Features
Significance of New Year; Indian PM’s visit; Boomerang!
April New Year is …
To Cassandra, the Sinhala and Tamil New Year are a very strong nod to national pride and our cultural heritage. It is essentially a thanksgiving to Nature – sun, rain, the earth, devas too – for the Maha crop of paddy has been harvested and stored. But man cannot live by rice alone. That’s sustenance for the body. The mind/brain and psyche too have to be nurtured and thus a holiday to R&R and celebrate; to firm family relationships, nurture togetherness since man is a social creature; cater to appetites with richer victuals and of course that which cheers for some; and fun and games for child and adult alike.
This year we remember that we, as a nation, are not out of the woods of economic difficulty, but there is hope, there definitely is. After years of mismanagement a great change is taking place, mostly because those who govern us are concerned about the country and its people and work for our betterment, not for their individual enrichment or rise in power.
Successful visit
Big Brother visited us, not with parippu and threats, but most definitely with an acknowledgement this tiny pearl at its southern point is important and a partner in the region, not an equal partner but definitely useful and needed. The body and facial language as exhibited when PM Modi and President Dissanayake stood side by side for cameras to click, and pictures were relayed to us via TV, was of two leaders who were approving of each other and easy to be with. Modi is a world figure courted by both eastern and western countries, but AKD stood tall beside him, not one bit dwarfed by Big Brother. There was rapport between the two and so, good for us.
It seemed to be a very successful visit and our President scored and so we are the beneficiaries, whatever critics may say about MoUs signed with no transparency.
Academic brings honour to SL
A foremost Ivy League University in the US acknowledged its respect to one of our academics. Has such an honour bestowed on one of our intellectuals before? Cass quotes the Sunday Island April 6: “In an unusual gesture 25 years after he retired from Princeton University where he served from Sept 1980 to July 2000, the University flew its flag at half-mast over East Pyne from March 28 to April 1 to mark the death of Prof Gananath Obeysekera.” He was professor of anthropology at Princeton and after retirement, given the honour of being elected Professor Emeritus. His wife, Ranjani Ellepola, was also a university teacher.
“Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in New Jersey, US. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth oldest institution of higher education in the US and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark in 1747 and then to its Mercer County campus in Princeton nine years later. It officially became a university in 1896 and was subsequently renamed Princeton.”
Princeton University has marked Prof Obeysekera’s death. The further acknowledgement of his worldwide acclaim as an intellectual and academic is that the New York Times on March 30 ran a long article by Clay Risen, with title: Professor Gananath Obeysekera 95 Dies; Anthropologist Bridged East and West. The article ends thus: “His wide-ranging work drew on field research in his native Sri Lanka as well as his extensive study of English Literature and Christian mysticism.
“Dr Obeysekera received his master’s and doctorate degrees, both in anthropology, from the University of Washington, where he also taught. He later taught at the University of California, San Diego, and at Princeton, where he was chairman of the anthropology department from 1980 until his retirement in 2000. (Two of his publications are listed here).
“In a 2003 interview for the University of California, Berkeley, Dr Obeysekera said his grand intellectual mission was to study the way ideas from one culture filtered through another, whether it be South Asian culture through the West or vice versa.”
Evils return to roost
Trump’s Liberation Day announcement of catastrophic tariffs will turn to a Presidential Term of chaos and the less well-off Americans suffering more the slings and arrows of outrageous rise of prices, shortages and job losses. He promises to make America Rich Again but he should spell it out as Make American Oligarchs Richer. His tariffs, which adversely affect the entire globe, will boomerang on him. Already the world and even his own people are ganging up against him.
I am sure most of you have read Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s letter to Trump on behalf of the rest of the world that has gone viral. She points out that outside the wall he is building to keep Mexicans from migrating to the US, there are 7 billion consumers. They will reach other countries for their purchases. From Greenland to South America and Africa, from China to Western Europe, there was consternation over the tariffs and soon enough reaction and now retaliation.
His chief advisor, Alon Musk with his very young son perched on his shoulder, is at the receiving end of merciless barbs and blunt blame. Talk show journo, Jimmy Kimble, tore into Musk recently, so much so that the billionaire lost his cool and marched off stage, to jeers. Others are following suit.
Trump and Musk deserve what they are getting and this should get worse, but please not for the Americans.
Cass wishes all her readers a day of piety and peace on the poya and then jubilation and celebration as Avurudhu dawns and proceeds with planets moving ‘Houses’ and us munching kavun in congenial company and playing games, indoors and out. Very happy New Year to All!