Me and my life

Internship

2018-11-30T22:46:00.000+05:30

After a long hiatus, started writing again. Its very difficult to put words together cohesively with all the rage and anger.

This time, its about the crisis now the health service is facing.

Just to recap: the struggle of medical students against SAITM was taking place since 2010 (just when I entered medical faculty), it reached a peak when the students boycotted studies for more than one year. The moment the students started boycotting the studies, the health community knew that it is going into a crisis. But yet they did not do their best to arrive at the solution, the administrators, the directors, the consultants, the PG trainees, the MOs and the SHOs, they kept on with their routine life knowing that the crisis is imminent. I also kept on with my work and did not do my to the efforts of the juniors.

Now we are at the crisis to which the seeds were sown when students came out of lecture halls. From December 1st 2018, there are no intern house officers in the hospitals.

This is a small description of the ward in which I work.
Doctors : there are different categories. The consultant, he does his daily ward round, see the important patients or all the patients and is the person responsible for anything that is happening in the ward. But he has delegated that responsibility to his junior doctors.
PG Trainees - Senior registrars and registrars are working in the ward as a requirement for completion of their masters.
Senior House Officers - They are a rare species of doctors, only to be seen in the wards once in a blue moon, especially when they have to get their diary to be signed.
Many of the SHOs are not seen during the ordinary work time in the ward and are seen rarely doing the extra duty/ on calls. Yet they fill their diary saying that they have been in the ward in the ordinary time and also claim maximum over time allowance and the consultants and the administration in the NHSL allow such a practice. (We despise the politicians for the corruption and the scandals and we criticize them for Bond scam and MIG deal and all) But we turn a blind eye to this corrupt practice and I wonder what the conscience of the most respected and learned of the profession tell when they sign those diaries.

Nurses: I don't know much about their salary and their shifts, but the thing I can say is that they go to take their lunch/ dinner together leaving the whole ward unattended. God help the patients during that time.

Minor staff and the attendants: They are the very difficulty people to work with except for a few. They have a their duty times at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. But their a window of period in which there would be no attendants or minor staff for work in the ward, though the Over seer office would say that their is a person for duty during that time, the previous shift person would leave one hour early and the next shift person would arrive one hour late, the a gap of 2 hours created where everything gets stalled, be it sending a patient for urgent dialysis, be it getting an urgent x-ray, or coronary angiogram and PCI, they all have to wait until the minor staff and attendants come in their own time and do. It is frustrating that I feel that it is better for me to get the trolley and take the patient to the x-ray or dialysis. Here also God help the patients during this time as well.

The crisis is the group of interns currently doing internship now finishing on November 30th are being forced/ expected to continue the internship. The whole medical fraternity is mea culpa to this crisis but a small group which is the most junior of them is expected to take the burden.

PS: My description of the ward work cannot be generalized to other places.

Ignorance is bliss

2017-05-29T00:12:00.000+05:30

Since October 2011 (the month I joined the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo), we have been going on for pickets, protests, silent pickets, candle light vigils, public awareness campaigns, signature collecting events against an illegal institution (SAITM should not be called an institution but a business venture). We have walked to University Grants Commission, Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka Medical Council, Presidential secretariat, President's house, and parliament. I am not sure whether there are any other places where we could have walked to make our pleas heard. Our voices fell on deaf ears both of the rulers and the ruled. Our peaceful protests were returned first with water cannon, then with tear gas and currently with lathi-charge. I pray that days of rubber bullets followed by real bullets and bombs will not come. Us and our protests were labelled with various terms including radicals, political parties, disruptors. Soon we will be tagged as terrorists too. They will first label us and reduce us to these labels disregarding all that is good in us and our ideologies. Then they start attacking/ discriminating. I have seen that happening in our country for the past 30 years and I have suffered through these labels within the faculty too.

Why do we care about an illegal business while none seems to care about? What is wrong with us? Can't we care about our academics and careers only without worrying about what happens to other people's right to health or education?

One person known to me told that doctors are more selfish than people from other employments/ professions. Yet they are ignoring what we as medical students have sacrificed from our careers and education to protest against an illegal business.

This is for my juniors, I salute you all for the sacrifices you have made for this struggle and the guilt that it is our batch that just missed the strike period and you all had to suffer through this, though the problem started for a long time and we did not do enough when we were there as medical students to end it will burn us for the lifetime. Your boycott from the academic activities have created a much wider discussion and impact, though whatever many "learned" people around you may say. It made our lecturers to release press release and express their stance, GMOA to have several one day strikes (though they are too selfish to do a continuous strike or a private practice strike) and the government to propose some solutions (though they are shit). But now I feel it is going nowhere and again we are starting to stagnate like the years before and the losses you are making is far more than whatever this shameless society is going to get by your success. And it is high time we find a recourse balancing the pros and cons.

There will a time come when all of this education system and health system belonging to the private sector and they would be prioritizing money first before everything and people will not have an effective public education/ health institute to turn to. By that time, what we did in the past 5 years would have been distant memories but we would be proud that we fought against it and the foolish society did not realize it.

Indeed ignorance is bliss and we could have been like Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. Neros of the previous and the current generation have led this island nation to this current hellhole. Yes, there is something wrong with us and we should be like Nero and make this country sink into a deeper hellhole.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned

PS:

This year, January a miracle happened in Tamil Nadu (unlikely place for such things to happen and this is not about DMK or AIADMK). After 2-3 years of Jallikattu being banned by the supreme/high court (I am not sure which) and having protested each year for it by farmers, students protested for it democratically and non-violently and were able to make the supreme court bow down to their demand.
And my friends who were counting how many car permits they can get in their lifetime and when they can get their first car permit, will have difficulty understanding this.

SAITM

2017-04-25T22:57:00.000+05:30

This is a very convoluted and difficult to understand post. It is directly on my thoughts on 25/04/2017 press interview.

