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Citizen Perera`s wish
Tuesday, 1 January 2013 - 4:23 AM SL Time
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Fortunately or unfortunately, the world did not end last month and it continues to spin madly on. Either the Mayan prophesy went wrong or we got their cryptic calendar wrong. So, we think the Earth is likely to go on wobbling on its axis at least for twelve more months of course, giant asteroids that dart across the universe at the speed of private buses, dreadful solar storms, irresponsible big powers with nuclear arsenals at their disposal etc permitting. Therefore, we are left with no alternative but to live our lives whether we like it or not, but there`s the rub. Are we to do so the way we did last year or should there be a difference this time around? It is hard to know what to do, as Bernard Shaw has wisely said, when one wishes earnestly to do right.
Great minds have wills feeble ones have only wishes. So goes a Chinese proverb anything Chinese goes in this country, doesn`t it? Citizen Perera makes no bones about the fact that he has only wishes. If wishes were horses, he says, he would ride them. But, his wretched fate has stood in the way of his equestrian pleasure rides. His toilsome struggle to make ends meet continues he pays indirect taxes on dhal, flour, kerosene and sugar so that the super rich could evade direct taxes and the hoity-toity rulers with shallow minds could have the pleasure of public money jingling in their deep pockets.
Citizen Perera may have been either disappointed or relived not to see an asteroid collide with the Earth on Dec. 21 contrary to the dark predictions by doomsday prophets, but he is sure to witness a giant collision of two institutions shortly if Parliament goes ahead with its decision to impeach the head of the judiciary. His earnest wish is that wisdom will dawn and the much feared institutional big bang, as it were, will not come to pass.
Speculation is rife that the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation is doing its damnedest to justify another fuel price hike. Citizen Perera hopes it will not succeed in its endeavour to take the country back to the bullock cart era by keeping fuel out of the reach of ordinary people most of them have already opted for shank`s mare. He also hopes that Sathosa will have the wisdom to realise that fodder is not meant for human consumption and desist from marketing rotten onions and weevil-infested rice and flour.
A few packets of powdered milk cost Citizen Perera as much as an Australian milch cow. (He seems to regret having rejected the famous Vedamahattaya who, in his wisdom, promised a cow for each and every family free of charge, at the 2005 presidential election.) Proud as he is of living in a country`s that grows the world`s finest tea, he has to pay London prices for Morawaka sweepings! Sugar has lost its sweetness for him instead, he gets the bitter taste of heavy import duties. He has had to survive on rotten vegetables replete with chemical residues and low quality rice and flour fit for pigs but sold at five-star prices. Even a cup of `plain` tea has become a luxury.
Citizen Perera is told that education and health care are free. But, he knows the state-run schools are seats without much learning unless the progeny of the rich attend them and hospitals are without vital drugs. He hopes that government schools will impart a decent education and drugs will be available in hospitals. Hope, as they say, springs eternal in the human breast.
Rulers are not all that inconsiderate. They have been kind enough to treat Citizen Perera to circuses albeit without bread such as night races beamed right into his humble parlour and ego-boosting exhibitions of Ozymandian proportions the State media tells him fascinating bed time stories of pious kings and wicked conspirators and lulls him to sleep on an empty stomach. They give him, with a generous hand, a daily dose of patriotism which keeps him going. They are lucky that he has only wishes and no will.
May there be no cut-price Lamborghinis for crooks and no badagini for the poor!
Cheers!
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