In its immediate aftermath, the so-called “unethical conversion” slogan, which, for a time, was kept under the bed pan, takes wings like a phoenix. Condemnations are issued and a parade of “concerned citizens” - led by the Buddhist political faces of the day - march on the headquarters of the said “healing service inc” and express their opposition to such healing and their miracle drugs. The building is attacked and (as the news on Sirasa reported it) a damage of a minimum of Rs. 30,000 is caused.

The march and the retreat, above, to me, sums up the consciousness of the “Buddhist-faced polity” of Sri Lanka and the insecurities they operate within. For one, for them to wake up to “unethical conversion” (or “miracle healing”, as some may call it,) it takes the death of human life. Well, for me, as much as there is democracy, people should be allowed to live and have their own beliefs - if “miracle healing” is a part of one’s belief system, then, there should be sufficient room for their practising of it. The fact that the gathering was held in the centre of Colombo, in the open, and with a massive participation, highlights that this meeting was known; was public and was sought after. Where were the “concerned citizens” prior to the meeting? Why is their protest only forthcoming in the aftermath of two people dying?

The Buddhist-faced polity share several insecurities with similar other extremist political factions. The intolerance of alternative agencies - specially, agencies of a religious bearing - is at its fore. Not that this is illogical, for the consolidation of their religio-political base should be the purpose of their existence. Yet, this very intolerance is an anti-democratic cleaver with which the right to faith of the others is tampered with. The very intolerance of “conversion” is a show of insecurity and an expression of force. The “against unethical conversion” bill has become a parliamentary concern. The JHU was a leading voice in tabling this. In a majoritarian Buddhist country of which the democracy is largely a game of addition and subtraction there are many emotive and subjective elements that rarely get recognition.

For instance, why would one “convert” in the first place? Is it really “unethical” to persuade one to a cause by, say, the promise of a “gift” or better chances? I mean, seriously, haven’t “persuasion” and “lure” been the heart and the veins of any form of “conversion” and “appropriation”? Be it through the desire for knowledge, be it through the promise of eternal youth, or even “eternal rest” people are bound to belief systems and faiths of different kinds. Where is it written that one may not change one’s belief based on one’s changing needs? Why is “belief” taken as a static entity one inherits at birth and has to be documented and preserved?

The “healing service” at Viharamaha Devi Park was a public programme. The people who were there were, too, adults drawn there by their own discretion/anxieties/curiosity etc. The “non-mainstream” extremes they were willing to probe were sought after through conscious means. Well, the programme ends in chaos and it prompts a politically backed smashing of windows. The windows are smashed alright - but, what next?

A bill that forbids “unethical conversion” seems to presuppose the space of a form of conversion that is indeed “ethical”. If so, what are the grounds for converting someone “ethically”? No choice in this world is politically exclusive or triggered by vacuums. From one’s conviction to ditch a mobile service provider for another, to drop a lover in preference for someone else, or to change one’s hairdo there is always inescapable external influence. If one is born Buddhist and is led to try out “miracle healing”, should his/her birth certificate be a hindrance or a limitation for such a pursuit? In the “ethical” sense, it should not. So, is to essentialise one’s choice, too, an “unethical” conversion / condensation of a sort?

The reality of human history is a dynamic and ever-fluctuating movement among faiths and systems of belief. At times, these shifts are more clear cut, such as one letting go of “being” a Catholic and starts “being” a Hindu. But, often, our shifts are subtle and not as polarised. We move by degrees and shades within a belief system taking slightly different positions. For instance, one may choose “Coke” in favour of another soft drink at a particular time. This decision is conscious and is influenced by his/her internalisations and so forth. But, this selection may easily be undone and be replaced with another brand - owing to stimuli and circumstances. The coming of “Red Bull”, for instance, may make one ditch “Coke”. Our beliefs and convictions, by nature, are rolling stones. The concept of the “floating vote” is the most convenient example one may find to illustrate the fact.

Therefore, technically and morally speaking, the problem here is not “unethical conversion” or the “miracle group” at Viharamaha Devi. The problem here is our own hypocrisy. It is to do with how these unfortunate situations are often manipulated by groups to enhance their own mileage and their need to live the news. In the end, such mandates deprive the simple pleasures and convictions of ordinary folk and do no tangible good to improve their life chances either.

When Dhoby (we never knew his real name as he insisted we call him Dhoby), first came to our house, dressed in a clean white shirt ad sarong, with a neat little konde tied to the back of his head, my first impression of him was that of a typical villager, whose knowledge was limited to the village he lived in, and the suburban house into which he had later moved.

