To all my brothers and sisters in whose arms I reside
I would never have known of a man called Mark Knopfler had it not
been for my musically inclined brother, Arjuna. He was so talented and
so dedicated to whatever he set his mind to accomplish that he was all
about the particular musical instrument that had caught his fancy at the
time. He just soaked up everything there was to know. Not everything,
for that’s impossible, but quite a bit and certainly volumes more than I
could even imagine.
For him it was piano, violin, the bamboo flute and the guitar; in
that order. Most times it was some curiosity, something that he needed
to figure out for himself perhaps. Once he got his anxiety out of the
way, the instrument too would go. I never understood. He once told me
that he gave up playing chess after he figured out how to checkmate with
just bishop and knight: ‘you need to drive the opponent’s king first to
the corner square of the colour opposite to the one controlled by your
bishop before forcing it to an end that your
bishop can control; the
shortest distance between two points is not a straight line, I learned.’
That was a profound explanation, but then again he’s brilliant in coming
up with something philosophical to explain away things done and said for
relatively pedestrian reasons.
Dire Straits songs
It was different with the guitar though. I think Knopfler was such a
hero that not only did he want to be like him, he wanted to be better.
He had posters of course. He had the music, he had the motion and yes,
the boy could play. He knew all the Dire Straits songs (he could sing
too). Me, I was just the kind-brother-in-awe then as I am now. Certain
things are not allowed to be outgrown.
Looking back I remember just one song and just one line of that song,
‘Brothers in arms’. I think that was the title song of a Dire Straits
album. Just one line: ‘We’re fools to make war on our brothers in arms’.
I checked the lyrics and the following caught me: ‘Someday you’ll return
to me your valleys and your farms, and you’ll no longer burn to be
brothers in arms’.
I am not sure to whom these farms and valleys will be returned or by
whom. We do burn, though. It is as though this is all we know about
community and solidarity. It is as though brotherhood is extracted and
not cultivated or allowed to grow; enforced and not the result of an
organically unfolding process.
The easiest brotherhoods are those that are given - those over which
choice is not a factor. We say ‘family’ or ‘blood-tie’. We cling to
similarity of colour, clan, faith and conviction. We die for these
brothers and expect them to die for us if necessary.
My brother Arjuna was in Colombo one day in May or June in the year
1991. It would have been past midnight for him, but I saw him in the
full flush of early spring sunlight in Boston.
He would have been fast asleep but I saw him fully alive. He would
have been silent, but he was making music. I saw a young boy, hair about
as long as his, playing a different guitar but making the same music.
Only the skin tone was different apart from the minor detail that my
brother had never been to Harvard Square.
I wrote to him:
‘I saw you this evening
floating down the sunbeams
cleaving through the dark clouds
this springtime suddenly.
I saw you shine, brother,
long hair falling over your beautiful face
skinnier than when I saw you last,
a cigarette stuck on your guitar
sipping the high notes you couldn’t quite reach.’
The boy could play but I never saw him again. There are so many
brothers and sisters in that category of never-to-be-seen-again.
We see them all the time and we are blind to them too, because we are
taught that the Brotherhood of Blood is thicker than that of shared
humanity. We are one in our suffering and this means that we can be one
in our solidarities too.
Stage drama
In 1973 I was forced to buy a ticket for a stage drama that was to be
performed at the Navarangahala. It was the first play I saw all by
myself. It was called ‘Pahanen Pahana’ if I remember right.
All I remember was that Sinhala fighters were fighting the British
army and that a lot of people died. I remember an ‘afterlife’ scene
where soldier embraced soldier without worrying about uniform colour or
skin-tone difference.
‘It is written in the starlight and in every line on your palm,’
Knopfler claims. Yes, we are fools to make war on our brothers in arms.
‘We have just one world, but we live in different ones,’ the song
observes. I’d like to flip it. We have different worlds and we can
choose to live in these isolated from one another. We don’t have to. We
can live in the same world. In fact we do, but are loathe to admit the
fact.
Arjuna Seneviratne is my brother. One of them, to be more precise. I
have no quarrel with him. That’s not on account of blood-tie. I should
try not to quarrel with my other brothers and not because they are not
named Arjuna.
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