Our politicians start their discussion on free education and reaffirm that they are committed to protect free education. In the middle of the way they say that SAITM is equipped with all the professors, lecturers and consultants and state medical faculties do not have that. But they do not come with a proposal how they are going to recruit the staff to state medical faculties.

Okay, lets hope that government gives SAITM hospital and gives clinical training and that solution is accepted by all other parties. What is the government planing to do if many more private faculties come up and request for government hospitals? So if government starts to give hospitals on what basis would they be giving. Definitely it should be on bidding basis. It would be like government bidding the patients for private entities. Isn't there a ethical issue and how could the patient's rights and the consumer's rights (private medical faculties) be balanced.

One minister tells a very convoluted false history about communism and how it has failed. Our media personnel do not have the necessary knowledge to call it a lie. If communism is a failure story, then capitalism should be a success story. But it is not so. Many countries which had capitalism has also failed miserably. There are successful countries with communism/ socialism. Maybe we should consider of changing the name of our country from "Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka" to "Autocratic Republic of Sri Lanka".

It is very sad to see that UGC chairman quoting that from Kilinochchi, students entered with 3S for Medicine in 2009. Northern province just emerged from the war and they are forgetting how those students would have studied with ongoing war.

Our politicians are quoting the ranking of universities, without considering the criteria which is used for the ranking and saying that our universities are behind in the ranks. Sri Lankan universities are mainly cater to undergraduate courses and postgraduate and research projects are done very less and government funding is also less.

Anyways I could write forever on the malice of our politicians and the stupidity of the people to vote these politicians to power.

Independence

2017-02-04T13:13:00.001+05:30

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

This is not a philosophical post about independence. This is regarding what happened in the next few years after independence and the silent atrocities done to a segment of its people. Today generally I see the estate Tamils or Indian Tamils (although it is not the correct term to describe them, the most correct term would be Sri Lankans of recent Indian origin) being ridiculed, they are considered for menial tasks and odd jobs. The health ministry has many programs targeting the estate population. The university entrance of them is considerably lower compared to other population. School drop out rate is higher among them. Why does it happen like that?

The answers are the excerpts from the book "Palmyra Fallen" by Rajan Hoole.

"In three Citizenship Acts dragged over fourteen months, the government of Ceylon annulled the rights of the settled Indian labour, keeping the intended victims in hope until the final blow. First the Citizenship Act passed by parliament on 20th August 1948 was presented by the government as intended to confirm citizenship on all, including former Indian resident domiciled in Ceylon, but contained insurmountable conditions to do with proof of birth in Ceylon of male lineal forebears up to the fourth generation. Second, the Indian and Pakistani Residents Citizenship Act (IPRCA) passed by parliament on 10th December, 1948 had a pretense of facilitating citizenship for those left out by the first act but contained income and literacy conditions all applied selectively to persons of Indian origin which disenabled the bulk of them. The Parliamentary Elections Amendment Act (Franchise Act), the third passed by parliament on 18th &25th October 1949, feebly linked franchise to citizenship and stripped away the franchise of a poor working class that had exercised it since universal adult franchise was introduced in 1931."

"Senanayake while introducing the Bill on 4th August, 1948 had said evasively, "It is quite a simple Bill, we are not prejudicing the interests of anyone; we are only trying to confer Ceylon citizenship on people in Ceylon who are not citizens of another country." Senanayake knew well that British and Ceylonese economic interests would collapse if the Indian migrants were expelled from the country; he only wished to deny them a say in government by annulling their vote."

"Dr. de Silva pointed out that rather than adopt the principle of birth or domicile in a country as criterion for citizenship, the government chose the racial principle. The moment the Government starts applying a racial principle against one group, its extension to others is only a short and easy step."

"In the citizenship debates, DS Senanayake talked of Indian Tamils depriving Kandyans of their lands and Indian Tamils brought with them diseases such as cholera with the effect that they spread the disease amongst the villagers so that all that these immigrants did was that they killed some of the villagers."

"Dudley Senanayke boasted in 1952 that his United National Party had succeded in liquidating the Indian Menace in Ceylon by the simple device of denying the vote to Ramasamy and Meenachchi"

"It was far from Senanyake's intention to expel the Indian Tamils willy-nilly, but only to keep them as labour derived of civil rights (slaves)"

The Acts introduced the virus of racism into courts and administration. Dr. NM Perera in his parliamentary debate "If an unemployed so-called Sinhalese man is fit enough to get citizenship rights why an Indian Tamil who has no income should be deprived of those rights?

"To an appeal by KG Nair on 8th March 1951 challenging the Franchise Act, Judge of Kegalle District Court ruled on 2nd July 1951 that its antecedent, the Citizenship Act was in no true sense legislation to create the status of citizenship, but was with the Franchise Act, part of a legislative plan to reduce the electoral power of the Indian community. The State challenged the judgment in the Supreme Court and had it nullified. This marked the demise of the rule of law in 1951. The bench ruled that no new evidence that was not placed before district court was admissible under a writ of certiorari. Thus affidavits brought by Indian Tamil leaders to show that the law was applied in a discriminatory manner were ruled out. The supreme court simply shut off evidence of discrimination. The Queen's Privy Council on 11th May 1953, upheld the Supreme Court's judgement, contending that the Indian and Pakistani Residents Citizenship Act meant that Indian Tamils were not arbitrarily excluded from citizenship. Justice was thwarted by a semantic game where the common sense notion of justice was lost in an arcane game of meanings of word combinations. By 1963, only 11% Indian Tamils had obtained citizenship by registration under the Indian and Pakistani Residents Citizenship Act. Indian Tamil citizens were excluded from land grants under the Land Development Ordinance and this ensured they were confined to the estates.

