A Hybrid Story …….

In biology a hybrid  known as cross breed, is the result of mixing  through sexual reproduction, two animals or plants of different breeds, varieties, species or genera,the mule  is a known cross breed by everyone, this is not a new thing to us. As Sri Lankans our national symbol is a  lion. We have a lion in our Flag. 

How we got our national symbol as a lion?

 In Sri Lanka we never had Lions. We have only Leopards.The historical Lion saga must be the first written  biological hybrid story in history, it is fascinating, but in term s of modern ethics and some measurements of what we called civilized world its bit awkward. Sri Lankans ,the Sinhalese , our epic story begins with a cross breed of lion into a woman. Can it be possible? Well who knows?but we have similar stories everywhere,beauty and the beast ,the frog prince,kind of fairy tale ,but why not some fair tales too can become true?

This story connects to Sri Lanka through King Wijaya. King Wijaya considers as the First Sri Lankan King, His father was Sinhabahu, (Sinha = Lion, Bahu = Hands). According to the Mahavamsa's folklore (the chronicled history of Sri Lanka), Sinhabahu's father was a lion and his mother was a princess of Kalinga. His hands and feet were like a lion's paws. This is the first written hybrid in the world.

When Sinhabahu was sixteen, he escaped with his mother and sister, Sinhasivali, and arrived in the capital of Vanga. He later killed his father for a reward and was offered the throne of Vanga.

He refused the throne, instead founding the city of Sinhapura, in his native country of Láta.Now a days Ancient Kingdom of L'ata belongs to states of Gujarat India, actually in Gujarat you can find real lions. He lived there with Sinhasivali, whom he made his consort. They had thirty-two children, of whom Wijaya was the prodigal son but eldest and Sumitta was the second. The Prodigal Prince was banished from his kingdom with his 500 friends and mistakenly he landed to our Island. That could be true, even Australia was initially  established for pirates  as an open prison but   The whole story  cannot be true some parts I believe  is a fiction, otherwise what a hybrid nation we are?

Well the story did not end form Prince Wijeya’s arrival .He came to Sri Lanka and got support if a local tribal Princes Kuweni to become the king. When he succeeded he chased his wife and two Hybrid children in to the forest. And our aboriginal people who known as Veddahs are coming from those hybrids.

I’m not a fan of this story, either believer of it. I think as many island been founded by Explores our island explored by Prince Wijaya   who was born in to humans. I can’t actually accept that Prince Wijeya’s grandfather was a real lion but I am a fan of the Stage drama named “Sinhabahu” by Dr. Edireweera Sarathchandra.

But that drama does not emphasize this cross breed or nothing even remotely close to triple x rated pornography what we seen in Internet. It has given very emotional attention parents love.Specially father’s love for his children. But children will find their own ways even if parents hide them in cave or in a jungle because of their love. 

They will break the boundaries to become themselves and they don’t think twice when they don’t want parents. Sadly we simply ignore parents might we  regret at some point but as youngsters with moronic egoism we all do this  at  some point .In the drama it shows son is killing his lion father when he came to looking for  his hybrid family.Finally father and son started the fight, but when father realized that his son can’t win he accepted  death by his son instead of losing his hybrid family.

Fathers love their children. Even In Buddhism  Prince Siddhartha’s ( Lord Buddha) father King Sudodhana (as per Historian Jackson Anthony who claim  that  Our  ex president MR related to King Sudodhana ) said  to Lord Buddha how father feels love towards the children. 
"It  goes through skin to the flesh, flesh to the bone, and bone to the Marrow bone". Even Dr. Sarathchandra when he starting Sinhabahu  drama script quoting this statement.

Even my father did this  and wrote letters quoting this statement in my late twenties, where I was neglecting him, not replying to him. Now I have letter to read, but now I don’t have father to write. Now too much about Sinhabahu I am forgetting to write on Hybrids.

