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.

Insha' Allah........................!

Will tower cranes fail?

OH god I don t want to hear it.we just heard the tragic accident in Grand Mosque Mecca and lost over 190 people. I’m not very certain how many of you continuously reading my blog but if there is anyone who can remember tower crane trap (http://kanchana2015.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2015-07-01T00:00:00-07:00&updated-max=2015-07-27T22:39:00-07:00&max-results=10&start=5&by-date=false)?

I did read it myself because of the tragic which occurred in Grand Mosque in Mecca Saudi Arabia. But it is not a failure of the tower crane.so far I did not hear failure of a tower crane. The accident occurred on a temporary crane.

Hajj refers to a Muslim's pilgrimage to Mecca and is one of the five pillars of Islam. At least once in his or her lifetime, each Muslim is expected to undertake this pilgrimage the sacred city of Islam. This holy journey is called the hajj in Arabic. While a visit to Mecca is beneficial any time of the year, it must take place during the month of  Dhul-Hajj (the last month of the Islamic year) to fulfill the requirements of the hajj.

Not only Sri Lankan Muslims throughout the world pilgrims to Mecca is an obligation in Islam religion. This has been practiced from Malcom X,Mohammad Ali. Rich or poor, black or white, Asian or European in Mecca nothing matters, as long as you are belong to Islam religion In Mecca everyone is equal.

Those who on the pilgrims on a Mecca have no hope of returning. After pilgrims if they were unable to make the return trip they accept it as a God’s wish. Due to various reason accidents are common. Also devotees on a hard journey through harsh environmental conditions. With modern facilities there are direct flights available to Mecca, but over hundreds’ years ago the journey was through desert .If something happened it’s the wish of the God the almighty.

About 2 million Muslims complete the hajj each year. The government of Saudi Arabia has contributed significant resources to maintain the holy places and manage the crowd of pilgrims. Despite the large numbers seen in Mecca each year, only a small percentage of Muslims have fulfilled the duty. Those who have done so may add the title hajj or hajji to their names.

In Sri Lanka we have Al Hajj Moheedeen Beg, who was a devotee of Islam as well he was a good singer. Most importantly most of his songs were about Lord Buddha or related to Buddhist stories. We Sri Lankan during the Wesak Poya day we will be hearing his songs in almost every Buddhist temple.

 Anyway with such a vast number of people in one place at one time, failures of crowd control and other problems have sometimes led to disaster. Some of the recent tragedies associated with the hajj have included. If few to mention   On July 31, 1987, Iranian pilgrims’ riot, causing the deaths of over 400 people and July 2, 1990, a stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel leading to Mecca led to the deaths of 1402 pilgrims. Again In 1994, another stampede killed 270 pilgrims. Likewise there are unavoidable incidents occurred within the Mecca premises.

But long before those there was a plane crash with Indonesian pilgrims in 1974.this was happened in Sri Lanka. Recently I went to Norton Bridge in Sri Lanka and able to see some of remaining monuments. The actually what happened was

The Flight 138 was a chartered flight from Surabaya, Indonesia to Colombo, Sri Lanka. The aircraft was operated on behalf of Garuda Indonesia. On 4 December 1974, the aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas DC-8-55CF, crashed into a mountain shortly before landing, killing all 191 people aboard – 182 Indonesian hajj pilgrims bound for Mecca, and 9 crew members.

The flight is said to have departed Surabaya, Indonesia at approximately 12.03 UTC heading to Jeddah planning a stop at Bandaranayake airport, Colombo, Sri Lanka. At around 16.30 UTC Colombo control cleared the flight. At 16.38 UTC another air traffic controller is said to have intervened and cleared the flight down to 5000 feet and reported clearing to 8000 feet. Colombo approach then cleared the flight down to 2000 feet at 16.44 and told the flight to expect a runway 04 approach. 

The crew aboard the flight was then asked to report when the airfield was in sight. The crew then continued their descent until the aircraft crashed into Saptha Kanya Mountain at an altitude of approximately 4,355 feet and at around 40 nm east of Colombo. All 191 passengers and crew were killed. The Saptha Knaya Mountains (seven virgin mountains) belongs to Central hills, Even today there are some places which no one explored. 

The crash remains the worst in Sri Lankan aviation history and the third-deadliest involving a DC-8, after Arrow Air Flight 1285 and Nigeria Airways Flight 2120. At the time, it was the second-deadliest aviation accident, after the loss of Turkish Airlines Flight 981 which occurred earlier that same year.

