Know your Speed , Comrades

In my career as a Freelance Journalist , for nearly one and half years I wrote for the kids' and youth sections of The Nation newspaper which I enjoyed thoroughly . When I moved to Daily News I couldn't publish a few that I had already written for The Nation. This particular story is one of them too. I am delighted that the series is now resumed to http://nightowls.lk/ . You'll find more in the series as you scroll down.

The letter ‘S’ in mathematics can denote or mean two things. But to be precise it only means one thing. Letter S refers to Standard Deviation. However in basic math S may be used to denote Speed for our convenience. Standard Deviation is an important static. The Standard Deviation is a measure of how spreads out numbers are. In other words it is a number used to tell how measurements for a group are spread out from the average (mean), or expected value. For instance, think you and your friends measure the height of 5 dogs. The heights up to their shoulders are 600mm, 470mm, 170mm, 430mm and 300mm respectively. The average height or the mean height of a dog will be the sum you get when you add all these 5 heights and divide the answer by the number of dogs, which is 5 .The deviations would be each dog’s difference from the average height you have found. So you deduct each dog’s height from the average height, square it. The answers you get must be added together and divided by 5 again. Then you get the Variance. When the variance is squared what you get is called the standard deviation. Writing down steps can be confusing. But I am certain about one thing. You and I may not make use of deviation every day. They are often used by Statisticians to calculate to know how the population in a town or country is dispersed, to know the birth rate, death rate, or in Factories they might use deviation to know how   the speed   taken by its employees to manufacture a particular product varies.

Speed, however differs. Speed is the rate at which something moves or operates. Or if rephrased better, it means how quickly something moves or how fast you do work. If you want to know how fast you rode to Kandy from Colombo, divide the distance that you traveled by the time you took to reach there. You will then know the speed of your vehicle. Speed, unlike the Standard deviation, is an everyday thing to us.  Speed was taught in  School. It might not made any significance to you back then though.

Several years ago I was invited to run the 200 meter relay by the Higgins house Vice Games Captain. My instant response was a ‘No’. They kept insisting me to do it because during that year two of the good runners   from our house were out of the country. I am not and was never a sprint. My events for every sports meet in school were usually the long jump and sometimes I took triple jump too. I could say I was good at them. But that year, in addition to field events I had to take part in a track event.  During heats I came 3^rd. And that year was the only year I became a runner.

Pic Source : Internet 

The same year John, a colleague, an athlete from Higgins House, a national level champion took part in the 800m, 1500m and 3000m relay. I could never compare myself to John . John was fast. She was as fast as an eagle through the air. She was the fastest I knew in Musaeus College. I loved watching her in long distance events. She was different. Steady, upright and herculean. In fact, Sprinters are clearly differentiated from endurance athletes. Simply look at their physiques and you will note the remarkable muscle bulk of the sprinter in the key prime movers.  In contrast, the endurance athlete does not display such muscle hypertrophy. He or she tends to be lighter, less bulked and even drawn looking.

I had a question for John that day. I asked her how they would run such long distances without a single break.  John was also called Jonty or Jonny by her friends. Jonty told me this.

Long runs stimulate the marathon, which requires lots of time on your feet. It all comes with practice. It is called endurance training. Endurance training is achieved by doing lots of low intensity running. The key factor here is running slow and running farther. And eventually you develop your speed with the time you‘ve got to run.   During trials we run three quarters or sometimes two thirds of the distance slowly. Fastest runners do most of their running at slow speed. Because they run a lot, and if they ran a lot and did most of their running at high intensities they would quickly burn out. You could do some training on this. You’ll be good. ‘ She said.

That was that. I never tried becoming a sprint though. Thereafter.

Several years after Jonty did her explanation, recently someone was advising me not to rush over things. And that somethings in life comes slowly no matter how fast we want to achieve them. We got to slow down then for a moment. Jonty made sense that day.  Lots of sense, in fact. I think.

Take simple things.

