NOT RUNNING SCARED

Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United States, Jaliya Wickramasuriya had an interesting tale to tell about the U.S press Co, or rather some of the peskier elements of it, when he spoke to the host of a SLBC Radio programme People's Power (aired 7 a.m. every weekday morning) recently. Said Wickramasuriya that he brought down many Sri Lankans and journalists from the United States, for the opening of the Mattala airport recently in a special chartered flight.

U.S journalists are generally hyper-cynical about South Asian countries such as ours about which they have heard mostly bad news, courtesy of their own political and journalistic establishments. But Wickramasuriya obviously coaxed them to undertake the tour.

At the end of it, these essentially Washington based scribes were flummoxed. One of them ended up profusely apologizing to the Ambassador saying that he felt embarrassed that his country is sponsoring resolutions in U.N assemblies that seek to censure the Sri Lankan political establishment when so much had been achieved on the ground and the people, particularly of the North, were undeniably delighted with the progress.

All the hair tearing, complaining and crying about Sri Lanka happens outside of our shores, and if there is any of it happening within the country, it's among the motley NGO crowd funded from outside, and the bankrupt opposition. This dichotomy is best reflected in the media, with the generally sensationalistic print and broadcast media crowd most often being unable to find cynical sensation dripping headlines these days -- and having to settle for ones about falling staircases and school marathons.

The travails of schoolchildren, thoroughly ignored during wartime, are back in the national spotlight as war and post-war issues recede to the background. This brings us to the curious reality about whether somehow the Colombo museum is in some funny way -- jinxed?

Many moons back, as it were, the museum developed a leak in the roof through which rainwater seeped and destroyed some of the country's valuable ancient artefacts. Then there was the break-in which led to the disappearance of still more artefacts, though Police was able to make considerable progress and crack the case open. Now, the main staircase leading to the upper floors collapses, with so many schoolchildren on it, and it is extremely fortuitous that no fatalities have been reported as a result of the stair-crash.

Professor Nalin de Silva, sometime ago, cracked the cadmium poisoning case leading to kidney failures in so many people in the North Central Province of the country, and perhaps it is time some clairvoyance was mandated to find out what spooks the museum -- or whether it is after all a coincidence that a series of eerie calamities have befallen the museum premises, as if lightning has struck thrice in one spot?

Or is it that the building is just, well, ancient? A museum is supposed to a repository of things very old, but this must be the one museum in the world that's ancient both inside and outside, and its time it's considered whether a sturdier external shell should house the ancient artefacts, sending the old stately mansion into retirement? People can make a museum of the museum building then -- the shell of the building that is -- and say this was the former museum, now preserved as a museum to remember that fact?

Be that as it may, schoolboys and schoolgirls, when they are not falling off staircases and running marathons, are these days generally leading less anxiety ridden lives. They can die in marathons, but not in bomb blasts.

But the marathon issue is more easily addressed than the bomb blast issue, and that is the bright side that the naysayer negativists have forgotten.

There are now better guidelines in place, with the President himself intervening, to ensure than the physically weak do not run marathons or other long distance races such as cross country events.

We have come a long way since the only evasion that was possible against death, was mostly, prayer that one wouldn't be in the wrong place at the wrong time.