Looking for our backyard heroes

Asoka Handagama's cinematic creation Vidu brought to light stark realities that we often turn a blind eye to. For those who missed the wonderful experience of getting into the world of Vidu in the darkened domain of a cinema hall, the film is about a boy on Negombo's Luwis Place beach (can be any touristy area in Sri Lanka), his self-taught lessons of life, the wisdom he shares with the world around him and his attempt at overcoming the many forces of the on-ground realities that attempt to pin him down. He is too smart and could be anywhere in our midst. Capable of heroic acts, he is aided in the film by other heroes in his quest to reach out beyond conventional limits. He and his world created by Handagama, challenge us all.

Our very own

Handagama urges us through his Vidu to think beyond the given and the possible. For that is what heroes are all about. He challenges us to look at our own heroes shunning the Batmen, Spidermen, Catwomen and Harry Potters that we, the elite often present to our children aping the dominant culture's commercially 'thrust upon us heroes'. We more than often get sold on them and help sell them to others while propagating the sustenance of such alien lies.

A scene from film Vidu by Asoka Handagama. File photo

All of this to me is permissible for we live in an age and time when freedom of choice is held as sacred as a sacred cow. That is as long as we do not shun our own heroes and fail to recognise them in our midst. What Asoka Handagama does so well, is to hit us hard on our backs, to wake us up to that truth. Much like a Zen master does on his meditation students, to remind them that the state of bliss or Satori they seek is real and is no elusive illusion. Vidu is not a character from any dreamland, but one found on our own beaches, on our own streets, at our own schools, during election time, being tossed and knocked around by many.

My sciatica thankfully took me today to a hero in Panamure close to township of Embilipitiya. A Vedamahatmaya (Ayurvedic doctor) with no fancy tags frills and indeed no fancy consultancy fees to his credit. He goes on treating hundreds of patients a day (he told me he is only absent on a Poya day), for all sorts of ailments to do with our nerves and nervous systems. Since there are many like him among us, his simplicity or the service rendered is not what struck me to cite him as my hero. It is a statement he made on his wall in the patients' waiting area, with two photographs that hit me. It was the only signage he had apart from information on what his hours of operation were and the types of disorders he treated.

Right and wrong

The first was a photograph (made at a nearby studio) of a mother carrying a young child on the front of her body on the stomach with both legs of the child close to each other and the other, where the same mother was carrying the child resting him on the side of her body on her ukula (above the hip) with the child's legs spread on both sides of her body. The first picture had a 'Wrong way to carry a baby' for its caption and the latter the 'Right way to carry a baby'. In between the two had this explanation "Our colonial masters had taught us to carry our babies the wrong way. This makes our babies grow up inheriting orthopaedic problems, for babies carried the wrong ways do not grow with flexible hips". He had more about what it could do to us as a nation, and I do not want to go into all the details.

He is my hero for he was addressing what most others would ignore at the very basic level of our health needs. And his was not a sponsor's message of what drug one needed to take to correct ailments resulting from this practice.

Seeking to find

Such heroes are many and they often go unnoticed. Some are doctors and surgeons who do not give preference to what they do in private clinics as consultants and give their all to the hospitals they serve in. Those who do not recommend Caesarean births to patients whose bills are paid for by their employers. In fact, a banker friend recently told me that there were many such births in families of bankers. A correlation that could be scientifically tested making an interesting research project for sociology students in our universities.

Away from the medical profession, we find heroes in those local, regional and national politicians that seek to represent us with the singular objective of serving us the people. Qualified accountants, who would simply not present books and certify them as correct, but expose the wrong doings within corporate entities and State organisations. Public servants and professionals who have got what it takes to give the right advice even when that would not stand them in good stead, with their political masters and last but not least businesspersons, who would not give bribes to get this or that tender for themselves and seek not to violate the correct procedures. The list for the sake of the future of our nation should be long. Like Handagama did with his Vidu, I beg to leave compiling the rest, for your own imagination. [email protected]