Recently I was chatting a friend of mine and our conversation got carried towards Muslim ladies, I was asked of a particular Muslim girl’s outer appearance and what I had in response was ‘I dunno I can’t remember’ because I’m not interested in Muslim ladies anyway. And my lame reason for the disinterest wasn’t as lame as the reasoning behind those ethnic cleansers who demote Muslims as a badass nation that’s conquering the territories with their rabbit-hole kind of population growth and the like. I had  issues simply with their cleanliness. ‘They are a dirty bunch of people’ I was told when I was a kid. And of course that was outright stereotyping, nevertheless  there were times I experienced it firsthand as well.

Upon cruising down my memory lane all the way back to those gone old nineteen-nineties where our boys led by Arjuna brought the world cup home, there were not only me and my family who were cheering gearing  and marveling at the TV. We had two other sisters and brothers from another mother at home who had come to watch TV with us since they didn’t have one at their place. My mom didn’t feel any difference in the warmth she extended similarly to all of us kids although the two sisters  were wearing Sholes and things to cover their heads and torsos. They were treated equally and  during the boring times we used to play   carom  or monopoly together chattering  out in half Tamil and half Sinhalese.  My dad couldn’t help evading our company anyways  on the one hand because  he just couldn’t grasp the situation as I was befriending  the Muslim neighbors  next door while he was known well all over the place as a hard core Buddhist and on the other because we had drastic differences  in terms of social class and caliber.

The first time I was made aware of their presence was when I came home with a hanging long face because I couldn’t find myself among the first five place-holders of the term-test marks in my grade two class at the end of the first term. Insanely enough all the mothers wanted their kids to shine brighter than the others back then in the primary education.  Consequently I also was pushed to get in there somewhere among the top five cause of all the caliber-related baggage  entailed to our family and my father’s reputation as an old boy of my school.  Well the reason for the knock down was me scoring just four marks for my Tamil paper in that term. My mother saw the solution in the talent of that young Muslim girl who lived next door and I was encouraged to address her as Akka (Not Akki) rather than ‘Teacher’.

What we had wasn’t a teacher-student relationship but a Brother and sister  ( ‘Akka and Malli’)  one.

Every evening she used to sit with me at our home and coaxed me to write Tamil letters at first and  subsequently Tamil words. Thanks to her effort I never stooped  beneath ninety marks for the Tamil test papers from the next term-test onwards. That legacy  I carried until I finished my Ordinary level exam where I had chosen  Tamil as one of the two additional  subjects we were entitled to choose for the exam.  The point here is that she being a youngster who hailed  from a Muslim background that was quite  a contrast to mine, had such an impact on my life. And as a result of her commitment I stood out as the only student from our school who secured an ‘A’ pass for Tamil in that year having toppled the world for our Tamil teacher at school who had established a tuition  monopoly  for all the other fellow students of Tamil because none of those  students upon whom he had vested hopes, had gotten through with anything that could reach my result.

Meanwhile when reminiscing  that awesome past I can never forget the fact that it wasn’t about just studying Tamil. We played together and had fun together  and she was the one girl I’ve associated closely enough to discuss the changes which occur  in us girls and boys as teens. She used to tell me her tales as to how she was once followed by a Sinhalese taxi  driver as she was walking her way home from Kurunegala town and how she managed to escape by going to the shop where her brother worked.

Back then the gravity of a guy following a girl for any reason apart from just teasing  her, had not registered properly within me as an act of vulgar malevolence. And hence it goes without saying that I wasn’t capable of understanding the religious, cultural and ethnic nuances of such a pursuit. Maybe that was why I bluntly asked her back then “So Akka what’s wrong in it when that guy followed you? He may have wanted to do it for fun”. It was then I got my first life lesson from her in the way she understood it “Malli guys can do harmful things to girls and that’s why it’s bad and a girl should run to a safe place when a guy is following her”. Although I went onto ask what harmful things that the guys can do to girls, she didn’t know it either and thus the conversation might have taken a different twist I no longer can trace. It surely isn’t laughing matter since back then I didn’t know how the babies are being born and I think nor did she know it properly.

When chattering near the place of worship at our home, once she wanted me to show how the Buddhists worship  and go about with their religious activities and since she was a girl she confessed that she didn’t know much things which were done in their religious observances. Again I was so naïve  to ask her why only Muslim males are going to the Mosque and not women very often. She said in their celebration of new year once a year women get an opportunity to go to the mosque  and engage in prayers and that’s what she knew apart from the prayers she had to chant during every break for meals and for tea.

Once I remember going with her to their small house where I was greeted with equal warmth and fervor  as any other family friend of ours would’ve made me feel. Her elder sister had made me a Birthday card which was one of the rarest hand-made gifts  I’ve ever had  until I had some paper-quilled cards I got from my female Best friend during the recent university times.

I don’t think any other gifts I’ve received which  must be reaching high-end price tags could have given  me that immense  pleasure I gained upon receiving that birthday card and the pack of chocolate  Akka bought me as a reward for my achievement with regard to Tamil at the Ordinary levels.  They were simple gifts of course but their value was immeasurable  because of the strong bond  they made me cherish  with their presence in my life.

That pleasure was never diminish from a slightest bit because she was a ‘Muslim girl’. I never felt uncomfortable around her since she had covered more parts of her body than other girls I’ve been with. But the most pitiful thing is the dilemma whether the kids of the present or even the ones in the future would or would not be  able to experience the bliss and the unity I experienced with Akka regardless of her being different with her religion, her language and her lifestyle. We are seeing mobs of terrified Buddhists sullied with ideologies that warn the world about an impending  religious erosion that’s harmful to Buddhism as they claim. They’ve forgotten the core values of humanity and hence they’ve begun repressing even the younger generation by brainwashing them to feel awkward about having Muslim friends who are a threat to the existence of Buddhists or the Sinhalese in this whole world. We’ve submerged as a nation to that framework  of the desperate survivor where Hitler too had landed in his times against Jews though in a more ferocious and lethal intensity than this.

So it is high time we watch our step as to where  these racist trails will ultimately lead us towards and up against what we are as Buddhists, Sinhalese  and even Muslims at present. We have become opportunistic enough to cheer Pakistan even against our own team simply in a cricket match because Pakistan would side us in defeating the UNHRC resolution pertinent to the human rights allegations. Still Isn’t Pakistan being inhabited by a majority of Muslims, the minority of whom we’ve alienated within our own land? If the trend invites further discrimination, there won’t be any more ‘Akkas’ for the ‘Mallis’ like myself to watch another Cricket world cup with the spirit of togetherness or to learn the life from. There won’t be any Fatima’s left for Diwulgane to sing about and summon to watch the ricing moon of Ramadan together.

Be it Halal  or Haram, Sharia or Jehad, Sufism or Wahhabism that have interfered our lifestyle, we have a responsibility to remain respectful instead of being aggressive in negotiating life with the concerned minority as a dignified majority.  If we crave for a deserving respect with regard  to our faith, our culture and our lifestyle, that we cannot expect to be granted and yet we have to earn it by respecting the other faiths, cultures and lifestyles. I believe if both the stakeholders of this impending crisis would understand that particular ground rule,  a future that features an imminent  chaos could be converted into a level playing field of harmony and mutual inter-religious, inter-cultural and inter-socio-ethnic understanding through negotiation that shall pave the way to a more peaceful cohabitation of races within the sixty-five thousand  odd square kilometers allocated  to the territory of Sri Lanka