You are late to school or office let’s say. And so you keep driving fast because you want to be there before you are marked red. Driving fast can possibly make us reach the destination early. True. But have you thought of the flip side of driving fast? What if you drive over a person at the crossing? What if you are unable to push the break or gear at the right time? It can cause harm. Not only to someone else’s life but even yours. It can even result in death. We’d never know.

Think of an exam you are taking. Especially   if that is a math paper.You would have lots of questions to solve within a short period of time. If you’d keep running around questions hastily all because you want to finish everything on time , you may tend to skip steps when doing calculations  and eventually land on to a wrong answer. Unless you have time to double cross them, you would not know if you have got it right or wrong.

Speeding on speed is harmful. You see.

Some of us want to become Managers, Entrepreneurs, Bankers, Doctors or whatever when we grow up. And in this process of becoming a Banker or a Doctor you and I will have to collect qualifications and experience.  That is how we are been told. Some of us want to pick on several degrees or several certificates at once thinking that it will help them to reach goals sooner. That’s possible however given that you don’t rush from one to another. And if you do so, you wouldn’t know what you have learned or acquired in the end. Sometimes doing lot of things at once can make us tired when achieving goals. And this is why we have to slow down.

Take trains for instance. When trains speed up and if you happen to look outside from a window you won’t see anything clearly. Everything will look like flash lines. Tress would appear like long green lines . Everything you see through a train would disappear in a blink when it moves fast. Same way, when you keep running quickly over things you don’t see what’s there in it. You won’t have time to experience and enjoy what you do either.

Life is like running. Really. If you carefully think.

Running at a high speed the moment you start off something can destroy your energy. And your journey will be a short one. Slowing down is good therefore. But that doesn’t mean being too slow either. Being too slow means you are very late to reach where you want to be.

Speed. Think about it.

Other articles in the series : 

Learn to pick your self up

A road is a waterfall

Water is noble

Mountains are cool to climb

You don't like Fruitcake?

Mr.Prashantha lal's favorite song

There are buildings , and then us

Elephants and the 'elephantness'

Life is all about scoring Amma points

Did you find the leader in you?

Lessons from laundering and laundry baskets

Is it ok to tell that you own my breath?

Laughter makes you lighter. Did you know?

It's a fleeting world , I realized.

Halves here and halves there

That bittersweet longing

Right choice matters

Landmarks will guide you to correct places

You can draw your own map

Kites, turtles and other things

When you have young blood in you

On bags , Fondly

No sunset for sunsets

Drum dies with drummer

'Athak dunna fun ekak'

Threads and Hearts

George , Harold and Captain Underpants

Learn to pick yourself up

In my career as a Freelance Journalist , for nearly one and half years I wrote for the kids' and youth sections of the Nation newspaper which I enjoyed thoroughly . When I moved to Daily News I couldn't publish a few that I had already written for The Nation. This particular story was one of them. I am delighted that the series is resumed to www.nightowls.lk. You'll find more in the series as you scroll down.

Picture credits: Tony J | Yohan Siriwardena

May be you should visit the beach. Stand where you’d like to be. When it is twilight or when dusk is about to enter, look straight. Head up. And then down. Down. Slowly. You will see the sun sinking down. As if the sea  is pulling sun into water. We call it sun set .But sun does not sink. Sun sets because earth rotates. Day and night happens that way.

Think of sea tides. Sea wave rises and falls back again at several times of the day. As the moon travels around the earth and as they, together, travel around the sun, the combined gravitational forces cause the world's oceans to rise and fall. Maybe the ocean once belonged to the moon and that’s why it is falling towards the earth. May be that is why the moon is constantly pulling onto earth. Trying to touch it once more.

In Einstein’s description of the universe, gravity is a bending of 4D space time. Objects like stars bend more fabric than you and I, and objects that are nearer to each other are pulled by gravitational attraction than objects that are far away from each. Think of some one whom you love a lot. In fact faraway love is interesting. We do not need to look too far ahead to appreciate people who are away from us. They are by your side, now and then, among flowers and pictures, words and places. It is a strange mix of presence and absence. There is gravity pulling you towards people that are near to your heart. Like moon pulling the earth because earth is closer to moon. Who knows , perhaps there can be a girl thinking of a boy in a faraway place and a boy thinking of a girl living in a faraway house.