"It remains very much under the shadow of the abuse of legality to disenfranchise the Indian labour as suited British and local ruling class interests in 1948. Its gravity hits us hard when we marvel at how the ordinary rights of an entire community were dissolved by two narrow court rulings that were oblivious to the centuries old traditions of basic rights. The Supreme court merely ruled on whether the district court's conclusions were justified by the evidence placed before it. The Privy Council looked at whether the Supreme Court reasoned correctly."

So coming back, our country was corrupt from the beginning both the political system and the judicial system. They are only here to protect the interests of the elitists and the capitalists. Its funny that DS Senanayake is considered father of the nation. I see the same type of laws and rulings made since independence, including the latest ruling by Appellate Court on SAITM case. Maybe our country is yet to get its independence from the corrupt politicians and unjust judicial system.

District Quota

2017-02-03T00:06:00.000+05:30

In 1971, university entrance was based on a quota system according to the medium of instruction. District quota system was introduced in 1977. These two were done to rectify the disparities due to availability of resources. The first one created many angered youth and a 30 year long civil war. The second one is a hot topic for people to discuss whether it is good or bad. But recently with the private medical college issue and everything, the district quota system is being used as a justification why a private medical college is essential in Sri Lanka. And the craziest thing is that the justification being told by the government ministers, past higher education minister.

First of all, the district quota system should have been an interim measure and there should have been a proper plan/ vision on how to share the resources across the island, so the student studying in a rural school in Monaragala and the student studying in Colombo have the equal access to resources, so a day could come in which z-scores of all the districts would be nearly equal. But as usual politicians have looted most of the funds and developing those areas is still a distant dream. Even after 40 years there is a disparity in the z-scores of the districts. The only other explanation would be that brighter students move to better districts by Grade 5 scholarships and by their own means which would create this disparity. But even the students having to move to another district for studies should not happen because of the the trauma caused by separation from the family and people in the lowest strata of the society cannot even think of that.

The politicians who are responsible for not bridging this disparity between the districts especially the ministers responsible for education and higher education are telling that the z-score disparity between the districts is a main reason for the necessity of private medical colleges. And it is sad that they are quoting certain districts as educationally backward. But what they don't understand is that they are again doing the same thing by creating a bigger disparity at the next level.

Anyway my ideas are of a utopia, which I know is hardly possible in our beautiful island. It is just tragic that Sri Lanka being gifted by nature in so many ways that it is being trashed by the corrupt politicians and complacent government officials. My utopia would be of the student studying in the same district and in the school nearest to him from Grade 1 through 13.

Future and uncertainty

2016-08-16T00:47:00.000+05:30

"Future is not set on stone"

What scares me to the core is the future and its associated uncertainty. Nearly 5 years ago, I started my med school career, I had no idea what my plan for the future. Now, just 3 months for the final exams, I am still at that place with no plan for the future. What is more distressing is that, you see your friends and classmates who started with you and enrolled in other courses in university are graduating and are with a plan for the future while you are still stuck in this place with so much uncertainties. Adding more to the stress is that people asking you what type of doctor are you going to be. And I come up with different answers each time that question is asked. Adding onto this, the exam stress of the Final MBBS and the merit list and performance anxiety of the long and short cases are the perfect blend to make a person insane.

People say setting short term goals would help in this situation and I have been doing that for the past 5 years and after this exam the same thing cannot be applied and I soon have to make a decision which I should have made before I entered med school. Anyway only thing I can do now is to put off all these thoughts for the next 5 months and prepare for the finals.

Education, protests and misconceptions

2016-07-16T01:04:00.000+05:30

As a state university student, whenever there is a protest by university students, I hear a lot of public outcry by both educated and uneducated telling that "It is only in Sri Lanka that it is happening. All because of free education, students do not value the education given to them. In all the western countries students have to pay for their education and they don't do protests and they value their education."

What amazes me is these people do not even try to see how it is in other countries, how students are protesting and for what they are protesting. The same problems exist in other countries even in western countries and in countries where students have to pay for the education. Here are some of the videos from YouTube of those protests.

2010 London - "Tens of thousands of students marched through London on Wednesday against plans to triple university tuition fees, and violence erupted as a minority battled police and trashed a building containing the headquarters of the governing Conservative Party."

2015 Germany - "Thousands of university students staged a protest in Bonn against government cuts in education which they say are destroying Germany's valued free-tuition university system."

2015 USA - "University students across the United States protested the rising cost of tuition and uncontrollable debt affecting graduates."

So this is to all the people who are gets angry or starts yelling at the sight of seeing some university students doing a protest. Please try to listen to what their demands are and what they are trying to tell the public. Also do not trust your mass medias and the politicians entirely because they all have indirect benefits by showing these protests in a biased way.

Accountability..... New word for Sri Lankan politicians

2016-01-20T18:59:00.000+05:30

This post is also related to SAITM issue.

In the society, if a person is going to buy a phone, the buyer will ask several questions about its quality, price, warrantee, and ask from several different people about their opinion about the phone. Then only the person will make up his mind to buy the phone. So, lets see what happened with SAITM. First the advertised they are accepted by SLMC, GMC of UK, UGC of Ministry of Higher Education, affiliated to some Russian Institute, and have twinning programme with final years in Russia. All of this without having a teaching hospital of its own. Within 1 week of this advertisement, SLMC advertised in all the newspapers that it does not recognize the MBBS degree offered by SAITM. Yet the students joined the institute and the government allowed the recruitment to take place.

Nowhere in the world such a thing would take place. A higher education institute not approved by the state being allowed to recruit students. Usual and the logical process in establishing a higher institute should be first it should have the physical resources and then the man power and should have the coursework for the degrees proposed by it and then it has to be submitted to the responsible authority and should be reviewed. After the review the institute would get approved if there are no shortcomings. But in the case of SAITM, no state approval was taken and students were recruited. Now the students of SAITM are requesting the state to intervene and solve their issue. But how can state involve in that matter, if it was not approved by it.

