Open Happiness...................

Switzerland  is the happiest country in the world in 2015.But Mexico is the number one consumer of coca cola in the world which comers to 225 liters per person. The Mexican has surpassed the inventors. In USA is only 200 liters per person. Either Mexico or USA not even among the ten happiest countries in the world. In Mexico Coca cola can be found in places where you don’t find water even, My understand is happiness is not really about drinking Coca Cola…

That could be a one reason  of course it is not the reason for happiness.

 Making grand children happy-Leo Tolstoy...

“Happy families all alike, each unhappy family un happy in its own way….”even if Leo Tolstoy said  that happiness will come in  similar reasons I have never heard of Leo Tolstoy is a fan of Coca Cola or that he encouraged  Russia  be happy with Coca Cola.

But Russia was unhappy at a time without Coca cola and that time Mikhail Russian President Gorbachev Russia can borrow happiness from USA with Coca Cola and cow boy hats. But again Russia was unhappier after those political reforms.

 Again as per Leo Tolstoy we can be unhappy in our own ways. If we don’t have a particular reason to be unhappy, but don’t worry we can find it by hard, we do it most of the time.

In Sri Lanka we do drink Coca cola, not like in Mexico still we have freely available water than Coca Cola hope it will be the same in future, also we have Elephant House Cream soda and Ginger beer. But still Sri Lankans drink Coca Cola. I know very famous Architect; certainly he is not a very happy person but loves Coca Cola. There was a story he was invited to come to Myanmar and he asked form the travel agent “Are there Coca Cola in Burma “Still some Sri Lankans called Myanmar as Burma.

I of course like the Old glass Coca Cola bottle. Now in Sri Lanka we often get plastic Coca Cola bottle think which is horrible, it is a disaster to the design of the original glass bottle as well the environment. Actually I stopped buying plastic Coca cola bottle. The changes of the coca cola bottle like changes of a woman.starting in a simple way shaping up her body in her youth and ended up in being bulky after middle age.
As Sri Lankans we are not very unhappy nations either, but we have issued straighten up, we are trying over 2500 years…

We have four main rivers which starting from Mount Adam’s peak. Out of All Mahawali River is the Longest River In Sri Lanka,Since I’m from Kalutara District I’m very familiar with  the  river Kalu.it is the river  which I learnt to swim and riding boats.

But my favorite river is Kelani River. It is the most dramatic river in Sri Lanka.Even Film Director David Lean identified it.His academy award winning movie the bridge on the river Kwai was filmed on Kelani River. Near Kithulgala, Even I have cherished memories in Kithulgala, I love white water rafting. 

This is the place where we can do most fascinated water rafting in Sri Lanka.

Kelani River passing through different landscape and meet the Indian Ocean in a very urban area in Mutwall.Not only the Kelani River even the Kelani Bridge in Colombo was subjected to very popular Sinhalese stage drama “Kelani Palama” (the Kelani Bridge).

It is that much connects with people. More than all of this Kelani River is the main water source to city of Colombo. Over 80 % of water supply is based on Kelani River. Clean water is a good reason to be happy. We have unhappy large number of people without clean water.it has turned into an epidemic of Kidney damages mostly north part of the Sri Lanka .

the climax  of the movie-the bridge on the river Kwai (filmed at Kithulgala)

The Coca cola company which highly advertising of open happiness since last week directly responsible of destroying millions of Sri Lankans’ happiness. We have a coca cola factory on river Kelani River banks. Their main source of water is same as Kelani River. In last week it was reported that the Coca-Cola Corporation has apologized for leaking diesel fuel into the Kelani River, and is promising to pay compensation to the victims of the spill. As per their information due to an explosion at the plant during construction carried out by a private contractor”. The statement was made just after the organization suspended the factory’s license to operate and threatened further legal penalties against the company. The thing is it was not the factory which identifies their defect first.it was people who noticed this before the factory turned into any action.
  Eventually, the Central Environmental Authority confirmed that diesel has been mixed to the water of the picturesque Kelani River. The Environmental Protection license granted to the factory was suspended. But after two weeks yesterday Coco cola company able to obtain the permission to continue their production in utmost good faith.