But how wrong I was!
Our Dhoby was anything but illiterate, and his knowledge was comparable to an encyclopaedia. There was nothing he didn’t know, even though it may have been a “little of everything”!
As children, we would wait for his arrival on a bicycle every Saturday morning, with our clothes packed into a bundle, which he stacked into a basket attached to the front of his old pushy cycle.
He would stop just outside our gate and ring his bell loudly, with three sharp rings, to announce his arrival. Then, carrying the clothes bundle on his head, he would enter the house and wait patiently, till we spread a large white sheet on the ground, on which we would place the soiled linen that he would have to carry back with him to be washed, and another clean white sheet on a mat nearby, for the washed clothes. The washed clothes would be arranged methodically, sheets first, followed by towels, pillowcases, napkins, curtains and finally, our clothes. My mother would then sit on our hansi putuwa, with a large blue CR book, on which she carefully checked each item that was brought and taken back.

Once this was done, she would ask our maid to serve Dhoby a meal or else a cup of tea and some food.
This was the time when he would regale us with some Dhoby anecdotes, which went back not only to several years, but were culled from the different towns he had worked in from his youth.
He told us he had first cut his teeth in the washing business when he began working as his father’s assistant (his father too was a dhoby and so was his grandfather, he told us proudly), in Jaffna – in Manipay to be precise, in the 1930’s. “Mage thaththa vada keruwe Vellala yapana pavl valata vitharai. Vellalapavulakata vada keruvama, thava puvilvalata vada karanne baha e kalayedi” he told us.

Then a youth of 14 years, he recalled how they would have to remove their sandals, and then taken to a special section where the washed clothes were checked, and the soiled clothes kept for them to take back.
The dhoby played an important role in Jaffna then, he recalled. From the time of birth, when the washerwoman was summoned to the bedside of the new mother and asked to take away the soiled linen and wash it, to the time when a girl child first attained puberty, when the dhoby was again summoned to take away soiled linen after her menstruation period was over, and the girl was allowed out of her room, where she had been cloistered for the time she was menstruating, the dhoby or washerwoman played a significant role. Once the girl was allowed out of the room, she had to wear an old saree her father had brought for her, and have her first bath. It was only then, that she was allowed to wear her new clothes. “If this ceremony was not held at the time of the girl’s first menstruation period, it has to be done on her wedding day, just before she wears her bridal saree”, he recalled.
The dhoby also played an important part at funerals, when he would be called to hang up white cloths and verties on the sheds erected for the occasion.

“Ape sevaya hamadama ageya keruwa. Apita pohosath minissu vatina thaagi, andum, salli, somehara velavata ratharan kaasi ( gold coins) vage devalauth denawa”, (Our services were always appreciated. We used to get valuable gifts like new clothes, money and even gold coins from rich families), he would reminisce.
He never tired of telling us how his father taught him to wash clothes. “Ekaledi api andum heduwe, alavalwala. Anduvalata saban ulala, hondata gale gahuwa”: “In those days, we would wash the clothes in a river. My father taught me to soap the clothes well and then dash them gently against a rock to remove the dirt.”

From Jaffna, his father moved to Puttalam, and then to Panadura, where he ran his own laundry. When his father died, Dhoby, who was by now married with children of his own, took on the family business as the eldest son. But when he fell on hard times, he had to sell the family laundry and began taking individual orders for washing clothes.

He got to know of our family, from a mutual contact, after our former dhoby had left suddenly, and my mother had been desperately looking for a suitable replacement.
Dhoby left for good when he became too old to work. His son then replaced him. But when my father gifted my mother a brand new washing machine for her 50th birthday, she regretfully stopped his services.

Before he left, he gave us his small notebook in which he had methodically kept records to double check each item of clothing he used to pick up and return from our house.
I have it in my souvenir draw, and each time I see it, it reminds me of a dhoby who endeared himself to our family and enlivened our Saturdays with his dhoby yarns.

Yet, they were a people of many limitations. They knew almost nothing about the past; at best, they could only guess. They had no knowledge of geography and very little about other peoples. But there was something precious: A language full of power and precision, ideally fitted for the many expressions of beauty. They were a highly civilized people, but the line that separated them from barbarism was very thin indeed.

