Non-traditional photographs

Colours

REVIEW: Indi Samarajiva

Author: Dominic Sansoni

Barefoot Gallery, Colombo 3

PHOTOGRAPHY:The remarkable thing about 'Colours' is that if I write a bad review I will have no place to eat. Luckily, the book stands up on its own. It is excellent not as a collection of photographs but in that all of the photos pull on a single thread, leaving Sri Lanka naked and exposed.

I have always been fascinated by unintentional design - but tickets, trishaws, government documents.

Those are my favourite parts of Sri Lanka - the painted fronts of the Lanka Ashok Leyland buses and the orange saris of office women at five o'clock.

The most beautiful parts of Sri Lanka are the parts that don't try. Instead, they inherit the natural rhythm of the island. That is the Sri Lanka that Dom has photographed, and that is what makes Colours a lovely book.

Lunch packet culture

The traditional photo book would cover the Perehera, Elephant Orphanage, Sigiriya, Adam's Peak, etc. That would cover everything and tell you nothing. Colours, on the other hand covers none of the main sites.

There are no elephants, there are no discernible locales and there are very few people. You get pictures of doorways, windowsills, awnings and the underbellies of fish. This isn't the neat packet of culture we serve tourists and then send on their way.

Instead, Colours captures what you see on those countless hours in between destinations. The orange of the Smak advertisements, the red of the rambutan and the flash of the cadju girls. The red, green and blue of the trishaws and the pinstripes of the buses.

All the uncontrived and unintentional colours of Sri Lanka are photographed in their natural habitat, on peeling wood and weather-beaten stone. I've seen all these colours before - I see them everyday - but I never knew they were so elemental as to be found all over the island.

That's why the book is unique and valuable. It doesn't photograph the parts of Sri Lanka we keep clean and show to guests. That's like when you sit down in a village house and they serve you overstrong cordial and soft drinks that no one really consumes.

What Dom has done is capture Sri Lanka when it's not looking, and those are always the best photographs.

Intention

As a typography and colour fetishist, the objects Dom photographs are captivating. Like, who decided to paint the wall that colour, and how did they have such exquisite handwriting? As a designer I would struggle to develop such a palette and theme, but it seems to emerge naturally throughout the island.

Of course, it takes a photographer to properly eye the beast, but still, who bought that monkey costume and how does it happen to match everything else in the book ? Sometimes the coincidences are just uncanny.

The isalnd, left to its won devices, has its own palette. Dom captures the green and red of the plantains, the pink of the lotus and clean blue of the sky. What's strange is how those colours have somehow blended into our daily life - the yellow of a monks robe and techni colour painting of a door.

No one chose those colours, it's like they almost dripped out of the jungles and sky. That is the Sri Lanka that's great - the part that doesn't try too hard or worry about foreign influences or what people will say. There's a part of Sri Lanka that just is and it's great that Dominic got that Sri Lanka into a book.

Colours is available at the Barefoot Bookshop. The print quality makes me jealous and it sells good.

Episodic narrative of educationist's experiences

Memoirs of a Director of Education

Author: K. D. Ariyadasa

Publisher: S. Godage & Bros. Colombo 10 Rs. 150

Review: H. D. J. Gunawardene

EDUCATION: Avoiding the possible self-centredness liable from autobiography, retired Director-General ("Additional" because there was already a political appointee in the slot) K.D. Ariyadasa, turned writer has offered us his seventh book which he calls "Memoirs of a Director of Education".

This is an episodic narrative of his experiences over almost a life-time, beginning from his school days and on to his true retirement at around eighty.

His sojourn in the field of education has notched thirty-five years, thirty of which have been in the administrative sector, known in colonial times as the Inspectorate, which took on an officer as Inspector of Schools, then through District Inspector on to Divisional and finally Director of Education.

When Ariyadasa stepped on to this hierarchic ladder, there was only one Director at the apex, but when he reached that level there were so many Directors and one Director General at the apex, parallel to whom Ariyadasa became an "Additional:.

The main value of Ariyadasa's going to print with his memoirs is his desire to lay bare some of the virtues that the public may not have grasped of the Inspectorate as well as the very valuable opportunities that lie in this sector, which to some may appear as hum-drum, routine-bogged and in recent times most politised.