Somehow Sri Lankan Media were very silent on this matter, I’m pretty sure they all must have overwhelmed with the open happiness of the Coca Cola. This factory was responsible for leakage and contamination before, but it happened on Election Day when no one was paying attention. This started to a chain reaction .It was also found that the water in the Ambatale reservoir which supplies water to households in Colombo and the suburbs had also been contaminated with oil and had led to the disruption of drinking water.

The Ambatale water pumping plant has also been damaged and had to be repaired at a huge cost with the assistance of the Environment Protection Authority. The water board says repair cost of the water purification system is very expensive again there are reports that the Coca Cola factory agreed to bear the repair cost.

Some  of Coca cola plants in India was closed by court odors for charging extracting too much ground water. Well the relationship with Coca cola from the beginning was not happy in India. It was Indian Prime minister Indira Gandhi who approved a parliament act saying without prior approving of formula and the ingredients of the any imported consumable product cannot be sold in India. It says that the ingredient and the formula of Coca cola is a secret only among 10 people in the world. So Coca Cola Company refused to issue Formula and ingredients and Indian government banned selling coca cola. Still in India Pepsi cola is widely popular and available than Sri Lanka.But even in India later on allow Coca Cola.

Well as it appears to me Coca cola is not about open happiness, it is very enclosed happiness. Can we be  happy without knowing what we drink?

Sri Lankan Records...............

None of Sri Lankan so far did not receive Nobel award of course India won twice both Literature and Economics. But we have notable Sri Lankans who won the Magsaysay award  Pro.Ediriweera Sarathchandra,musician W.D Amaradewaa, Rev.Father Marcelline Jayakody, Savodaya Founder A.T. Ariyaratne. The Agha Khan award Winning most influential architect of the region Deshmanya Jeffry Bawa  also we have Olympic Medal holders in athletics as well world champions in Cricket. They are all Sri Lankans.

(Savodaya Founder  Mr. A.T. Ariyaratne)Yesterday In Nuwara Eliya, Our Tea Capital served 35000 cups of Tea to people and its Guinness world record. The previous Record was belonging to India where they serve only 32000 people. This is not first world record that Sri Lanka holds. The world first Women prime minister is from our country. Somewhere in Past Sri Lanka actually it was Ceylon the number one tea exporter to the world. Due to various reason now China has become the number one and my little Pearl still maintaining the fourth place. Not too bad……..

 (there is no considerable growth of production since 1970.)

It was Late Singapore Prime  minister Lee Kuan U in book “The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew” there is a chapter about Sri Lanka he has pointed several facts where Sri Lankan Tea Industry fails at the time the Government taking over the privately owned tea estates during 

Mrs.  Bandaranayake .
But again it was Fidel Castro who really admired taking over private tea estates in the Non-Aligned Summit which happened in 1976.He did make caparison where they took over sugar industry and tobacco industry by a revolution. But Cuban Sugar Industry did not become number one in the world at any point. Brazil supplies ½ of the world sugar requirement still. Any way both Cuba and Sri Lanka Still independent Islands. At least we have something common……

(TheLotus tower  still at construction stage)

This all about Sri Lankan records. Well even our tea industry had some sort of decline there are certain things made Sri Lanka again to put in the number 1 place, but most of things are not in people friendly way. We are about to have the south Asia’s tallest tower the Chinese Gift,  the Lotus tower very soon. Well it now almost piercing s Blue sky of Colombo. Skyline of a city is an indication of the development of a country…that may be true to Qatar ,Hongkong,Dubai but In Sri Lanka it seems to be little exceptional we have still GDP per capita of 3800$,so this South Asia’s tallest  tower most probably won’t be a reason to bring this amount in a higher elevation.