Over 2500 we have been a hybrid nation with many colonial influences. From Portuguese, Dutch and British we have many hybrids. Still we can see some common hybrid names. Not only with the people had many hybrid elements. The Dutch they only had the power in coastal areas of the country but they introduced hybrid architecture to Sri Lanka. And it’s very successful hybrid .typical Dutch houses are consist with Large gable roof and nice street facade.Here in Sri lanka the Dutch introduced the same gable roof which cover the heavy monsoon, but they also adopted several Sri Lankan requirments.The Sri lanka houses always had buffer between the road  or garden and the house.

We Sri Lankan don’t take visitors straightaway in to the house, in traditional houses we always had a buffer which known as “Pila”. This is the place where visitors come and sit often, some cases there is a day bed or inbuilt seat. Often the owner of the house or elderly male will sleep at night on the pila mainly for the protection. The Dutch use this element and introduced long raised verandah gable roof with large eve.the  Galle fort gives living proofs on this .

Modern Sri Lankan house now been subjected to many changes but still the long verandah seems very common feature both in antithetical and practical aspects. Also the Dutch is responsible for introducing the roman Dutch law to Sri Lanka it also sounds as a hybrid of Rome and Dutch but some reason this is not been practicing even in Netherlands. Only Sri Lanka and South Africa still using Roman and Dutch law in their legal system.

Modern Sri Lankan have an another Hybrid dream. It’s nothing to do with architectures it’s about Automobile. In Sri Lanka we don’t have fuel. We do import fuel and relatively one liter costs over 1 $.Some Sri Lankans owns a car but they do not use it because of the fuel cost. Well to avoid all these problems Sri Lankan automobile market flooded with Hybrid vehicles. As a marketing strategy it says this is less environmental pollution but I don’t really agree with that if we really care about environmental we should be using electric cars.Sri Lankans most favorite hybrid dream is either Honda or Toyota. But within the 100 days of the Good Governments they imposed a 100% tax on the Hybrid vehicles. Actually the good Government is a Hybrid. But still Sri Lanka is a good market to recondition Japanese hybrids.

This Hybrid government is a combination of a president who is the former secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and prime minister of the former position leader and the united national party leader. This Hybrid Government includes 115 ministers and the majority of the parliament.

As per the government this Hybrid government will be precedence to other countries. Remember again we are doing it first time of Sri Lanka. But so far nothing significantly has happened will see we have five years more.

Apart from all this our latest Hybrid experience is a hybrid court. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, released a report on human rights abuses by Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during Sri Lanka’s civil war. His report calls for the establishment of a special court “integrating international judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators” with an independent Sri Lankan investigative and prosecuting body, defense office, and witness and victims’ protection program.

Even this Special report primarily focused on the final war between Sri Lankan government and LTTE but the human right abuses been widely using each and every government not during a war even in the civil society. We have over forty thousands   of missing people in Sri Lanka .This is after the we become independent country. Even though we are now in the 21^st century we have army Brigadiers who ordered to   shoot killed civil citizens and we had a diplomatic service to appoint the same Brigadier as a diplomatic officer in Turkey.

In Sri Lanka we have an unpredictable court system. There are some Judges who were been charged with child abuse, attempting rape and they don’t have court case and still they are happily working as judges in supreme courts. In this circumstances it an essential to establish league procedure where people can rely on. "Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done." This was known by each and every law student later they are the people who become lawyers, judges since 1923   with the R v Sussex Justices, Ex parte McCarthy case .But sadly in practice they simply ignoring.

With this concept of Hybrid court I have a slight hope about the future which has certain realibility.Since the Sri Lankan government did not sign The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court   or the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 17 July 1998 As Sri Lankans we can’t go to International Criminal Court in The Hague, in Netherland.Actually it was former President CBK responsible for not signing this treaty.

When we can’t see justice from the internal legal system we hope justice will be happen with a hybrid attempt.Sri Lankan legal system is a massive waste of time and money. I have personal experience of a land dispute; even the third generation of the family had to appear in the courts but still no verdict. Some child abusive trials keep moving forward and the poor children simply losing their life as adults. In Sri Lankan legal system only good for lawyers.my only wish is that proposed Hybrid courts will give at least a slight relief to Sri Lankans.