There are pebbles. Take a pebble and throw up. The pebble comes down. What of kites? Kites fly high and fall back. Crosswinds and storms can bring them down. Eventually everything falls.  Even leaves fall. And they curl up in soil. Everything gets collected to earth’s core because of gravity’s effect. But that does not mean you cannot try throwing up a pebble again or fly a kite again. All it needs is some determination.

Take simple things.  How do we get rain? The groundwater or what we call as the water those runoff mountains, the water in lakes, sea water and the water that is transpired by plants is condensed to the sun’s heat and evaporates with air, forming tiny droplets in clouds. When the clouds meet cool air over land, rain is triggered, and water returns to the land or sea. Once it rains, rain doesn’t stop there. Rain comes again and again. Because the same water that falls down is taken up by sun’s heat again. So you see that there’s a way to take things up when they fall down.

Did you think of how you get electricity? The power comes from the electricity department. Electricity Department gets it through the main unit. The main unit receives power from turbines. Turbines generate energy using water. So, electricity energy is produced by water, and we get water when it falls from a high altitude to a low altitude. Now did you see the use of water falling from top to below?

We also fall . Like rain and everything else. Like the water that fall from mountains. We fail to do things. We lose in competetions. We  may run short of marks to enter University . We may lose in a business . But we forget that there is energy to go up again. Instead we keep on worrying and getting disappointed. We do not learn to transform obstacles into opportunities and try doing it again. Next time you fall, think of electricity or think of the groundwater that evaporates, falls down and goes up again.  We all need to fall . So we can learn to pick ourselves up. 

Other articles in the series : 

A road is a waterfall

Water is noble

Mountains are cool to climb

You don't like Fruitcake?

Mr.Prashantha lal's favorite song

There are buildings , and then us

Elephants and the 'elephantness'

Life is all about scoring Amma points

Did you find the leader in you?

Lessons from laundering and laundry baskets

Is it ok to tell that you own my breath?

Laughter makes you lighter. Did you know?

It's a fleeting world , I realized.

Halves here and halves there

That bittersweet longing

Right choice matters

Landmarks will guide you to correct places

You can draw your own map

Kites, turtles and other things

When you have young blood in you

On bags , Fondly

No sunset for sunsets

Drum dies with drummer

'Athak dunna fun ekak'

Threads and Hearts

George , Harold and Captain Underpants

Anamnesis

Source : Berlin ArtParasites

There is nothing
I would forget.

Your bright eyes that squinch,
in an air conditioned room,
the way you wear your blue shirt.

how gaze turns into blood rush,
how words fall out beneath you

but there are heart rapids of yours
I have not touched
and longing for.

The word 'ammata siri' has another meaning too

Pic Source : Internet

I was told by a dear friend that I have not written anything new lately. And instead have been posting what I had written over the last few years. There are days when there is so much to write. Then there are days without stories too. There are days that I crave for stories but nothing comes to mind. And I wait for something exciting to happen.

I told him that I have run out of stories. And asked if he could suggest something . He didn’t have much either. ‘You should write something new now’, he reiterated. I said ‘ok’. And that was that. We moved into some other conversation.

It took a couple of days. And suddenly I landed on something. This happened somewhere in 2015, at a place called SriLanka Law College, of which I cannot recall the exact day. Half way through the lecture, Sir Prasantha talked us about the  ‘ammata siri' moment he has had some years ago.

The Sinhala language is one of the most complex languages in the world. So says many. A beautiful one too. I have realized that sometimes the beauty in Sinhala poetry and fiction is lost when they are translated into English. And some are even untranslatable. We may find it difficult to figure out the right English word that goes with the Sinhala one. And it is one of the funniest languages. I tend to think. We have our own way of speaking the language. Different pronunciations. Different words that can mean the same. For instance someone from down south may call it ‘makkeyi' meaning ‘what’ and the very same may be called ‘mokakda’ by someone that comes from Colombo and suburbs. That’s the SriLankan-ness we have embraced.