(Prospective image of Sri Lanka with the Lotus tower.)

Then also we had the world record of Jumbo cabinet during former president’s time which exceeded over 60 cabinet ministers for population of 20 million people. We have 225 seats in the parliament. Not bad. Also we had a cabinet minister for Sugar. May be inspired form Cuba. Only one sugar factory is functioning in Sri Lanka.

Again we had four cabinet ministers only for education this was not to improve either education or sugar industry in Sri Lanka, only to please his friends. This is not including the deputy ministers, with all cabinet ministers and deputy minister total number of ministers exceeded over 100.

(http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-cabinet-ministers-appointed-by-a-government/)

I’m not sure is this a reason to cry or laugh but who was bearing the total cost of this minister.

In Sri Lanka both cabinet minister and deputy minister entitled with   so many facilities.750 liters of fuel for three vehicles. Per one minster only the fuel allowance is over 2000 liters per month.

Then 15 numbers of his personal staff. Most cases the minister appointed his family members to his personal staff. After five years they all entitled for government pension, here not to mention official residents and telephone bills and other utility facilities which another part of the whole package.

 Also they are entitled fir all the privileges as parliament members.monthly the whole family on foreign official tours .From previous government there were some cabinet minister they never had any official duties, but government budget allocated their maintenance cost only.

Apart from that they have their invisible hand on each and every  government projects.one of the previous government there was a cabinet minister who was known as the Mr.10%,but end of that era he became Mr. 100%.So no wonder why  our GDP won’ t reached higher level  even though there are buildings reaching to the sky.

These were well known facts during the past election all the political meeting widely accusing over this white elephant. As Sri Lanka over 6 million people thought about this and vote against the previous government. From January 2015 we got a new president.one of his political promises were limited the state cabinet for 25 numbers. But he it was a broken promise, it exceeded over 30.yet again we had some positive thinking over minimizing the numbers of the cabinet ministers. So again at the parliament election majority had hopes on the new government. Well happy to say at the moment we are holding another world record for over two weeks.that is the smallest  cabinet of the world.at the moment we have five members in the cabinet including president and prime minister

(the prime minister is not included actually there are five members.)

Sadly this in not keeping another political promise, these days newly elected parliament members are bargaining over for cabinet ministry post from new government. There are unofficial information says this time the cabinet is little less than 50.At least we can be happy it is not growing. In Sri Lanka  the reason why we do smile than  other nations in the world is we are always very optimistic.

But there is another reason as per the 19^th amendment the situation such over 30 member of cabinet has to take parliamentary approval. Nothing to worry they will get it tomorrow early morning.

Actual now it has proven this is a complete white elephant and the administration body of Sri Lanka can take care of even without a large number of cabinet ministers. But we don’t have far sighted leaders; we have only politicians who think of wining the next election which will be in another 5 years.

The Donkey Life.

Puttlam is a coastal town In Sri Lanka well it  has two main productions salt and cement .well it does not seems both has any relationship, but so far there are  no any conflicts either. I have a friend who worked in Puttlam Hospital he is a doctor, As per his statistics Puttlam hospital has the highest number of child birth in Sri Lanka.Also he said often there are situations where the   same man got two wives and both of them are admitted to the hospital same time for the delivery, I think it’s because there are large number of Muslim Population living in Puttlam and in Islam if you can afford you can marry four wives.No wonder Puttlam has heights number of child births.

Puttlam was the city which accepted large number of Muslim refugees when LTTE chased them from North within 24 hours. Even After the war most of them did not return back to their villagers.

(School children near Puttlam Cement factory on a field trip)

Well this is not about Muslim community  in Puttlam and  Salt or cement. There are another uniqueness has Puttlam that is freely loitering donkeys in Puttlam town.

