Hark, hark, the dogs do bark; but there are no beggars in town?

By Wijiyth De Chikera
Courtesy: The Sunday Leader

(October 13, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Business today has gone to the dogs. A casual survey of the increasingly canine field of commerce will reveal a distinctly doggy trend. On the one hand, there are the sunshine stories of mercantile ladies in love with tramps (strays, dear, of the bouwa-ine ilk) and dog shows that showcase not mere thoroughbreds but the most thoroughly-loved. On the other, proving the axiom that into each rottweiler’s life some rain must fall, there are the reports of business tycoons allegedly entreating the municipal authorities to do to Colombo’s mutts what Al Capone once did to Chicago’s Mafiosi who didn’t see eye to eye with him. You know, dear, gun them down…

Tender-minded approach

On reflection, one tends to prefer the tender-minded approach, where our poor little four-footed friends are treated like woman’s best friend. Such a worldview shows breeding, even if the hounds themselves are hardly purebred. But to be fair by the big business blokes, a rabid gang of loiterers (I mean the pooches, dear, not some politicos you may know) is not the chief characteristic by which any highly diversified conglomerate would wish its international clientele to remember our commercial capital. And the blue-chip’s PR people, or ‘relationship managers’ as they are more, er, popularly known these days, have assured outraged animal lovers that it was all a big mistake and that they, too, are enamoured of frogs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails, like all good little boys who play in the major leagues.

Happy hunting

Be that as it may, the big idea that wasn’t – to round up and execute stray dogs – may prove to be the happy hunting grounds of a modest proposal that we present here… For it gets one thinking, does it not, what grand potential lurks modestly behind the deceptively easy outlook on life whereby one simply sweeps under the carpet the, uh, uninspiring facets of the environment in which one lives? Consider the possibilities, dear…

For starters, forget dogs: consider the dogs of war – those maimed and formerly uniformed men and women who sacrificed life and limb when their orders cried “havoc!” and let them slip… Where are those heroes of yesterday? Some of them are still on parade, so to speak – at sporting competitions for the now-differently able (the tough-minded aren’t afraid to say ‘handicapped’, dear). But where are the unseen masses of other young men and maidens who, by dint of being born on the wrong side of the ethnic divide, are even today a lost generation in our midst? What, they’re undergoing rehabilitation, is it, dear? All’s serene, then… No call for one to needlessly worry; they’re safely tucked away somewhere out of sight – the jetsam of terrorism, who (now out of mind) help our jet set to party wildly like there’s no tomorrow and like there was no yesterday.

Beggars

For seconds, can’t we do something about the beggars who literally litter our streets? At virtually every signals-controlled junction and shopping mall, many not only make traffic jams worse and threaten to dent our deluxe cars, some even take optimism to its audacious heights when they intercept us on shopping sprees and interrupt our conspicuously consumerist trains of thought by outrageously demanding that we, we I mean to say, buy them a packet of powdered milk… Pow, aney!

Where’s the milk of human kindness, as mother would say. But chee… the gall and face and cheek of these blighters, no? And what will all those lovely tourists think, men. Why can’t we have members of organised crime round up these mendicants for at least the night? What’s that, the underworld mudalalis do that even now? Hooray, at least the city will be beggar-less when the revelries begin. Phew…

Weaker sex

For the salad, think for a moment about the weaker sex (no, not you, dear… nobody in their right mind would accuse you of being weak): the women of our country who toil and slave so that their families can survive in the new economy. Hmm, yes, well… the best that can be said about them is that these women are already out of sight – on plantations, plucking tea industriously; overseas, as worse than wage slaves; and in garment factories which comprise the warp and weft of Sri Lanka’s socio-economic fabric. Woof… such a pity that those interfering foreigners are fabricating political yarns to deprive our hard-working girls of their daily bread. What’s that, dear… and their hardly-working menfolk of their daily booze?

For soup, there are the refugees from our late, great war – the flotsam of post-conflict life… floating in a sea of bloody mud, monsoon water and malarial excrement (sorry, dear, did I spoil your appetite – what’s for lunch, anyway?). Do they and their pathetic supporters have to shove that sea of human misery in our faces? Can’t we shut them away, somewhere up north in the remote Wanni, and forget them until the next northern election? What’s that you say: it’s been taken care of already? Good show…

Side dish

As a side dish, take the marginalised in our society – take the silenced voices of true patriots; take prisoners of war and prisoners of conscience; take advocates of alternative modes of governance, economic models and socio-cultural mores; take the over-educated and under-employed, and the uneducated and exploited; take the men, women and children trapped in the sex trade; take the mentally and emotionally challenged (mad, sad and dangerous to know, dear); take the lonely elderly and terminally shut-in; take the jailed; take the jobless; take the homeless; take the money-less; take the powerless; take dissenters and dissidents. Yes, take them… and shoot them all! (What’s that you’re saying now, dear: Come in out of the sun? The little green-and-white tablet? Lie down a little? Sorry, just let me finish this last paragraph first.)

Thankfully, all of the above are put away, shut away and kept away, or driven away. But be that as it may, life goes on – campaigning; coaxing and cajoling the electorate, and carping and cavilling against the opposition; championing the highfliers, condemning the fallen mighty, congratulating the high and mighty winners. And at an indiscriminate glance south, who can say that politics today, all included, hasn’t gone to the dogs, too? So, bow gracefully as you pass in your husky-driven motorised sleds, dears. In fact, bow-wow! It’s a dog’s life, indeed; but luckily for you, some poodles are created more equal than others.

-Sri Lanka Guardian