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Why waste money at the feet of statues?

It has become a regular feature that the politicians get to garland or lay flowers at the feet of statues. Often these politicians neither respect nor follow the footsteps of the leaders whom they pretend to honour. Much money is wasted to organise these functions and even cranes are hired to raise the politicians to tall statues.

We are a literate nation. We must stop and think what purpose this serves. The flowers just fade away in a day or two. Only the flower sellers get something out of this regular performance besides, of course, bloating the ego of the politician.

If a leader is appreciated, do what he wanted done for the nation. Follow his footsteps or fulfill his dreams. If you cannot, and if you must make a show of it, do something that will profit someone in a meaningful way. Charity is recommended in every religion. And today, people can do with a little charity. Why not commemorate the past leaders by doing some charity-like feeding the poor or the orphans? Or helping some widows to set up some business to stand on their own feet? Or build a school?

There are so many good deeds we can do without just laying flowers at statues which cannot even appreciate the beauty of the flowers.

Dr. Mrs. Mareena Thaha Reffai
Dehiwala

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Ticket checkers outwitted

Very often, the conductors of private buses do not issue tickets. As a result, I have noticed that they request for money again from the passengers who have already paid the fare. This sometimes makes the passengers angry and they start berating the conductor. But what I am trying to convey here is how the bus crew outwit the officers deployed to fine conductors who do not issue tickets.

Before the bus approaches the place, where the ticket inspectors are lying in wait to catch and fine conductors who do not issue tickets, the driver of the bus coming in the opposite direction gives a cue to the other bus driver about the ticket checkers and then the conductor immediately starts issuing tickets and thus avoid getting nabbed by the checkers.
I would like to suggest that for the ticket checkers to catch them red handed, they have to be mobile and not get themselves stationed at a regular spot or at locations convenient to them. Only by being mobile, the ticket checkers will be able to outwit the conductors.

Mohamed Zahran 

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Show over for porn fans

The above was the caption in a news item in The Nation Sunday paper some time last year. Since then, internet viewers are dismayed that their choices are being tampered with and censored.

Sri Lanka is a free country. If a citizen pays to browse the internet, he is entitled to his monies worth. The subject for censoring should be examined and studied, preferably by a Select Committee. In this instance, some prudes in the Sri Lanka States Establishment have engaged the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) with the role of ‘Moral Police.’

Before venturing out on such gross stupidity, let those men look back into their own lives. Both men and women as teenagers read romantic novels that came in cheap paperbacks. They went into reveries: A girl daydreaming of her Prince Charming and the boy of his Cinderella who he would keep safe in cotton wool.

Unknowingly, the book would slip and they may find that they have soiled themselves. In their sleep came nocturnal emissions. That is a part of what man is heir to, for God and Nature gifted the animal world with genitals to procreate.
What did God tell Adam and Eve? “Go forth, be fruitful and replenish the world.” To assist them in their endeavour, he did not clothe them, though he could have covered their nakedness.

The Bible is a preponderant and chief source of information concerning sex, birth, masturbation, birth control, rape, incest, polygamy and perversion. That is not to belittle the knowledge it imparts but that the great book dealt with man and not the heavens, though it alludes to good and evil.

Long years ago in about 1950, a book by Havelock Ellis, a British authority on the sex life of people reported that 1,000 girls college graduates were questioned by lecturer Dr. Katharine Davis on what they found most sexually stimulating, and the majority replied, “Man.” Men asked the same question replied, “Women.”

Censors are obviously trudging the wrong road. The Archbishop of Canterbury was reported in The Times on May 29, 1930 that any form of censorship would be intolerable and contrary to man’s animal nature.
Both good pictures and literature together with what was believed to be bad, should be available for choice to discerning mankind. Banned books and pictures are the top sellers.

Dr. Eustace Chesser in his book Human Aspects of Sexual Deviation published in 1971 says that pornography is not anti-social. It is a substitute for sex in its absence, experienced by bachelors, widowers, spinsters and widows.

Deprivation of pornography, in its many forms, could lead to insanity at its worst. First it will start brooding and lethargy, and the nation losing an active worker, leading to alcoholism and the practice of heroin inhalation and other drugs. Denmark in 1956 made pornographic material legally available and with it, sexual crime plummeted by 25% initially. Psychologists advised that children of school going age will not be harmed by pornography for their day and night dreams carry a pornographic content.
Curbed sex could lead to homosexuality and lesbianism apart from the role genes and hormones play. Sadomasochism and perversion too may result and soon sex will be made a criminal offence.

Psychologists know that there is no normality in the sex desires of men that there are as many variations, as there are men, on this planet. Any attempt to normalise practices will end up with making sex a criminal offence.

A country’s achievements in every field are directly related to man’s sexual mores. A Freudian will say that suppression of man’s sexual psyche will stultify his achievements in all fields. Was it porn that is depicted on the frescoes at Sigiriya and in caves? Did the world’s painters and sculptors indulge in pornography? The human body and its needs are what they sought to depict and release man from staid suppression of his varied sexual needs.

Sexually frustrated men in high places burden the country with stipulations on what is acceptable and what is not.
God save this our homeland from censors! Western countries permit films with explicit sex related to the story. Theatres permit stage shows of striptease. A nation that is not sexually frustrated will excel while those that suppress Nature’s mores will soon bite the dust. Censors, you all are warned!

William Sigera

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Excess of Evil (2008)

Toxic-milk for a yuan quick-fix
Weaned on high melamine-mix
Older and bolder a billboard display
L.T.T.E’s terrorism as child’s play.
When justice hesitates
The world is raped.
 
Irene de Silva
Colombo 5

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 Appreciation

113th birth anniversary of C.E.P.Kumarasinghe

A sonnet to my father

At times I feel you’re gone, miles away on a pilgrimage
A noble mission to worship ’n convey a cheerful message
None’ll know how much I feel, care’n miss dear you,
What it means to disown a loving, admirable father like you
Uncountable sorrowful days glided away desperately,
Your absence, the vacuum is felt more day by day so miserably
Time heals mental pains is strongly, widely believed
That’s untrue for me, it hurts me, I’m never relieved
Wonderful memories evergreen still linger on, none can steal,
They leave such aching heart burns much heard ‘n unable to heal
Being the eldest I recall many things you willingly had to undergo,
As it happened twenty one sad long years ago
The parting unbearable so bitter as each day silently dawns,
I lonely lament missing you’re my beloved father, I still mourn.

Kumari Kumarasinghe Tennakoon

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