Remember what YAMU did sometime back? They compiled a list of words, rather some authentic Sinhalese words that people use in their day to day conversations. Like Machan ( that covers everything starting from bro to dude , man or mate ), Aney ( expresses a way of pleading or frustration) or Mala keliyayi , the local way of expressing dismay. And among these ammata siri has a place too.

Going back to Prasantha Sir and his ammata siri  moment, this is what he told;

"I was with my family, my wife and the sons during one of those Ananda-Nalanda cricket matches. A couple of friends and I were also a part of the cheering. One of them suddenly yelled 'ammata siri' when a kid strucked a wonderful six. He was performing brilliant that day and that particular six heightened the joy in many of us. But my wife was a little displeased with the heavy noise and dancing. She thought it was indecent. Besides  being  somewhat senior compared to the rest of the audience maybe she thought we should have behaved a little nicer than that."

We had a couple of  ammata siri  moments recently.  One was the England vs SriLanka’s T20 match. It was a tough game. But in the end some extraordinary performance took the match in to a whole different experience.

Some think it is not decent enough to use words like ammata siri, ammata udu, machan or whatever. And in the same way one may say you are not SriLankan enough if you have never used such words. It is all perspective. I have found. There is nothing right or wrong. Or good or bad. Decent or indecent. If we see carefully enough, often things are named  and names are agreed upon. People create their own lines, their own notions of morality. It is a line, I like to think, is a product of human error. We sometimes tend to narrow down things. And forget that there is something beautiful on the other side.

'I don’t find anything rude or dirty in the word'. He further explained. 

One may use it to express a moment of wonder. It may also connote a feeling of surprise. If we break down the word in to two it can be read as ‘ammata asiri’, giving or invoking blessings on  the mother who bore and gifted a child with such talent.  In the case of the Ananda – Nalanda match it was more like acknowledging or giving importance to some quality of the player and conveyed something good.

Sir Prasantha gave a new twist to the word which I had  never thought of. And wonder if any one did so.

The word isn’t bad. The next time you say ‘ammata siri’ you shouldn’t feel offended or uncomfortable.

Sunil- Saputhanthri moment

Pic Source: Internet

A couple of years ago an article in Irida Divaina taught me that a work of art , be it a poem , song or whatever doesn’t entirely belong to the creator. Once it is given, it’s owned by the recipient. It’s the recipient’s song. Thereafter. It seems that there is no writer or musician behind most of the songs sung today. The good thing is, creator isn’t destroyed. Entirely. People wish sometimes that great people be elevated to his rightful place among literary greats. And maybe because of this very reason the writer or lyricist of any creative form is mentioned before it is sung or played. They are often remembered. Praised. In volumes of word and anecdote.

I remember the early mornings and late evenings, when we had an old Sony radio. Which use to function way better than the one we have now. I remember Amaradewa, Nanda Malini , Somathilake Jayamaha, Kapuge , Rohana Baddage  and many others over the then Radio Ceylon , Broadcasting Cooperation now. And among them was Sunil Edirisinghe. Whose songs I cherished the most. The radio played a greater part in life. This is how I got trained to the song and lyric.

Much later, I learned to appreciate the song better. I became an avid musical show goer. Out of them more than a thrice I witnessed Sandakadapahana, a solo performance by Sunil Edirisinghe. Different days. Different lyrics. Different genres. Always surprises. Between empathy and artistry. So much of lively observation. Intellectual grasp. And Cultural tensions. And the radio became a memory awakening. Eventually.

On a rain drenched day in 2012 I attended ‘Sunila Vila’. It was an exercise of celebrating 41 years of Sunil Edirisinghe’s singing which also included the launch of ‘Sunila Vila’, a comprehensive guide to his songs collected and compiled by Pushkara Wanniarachchi. Jayalath Manoratne dabbed the narrative using his musical fact and drawing experiences he has had with Sunil Edirisinghe. Among them was Rohana who had much to share. He recalled the days when he turned up to make music for Sunil’s songs.