In my own case I recall the "Annual Dread" known as the Annual Inspection (where even class promotions were pronounced by the visiting Inspector of Schools), the boring inquisitions on anonymous vexatious petitions and intimidating "Flying squads" - all the bane of the teaching profession.

In his "Memoirs", Ariyadasa recounts with what stretch of humaneness he fought against this manner of public resentment and gives the present incumbents of the Educational Administrative Service some objective studies to ponder upon, if not to take a leaf from, in these times when men of Ariyadasa's blood are, perhaps, made to cow down.

Having been in the Education sphere myself, I feel myself as an "Ancient" educationist. I do not know whether Ariyadasa feels the same, whether the upward graph he saw has now turned downward in development.

The reader can look for the contrast. However, the point at which Ariyadasa leaves the Ministry of Education when he had a legal right to go on at the summit for another four years, indicates in no uncertain terms the direction in which education was heading despite his presence. Therefore a farewell was the most welcome step.

Writing in his pensive moments, Ariyadasa picks out for the Preface itself, those gladsome situations and experiences which only those in education are most privileged to recall and enjoy for instance, the Headmaster who closes school early but feeds with his own rice all the pupils, or the Minister who doesn't mind the fate of the school so long as he gets the best teacher transferred out to satisfy himself or; Ariyadasa's own discomfiture having to 'inspect' his own revered teacher's work and so forth.

Besides such memories, he could be proud of his own active participation in such momentous events as Independence and subsequent White Paper on Education, drastic reforms of 1956, the 1962 Report, the 1969 Centenary, Curricular changes of 1971 as also the changes in educational administration.

These are only a few pointers for the reader. I leave it to the reader to enjoy these episodes himself.

In the end, I am sure, he would wish that space had not inhibited the author from narrating more of his experiences for the present-day teacher and educational administrator - the entire school system being as it were in a melting-pot.

Children in the thrall of a global holocaust

CSEC - Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

The Crime Against Children,

Edited by Maureen Seneviratne, Chairperson, P.E.A.C.E.

Sponsored by the Body Shop Foundation , U.K., 2006, pp 250.

Review: Carl Muller

EXPLOITATION: The organization, P.E.A.C.E. (Protecting Environment and Children Everywhere), consists of an inspired group of persons who target child prostitution, child pornography and the trafficking of children to meet the lusts of adults.

The PEACE symbol is a broken lotus bud, bent as it were in shame, even despair, bowed under the tremendous demand for its flesh and blood, broken in mind and body, yet not fully severed from its stem, as though it supinely waits more assault, more encroachment - a bud that will not flower but lies abject and silent in the unspeakable part it must play.

In the 1960s a message was boldly and quite brazenly carried in the literature of a foreign travel agency that advertised "Sex Tourism".

When this message came to the notice of the then Tourist Board, there was a great show of indignation and many were the comments made: "Did you ever?" and lots of "Well I never" and that, as far as reactions went, was that. The message was blatant enough: Do you want a boy? Or a little girl? Go to Ceylon, island of all your desires! And no, we were not really interested in what they wanted, be it boy or girl.

It was what we wanted that was all-important - the almighty dollar! Tourists came, sought, got what they wanted, and left. At every beach resort - oh, especially the beach resorts - they supped well of the young flesh of the surrounding hinterland, then left behind new bouquets of broken, sullied lotus buds.

The situation worsened with the coming of information technology. Websites were created, each replete with the 'joys' of child sex, pictures showing horrendous abuse, group orgies, children posed in the nude, many pinpointing this island as a paedophile's dream come true.

Governments all over the world have now come to realise the terrible consequences of child rape and buggery, the ensuing traumas, the psychological devastation that has spread like brown clouds everywhere. It is a sort of global holocaust today.

Even offenders, caught, brought to justice, will not truly say what causes them to savour child-life with their vileness. It is even thought to be fear - the fear of expending themselves with an adult who can give them HIV/AIDS.

Offenders have, at times, tried to plead their cases, saying that it was safest to have sex with children, especially pre-pubescent children, and the younger the better. But did their victims feel safe, they were asked, and they shrugged. They considered it a deal! We pay them - they give us what we want!