So, what are the approval obtained by SAITM? First they only had approval from Board of Investment. Even that approval was with the condition that approval from Ministry of Health, SLMC, and UGC should be obtained before commencing the programme in MBBS degree. But Dr. Neville Fernando disregarded that condition saying that he has sent letters to the respective organizations and has not heard from them, and started enrolling students in the year 2009. Then they obtained the approval from UGC and Ministry of Higher Education in the year 2011 when S.B. Dissanayake was the Minister of Higher Education. This approval was provided when SAITM did not have a teaching hospital of its own and the institutional review by the Ministry of Higher Education identified several short comings including that students who have failed in A/Ls being enrolled for Medicine course. The approval by UGC was nothing legal but a political intervention by S.B. Dissanayake. No one knows how much bribe was given. This approval by UGC which they obtained illegally by bribes and politics, has given SAITM a state recognition. Only thing they now lack is the SLMC recognition. But unfortunately for them and fortunately for the people in this country, SLMC is not corrupt or politicized or can be bought with money.

So, coming to the mindset of the parents and the students who joined SAITM knowing that it was not recognized by SLMC. What were they thinking? Were they defrauded by Dr. Neville Fernando or were they hoping that through political influence and the influence of money, they can get the approval of SLMC and the state. If they were defrauded, by now they would have taken action against Dr. Neville Fernando. But they have not done that yet. That makes them complicit in using political connections and money to get the SLMC approval. But these activities will not be investigated by the police or the good governance. S.B. Dissanayake will not be held accountable for granting approval contrary to the evidence provided to him. We need a political system in which every decision taken by politicians will be held accountable and citizens can challenge them in proper judiciary and the politicians will be held accountable for their lifetime unlike what is happening now. With each change in government or each change in the portfolio of ministers the accountability is lost. Future will seal the fate of this crisis but in the end we want the public to be the winners of our struggle, not the elite or rich subset of the population but the whole country and the future generations.

Free Education, Free Health and Sri Lanka

2016-01-18T23:53:00.000+05:30

This post is part of a series in addressing the several questions posed by the people who support SAITM, private medical college in Sri Lanka.

Foremost point they argue on is that all the other countries are having private medical colleges why Sri Lanka should not have them. First let's take the countries who are in the top 10 positions in the Human Development Index of United Nations and also the regional countries (SAARC) and compare their GDP, percentage of GDP on health, education, health level, structure of their medical education.

Human Development Index is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and have a decent standard of living.(1)

HDI Rank	Country	Life Expectancy at Birth	Infant Mortality Rate per 1000 live births	Maternal Mortality Ratio per 100000 live births	Total Health Expenditure as % of GDP	Government expenditure on education as % of GDP	Expenditure on education as % of total government expenditure	Gross tertiary education enrolment ratio as %	Military Expenditure as % of GDP	Medical Education
1	Norway	81.6	2	5	9.6	6.6	15.0	78	1.4	Provided in 4 public universities. No private universities for medical education. Tertiary education is free and grade point requirement is extremely high for medicine.
2	Australia	82.4	3	6	9.4	4.9	13.2	89	1.8	19 universities provide medical education. 17 are public and 2 are private not-for profit universities. Students are provided government loans and scholarships. Entrance is by UMAT test which also requires high score.
3	Switzerland	83	3	5	11.5	5.0	16.1	56	0.7	6 medical schools and all are public. Financed by the government.
4	Denmark	80.2	3	6	10.6	8.5	15.0	82	1.3	Provided in 4 public universities. No private universities. University education is free and students also provided financial aids.
5	Netherlands	81.6	3	7	12.9	5.5	11.6	77	1.1	30-50% of applicants are turned down. Yearly enrolment is 2850 and Dutch population is 16.3 million. All 8 medical schools are publicly funded.
6	Germany	80.9	3	6	11.3	4.8	11.0	60	1.2	Admission is highly competitive. 36 medical schools in Germany. Only one private medical school. No tuition fees at public universities.
6	Ireland	80.9	3	8	8.9	5.9	12.7	71	0.5	6 medical schools, 5 are public and 1 is not-for profit private. Tuition is free.
8	United States	79.1	6	14	17.1	5.2	12.9	89	3.5	141 medical schools including both private and public. Funded by scholarships, federal and private loans and grants. Entry by completion of pre-med courses and is highly competitive.
9	Canada	82	4	7	10.9	5.3	12.2		1.0	19 medical schools and all are public.
9	New Zealand	81.8	5	11	9.7	7.4	18.7	79	1.3	4 medical schools and all are public. Fees by government subsidies, government loans and scholarships.
14	United Kingdom	80.7	4	9	9.1	5.8	12.7	60	2.0	32 medical schools and 31 are public and 1 is private not-for profit. Percentage of applications accepted in 2014 was 8.0%.
73	Sri Lanka	74.9	8	30	3.2	1.7	8.8	19	2.3	9 public medical schools and 1 private medical school which is not accredited by SLMC
104	Maldives	76.8	7	68	10.8	6.2	15.3			No medical schools
130	India	68	38	174	4.0	3.9	14.2	25	2.4	381 medical schools of which 160 are public and 188 are private.
132	Bhutan	69.5	27		3.6	5.6	15.6			No medical school
142	Bangladesh	71.6	31	176	3.7			13	1.2	83 medical schools of which 29 are public and 54 are private.
145	Nepal	69.6	29	258	6.0	4.1	21.4	17	1.5	18 medical schools of which 4 are public and 14 are private.
147	Pakistan	66.2	66	178	2.8	2.5	11.6	10	3.4	94 medical schools of which 39 are public and 55 are private.