Sunil didn’t forget Kumaradasa Saputhanthri. Sunil said like this. ‘සපුගෙනුත් රෝහනගෙනුත් මට ලැබිච්ච ආලෝකය කියා නිම කරන්න බැහැ’ (I cannot express in words how much Saputhanthri and Rohana has done for me). In return Saputhanthri interjected ‘මටත් එහෙමයි. සුනිල්මගේ ජීවිතයට ලොකු ආලෝකයක් වුනා’ ( Same with me. Sunil rekindled my life). The article that appeared in Irida Divaina was remembered. In a universe where humility and arrogance intersected. Creators aren’t often dead.  Like Saputhanthri.

Saputhanthri is well aware of the reality in life. He thinks that at some point in life for what we do, we are pained.  He is acutely conscious of pain the world is made of.  And pain   itself is consumed alone. What is most profound in him is that he realizes victory and happiness is illusion. He humbly accepts that what we call ‘sapa’ or luxury in life is temporary satisfaction. And greed serves nothing in the long run. His reflections on this subject are textually powerful.

අදින් මතුව යළි  සටන් වදින්නට

රජෙක් නොමැති සිහ අසුන් අරා

සුසුම් නළින් මිස සිතින් බැහැර නොව

හිඳීම් මගේ දුක කිරුල දරා

දිනු විසල් ලොව සිතින් හරින්නෙමි

උතුම් මිනිස්කම මවෙත රඳා

මගේ දෙපා මුල වැටී මෙසේ මම

කියම්  මගේ දුක මටම හඬා 

 He educates and is educating his audience. Especially for those who don’t know that happiness births   from vedanawa (pain or sorrow). The writer tells us. More often, those who love sob too hard. To love means sorrow. There is heart tremble and dismantled mind. There is terror, fear and longing.

සතුටේ උපත කඳුලයි සදා

හද වේදනා දෝතින් ගෙනා

The truth is , some things in life just don’t come to us.  To reach love’s preferred destinations (or in search of happiness) we got to survive the thorn –road. Saputhanthri understands it. So intimately.

පිපි මල් මතින් පියමන් කළෝ

දිනුවේ ද  කවදා ප්‍රේමයෙන්

විඳි වේදනා සතුටින් දරා

පැරදී  ගියේ කවුදෝ  එයින්

Absence, sorrow and despair. When people leave we learn the heavy words. She loves you. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah .Or he loves me. Love? We were and are desperate to grow up and find out about this thing.

පාළු  පැලේ අඳුර පිරේ

මගේ පැලට වරෙන්

හනික සෝඩී නගේ

දුරුතු හඳේ සිහිල වගේ

තනි හිතට මගේ

පාළු දැනෙයි නගේ 

She appeared in the strangest ways. And left. In most common ways. She disappeared like the mist that wipes away mountains. She’s gone like the rainbow erased by cloud wave.

 පාට දේදුනු සේදිලා ඇත කඳුයායේ 

සීත රැ  සඳ පීදිලා නීල තරු යායේ 

ඈ  ලවන් තෙරේ

සෝ ගී සුසුම් මැවේ

මීදුම් වලා  ලෙසින් පාවී

ඈතින් හැපී  බිඳේ

මා නුවන්  දියේ

පීනා  නැගෙන්  සඳේ

පායා දුරින් ඇදී  ඈ  මෙන්

පාවී  නොයන්  සඳේ

The poet deals with this kind of absence and absenting. This world is made of yugala dharmatha. Short- tall. Bitter- sweet. Happy –sad. Absence and presence. Then there are arrivals and departures. In a world where nothing is permanent, how come love be permanent? This is the law. Ancient. Inexhaustible.

සයුර ඉම රතු සිතිජ රේඛාවේ 

මියෙන හිරු සේ ගිලී බිම් අඳුරේ

තලා මා සිත පලා ගිය ඔබ දවයි මා

තනිවෙනා මොහොතින්

His expression of poverty is fascinating. Saputhanthri has captured capitalism in a few chunks. Sensitive. And empowering. He is bestowed with words that roll out effortlessly. He affirms that there is a line dissecting the impoverished and those enriched.