 Donkeys are not native to Sri Lanka and it is believed that Arab traders brought them to Sri Lanka. They were useful to transport of salt. Now Salt transportation has been motorized so donkeys were neglected. Poor donkeys now been chased away by the people because it was believed that the smell of their dung kept away harmful insects from coconut plantations.

 However these animals adapted to local conditions and they still exist as feral populations in Mannar and Puttalam.My Friend while he is working in the Puttlam Hospital invited me to spend the weekend with him in Puttlam.Actually he is a nice guy and keeping a Donkey as a pet. General believe is that Donkeys are not good as pets, but over two days I got to observe the donkey very closely.

The First day donkey did not do anything.it did not move an inch. When we looking at distance it seems that donkey is in a deep thought. There is a funny story about what Puttlam donkeys are thinking. Well this goes to the time of where the salt caravan did transporting salt across the Puttlam Lagoon. A one of donkey was fall in to water with its luggage while it was crossing the lagoon. With the sea water some of the salt got diluted and donkey felt little relief because of the less of the weight. Then donkey thought this is a good way of losing its weights as a habit the donkey started falling on water. The trader got lost his profit and identified the donkey is doing this purposely. Next they the trader thought teaching a lesson and instead of salt he gave dry soil as the luggage.as usual the donkey got felt in the water, but soil got heavy with the water and donkey felt more weight .So people of Puttlam say still that donkey thinking the reason of increasing the weight .Generally Donkey consider as very dumb animals.

The other observation of mine was the way of mating. Well my understanding donkeys have not understanding of being kind or love for each other. The male donkey just chasing over a female one when the female one tired of running they started mating each other. Both of them were making horrible sound very unpleasant to hear. The other thing is donkeys have no any feel of being territorial. They just walk through houses or mosques and everywhere till someone chased them. Again then next day same donkey going to the same place. They have no any sense of learning something from the previous experience.  From the ancients times donkeys have been famous for their stubbornness. Whipped, mocked and without food. But my feel is they are not stubborn. Donkeys have very limited memory but they are very harmless creatures.

Well in that case donkeys may have very low memory. But can you believe there are over 40 million of donkeys living in around the world. Out of that 40 million most of donkeys are living in underdeveloped countries. Sometimes   donkeys are mating with female horses and produce mules.

Donkeys were being subjected for many stories. I’m sure most of you have heard stories of Aesop and Nazirudeen If not, probably have watched at least one movie of Sharke movie  series. But out of all I very much like the poem by G. K. Chesterton. As it appears to me this is a reasonable poem  for all donkeys.

When fishes flew and forests walked  

 And figs grew upon thorn,  

Some moment when the moon was blood  

   Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry

   And ears like errant wings,  

The devil’s walking parody  

   On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,

   Of ancient crooked will;

Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,  

   I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;

   One far fierce hour and sweet:  

There was a shout about my ears,

   And palms before my feet.

THE poem could be interpreted in different ways “The tattered outlaw of the earth” well that is something about donkeys.

But we all know the donkey’s hour of glory  came when it carried Jesus Christ into Jerusalem,  also still many donkeys think people praised to the donkey not to the Jesus Christ…..

Reading Makes Full Man................................?

Reading makes full man, well I’m not  really agree on that, if it is meaning  that reading makes  perfect man ,it will never make us perfect, we can be gain knowledge by reading, but we can’t  be perfect by reading. After all nobody is perfect. By reading what we can do is we can justify what we are doing we can also find very valid reasons to justify what we do whether it s right or wrong.

 It was Egyptians who started keeping document as an archive, and later this converted into the place which is more than just an archive. But it was not written in papers those were burnt clay tiles with writing, but the concert of modern library started in Greece. Greeks adopted the Chinese invention of printing in papers. Then library was common practice most of religious institutes, Now of course we have E libraries, we don’t have to get the hard copy, if we have a tab or smart phone then we can read whatever we want. But reading a book is different from reading   it from our tab.