Of the regional countries Maldives and Sri Lanka stand highest in health indices and are comparable with the developed countries. When comparing the expenditure on health of GDP, Sri Lanka with a very low value of 3.2% has achieved the results while Maldives has spent 10.8%. When considering the education sector Sri Lanka spends 1.7% of GDP and it is the lowest in the region but still manages to provide tertiary education to 19% of students who complete secondary education. Countries providing free education even in universities, are Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Brazil and Slovenia. Neo-liberal principles that the present government bases its development policy views education as a private investment and a commodity. But the well-developed Nordic countries view it as a civil right, public service and equality issue. Meanwhile the countries which privatized the education in the last two decades like India, Pakistan and Nepal are still lagging behind in the health indices and this disproves the popular conception that privatization of medical education will result in the improvement of the health status of the country.

This proves that the education and health sector of Sri Lanka caters well enough when comparing with the funding allocation. The data used in the table are from World Bank and of the available most recent data.

Commercialization - 1

2015-05-18T23:32:00.000+05:30

I am neither a capitalist nor a communist. I don't believe in labelling and that essence of a person can be summarized in a word or two. I have seen how much the world has changed within the short time I have been in this world, which is not more than 24 years. There is a Tamil saying "மாற்றம் ஒன்று தான் மாறாதது" which means that change is the only thing which does not change. I find it difficult to swallow these changes since I always get stuck with the question where do these changes lead us.

I have seen the childhood of many children being commercialized. I have seen many preschoolers and prepubertal children appear on TV and act out the roles, dances and songs which I thought was inappropriate for them. I have also seen the parents of those children telling that they are proud of their child without even realizing the inappropriateness of the items performed. What are we doing? Are we trying to reduce the childhood period of those children and expedite them into being adults? Are we stealing their childhood from them and who are responsible for it? The media companies who want to increase their ratings by commercializing on the childhood of many innocent children.

I have seen how medical/ health service being commercialized. Private hospitals in Sri Lanka were almost nonexistent before the Free Market economy policy. With the introduction of the policy, private hospitals and channeling centres cropped up all over the island. It also lead to numerous pharmaceutical companies from small level to large level starting up. The competition between hospitals, pharmaceuticals, doctors saw the corruption in the health service. Though it might be an insult to the honestly working doctors in the country, but no one can deny this truth.

I have seen how education was commercialized. Once upon a time, teaching was considered a prestigious job. But today many youngsters do not aspire to become teachers and despise the teaching job. I had teachers who did extra classes to cover the syllabus free of charge. I now see teachers who just sign the register and does the most of the job at the tuition classes housing more than 200 students. I have also seen teachers valuing their ability to publicize themselves more than their ability to teach. Though there are teachers who work hard to make a change in a students' life, it is difficult to deny the existence of the other kind of teachers.

Who will claim responsibility for these changes? I have seen some blaming the current generation for these changes. The current generation is merely a step of reaction in a chain reaction that was started ages ago. This is to all those who want to blame the youngsters for the present state of society. They better look in a mirror and start blaming.

You live, you learn

2015-04-03T22:16:00.000+05:30

There comes a time when you have to stand up for yourself and say enough is enough.
You go through life trying to please people and be nice because that’s how you’ve always been and also how you’ve been raised.
But you’re no stupid individual so you realize how every now and then people take advantage of you. It is not a ‘quid pro quo’ kind of situation but rather a one direction only.
You happily lend a hand and are available when needed unless major forces make that impossible for you to do it so.
Then there comes not only a day, but day after day after day, that you need something out of someone else and they just make up excuses and you end up alone trying to figure out a huge mess it is a tad too big for an individual to handle.
Let’s take it down a notch, shall we?
Say they call you to go grab a coffee and you are there on time and everything goes smoothly.
Then you spend months and months suggesting you could go to that Irish pub that has live music every Thursday and there’s always an excuse: I am too tired, I got no money, I’d rather stay in ‘cause it’s cold and an endless array of excuses that no preschooler would buy them.
But you buy them and think that maybe they are not available, cannot make it there. So you go back to the vicious circle and are available when needed and when you need some of your so called friends and family just because (let’s not get into details)… oh! All of the sudden they are all extra busy clipping their toe nails.
‘C’mon people!
Along comes a day that after many (MANY) years of putting up with this bullshit you sit by their side and tell them how you feel.
You tell them how you feel and no matter how much you try; they never make time for you, not once, not ever.
And then you see a blushing red face of guilt followed by lame excuses and you turn around and think to yourself:
You know what? Fuck it! I am no longer sixteen and I am no longer putting up with this stupid ongoing drama. Either you are here or you are not.
Life’s too short to be the underdog, and I can assure you I ain’t one of them.
If you want to share life with me you’ll make the effort as much as I do.
If you don’t, I’m not going to lie, I will still feel a bit sad and a tad betrayed but I sure will move onto the next chapter without looking back.
Enough of looking back. It is now time to look forward and make the best of it.
And whoever feels like yours truly, is welcome abroad.
To the rest, it’s been an interesting ride.

Copied from elena2.tumblr.com

Love: Infinite language of souls

2015-03-30T23:35:00.000+05:30

"Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill." - Gitanjali

Love is the theme for all the poets, story tellers, writers, painters, movie makers etc. If the element of love is taken out of all those art works, what would remain are just pieces of papers, canvases, reels and costumes. It is the life blood for all the artists. Yes, they have made love a valuable thing. They have aspired us to find love. They have created a successful economy around love from Valentine's Day to greeting cards, flowers, chocolates. But they have also made it a rare commodity. They have made love as something that should be achieved within a specified period of time in a person's life. They have made it a race and a competition.

What is love really? Concept of love is seen in animal kingdom. It is seen in cultures widely separated before they even started communicating with each other. So it can be safely assumed that love was existent in our species even before culture and civilization was found. But what have we done to it. Limited love within a narrow sphere of culture and tradition.

Love is all around us. It is not a rarity. There is nothing commoner than love. You cannot classify love. So to all those searching for love, open your eyes and see.