හිතේ ගින්න අවුලා ගෙන සුරතල් පොඩි එවුන්ගේ

කුසේ ගින්න සනහන්නයි අතුරේ පිය මනින්නේ 

මලට කලින් අපි තැලිලයි පූදින මල් තලන්නේ

අපේ දුකට හඬන මලේ කඳුලයි පැණි කෙරෙන්නේ  

This line struck me the most: මලට කලින් අපි තැලිලයි පූදින මල් තලන්නේ. Kumaradasa Saputhanthri points out that a toddy tapper extracts the sap of a cut flower in a palm tree even before it sprouts entirely. It’s a directive. Tight rope walking is a play between life and death.Ra is there bread and butter. And then they die with no comfort in life. Like the thal mala that gets crushed half way through its birthing and never gets to see the world outside. The key word ‘thalila’ hints the hardships of those undermined in society. Well he uses, අපේ දුකට හඬන මලේ කඳුලයි පැණි කෙරෙන්නේ  as a metaphor clearly, referring to that only the thal mala tears on behalf of them. Its tears that turn to white liquid (Ra) is what really survives them. No one talks about them now. It’s a matter of selectivity. For one who is meticulously observant would know. Like him.

Saputhanthri comes, in strange ways. This was my fourth time witnessing Sandakadapahana. Taking off from different lyricists to different times the show came to a halt. The commentator thus ended the show: may all beings gain wisdom. Sunil Edirisinghe switched his voice on. It was a song written by Kumaradasa Saputhanthri. The song minisa suwandayi mala se.

The song speaks of man in plenty. A world that gave birth to man, whose wisdom glared like sun and breath so fragrant like of a flower .Subsequently blemished. Ravaged. Stole lives and divided territories. Let us not forget the boxing days we have had. Those days when ordinary shopkeepers were burnt alive, leaving neighbor’s life in turmoil. When people were killed in thousands and ten thousands.We still live in an era that constitutes civilized bulletins.

Saputhanthri’s  lyrics are a timely intervention. Backed by reality and truths.  And of course Sunil Edirisinghe will give voice to his words and keep singing to us. Sunil exists where Saputhanthri is. Hearts blended. We are certainly a blessed nation to have such people anchored by thought and song.


 This was first published  in The Nation newspaper , 25th April 2015 . Pamodi Kuruppu is a freelance writer. And can be reached  at rakhithakalu@gmail.com

Dawn and heart. 2016 .03.09

I sit in the eye of light
a chunk of darkness,
a bulb, a filament,
as a piece of half - light
sneaks through
the -far -away kos gaha.
I watch how you find way to my heart,
how you have put off,
dark , tall , the fleshy nose-
generous and sensitive
a rare fragrance,
the sky -blue shirt,
so handsome you are
again and again.

Sun Again

Pic source :Internet

You must be the sunlight;
one that glitters silver on wire
solstice Pacific 
turn rib clouds orange 
that moves broken in the mango tree
and drops like a paw
turns scratch into crimson
and drown them in my skin.

Lapses in time , forgotten people and remembered ones

In my career as a Freelance Journalist , for nearly one and half years I wrote for the kids' and youth sections of the Nation newspaper which I enjoyed thoroughly . When I moved to Daily News I couldn't publish a few that I had already written for The Nation. This particular story was one of them. I am delighted that the series is resumed to www.nightowls.lk. You'll find more in the series as you scroll down.



Years ago, while at school I was called off for a Guides’ meeting. All guides at Musaeus College met at the senior Reference Library for whatever they had to discuss or do. That, the senior reference library is a place full of memories for every Guide in Musaeus College .No doubt. And for someone like me , it wasn’t only a place for guide meetings but also a hiding spot during school assemblies , for which sometimes I didn’t want to go because they kept repeating the same old things . And it was a - pass- free- time place. Most of the free time was spent hunting down books and reading. On one such day a friend came by and suggested that I must read Sarachchandra’s ‘Malagiya Aththo’.

