Next phase: Every drop will count

Last Sunday morning, I was driving on the Colombo - Palmedulla - Embilipitiya Road to get home to the Deep South. I was escaping from a most disappointing week spent in the big city. It was not that I had complaints about the torrential rains and the fact that many areas were severely inundated. I could put that down as pay-back for the hurt we cause Mother Earth and the insensitive development work we take on within our cities; indiscriminately filling up the marshes and the watersheds, paving cemented drive-ways and building other obstructions preventing rainwater from seeping in or draining out with ease.

Unimpressed

Nor was I impressed, reading stories in the media of how some of our Parliamentarians got to the House, when the surrounds went under water. It's a long time since I gave up worrying about some of them and their antics. Perhaps, I should have thought about complaining about our lack of a maintenance culture and the haphazard manner in which we deal with our environment. But I knew that, it does not do much good now to complain. Since our system of city drainage are in such a mess and in most cases is irreversible, I only hoped and wished that the freak weather we had, was not an initial unfolding of the wrath Mother Nature will have on us, for the hurt we have caused her, with our most uncaring ways.

My disappointment within this backdrop was very personal. I was simply appalled at the scant disregard and disrespect some people in the city had for others. Not being concerned about doing things on time, not bothering when late due to avoidable circumstances, to keep those affected informed and not taking care to acknowledge the time and effort put in by people who volunteer to assist. I was appalled to see how sponsors, political figureheads and paid-services were taking precedence over all else. It was an experience of sheer disgust.

Parliament complex under water. Picture by Rukmal Gamage

While the specifics of that experience will remain further unexplored, it is adequate to say that I was returning in a state of deep discontent. Yet, like they say, there is a silver lining in every dark cloud and mine was a most rewarding experience of chance encounters.

Silver linings

It was just 7 am and I had passed the Kuruwita town and came on to a clear stretch of road and on the left of me, saw the sign of a by-lane which read Saman Mawatha. What caught my attention was not the signage that much, but the activity that was going on. A group of people consisting mostly of elders were cleaning up the roadway. They looked to be middle- class and a congregation of a few families performing what looked to me a Shramadhana, a labour of love. Please do not get me wrong, I am not for a minute making social class comparisons or making an analytical assessment of our social strata, but simply saluting this group of good citizenry. I turned the vehicle I was driving, parked on the other side of the road and watched them in action. Some had slash-knives and others eakle-brooms. They were cleaning the overgrowth, the sides of the paving, bringing some order to that roadway.

That brought flashback memories of a visit to Kyoto, Japan in the early 1970s and what I chance observed there. I recollect how a reader had queried a statement I had made in one of my recent columns on tourism, which cited Japan as a 'nation brand'. She asked me to justify why I think that country qualifies to be such a brand. In explanation, I did relate this same story to her to illustrate that deep commitment to quality and its consistent maintenance by all, was what I considered to be the key pillars of a nation's worth, as a brand.

It was Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan in late October, when winter was breaking. We were returning from my being a scholarship student in the USA and the reason for our visit to the ancient cities of Kyoto and Nara was my deep appreciation of the works of the Zen masters and the lovely accounts I had read and seen of Zen gardens. Not so much the grandeur of the Emperor's Palace or other monuments around.

I had to walk a few hundred metres each morning in the chilly cold from the tiny hotel we stayed in, to get morning milk from a vending machine for my baby daughter.

As dawn was breaking, around six am in front of each house an elderly or a mid-aged member of the family was sweeping the frontage of each house. A neat row of people, each well-protected with warm clothing, were hard at work. When I passed by, some looked up to greet me and then bow. I returned the courtesy without then realising that I was witnessing an act that demonstrated the true character of that nation.

On my return, what I saw on the sand in front of each house was indeed a revelation. Not only were the frontages swept clean, but there were beautiful designs made with the eakle- broom that made that surface look like a kaleidoscopic work of art. Being designs on the sand, they would be blown over or trampled on, yet it was there like that drop of dew that would vanish when the Sun came up. A true Buddhist sentiment expressed with a Zen meditative rendering.

Acts of caring

The Saman Mawatha, residents were not creating works of art, yet were taking the trouble to make things better. Perhaps it must have been for a wedding or other ceremony that was to take place or the visit of some dignitary to the area.

Since I did not venture to ask, I would not know the reason for their doing. I could have asked, but then if it was done for purely selfish reasons, I would have been disappointed. I wanted to be content with my thought that, like what I saw in Japan, what I saw in Kuruwita, also was truly an act of caring.

What I encountered next, was even more rewarding. It was in the centre of the Ratnapura town. Two younger children dressed in the Sunday school white sarong and the lama-sari signalled for me to stop my car. With them was an aged blind person. The children on their way to school were helping this hapless person cross the street.

The care and caring they showed was indeed heart warming. It not only made my day, but also gave me hope for our future. A future that can be brighter than that, we have known before.

For we have hope and wish for that to happen. Hope of a future where the positives we count, can negate and drown the many negatives we are used to witnessing around us.

A better future

Our President is taking on the next phase of his governance. There are wishes and hope that our nation will be steered towards a better future. His is yet, an unfinished job. There is so much more he has to do to guide this nation on. For that we must wish him well and more importantly, resolve that there is so much each of us as individuals and as one big family of 20 million people can and must do, to help ourselves. No matter how small or big that effort will be, every drop will count. Like the good saying goes "It is better to light a solitary candle, than curse the darkness".