Facebook Heroes

2015-03-07T22:55:00.000+05:30

There was a time when people rose against oppression in rebellion
There was a time when people took risk to inform the public the truth
Now is the time people take photos of things and post on Facebook
They are our Facebook Heroes
Giving voice to the injustice in the society by sharing statuses
Of which they know nothing of
Sometimes a false information
Sometimes a twisted truth
Sometimes harassing a religion, a community, a race.
All they want to do is create havoc.
Provoked by the insecurity in them.

Social media was not supposed to be this
It made Arab Spring possible
It made citizens report to the world
Our Facebook Heroes living in a virtual world
Using it to spread mistrust and false

Raise the glass to all the alcoholics

2015-03-06T23:11:00.001+05:30

I don't have any problems with alcoholics or with any person who drinks alcohol but not an alcoholic. They don't need my approval to drink and I am well aware of that. I will never obstruct from their drinking pattern or wishes.

But what I can't bear up with is when they prioritize a bottle of beer before their friends and it hurts deep. They would go to any extent to have that drink even though it will hurt their friends. They also demand that their friends should bear up with them being drunken and assist them in hiding the truth to their families.

When they are drunken, in a state of intoxication, the words they tell, the actions they do are too hilarious but I restrain myself from getting angry or laughing at them because I think both getting angry and laughing will positively reinforce them to further similar behaviours and they are still my friends and me laughing at them in their state of intoxication makes me a bad person. But the most difficult for me is guessing whether such behaviours are due to their intoxication occurring without their conscience or are they doing those behaviours with their conscience wanting to make a joke of themselves.

The recent trend I am seeing in some people who drink alcohol is them quoting a few studies published stating that people drinking alcohol have many health benefits compared to non-drinkers. I just want to say that accepting a very few studies while there is a pile of evidence stating the ill-effects of alcohol, is not science. The best is to look at a meta-review comparing all those studies.

So this is to my friends who drink, that I am not prejudiced about you or against you drinking but please prioritize your options first and don't put your friends lower to a bottle of beer.

Post-election, Post-war Thoughts

2015-02-02T00:45:00.001+05:30

There are two moments in my life, in which I was ashamed of being born in this country due to events occurring in my lifetime. The first is on 19th of May, 2009, the first of post-war days, in which people were celebrating the victory of the bloody war in the streets, amidst thousands of fellow citizens were stranded homeless affected by war. No one cared to remember the civilian casualties and at least pray for them, nor the political leaders claimed to care about those people both dead and alive. That was the first moment, I strongly felt that Tamils were alienated from this country, though during war times, Tamils had to be searched for a long time at check points.

The second moment is on 9th of January, 2015, the day the Presidential elections were released and the social media were flooded with those statuses yet again separating the minorities from the country. All the hopes, I had for this country got shattered when I saw some of my friends had shared those statuses. It reinforced my belief that Tamils are alienated from the country, though I wanted to believe the opposite.

Now 3 weeks after the regime change, I am saddened by hearing people say that all the development projects are being halted and wishing the regime had not changed, they would have had expressways to Kandy and Kurunegala. For all those people, everything that matters for them is the megalomaniac projects that would fulfill their wants and comforts while they turn a blind eye that even fundamental human rights are being violated in North and East and also in the south to the socio-economically disadvantaged people. People in North and East are not being allowed to go to their homeland citing security reasons and development projects (e.x. Sampur) even after 5 years after war. Why can't they just for a second put themselves on those people's position and think what they would be feeling? All my life, one thing I learned about Tamils is that they love their homeland more than anything. By homeland I mean the village/ town in which they were born and were living ancestrally. Isn't that one reason, enough for making this change in regime whatever his/her race/ religion/ language is. It also makes me think, the ethnic problem/ national problem that they were talking all those years when LTTE was present suddenly got solved or disappeared after winning the war. Most of them fail to separate LTTE from ethnic problem which was present before LTTE, during their period and after LTTE. All of them were only afraid of the frequent bomb attacks in Colombo region, while people living the war had to undergo far more hardship and those people accepted what LTTE did because they believed that there was a national problem which needs to be addressed.

People who are addicted to drugs seldom understand that in long term it is fatal but seeks the temporary excitement to escape from the reality of the world. I think these people who complain were drugged by the previous regime to these megalomaniac projects and now they are starting to complain of withdrawal symptoms. It is our utmost duty to help them make it through the withdrawal period, as symptoms get worsen with time for a period.

Regarding this country, there is only one period in my life I felt sad. The period was from December 2005 to August 2006. Both the parties (government and LTTE) built a glass house called ceasefire and started throwing stones at it even before it can be made into a strong structure and the whole structure collapsed damaging both parties. There is no point in arguing who threw the stone, the result is the same. I will forever be haunted by the alternate reality where that glass house was protected and strengthened to everlasting peace.

2015 Presidential Election Fever

2015-01-10T23:50:00.000+05:30

The day the election results were released, on 9th of January, racist/hate posts started to appear that the "country has been betrayed, Sri Lanka is going to be destroyed, Tamils and Muslims voted out the Mahinda Rajapaksha, Sinhalese are going to be extinct in this country, Tamils and Muslims are taking revenge". I am disgusted, distressed and worried of these posts on social media. I hoped there would be a new beginning for the ethnic minorities with the new president but we are compelled to fight these racist ideas even though it is in social media.

Even when Tamils and Muslims are taking the most possible democratic way to express their opinion, these racist posts are appearing on social media. They voted as Sri Lankans, for the leader of unified Sri Lanka. They voted MR out because he failed in reconciliation in the past 5 years not because MS had addressed the ethnic issue adequately in his election manifesto. I would say Tamils and Muslims are taking a leap of faith on MS. Because hope is the only thing left for the Tamil people.

