Re-Defining “Outlandish”

By Emil van der Poorten -

Emil van der Poorten

When last I looked in my rather moth-eaten dictionary the word “outlandish” had, beside it, “adj. looking or sounding very strange.”

While it is the word that comes to mind most readily when one views the goings-on in the Debacle of Asia, in the context of Sri Lankan “reality” is much of what we see on a day-to-day basis “strange?”  After all, as someone once said, “Everything is relative, though one sometimes wishes that one’s extended family wasn’t!”

Where in any nation wearing the garments of democracy would you have the daughter of a man riddled with bullets, gangland-style, expressing an interest in running under the banner of the party in which one of his alleged murderers continues to be a leading light, with patronage from the very top?  Of course, one has, again, to place this behaviour in the context of the widow of the murdered one (the young wannabe candidate’s mother) accepting a post of “Advisor” to the man who heads the party in which the alleged killer is a Minister.

Of course, another dictionary entry also presents itself as alternative terminology for this kind of behaviour: it is “bizarre,” the legend besides which reads “adj.odd, strange.”  “Outlandish” though seems to be the better alternative because it suggests “bizarre” carried to its extreme!

Adding to this little tidbit in the news is that of the ongoing saga of the Prime Minister who did/did not have responsibility/accountability in the matter of one of his major minions issuing a “release” of some sort that enabled a huge quantity of heroin to pass out of our (at least for now) primary port without hindrance of any sort.

That bit of “theatre of the absurd” if one is particularly given to black humour was somewhat enhanced by the shrinkage of the product of the poppy that was experienced very soon after it was taken into custody.  If memory serves me right, the material seized shrank by something like 100 Kgs.  I know Sri Lanka is sometimes referred to as the “Miracle of Asia” but isn’t this feat pushing the bounds of credulity somewhat, particularly when it is followed by a cockamamie “explanation” that some of the product was contaminated and, therefore, “removed” from the presumably “good” part of the shipment? I do not pretend to any particular expertise in the matter of narcotics, but short of some very sophisticated methods being applied, the existence of which no one I have spoken with is aware of, how was this “separation” accomplished And what happened to the 100 kilograms plus which was “separated?”                                                               Read More