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There are only two gods worth worshipping. Chance and electricity.
You take another picture, which is what you do when you don’t know what else to.
Camra=coping
‘These are not holiday snaps. These are photos that will bring down governments. Photos that could stop wars.’
Hell is all around us and is in session as we speak.’
‘What have you done for a thousand moons?’ ‘I’ve gone to every holy house to watch people pray.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I enjoy how stupid they look.’
His voice evaporates like good intentions do.
On this day, the Beira Lake smells like a powerful deity has squatted over it, emptied its bowels in its waters, and forgotten to flush.
You stand on the corpse as if it were a surfboard.
Ok 1st of all damn
2nd kinda wiplashing with the perspectives
We are a flicker of light between two long sleeps.
Evil is not what we should fear. Creatures with power acting in their own interest: that is what should make us shudder.
Arguably the same thing
How else to explain the world’s madness? If there’s a heavenly father, he must be like your father: absent, lazy and possibly evil.
Follow any turd upstream and it leads to a member of parliament.
So much corruption
‘What are you scared of? You’re already dead! The worst has already happened.’ That’s a Sinhala phrase you hear a lot, especially around war zones. You’ve heard it uttered by aid workers, soldiers, terrorists and villagers. All bad things have happened already. It cannot get worse than this.
‘I’m not your Helper, sir. I only help those who help me. If you don’t want my help, I can leave.’ ‘You sound like the UN.’
‘So you’re only interested in photographing the poor. Not in helping them.’
‘You must know, madam. Some bodies are never found. Every day, I speak to twenty, thirty mothers like you.’ ‘Then you must be rich. Take this. If you return my boy, there will be more.’ ‘Rich and poor are all equal before the law.’ ‘That’s a good joke.’
Every corrugated roof has a cat or a mongoose or a spirit slithering along its curves.
Mongooses have weird eyeballs
‘If suicide bombers knew they end up in the same waiting room with all their victims,’ says the ghoul in her slithery voice, ‘they may think twice.’
‘Did you recognise the white man?’ ‘Not really.’ ‘Is that a no?’ ‘Every suddha looks the same to me.’
Of course, she is wrong. If you have a camera, no place is the wrong place.
‘I thought you care about innocent people dying,’ says Ranchagoda. ‘We have to look after our people first.’ ‘That’s a bit racist.’ ‘Only when it is government policy.’
Do animals get an afterlife? Or is their punishment to be reborn as human?
‘These are false words,’ she shouts. ‘Revenge is no justice. Revenge lessens you. Only karma grants what is yours. But you must be patient. It is the only thing you need to be.’ Sena screws up his face and spits out his words. ‘Typical government office. Take a number and sit down until you forget why you came.’
‘Magic isn’t evil or good. Or black or white. It is like the universe, like every missing God. Powerful and supremely indifferent.’
You considered neither ‘faggot’ nor ‘homo’ nor ‘queer’ as slurs because you were none of these things. You were simply a handsome man who enjoyed beautiful boys.
The box is flimsy, made of paper that wants to be cardboard when it grows up.
In all this madness, there is only one beast whose existence you doubt. And you are not thinking of God, also known as Whoever. You are thinking of that most impossible of all mythical creatures: the Honest Politician.
‘Laws are written by men,’ you say. ‘Who don’t mind bad things happening to people who aren’t them.’
Power is when you can issue threats without speaking them.
‘You can use your privilege to help others or to exclude them.’
‘Buddhism forces the poor to believe they belong where they are. The order is made to appear natural. It is self-serving bullshit that keeps the poor sick.’
‘All religion keeps the poor docile and the rich in their castles. Even American slaves knelt before a God that looked away from lynchings.’
‘It’s not how we died. It is how we were made to live.
Everyone claims non-violence. Except when it comes to mosquitoes or rats or roaches. Or terrorists. Then it is kill or be killed.
Any relationship in the war zone is unnatural. Friendships are forced and brittle.
Besides, only Americans get Pulitzers. The Americans, whose CIA sponsored that Indonesian massacre, who have a naval base south of the Maldives, and have sent teams of interrogation trainers to this so-called Palace in this so-called paradise.
‘There is energy here. Come sit with me. There is no God to follow, no Devil to fear. Energy is all there is.’
‘That God is absent?’ ‘No.’ ‘That God is distracted?’ ‘Nehi! God is incompetent. He is willing to prevent evil. He is able to prevent it. But he’s just badly organised.’ ‘You mean he navel-gazes like the rest of us.’ ‘I mean he’s always late, and cannot prioritise.’
Despair always begins as a snack that you nibble on when bored and then becomes a meal that you have thrice a day.
‘Who do you blame for this mess? Was it the colonials who screwed us for centuries? Or the superpowers that are screwing us now?’
‘Who screwed us?’ ‘The Portuguese assumed the missionary position. The Dutch took us from behind. By the time the Brits came along, we were already on our knees, with our hands behind our backs and our mouths open.’ ‘I’m glad we were colonised by the British,’ you say. ‘Better than being slaughtered by the French,’ says the Priest. ‘Or enslaved by the Belgians.’ ‘Or gassed by the Germans.’ ‘Or raped by Spaniards.’
‘This island has always been connected. We traded spices, gems and slaves with Rome and Persia long before history books were invented. Our people too have always been tradable. Look at today. The rich send their kids to London, the poor send their wives to Saudi. European paedophiles sun on our beaches, Canadian refugees fund our terror, Israeli tanks kill our young and Japanese salt poisons our food.’
‘The British sell us guns and the Americans train our torturers. What chance do any of us have?’
‘The Brits left us with an unpolished pearl and we have spent forty years filling this oyster with shit.’
‘Here’s the stinking truth, take a good whiff. We have fucked it up all by ourselves.’
‘Why is Sri Lanka number one in suicides?’ asks the girl, peering through thick glasses. Are we that much more sadder or violent than the rest of the world?’ ‘Who the fuck cares?’ says the hunched figure, as a lady in pigtails does her high jump over the edge. ‘It’s because we have just the right amount of education to understand that the world is cruel,’ says the schoolgirl. ‘And just enough corruption and inequality to feel powerless against it.’ ‘And we have easy access to weedkiller,’ says the hunchback.
‘If I helped people who wanted to die, am I a murderer?’
The gallery is filled with the finest shots you ever took. You have borne witness. You have done all you can. Soon everyone will see them. Soon everyone will know.
Despite all speeches made to the contrary, the naked bodies of Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and Burghers are indistinguishable. We all look the same when held to the flame.
‘God’s gift,’ the warden said, ‘His violence... God loves violence. You understand that, don’t you?... Why else would there be so much of it? It’s in us. It comes out of us. It is what we do more naturally than we breathe. There is no moral order at all. There is only this – can my violence conquer yours?’ Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island