We see a strong contrast between the Greeks and the Hebrews. To the latter, the ills and sorrows of the world were because of man’s disobedience to the laws of the one true God. The Greeks subscribed to no such idea. They raised many gods who were constantly at loggerheads with each other and who also, intermittently, concerned themselves with the affairs of men. A rare bunch of gods to be sure, actuated by human passions and wholly engrossed in their own adventures. However, the Greeks did have a sort of divine concept - that behind all their gods was Fate, and Fate determined the destiny of both gods and men and no one could challenge or fight it.

This, as we are aware of, was the prevailing note of Greek tragedy, and this concept gave to it a great sense of dignity. Not only did they accept the workings of Fate, but also met its demands with dignity, without protest, and with no attempt to claim that things were better or worse than what they actually were. In this mind, they had no longing for anything that could not be attained, and possessed, as a result, an enormous self-respect that compelled them to follow good rather than evil and even sideline the gods if necessary.

Above all, the Greeks were stem realists. Mysticism held scant appeal. Homer, for example, regarded an ocean wave as “nothing else than salt water’. Death was nothing other than the end of life. What happened after death was of no concern and really did not matter. Man stood alone and relied on his own self. He would surmount obstacles alone and unaided and accept with a splendid dignity the worst that Fate threw at him.

This is how the worship of humanity became the dominant feature of Greek life and belief. It was this that brought about for everything that made human life a fine thing. Among these, beauty came first. When we consider the old sculptures of Egypt and India, we may even think them quite repulsive, even hideous. They were usually meant to signify power and terror. To the Greeks, this could never be. They needed beautiful gods; and the images they raised held these dreams and ideals of beauty. They were also conceived largely with justice, freedom and truth. Together with beauty, these ingredients were all absolutely necessary for the happiness of man.

It is also true that the Greeks were never sentimental. This could have been because of the absence of traditions and laid-down conventions. Their realism also made them uncluttered. They preferred the simple and unadorned. You will never find in Greek poetry the elaboration and ornamentation that is so evident in a poem such as “Paradise Losr the Greeks preferred to be straightforward, even austere. What we see in their literature and sculpture is a simple, incredible directness of plain truth.

Another thing to be kept in mind: The Greeks were, as I said, a small people who lived in a number of city states, each possibly numbering a thousand, and all on the sea. Of these, Athens was the most remarkable and most intriguing. After all, the greater part of Greek literature came down to us from Athens - one small city no bigger than Greater Colombo!

The pity of it all is that almost eighty percent of Greek literature is lost and there was a time when all that existed was preserved in the library of Alexandria. Then came the wars waged against the Persians; and that brought about the birth of European patriotism. The Greek fear of the barbarian stimulated an intense love for their country and, naturally, they regarded themselves as the guardians of their culture.

Having laid out, as it were, the “groundwork”, I must also remind how, in the preceding chapter, we dwelt on the substance of Greek romantic literature. This was evolved in the dawn of European life. It has been said, decidedly, that Greece was Europe’s dawn - a dawn that came without preparation and warning. This was their literature, sung by wandering bards, repeated, elaborated, from generation to generation, first written out by Hesiod and Homer and providing to the later dramatists the plots for their plays.

Most remarkable was the short period - a few years - in which Athenian drama was produced AEschylus came to prominence in 484BC and the “Medea” of Euripides, his crowning achievement, was produced in 431BC. All it took was 53 years to bring to fruit the greatest development of literary art the world had ever witnessed!
Of course, we did have a similar development in the drama of Elizabethan England. Let me not go head-over-heels with the Greeks. Let’s place it on record that all the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher. Massinger, Webster and Heywood were written in a space of 38 years!

Early Greek drama, like the beginnings of medieval drama in England, was religious. They rose out of the ritual dances performed in the Spring before the shrines of Dionysius (the Roman Bacchus) and the intimate connection with the god of vineyards and fruitfulness. Try to recapture it all: everyone went to the theatre in those far offtimes. It was a national duty. The huge Athens theatre held 30,000 people. This was what was found in the days of AEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The front row of this theatre was reserved for the priests, while the Priest of Dionysus would seat himself in a specially carved armchair. All citizens were expected to attend, and they did so with much enthusiasm. In the days of Pericles, the price of all citizens’ seats were paid by the state.

The players who performed in the great theatre were selected after a series of competitions held by the government. Wealthy men financed the drama companies that put the plays on the boards. There were three rounds of competitions each year. The characters in the Chorus had a prominent part in the action of the play, but, as theatrical technique developed, we see in many of the plays of Euripedes, the Chorus being used merely s a means of commentary on the action, not a part of it.