The Story Of Looking Right From The Left

By Mahesan Niranjan –June 4, 2016

Prof. Mahesan Niranjan

On a rather rainy day a couple of years ago, the year 2010 I believe, two middle aged men in deep thought and nostalgic conversation, attempting to cross the main road outside the campus theatre of HillTop University in Sri Lanka, had a narrow escape. A fast moving car, going completely out of control, came to a sudden stop, crashing into a roadside lamp-post with a loud noise.

“Screech!” “Thud!”

Who were the two men, and why were they not looking carefully before crossing the road?

The two are my friends. One is Sivapuranam Thevaram, my drinking partner from Bridgetown, who was taking advantage of the end of the long running deadly war in our country to visit the place on Earth he loved the most. From the structure of his name, you will immediately infer that Thevaram is of Tamil ethnicity and he comes from the Northern parts of our island.

His friend was Dakunu Aarachchige Richmond Sinhaya. Not his real name, of course, but from the structure of the name I have synthesized, you will infer that he is of Sinhala ethnicity, and that he comes from the South.

During the golden days just prior to scaling up of the deadly war, Sinhaya and Thevaram were contemporary students at HillTop. Though they were supposed to be from the opposite camps, the mutual respect and affection they had for each other were above all known bounds of those particular traits.

You might wonder why I chose the name Sinhaya to refer to a friend from the South. After all, the image portrayed by the chief of the animal kingdom has recently been hijacked to represent a particularly nasty aspect of political thought in our country, right? Well, I have chosen that name because during his teenage years, Sinhaya approached public examinations in a manner very similar to how the King of the Jungle would attack, tear into his prey and finish the job. No examiner was known to set a mathematical problem that Sinhaya could not solve. His talents were unparalleled and natural.

Thevaram, on the other hand, though mediocre in his natural abilities, was raised in an environment of unparalleled inertia. He was a product of an educational environment of immense social and parental sacrifice, exceptional state schooling and even more industrious private education. Mass production of university entrance was the single minded objective of the community around him, very focused on benefitting a small social class, with all other damages of its inertia swept under the proverbial carpet, and to this day remaining unacknowledged in popular political discourse.

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