Touring back to roots
 A dog lived behind that mountain of food. In fact his whole
generation lived behind that mountain. Unfortunately none of them knew
it was a mountain brimmed with food. Every morning the dog is off
looking for food down the valley. The stroll seems so long for the poor
fellow because food is not so common. He has to be happy with food,
however meagre it is. He was always starving having eaten so little.
But there were birds flying in the sky who could see how rich the
mountain is. They descended to have food. Still the poor dog didn’t know
the birds were enjoying a sumptuous meal.
My teacher narrated this parable to explain something else. I
remembered this parable when I was listening to another elder giving a
speech on literary trends. Literary trends don’t appeal to the common
man mostly because they are bombarded with unnecessary jargons, hence
have become so much pedagogical and dogmatic. But this particular talk
was interesting because he was comparing the east with the west.
It is no secret that we Sri Lankans are generally fond of ‘western’
influence. Besides we are not short of folks, who claim to be experts on
certain subjects, toying with newly-coined terms. I can quote some
famous examples: absurdism, existentialism, post-modernism, feminism and
free verse.
Literary trends are where you almost revere western influence. Not
that the western influence is bad, but we do not know we easterners too
have a literature rich with such models. There are some concepts born in
the West, continue for some time and face a natural death. What do we
do? We accept them with open arms and harp on stale food. Only
difference is that rarely do we know we starve all the time – or we
don’t know at all.
 We borrow these concepts to show off our ‘scholarship’ or
‘knowledge’. I remember how someone described about a particular writer:
“You have to read several times to understand his writing.” This of
course was a compliment. With so much effort I managed to understand his
writing at last. But then I realized another fact: it was more ambiguity
than any deep meaning.
Whatever deep, my teacher says, could be explained in simple wording.
Even so that is, though written in simple words, hard to understand
because the message is deep.
When something is written with so many technical jargons and
unnecessarily complicated and obscure word order you have to rack your
mind over that only to understand how trivial the message is. This is
the nature of most ‘serious writings’. No wonder they say empty vessels
make much noise. Those serious writers themselves hardly know what they
write.
Genuine serious writings are written precisely and convey many
messages.
The elder’s question was simply why we should go to west if we have
the very same wealth in the east. For instance he said free verse
doesn’t belong to the west. Sigiri graffiti existed long ere the western
free verse. Absurdism and existentialism all existed in ancient
literature such as Jathaka tales quite long before Chaucer and
Shakespeare.
But the problem is we don’t see that. Do we fail to see that, or have
some of our scholars chosen not to see it deliberately? We live in, not
behind, a mountain of food, but we go look out for stale food.
But there are birds too. Westerners come and spot our richness. They
take it to their lands, reshape it into their style and give it back to
us. That’s what happened when Ceylon was under the British.
We cannot completely accuse the British for ruining our country.
There were Englishmen like Henry Parker, Rhys Davids, Hugh Neville and
John D’Oyly who took our thinking to their lands. The Whites are also
responsible to make our traditions and culture popular in the west.
Next time when you spot a critic droning on some unfamiliar western
concept, you have every right to pose a polite question: are you
actually familiar with the concept? Now that’s a tightening suppression,
I must say. No one has a right to keep you from discovering the western
concepts.
But when you are perched astride you will see how beautiful both east
and west are. It’s always good to tour back to our own roots as well as
to sightsee what’s alien to us. Cut your teeth on this, you will realize
it has all the more reason to enlighten your destination.
The parable didn’t sound convincing at first, but now it’s timelier
than anything.
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