Do they consider Tamils and Muslims as citizens of this country, who have their democratic right of voting their representatives? If they can't understand and accept the simple fact as Sri Lankans they voted out the MR, I feel it is better to divide the country and have separate elections for those regions and separate leaders. Sri Lanka does not have separate leaders for Sinhalese, Tamils or Muslims, there is only one sovereign of Sri Lanka.

They also have to bear in mind because the North and East could not vote in 2005 election due to decision taken by LTTE based on some unknown reasons, MR came into power and defeated the LTTE. But there is always the other alternative if North and East had their right to vote in 2005, definitely Ranil would have been elected and we possibly would have been able to find a different solution in which innocent lives were not sacrificed. What MR has achieved of many possibilities to defeat LTTE, the country is put into a negative peace/ victor's peace which could have been turned into positive peace but he failed to do so.

The only occasion where the ethnic problem was partly addressed was when the 13th amendment was introduced to the constitution. But that amendment one which was imposed by Sri Lanka. If we wait for the majority to give us a solution, I sincerely think that we would be waiting for the eternity or until the day where there are no Tamils left in this country.

I have a dream, in which a Sri Lankan who is a Tamil/ Muslim becoming the sovereign of this land at least once in my life as it is happening in USA now. Considering what has been going on, it is a just a day dream, even thinking about that dream is considered blasphemy by the majority of majority in this land. But in a democratic country it should be a reality.

Remembering the dead

2014-11-27T19:19:00.002+05:30

November 27th is the Maaveerar Day or Heroes' Day observed by Tamil people to remember the militants died in fighting to ensure the dignity and the rights of the Tamils living in this island. This day in the post war Sri Lanka brings a nostalgic feeling and I feel very difficult to swallow this reality. The reality I mean is where the cemeteries of the militants were destroyed by the government and the government is on active surveillance to prevent people observing this remembrance day.

As Tamils living in this island, we started to fight for our dignity but after the war we have lost our right to remember the dead/ fallen under this government. The chronicles say King Dutugemunu built a tomb for the ashes of Ellara and made people to pay respect to this tomb but this government has gone to a new low by destroying the cemeteries of the LTTE militants and banning the remembrance.

To them the militants may be terrorists who killed innocent lives but prohibiting the people to remember them is basically inhumane. Yes we have lost many things in the war, to the list we should add our right to remember the dead.

Criticism

2014-08-12T00:05:00.001+05:30

Recent events, have made me realize the things for which I was criticized when I was 10 are the same things for which I am being criticized now. The responses I had towards those criticism are stonewalling or hatred or laughing it off. At the time of criticism, I thought the responses were appropriate. But when I look in retrospective, I kind of doubt myself whether I really have some problems and I have been defending those problems rather than trying to correct them. But still the way I was criticized for the particular thing was exactly the same way I was criticized when I was 10 years. The astonishing thing is that even after 13 years, I have not been able to get rid of those critics in my life and even when I go to a new place, those critics appear in different persons. So, this is to all the critics, trying to change me, pull me down, you are warned.

Creator and Creation

2014-08-10T01:04:00.001+05:30

After watching a movie, a question came to my mind. I have watched movies and am astonished by the brilliance of them. So the question that I am having now, is which is greater the creator or the creation? When a director, creates a movie he tries to make a perfect movie as he perceives. So according to his thought, the movie is perfect object/being. But as we all know that the director is not perfect but he created something perfect as he perceives. So movie should be greater. But the movie will not be there if the director was not there, so director should be greater. So now I am caught in a loop hole argument from which I can't come out.

A Dish Best Served Cold

2014-06-19T22:51:00.001+05:30

You will never see it, the fire burning in me
Nor me lurking in the dark shadows, hiding and watching you,
Nor the point of the hidden knife pointed right at you.

I may act your ally, friend, companion
But all the time I will be plotting, waiting, praying
For that moment to let the fire out.

The fire created by the scars you gave me
Which I hid under the smiles and laughter
Oh well! I hid them giving no clue at all
But the writhing pain they give me
Gives the fuel to the fire burning inside me.

There is no rights and wrongs
It is just needs to come out or
I will burn from inside out
Until I am not there anymore
I wish I could stop it all,
But nothing can be done except to let it out.

Racism and Humanity

2014-06-17T00:15:00.001+05:30

In the Facebook, I see many of my friends have changed their profile picture to "Stand Against Racism" regarding the incident in Aluthgama. But in my opinion I would say it is too late. Human mind does not work like that. From the prehistoric times (Cro-Magnon against Neanderthals) to uncountable examples from known history (Hitler against Jews, Apartheid in South Africa, Whites against Negroes), I can confidently say that the human mind is programmed to racism. It might have played a protective role in wild humans the enmity towards dissimilar organisms improved his survival. Racism was there even before humanity was there in humans.

So coming to other topic, what makes us humans? The humanity in us. Do we have humanity in us? I believe everyone have it in their hearts buried deep in a corner. It tries to come out of hiding but it rarely manages to do so and we see them as acts of kindness in the world outside. But the power of those random acts of kindness is immensible. For me "Stand Against Racism" is those random acts of kindness where humanity in us comes out to light. But in a country like Sri Lanka, it will take a lot of dedication and leadership to eliminate racism, which is remotely possible in the current context and whatever the actions taken would only subdue it for a while but it will come out another time in near future. One peculiar thing is that they are shouting against racism when it has been happening in the country for a very long time from a simple text book like history books in schools to ethnic war for the past 30 years. I end this post with the lyrics from a song called Re-gaining Unconsciousness by NOFX.

"First they put away the dealers,
keep our kids safe and off the street.
Then they put away the prostitutes,
keep married men cloistered at home.

Then they shooed away the bums,
then they beat and bashed the queers,
turned away asylum-seekers,
fed us suspicions and fears.
We didn't raise our voice,
we didn't make a fuss.
It's funny there was no one left to notice
when they came for us.

