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
