Eat Lard

One morning I woke up and found that I was evil. That all I had stood for was twisted and blackened. All I believed in was unclean, contaminated by a germ that had taken hold while I was asleep. No longer could I feel patriotic, share in the simple pride of a waved flag, of a crisp military parade. Words like honour and independence tasted bitter now. Altogether new synonyms had wormed their way into my mind. Unity meant conformism, discipline meant submission, patriotism was now racism. Pride had become hate, democracy  a shapeless beast, terrorism an excuse and freedom meant absolutely fucking nothing. 

But last night, I was an innocent. I knew but did not fear  the “Patriotism” that was Shaw’s “… last refuge of the scoundrel”; for what is society with no shared purpose, with no pride, no symbols to rally around?  Would it even  endure? So I had sought out that which was clean and honourable and euphoric, what I could stand up tall and salute. There was a simple pleasure of the skybound firework on the day of Independence: its rushed journey heavenwards calling me to the giddy heights of citizenship in this great enterprise of this country. I grew to love the clean detergent smell of wearing my national dress, the raising of a flag so ornate and symbolic that other’s tri-colour flags seemed so stark, dry and childlike. I honoured the pioneers who had not long ago secured our independence from the clenched fist of colonial strength.

Then, last night, delirious fevered dreams flashed vivid technicolour corruptions of what was simple, beautiful and pure. I dreamt of a State that disenfranchised its own citizens with a single act of parliament. Of academics and the educated, who should know better, incite violence against those who had been my brothers before I slept. Of laws to punish a religion growing, of an Oxbridge educated elite spewing Sinhala Only. As the fever took hold, I saw hundreds of citizens horded into buses and driven into empty spaces. There were flashes of children severed by shells that we calculated to be an acceptable cost of political convenience. I mutely screamed at an electoral majority that could not see any other solution but War. And all the time, I saw hate, spilling like bile, mixed with spittle, running down the jowls of the politicians, gathering on the chins of bestial men and women who in their bloodlust cornered and attacked all that was different, alien and ‘para’ –‘other’.

And at that point, my weakest moment, the microbic invader struck, confusing me. In this confounded state it showed me that we had become the Nietzschean evil we set out to destroy, that our souls were tainted and it told me that the articles which I had shaken my head at before were true, we were monsters, the LTTE and I, two sides of the same coin. That morally, this nation and all we tried to preserve was exactly the same as a group of people who strapped bombs to themselves and blew up innocents.

In my shame, reader, I believed this all. I hated myself. I read comments, op-eds, and even the hysterical messages of trolls who painted my red door black. Shrill voices screamed out how we were no better than that which sought to destroy us. As the infection multiplied, as the moral lethargy replaced the will to act and cycles of cynicism and withdrawal lowered my expectations further till all I could do was tiptoe past my bruised conscience and better sense. I almost succumbed that night to the fever that gripped me ever harder, a final mocking image locked in my mind of hundreds of my brothers and sisters lined up for busses with no destination as men with grey faces and grey guns looked on.

Just like that, the image flickered and I remembered how the story actually ended that day: A single citizen filing a fundamental rights petition against the forced eviction. I felt the ground tremble as the judiciary like a waking giant, reached swiftly to stop and reverse the executive action, holding it unconstitutional. And there alone, in the calm at the eye of the cyclone, I saw clearly what ideal was left to us, what it is we were fighting for, why were different from the monsters we confronted. It never mattered how stupid, base or corrupt the people and their elected officials were, we are still a Republic, we are a representative democracy, we have institutions, a separation of powers and checks and balances. We have a constitution which is a covenant between every citizen and the state. We are greater than the sum of our parts. No matter how often the law is bent, broken or bought it will always be there, if nothing else but as a sullen reminder, and we will know it is wrong and it cannot be got rid of. No matter how many votes are stolen, coerced or rigged, every so many years every leader must endure the risk of being cast out. It will not matter how many journalists are silenced, the media can only be reined, never retired. A state of emergency that has lasted some of us, our whole lives  and successively more brutal governments have not been able to completely do away with the freedoms that is the promise of our noble enterprise. The glass may only be half empty, but, damn it, there is a  GLASS. It can always be filled. Are we appalled by a state sunk in debate, argument and compromise? Celebrate this. We talk, because we know the alternatives. We know their price.

There is NO comparison between this Republic which we are equal citizens of and a systemically violent, fascist personality cult. If I need something to hang on to, I will hang onto this. I don’t need to expect the best motivations of the leaders to ensure that my freedoms will survive. It will, battered and bruised, because that’s what it is built to do in a democracy.

I see now that we’ve quite missed the point by celebrating our independence. There is so little to gain recounting our release from an imperial rule, when you consider that the single most significant event that took place that day was the birth of the republic. The beginning of the hard work of building a nation. The metaphorical inking of the eternal contract between the state and all its citizens, even those yet unborn. This day something wonderful was birthed, a people with the mandate and opportunity to create their own destiny, to govern themselves, a prize that so many are denied elsewhere. As much as we’ve squandered it and made ourselves unworthy of it, it still there, silent, resourceful enough to swiftly counter even an act Executive excess and only needing a single citizen to call it into action. And that is what we need to do, we need to USE IT. To build on it. THIS is the ideology worth fighting for, THIS  is worth standing up for. This is my pride. I have found myself to be an Idealist and I am NOT ashamed.

The fever is gone. I’m going to put up that flag now.