Now there is a remaining old landing tire placed near the Norton Bridge and a monument plaque. But still if you talk with old people of the town there are people claiming that there were participate the mission on dead bodies in 1974.some stories are true some are fictions.

Anyway friction are sometimes better than real, we have a frictional movie named after Saptha Kanya, but nothing is truly related to the Mountain. The movie became popular among my school days and it had very nice songs.

 During the time movie main actor of the movie have been subjected many controversial stories. But still he manages to stay in the popular line not only as an actor as well TV presenter, singer etc. He did not failed either what happened in his personal life. May be its Gods wish…..

An adventures Drink..............

Majority of the Sri Lankans are Buddhist. In Buddhism use of any form of liquor or drugs considers has a sin. But large percentages of Sinhalese Buddhist are not following this at all. We have several kind of local liquor, but toddy consider as the most local natural product. Even this is a small country we have mainly three different kind of toddy depending on the area. Coastal area of the southern part of the country has coconut toddy.

 Jaffna and north province they have palmairha toddy. Central hills highlands and Sabaragamuwa area they have Kithul Toddy. Toddy making is an art; everyone can’t make Toddy just because you have a coconut tree in your garden.

Today is the sap from palm, Palmyra, or coconut trees used as a beverage and sometimes as an alternative to yeast to foment rice flour. To collect the sap, the flower bud is cut at the tip before it blossoms and an earthen pot is hung to collect it. This traditional method of collecting toddy is slowly becoming a rare scene largely due to government restrictions and non- availability of skilled hands to actually do the job.

If you are a coconut Toddy fan I recommend you to go to Payagala, which is few kilometers away from Katutura town. Toddy in Sinhalese term known as “RA”
There is a place called “Raa cantima”.(the toddy Cafeteria”” where they sold fresh toddy, just brought down the coconut trees. The sweet extract tasted deliciously good but also gave an instant intoxicating feeling.

The traditional toddy tapper strapped around his waist the tools of his trade. The most important is the ‘labu katey’ this could be a clay pot or now a day’s plastic pot, a round container which is used to collect the toddy. A small wooden box holds his implements. Most important among these are the tapper (thalanaya), a wooden stick or  a bone of a cow resembling rounded hammer with which pounds the flower, and very sharp  knife which is used to cut the coconut flower. The box holding his tools and the ‘labu katey’ are secured to the waist by a broad band tied around the sarong, thus leaving the s hands free to climb. Also hanging from the waist is a coil of rope. 
With this simple equipment the toddy tapper is ready to start on his hazardous job.

All the Toddy tappers in India,Sri lanka,they are using this requirements,but In Sri lanka we have our own way of doing certain things, Well it is not about how we making toddy, it’s about how we climb trees.

But what fascinated is the way the Sri Lankan toddy tappers went about with their work. Coconut trees are high and far apart. If one tapper has to cover over 10 trees, it is very hard for him to scale the trees repeatedly. To avoid the hassle and to save time, they have evolved a quick but a risky method of transferring themselves from one tree to another without actually climbing down. This Know as in Sinhalese “ATHURE YANAWA”.

They tie strong three-stranded ropes made out of coconut fiber (coir). When the tapper finishes one tree, he races to the other adjacent tree placing his feet on the unsteady rope and a separate rope to hold him from falling.

 They rely on the speed as it minimizes losing the balance and accidentally falling down to the ground. It was a breath-taking event for me to see the toddy tapper cross-crossing the trees on the flimsy ropes just like a circus trapeze artist, but without a safety net below.

Apparently there have been unfortunate events in many cases where they have slipped and fallen down to the ground either to their death or to permanent injury. Unfortunately, even today, toddy tappers in Sri Lanka are some of the poorest people, relying heavily on the income they get from selling their toddy. Taking this big risk is a small price they pay to feed their families.

Well Life is also like a tight rope to walk carefully. A slightest mistake will caused falling us from the rope.

An Island Life: Life with Monsoon ..............

An Island Life: Life with Monsoon ..............

Life with Monsoon ..............

Getting wet in the rain very childish experience that we loved. Here in Sri Lanka we don’t have winter where we can ski, the rain is the only seasonal climatic change .As a child I had problems with rain that was wake up in the morning going to school in the heavy rain, but I did stay home and sneaked off form home and rode the bicycle in the muddy road in rain…fondness of the rain not very childish as adults we enjoy the rain differently.