This, I say, and so do all the concerned people of the world, is no answer. Even Shakespeare told us of the seven ages of man - from childhood to second childhood, and each in its ordained place.

To propel the world of the child into the world of the adult, to make a mockery of innocence, to drag rainbows in the gutter, is to subvert the natural order as well as the divine order - and yet, as is seen, even greedy parents are to be blamed for bending to the will of those, who with money as bait, abuse the family children.

In my own way, I have dealt with such scenarios in my novel, Colombo - A Novel (Penguin, India, a short story, "Chootie" in Birdsong and other Tales (Arya, Kandy), two short stories, "Nelum" and "Fallen Angels" in All God's Children (Vijitha Yapa, Colombo) and in my novel "Once Upon a Tender Time (Penguin, India).

It would then seem that this malaise is not reserved for the beaches of Sri Lanka, the houseboats of Bangkok, the ghettos of San Francisco or the slums of India and Afghanistan. We have been told of horrific stories from Belgium, Germany, France and UK.

We have acknowledged the sex-slave traffic out of the lands that were once part of the Soviet Union, even out of Mexico into the US. Children, it seems, are no longer regarded as children. They are today's sex objects, admired as such, wanted as such.

They are sold, bartered, used and discarded. They are no longer of the age of the child but in some transitional stage where they burst into the age of whoredom and are subject to every sexual crudity from oral to anal sex.

As Maureen Seneviratne says: "These children do not know, do not even partially comprehend the extent of the damage being done to themselves, to the wholeness of themselves as persons with rights to their own bodies, their integrity and their (childish) wholesomeness, by the criminal abuse perpetrated on them."

And she also reminds that many of them come from "poverty-stricken backgrounds, from dysfunctional homes ...born out of the parents own violation and ignorance." She tells of one paedophile who had abused 1,500 children in a matter of a few years residence here and, to put it in point form, we have this sort of vicious sexual serenade:

. The commercially sexually abused child is regarded in society as a child prostitute (a common and incorrect reference) and as the lowest form of life.

. The child is condemned, regarded as contemptible, degraded and despised.

* Nevertheless, the child makes others rich and powerful by its bondage.

* The child is sexually abused, used to pose for child porn, trafficked across national and international borders.

Huge task

What PEACE has set out to do is a huge task. All over the coastal areas and in the cities, there exist dens that nourish this trade. This has also given rise to the procurers and pimps-men, even women, who would matter-of-factly approach a tourist and say. "Have nice small boy. You want? Only ten dollars.

Retelling the story of PEACE is important. It all came about following the 1988 Study on Child Prostitution in three Asian countries, one being Sri Lanka.

This Study, commissioned by ECTWT/Bangkok, asked that the Sri Lanka investigation be made by Maureen, together with Mr. Shirley J.S. Peiris (then general secretary of the National Christian Council), Ms. Manel Nanayakkara (National Executive Director, YWCA), Mr. Mohamed Mahuruf (then withy Terres de Momme) and the late Mrs. Faith Abeywardene (then with Redd Barna). This became the core committee of PEACE.

The book then tells of this 'war like no other"- and the end is not in sight.

However, the PEACE mission statement says it all with a dogged determination. "(We seek) the elimination of child prostitution, child pornography and trafficking of children for sexual purposes. (We seek) to encourage the local and world community to ensure that children everywhere enjoy their fundamental rights, free and secure from all forms of commercial sexual exploitation."

Pornography

It is of relevance to us that President Mahinda Rajapaksa had made this year, 2006, the Year of the Sri Lankan Child.

What is now most telling is that we re-examine the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, especially Articles 25, 34 and 39 that deal with the placement of children for care, protection and treatment; the protection of children from all forms of sexual exploitation, abuse and prostitution and involvement in pornography; the treatment, recovery and social integration of children who are victims of armed conflict, torture, neglect and maltreatment.

As it is, child prostitution is rife in this country as well as in the Philippines, Thailand and Taiwan among so many others. This could be linked, in the main, to poverty. Many books have dealt with this in the case of India.