(Jaffna Library  form Fort)

In Sri Lanka we had the largest library in South Asia. It was Jaffna library. Of course I never got any chance to go there. Last time when I was in Jaffna I went there but it was closed because of a holiday. Even if I get any chance to go in I don’t think that I will be able to see any of books. Because the entire library was completely burnt by the Sinhalese.

(http://www.infolanka.com/news/IL/1299.htm)

"History’s footprints

are ash. 

There are ash people,

ash places,

ash memories,

and ash eyes. 

 This library,

the one you see,

is ash too. 

 There were ashen people here,             

wearing ash spectacles,

sitting on ash chairs

and reading ash books.

Those ash books

contained ashen lessons;

the lessons of 1981,

1983,

1987-88-89,

and on wards,

ash years;

 and the ash walls here

still recall

the ash words 

heard on the ash day. 

 Where would all this ash go,                                                        (   Burnt library )

one day?

maybe there is an ocean,

somewhere,

an ocean of time,

made of ash

and ashes.  

The ash ocean,

will kiss

the ashen shore of 

Jaffna,

the city of ashes,

and caress

the ash heartbeat of my nation,"

“Sri Lanka maatha…” 

( Rasika Jayakody 26-05-2012 )

This has happened before that in India. Old universities of “Nalanda” and “Wikramasheela” was burnt completely .Also same thing happened In Germany before the World War II.There was a particular politician who was responsible for burning Jaffna Library and later he also assassinated .ironically  under the good governments in Sri Lanka both his  sons were elected to the  parliament this time. I wish the history won’t repeat again.

The other library which I like most is Colombo public library, I t is not big as the congress library in USA, but still it has reasonable collection, then the other my unforgettable library it is  Ingiriya public library, well it was a very small place. Now of course we have new building, but so far I never been to the new library building. But I was a very regular to the old library during my school days. We had a very helpful librarian as well.

However if we are going to library the whole idea is reading something. There may be some of us have occasions that we go to library to meet someone but I don’t think any of us frequently visiting to library to see the building.

We generally go to library to read, there is a lesser tendency to go to library to enjoy the building.

(Padeniya Temple Ancient Library)

 But in Sri Lanka there is a one library which I very much like to visit only to see the building. Well it is not large modern building; it is a small wattle and daub construction belongs to Padeniay rajamaha Wiharaya in Kurunagala.

Sri Lanka we had a traditional education system based on Buddhist temples. Most of Buddhist temple has large amount of religious books. Those books are hand written on Palmyra leaves. 

These kind of books were  known as  “Puskolapotha”.the Place where these books were kept known as “ Pothgula”.It is very much similar to a reference section of a modern library. You can’t borrow the book but of course you can read at temple premises.

 Sadly this is not allowed for women, due to various reasons. Traditional Sri Lankan education was not a women right. It’s during the British period of Sri Lanka that women were allowed for formal education.

Padeniya Rajamaha Wihara is one of the very old Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka. If you are taking Anuradhapura   road through Kurunagala this is actually on the main road.

In Sri Lanka history the ancient kingdom started fromAnuradhpura,But eventually  it started moving towards south western part of Sri Lanka.At one Point Kurunagala became the capital city of Sri Lanka. 

The kings of that time did not think of building high rises or highways. What they built was Buddhist temples.temples. Padeniya belongs to that time period but there are some stories which related to King Dutu Gemunu’s period.

The ancient library, “Pothgula” which is over three hundred years old but its wattle and daub construction. Most of wattle and daub construction does not existing such a long period. With time the moisture will cause to damage the strength of the walls and also termite attacks to the sub structure.

This particular building rests on large rock subsurface of that the water of moisture absorbent by the walls is very little. Since this is an archaeological conserved building they won’t let us to see the inside, I have been to this place several times but so far never got any opportunity of seeing it inside. But the external plastering has very smooth texture. Actually the Padeniya temple is something worth watching.