Even though we are Sri Lankans more or less we all fans of Bollywood movies. From the very beginning the Bollywood movies understood how much we love rain. A song in the rain is a typical element in most of Bollywood movies, From Dilip Kumar to Sharukh Khan and Bimal Roy to Karan Johar they all did rainy song we all still watching.

Actually in our hot and humidity climate the rain is a big relief. That is the only natural way of reducing heat in tropics, Also we still based on agriculture, what can we do if we did not get rain properly?We have a Monsoon life...we planed our life according to the monsoon pattern , the  monsoon it is part of our life....

In Sri Lanka we have three main ways of getting rain, out of all the monsoon is the most important. Our rainfall pattern is influenced by the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal and is marked by four seasons. The first is from mid-May to October, when winds originate in the southwest, bringing moisture from the Indian Ocean. When these winds encounter the slopes of the Central Highlands, they unload heavy rains on the mountain slopes and the southwestern sector of the island.

The second season occurs in October, the inter monsoonal months. During this season, periodic squalls occur and sometimes tropical cyclones bring overcast skies and rains to the southwest, northeast, and eastern parts of the island.so September, October we have very heavy rains. The mean annual rainfall varies from under 900mm in the driest parts (southeastern and northwestern) to over 5000mm in the wettest parts.

The central hills before we cultivated tea it was covered with trees. The root system of the trees absorbs the heavy rain during rainy season and little by little filtered water to the lower grounds. Now central hills areas cover with trees to absorb the water. But now   have tea plantations cover all mountains which do not have strong root system to absorb monsoon rain. Any more water does not filter thorough, now it’s flowing over highlands and causing to floods in the lower levels and heavy drought in rest of the years. These are sensitive climatic issues that we are facing, unless we did not act in far sighted vision we will be in trouble. The rainy season of Sri Lanka causing disastrous landslides losing our beloved ones.

I t was the great king Parakramabhahu (1153-86) who told “not even a little water that comes from the rain must flow into the ocean without being made useful to man”. He did not stop saying only it he made the largest man made tank in Polonnaruwa which known as” Parakramabhahu samudraya”( The Parakramabhahu sea)Even today we using Parakrama Samudraya  as the main source                 of water  and Polonnaruwa area still supplies large  amount rice  requirement to the country. We Sri Lankans without rice we don’t feel that we ate. Still the King Parakrama Bhahu looking at the magnificent tank.

 If you are visit Polonnaruwa you can see the stone statue of the King Parakrama Bhahu. This is how our proud history responded to the monsoon.

I wish we will never experience “the November rain. “In Sri Lanka November we don’t expect heavy rains, but we starting to feel little cold December.

“When I look into your eyes

I can see a love restrained

But darlin' when I hold you

Don't you know I feel the same

Nothin' lasts forever

And we both know hearts can change

And it's hard to hold a candle

In the cold November rain

We've been through this such a long long time

Just tryin' to kill the pain, oo yeah

But love is always coming and love is always going

And no one's really sure who's lettin' go today Walking away”

Well I also agree nothing last forever…but it is very hard to accept it sometimes. For me this is the most heart touching song by Guns N' Roses.Though I ‘m not very much fan of music videos but the music video of this song is a brilliant piece of work. Even real life Axl Rose was married with Stephanie Seymour. When they broke up over a year Axl Rose sent flowers to her pleading for second chance.

Nothing is forever…….for everyone Axl Rose…..

As an Architect I have a love and hate relationship with the rain. Our traditional houses always responded to the heavy monsoon. The hip or gable roof with long eve keep away the rain coming to our houses, even most influential Architect of our region architect Geffrey Bawa did not challenge the monsoon rain with novel roof designs. Even his last project; the Marissa House covered with large single pitch roof, but allow to enjoy the monsoon sea.

But as young architect I don’t have the patience, being bit of stubborn also forgetting how my client is going to suffer during monsoon, I prefer to have flat roof. For my understanding flat roofs are very architecturally pleasing. Our clients often coming with small pots less than 12 perches. Flat roofs could be a vertical garden where you don’t have a garden in the ground level. Also we don’t rain throughout the year. As architect we can still play with rain. That why I love rain…it is always very playful…The Ruhuna University mastering the Sri Lankan Roofs....

What I hate about rain is we can’t help it makes our projects delaying. This unpredictable monsoon patterns causing to lot of delays at site. Yesterday at site a one building looks like an extension of the Berei Lake.It is sad what happed at site…but can we blame to Monsoon…..?