One book, "Ruling Passions" tells of the sexual slavery of Indian youth by members of the British Raj, and we know too well of the number of children who became the playthings of the British forces in their rest camps in Diyatalawa.

Are our young powerless to resist? Too often, they are. Sadly enough, we now see what I could easily describe as new "invasion of the body-snatchers" where families hide, shamefacedly enough, when their children are abused by family members-uncles, grandfathers, cousins-and markedly in cases where mothers are at work in West Asia.

This situation even prompted Lorna Wright, a Sri Lankan novelist and reporter to once demand: "Send our mother back!" Yet this, as we know will not happen. Mothers will still go in droves to the Middle East, hungry for petro-dollars, leaving their children to be abused, ill-treated and victimised by their drunkard fathers and others of the family.

What have we now? The bodies of Third World children are commodities to be sold, to satisfy the needs of the developed nations. Even little ones of six and seven are no longer safe. The problem is that there is always a denial and a cover-up.

One factor is the money involved and earned. It is seen how tourists are willing to pay much more for a child, much less for an in-trade adult prostitute.

As I said, there is this fear of decease and so, the younger the child, the "cleaner" it has to be. Also-and this is important-the CSEC has determined that local demand for sex with children outnumbers the demand of foreigners.

Yet, foreigners receive a higher profile and more media coverage when apprehended. What I would like to know is whether a child, repeated abused locally by a neighbour, a family member, will react with any sort of repugnance when told to subject itself to a foreigner.

What, to the child, is the difference? To the child-mind, the foreigner could be a better "uncle" and give it nice gifts as well! As the CSEC says, we also need to examine "the social, cultural and historic constructions that create sexual tolerance and that work together to implicitly allow a 'market' for this crime."

All in all, this is the most comprehensive book ever put out in Sri Lanka on this subject. It is a must very necessary reading for educators and social workers.

It is also a book of huge and devoted commitment and it can, with the immense scope of its involvement still help raise that broken lotus bud and ensure that none such will ever again mask the fair face of childhood.

User-friendly book for children

Sisumina Shishyatva Jayatemba

Author: Anura Gunasinghe

39, Third Lane, Rawatawatte, Moratuwa

105 pp Price Rs. 130

EDUCATION: Sisumina Shishyatva Jayatemba is a book especially written for students sitting the 5th standard scholarship examination.

The author has taken care to use the correct langauge terms and basic grammar through exercises. The book conforms to the syllabus prepared by the Department of Education.

Some of the subjects dealt in the book are gender, number, verbs, adjectives, sentence structure, subject and object, punctuation marks, syllabication, antonyms, synonyms, proverbs one word for many, folk poetry, abbreviations, similes and metaphors.

Clear printing and fairly big letters will appeal to children. Adults too can use the book to educate their children.

Options

LAUNCH: Since 1994, Options magazine has provided a platform to discuss challenges faced by women in Sri Lanka and South Asia.

Over the last 12 years Options has covered a range of issues from reproductive health and the peace process to fashion and photography, states a press release issued by the Women and Media Collective.

In 2006, the magazine has been re-conceptualized with the aim of making it accessible to a wider audience. The magazine is divided into three main sections. The regular section is a series of Op-ed articles on broad thematic areas.

Rant and Rave reflects on the complexities and contradictions of modern life; Political Comment is a space to discuss the impact of political issues on women and debate feminist politics; and Masculine is intended to reflect on how masculinity is defined and practised in our society.

The Review page will feature an article from the literary scene; PH 5.5 is an attempt to move away from the negative view of women's health to a positive one; and Ms. Godget Reports will introduce the latest in technological gadgets.

Options will also feature a short story and poem written by women. The theme for this issue is The Body, and a series of articles will explore this theme from different perspectives. The Photo Essay will provide a space in which professional and amateur photographers explore the theme through their photography.

Options is published by the Women and Media Collective (WMC). This issue will be distributed free of charge.

Those who would like to obtain a copy, may contact Velayudan Jayachithra, Publications Officer, Women and Media Collective, 174, Alwis Avenue, Castle Street, Colombo 08. Phone: +94-11-5632045/2690192, Email:[email protected].