It took a couple of days. I finally opened the book I have been waiting to read, Malagiya Aththo by Ediriweera Sarachchandra. Sarachchandra was a Sri Lankan playwright, novelist, poet, literary critic, essayist and social commentator, whose fascinating theater work like Sinhabahu gained lasting popularity. Was embraced by many. Malagiya Aththo and its sequel, Malawunge Avurudu da dwells around love. Very poignant. His reflections on life over death, arrivals and departures are textually powerful.

One of those phrases in the story stopped me. ලොවෙහි ඇත්තේ යාම් ඊම් පමණක් ය . ( This world only consists of entrances and exits.) True. In a world that everything fleets, nothing lasts. Even people. They come . They go. This was what the Great One learned. The ancient law of Siddhartha Gautama. Later on Sarachchandra’s words were remembered as I read Shakespeare’s ‘All the world’s a stage’. The earth is pictured as a theater stage on which various characters appear for a short while and then empties out to make way for a new production. A generation goes, another comes but the earth stays ever. Sun also rises.

Pic Source : Internet

Some people come and go and are forgotten. Some come and go. But they never really go. However far they may have gone, they are by us now and then, remembered again and again, every day break and night. Their presence is a memory or need. I tend to think.

This morning, however (and many mornings before) Archimedes was remembered, when I stepped into the bathroom .Some of the greatest inventions in the world were done while having showers. Same with Archimedes. Archimedes got into the tub for a bath and water overflowed. He eventually found the connection between volume of the water over flowing and the body mass.

As we approach the microphone there is one person that comes into mind. Alexander Graham Bell. If not for his experiment we would not have had a device to address larger gatherings, louder and clearer.

Three years ago, in a place called Colombo I met a man ( or I may call him a ‘boy’ in heart) who taught me two years after that people are not completely lost. They are found in anecdote and landscape. They are just there, at a countless distance, caught by winds and impossible to catch. And for him I wrote thus:

Now and then

as you come and go

it feels like

I have been absented

and your absence has gone through me

like needle pulling thread

All I do is stitched with its color.

Woven in distance and tear

to my heart and me,

it’s only you.

And among all these, some important people are forgotten. Or else we are purposely neglecting them. Eliza Grace Symonds invented the telephone as Graham Bell did. However, as she delayed it by half an hour to register her invention at the Patent Office, Alexander Graham Bell became the inventor in the eyes of law for the telephone. Time was the trick. One of those history’s sacred moment was stolen. Nobody talked of Eliza Grace. She will not be footnoted in the future.

Though Galileo, commonly known as Gal Gal is said to have discovered the telescope. But this is not strictly true. Galileo rather improved the telescope which was designed by Lippershey for the first time. But no text book remembers him. It seems that we do not give enough credit to people who have done the initial creation for the advancement of society. Or may be its human inadequacy.

And so I went from Sarachchandra’s live words or perhaps to a world made of acute pain, followed by a lover’s departure, then to Shakespeare and in the random haste I went to a day in 2015, at Law College, where a Lecturer once told that we leave not only memories, even the breath, smell and everything else possible to leave making the presence more stronger. His thoughts inspired and I wrote on them sometime back , titled 'Is it ok to tell that you own my breath?'.

I do not know what makes us forget and what makes us remember some. May be we carefully set aside things or people we don’t want and gradually learn to forget them. Or it could be love that keeps us remembering, small but significant or it is hope crafted by madness.


Other articles in the series:

Learn to pick yourself up
A road is a waterfall
Water is noble
Mountains are cool to climb
You don't like Fruitcake?
Mr.Prashantha lal's favorite song
There are buildings , and then us
Elephants and the 'elephantness'
Life is all about scoring Amma points
Did you find the leader in you?
Lessons from laundering and laundry baskets
Is it ok to tell that you own my breath?
Laughter makes you lighter. Did you know?
It's a fleeting world , I realized.
Halves here and halves there
That bittersweet longing
Right choice matters
Landmarks will guide you to correct places
You can draw your own map
Kites, turtles and other things
When you have young blood in you
On bags , Fondly
No sunset for sunsets
Drum dies with drummer
'Athak dunna fun ekak'
Threads and Hearts
George , Harold and Captain Underpants