{"id":111987,"date":"2021-02-23T17:20:31","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T00:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=111987"},"modified":"2021-02-23T17:20:31","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T00:20:31","slug":"the-tree-and-the-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/02\/23\/the-tree-and-the-lady\/","title":{"rendered":"The tree and the lady"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

She\nhas been there for many years, living peacefully in the forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\none day the earth beneath and around her began to shake and tremble, making her\nvery nervous. Then she saw: the man and his machine, the harbingers of her\nruin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nthere she stood helplessly immersed in thoughts that were of extreme\nbewilderment, which quickly turned to great sadness: how could he? Doesn\u2019t he\nor those who command him know that I am amongst the rarest, with only a very\nfew of my relatives living in some other locations in the country?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May\nbe he and those, who are above him don\u2019t know or even if they do, would they\ncare? So the great tree,  with such mournful thoughts was getting ready for the\ninevitable that would come soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then\nshe heard the commotion. The roar of the machine abruptly fell silent. And came\nthe voice \u2018No. The tree stays\u2019!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\nall know what followed next, don\u2019t we? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nthat particular \u2018Crudia zeylanica\u2019 tree was saved by the intervention of a\nvaliant lady forest conservator, who was not afraid to face the political\nwherewithal, which was made even more lethal by copious amounts  of ignorance and stupidity of some\nothers, who seemed to have no compunction in removing it to accomodate for an\n\u2018express way\u2019. And I wonder, in spite of the efforts of all concerned how long\nthe tree can survive before the axe comes down, which I sincerely hope will\nnever happen, a hope against hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some\nsay that changing the already completed design and the current work already in\nprogress of the express way, in order to save the tree, might incur few\nbillions. I am not a civil engineer, yet isn\u2019t it a bit too high? And then how\nabout the cost of building towers or the size of expenditure spent on building\nand maintaining numerous non-revenue-earning white elephants standing all\naround the country: products of whims and fancies of both past and present\ngovernors?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now\nwe know this wasn\u2019t the first instance, when in a previous occasion too, the\nsaid officer stood her ground, while taking on the political might of another\npolitician, who in the course of his argument with the officer also threw a\nphenomenally absurd and stupid question, (which by the way is not unusual\nanyway as far as this nincompoop lot is concerned), at her: \u2018what is Oxygen\nfor, eating?\u2019 And then another from the same \u2018Illuminati\u2019 lamented: \u2018why talk\nto media, all the time?\u2019 Well leaving aside the questionable traits of some of\nour media channels, it is still the media or how else he proposes to get the\nmessage across to the public? Is he talking about going back to olden days,\nwhen an old van or a tractor doing rounds in the town or the village, with a\nloudspeaker tied to them blaring out music and whatnot?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nit is also quite disappointing to hear that some people are trying to belittle\nwhat the forest officer has done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nwonder whether this attitude\/habit has now become a national trait: belittling\nand fault-finding instead of admiration and praise, when they are due? Remember\nthe disparaging remarks made by some belonging to our political elite itself\nduring the war: \u2018Alimankada\/Pamankada, Kilinochchiya\/Madawachiya and\nThoppigala\/Gana kalawak\u2019. So the lesser mortals taking a negative,\nunappreciative stance in situations like the one being discussed here, is not\nsurprising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly,\nand in my opinion, the brave lady forest officer is a \u2018David\u2019 fighting the\n\u2018Goliyaths\u2019, who wouldn\u2019t give a tinker\u2019s cuss about the colossal damage, often\nirrereparable, is done to the environment in the name of development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laksiri\nWarnakula <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula\u00a0 She has been there for many years, living peacefully in the forest. And one day the earth beneath and around her began to shake and tremble, making her very nervous. Then she saw: the man and his machine, the harbingers of her ruin. And there she stood helplessly immersed in thoughts that were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-laksiri-warnakula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}