Sleep my children and peace attend thee...
I seldom go to sleep before midnight. Most days I sleep around 1 am.
I know some people subscribe to the early to bed and early to rise style
of sleeping. Some like a ‘power nap’. Some are veritable Kumbakarnas;
they sleep for decades, it seems. Some sleep like logs. Some are
restless; they toss and turn. Some sleep-walk, some walk-sleep. Some
have sweet dreams and some nightmares. We are all made differently and
so there’s nothing surprising in there being lots of possible
sleep-ways.
My friend Priyantha Wickramasinghe, as an undergraduate, was almost
impossible to wake up. He would vow to study all night after getting
back to the hostel but would invariably beg us to wake him in 10
minutes. After 10 minutes, he would be woken up and told that his time
was up. He would beg for another 10, then 15, then an hour. This would
go on until the ‘wakers’ tired of the game and went to bed. Priyantha
would literally fall asleep with a book in his hand. He would be on his
side, book held up and from certain angles one might think he was deeply
engrossed in it. The book, I mean. He was engrossed. In slumber.
People have strange sleeping habits and I have not had reason to lose
any sleep over this issue. This morning, however, I wondered. I really,
really, really, really wondered about how some people sleep. I am
thinking about a man called Ban Ki-moon. I am thinking of a woman called
Navi Pillai. And another called Louise Arbour. A man called Chris
Patten. In happier times I might have wondered about Gordon Brown and
David Miliband, but these poor gentlemen have lost too much sleep in the
past few months for me to wonder about possible shuteye-pattern.
I wonder because I heard that Israel attacked a flotilla of aid ships
bound for the Gaza strip early Monday morning, and that 10 people had
been killed in this pre-dawn attack. Ban Ki-moon has woken up from a
stupor. He’s outraged. He’s called for an investigation. I love this
man. He’s called for investigations in Sri Lanka. He’s thrown the book
at Israel. I am checking the internet every few minutes, waiting for a
statement from Navi Pillai, the woman who loves to hate Sri Lanka and
who became too anxious by listening to Tiger propaganda that she would
fight a war to get things untwisted.
This is what she has said: ‘I am shocked by reports that humanitarian
aid was met with violence early this morning reportedly causing death
and injury as the boat convoy approached the Gaza coast.’
Shocked? Just ‘shocked’? What’s the lady done with her moral high
horse? Sold it to Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defense Minister? I am
surprised she didn’t get on the phone with Chris Patten and drafted a
letter for the International Crisis Group to release to the world,
demanding that Barak and his Prime Minister, bend down and be caned for
being naughty.
Was she sleeping, this lady, when those 10 people died? Did someone
wake her up? Does she have on her computer several word templates, one
for each country; one for ‘shock’, one when she’s ‘appalled’, another
for ‘investigations’, and so on?
Chris Patten. Where was he? Why is he so silent? We are not talking
about a ‘first’ here. Isreal, Palestine, Gaza, West Bank...these are not
place names we are hearing for the first time.
We heard them all long before we knew that Ban was the first name of
a man whose surname was Ki-moon, long before Navi Pillai started siding
with terrorists and started believing anything and everything that they
said, and long before Chris Patten had to leave Hong Kong.
Forget Gaza. How about Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo Bay? How about
investigations in and of these places? Does Ki-moon fall asleep
automatically when such names are mentioned? Does Pillai? And Patten?
Louise Arbour...what does that lady have to say? We are talking here
about elaborately planned and precisely executed crimes against
humanity, ladies and gentlemen. Not once in a blue moon. Frequent
attacks. For decades. We are talking about repeated and in-your-face
violation of UN Resolutions by the State of Israel. I am imagining Chris
Patten waking up to this bit of news from Gaza. I don’t know what he
would say or think, but since he’s said and done nothing, I would like
to put some words into his mouth and some action into his hands.
‘Gaza? What’s Gaza? Some kind of sweet, some Turkish Delight? Who is
the aggressor? Israel? Nooooooooooooooo.......can’t be. They don’t do
crimes-against-humanity. They are our people.’
Chris Patten then does some ‘doing’. He gets on the phone to the
British PM and says, ‘You may have heard about some Zionists chewing
some Turkish Delight, but that’s all baloney. Didn’t happen. Will not
happen.
If you are pushed, say “concerned” and nothing more.’ Chris Patten
then has breakfast and calls his pals in the International Crisis Group
and brief them: ‘Palestine is not a country, and is therefore not our
concern. Israel is a Holy Cow. Don’t touch it. It’s Sri Lanka. Get it?
Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka. Gaza Smaasha. Israel
Smeashrael. Palestine Shalestine. All bunkum. Let me repeat. There are
things we can chew and things we cannot. And things we will not even if
we could.’
Something was murdered yet once again on Monday morning. Integrity.
Pillai must sleep well. So to Ki-moon. And of course Arbour and Patten.
All good and healthy sleepers. I am sure they have differences, but in
this they are similar: sauce for the goose, according to them, is not
sauce for the gander.
Sleep tight ladies and gentlemen. There’s a bug that’s biting you.
Take a few pills called Sri Lanka and you will sleep well. All through
the night. And, if necessary, through the day as well.
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