Looks like witches are in season,
you better fly your flag and be aware
of anyone who might fit the description,
diversity is now our biggest fear."

Desperate failed attempts at poetry

2014-06-14T22:04:00.000+05:30

I start writing some random sentences that comes to my mind but I struggle to get the next sentences out and whatever that comes feels like it does not match and I hit the backspace. So rather than completing them I though why not publish them as it is and see what happens. So these are just start/middle/endings of several poems.

"We are haunted by our past
We are haunted by what could have been"

"I am afraid to go in front of a mirror
Of what I will see in it
A shy boy, with those dreamy eyes
An adolescent trying to figure it out
An adult regretting his past
Or a monster greedy with ambitions"

"I built a wall so strong, so thick,
Spanning from the fiery hell below to starry heavens above
Protecting me from getting hurt
Without knowing I am imprisoned inside it"

"We are bound by the shackles of so called freedom
A state of mind that we are free to do anything"

"We just drifted apart, it was no one's fault."

"Everyday is a dream and a nightmare
What if both are the same
Who knew the dream could turn out to be my worst nightmare"

"All those doors shut on my face
Makes me never want to knock on a door"

I just hope, one day I will be able to finish these things up to my satisfaction.

Health Camp at Kahawatta

2014-05-26T22:20:00.000+05:30

Health Camp organized by Medical Students' Hindu Society of our faculty was held on 24th and 25th of this month at Kahawatta Tamil Maha Vidayalyam, Ratnapura. It is my 5th medical camp, in the faculty starting from Mannar, Poonakari, Udappu, Deniyaya. As usual I was assigned to vision care. The first day was for screening of school children which was done by medical students and second day was for the public and referred school children done by doctors. It was crowded from the start till the end.

Why do we have to do a free health camp in a country where a health care up to tertiary care is free. Even when government has decentralized the health care, with each province having its own general hospital with specialists. What amazes me is that people come with chronic problems and want to sort it out in one day, but all we do in the camp for them is to refer them to the hospitals. So where is the problem? It is either people are unaware of how to access health care or they are misguided along the health care pathway at some point.

People with mature cataracts are coming to the health camp thinking that using spectacles can cure it. Even when explained that, they kept asking for spectacles telling that they would do the surgery later. I was tipping my anger point but controlled it because I felt sorry for them.

But the climax of the health camp, was we couldn't screen all the people who came there and we had to send the people away at about 3.00 p.m., then one person, around 60 years came to me while I was writing referral letters and said "I came here at 4.00 a.m. without taking breakfast and stayed in line to get seen, but now I am going back. Will you people receive merits by this service?". I just listened to him and said no words because there was fault in the way we held the camp.

But why do people think that they could get well by coming to one health camp, where is the problem? Are there no drugs/physicians in the local hospitals? Are they not competent? Or is it just a problem in the health seeking behaviour of people? If it so, what has the education system has done to it. Here we are given free education up to tertiary education and taught Health Science in secondary schools. It includes many things like puberty, sports, exercise, nutrition, and first aid. But it does not include how to access health care in the country, what is the organization and what are their rights in relation to health care. I guess soon, they would put that up, otherwise we have to face many generations with wrong health seeking behaviours.

Uncertainty

2014-05-11T21:24:00.002+05:30

I follow the same routine everyday, from the moment I get up until I close my eyes. To change even a small thing I have to think it over and over again several times before doing it. What am I afraid of? I guess it is uncertainty. Uncertainty of how a new food item you have never tasted before would taste like keeps you from ever ordering that food item. You just buy the same old food item and go to same old restaurants even though a new restaurant is nearby you are afraid to go to it. So I am being boxed into a very tight space due to my fear of uncertainty.

I think it is my worse fear. Uncertainty of the future brings me creepy nightmares. The worst is when you have to decide something about your future like your career and you are presented with many choices. Then we look up to others to make our decisions for us because we are afraid of uncertainty.

So what am I going to do about it? I guess answer is simple just embrace the chaos. Make decisions spontaneously do not wait for others opinions if the decision you are going to make about is only about you like what are you going to eat now. And I guess you may get hurt, shocked, out of your comfort zone by being spontaneous, but it would be best remedy for your fear of uncertainty. So I guess this is the post out of many drafts in different topics after a very long time that I published and this is me being spontaneous.

Identity/ Being an outsider

2013-10-12T22:28:00.000+05:30

The 30 year old civil war has done many terrible things in Sri Lanka to people from all the corners of the island. Many losses, loss of loved ones, loss of motherland, etc.... Being a child to a parents who displaced to the hill country from north due to the civil war, I didn't suffer the hardships of the war.

First of all, to people who don't know much about Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, mainly two Tamil dialects are spoken, one being the Sri Lankan Tamil spoken by Tamils from North and East and the other is the Indian Tamil spoken by Hill country Tamils. The two dialects are so different, the way you pronounce one word would distinguish you.

To the story of me again, so I grew up under the parenting of Sri Lankan Tamil dialect, but in the society I learned the Indian Tamil dialect. So I began to speak a little bit of that and this, mixture of both dialects. But at times I felt like an outcast, a boy speaking a mixed Tamil in a society where they speak the Indian Tamil dialect.

But I was so lucky that I did my secondary education in English medium, so some subjects I didn't have to learn in Tamil. But the problem again starts when I come to the university, where most of the Tamil students who come there are from North and East, where they speak Sri Lankan dialect. I am made an outcast again in the university, for speaking a mixed dialect amidst Sri Lankan Tamil dialect. I had to limit myself from making any speeches or involve in any activities that may make me speak in front of an audience because of this problem.

Many people have lost many things in the Civil war like lives, possessions, freedom, but I have lost one peculiar thing in this war, my identity. I will be an outcast my whole life.

But when I think of this, I can't help wondering about what will happen to the people who displaced to foreign countries, what would happen to their identity.