{"id":134046,"date":"2023-04-28T14:42:11","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T21:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=134046"},"modified":"2023-04-28T14:42:11","modified_gmt":"2023-04-28T21:42:11","slug":"debts-that-cannot-be-repaid-in-full","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/04\/28\/debts-that-cannot-be-repaid-in-full\/","title":{"rendered":"Debts that cannot be repaid in full"},"content":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A friend joked recently that there was a time when friends and relatives would ask \u2018aren\u2019t you thinking about being married?\u2019 but now they ask \u2018haven\u2019t you thought about migrating?\u2019  Clearly times have changed from relatively bearable to hard and worse. Understandable too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If things are unbearable, there are two options. One, do your best to make things bearable. If this cannot be done alone, then seek like-minded people, network, build a community, turn idea into ideology. Fight. That\u2019s if \u2018this place,\u2019 however you define it, is considered to be of value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not easy when one\u2019s mind has been and is constantly bombarded with negativity about the country, the culture and history even as it is injected with all kinds of fairy stories about some other place.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there\u2019s the second option: leaving. Decide to leave and you can support the decision with countless arguments. In other words, once you\u2019ve convinced yourself about a decision or a course of action, it\u2019s easy to convince the world, especially because even if the world objects, you\u2019ve justified things to yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing wrong with this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently I met a school friend, Esala Hettiwatte. He spoke about these matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I have told my children, go wherever you want to go, but remember that there\u2019s no land like this.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now someone could argue that it\u2019s a place-bias born of long years of residence. \u2018There\u2019s no place like home,\u2019 after all it is not a country-specific assertion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I get him though. When people ask me why I returned to Sri Lanka (and many have, over the years),  I\u2019ve told them, \u2018there are two reasons: first, I am a beneficiary of free education and that\u2019s a debt I cannot every hope to repay in full, and secondly I can\u2019t think of a country more beautiful or a people more enchanting than this.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just free education though. Just think. The vast majority of Sri Lankans benefit from free education and free health services including complicated surgeries which would cost a fortune if done in a private hospital. They benefit from all kinds of subsidies. Much of it can be calculated but we don\u2019t add it up to overall income. Someone paid for someone\u2019s education. That beneficiary is not asked to repay that someone. Indeed most beneficiaries aren\u2019t even conscious that these can be seen as debts and that the civilised thing to do is to repay in one form or another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, being ignorant or feigning ignorance allows us to absolve ourselves from any guilt. Indeed, no one will say \u2018hey dude, pay your debts before you leave!\u2019 I am not saying that either, don\u2019t worry.  One doesn\u2019t have to be resident in a village, a community, a household or country to serve the relevant place or people. And there\u2019s no deadline either. If you do feel obliged to repay, you can do it as you wish, when you wish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Esala was not talking of any of these things. He feels blessed to have been born here. He feels blessed to live here, despite all the deprivations. I feel the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The beauty needs no description. All you need to have done to love this country is to have traveled. It\u2019s a small island. Easy to cover, so to speak. Easy to discover and rediscover. It\u2019s more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a sitcom that was very popular in the USA a few decades ago titled \u2018Cheers\u2019. The theme song had a line that was almost an ad: \u2018where everybody knows your name.\u2019  Familiarity. That\u2019s what was special and was being marketed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Sri Lanka, any conversation of any length has the potential of producing life-long friendships. Talk to a stranger for a few minutes and you\u2019ll probably find that the person is related or knows someone you know or there are places both have been to or things both are fascinated by.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it is the size of the country. Maybe it is the culture. Maybe it is just Esala. Maybe just Esala and myself. But maybe there\u2019s some truth in the Victor Ratnayake song, \u2018Okkoma rajavaru <\/em>(all kings)\u2019 where he claims, \u2018we are all fathers, we are all mothers, we of the Thun Sinhale are all related.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, people have issues with \u2018Sinhale\u2019 thanks to those extremists who have misread the name and are convinced that it confers exclusive ownership to a particular group identifying itself with a particular language and thanks to those who have different fixations about self and community. Sinhale, though, is a composite of the Yaksha, Naga, Deva<\/em> and Raksha<\/em>, the four hela communities. And ‘Thun Sinhale’ refers to the island\u2019s geography separated into the three provinces Ruhunu, Maya and Pihiti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s an aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are all related. A nation of relatives. We will be there for each other, even those we dislike or consider to be enemies, in moments of triumph and moments of tragedy: we are present at the magula (celebration) and the maranaya (death).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can never leave. We can never completely pay off the debts we owe. True for me. True for Esala too, probably. But more than that, this country is way too beautiful to leave. Some loves are like that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[‘The Morning Inspection’ is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne A friend joked recently that there was a time when friends and relatives would ask \u2018aren\u2019t you thinking about being married?\u2019 but now they ask \u2018haven\u2019t you thought about migrating?\u2019  Clearly times have changed from relatively bearable to hard and worse. Understandable too. If things are unbearable, there are two options. One, do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134046","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=134046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}