Shane Joseph's Blog

I have noticed that many friends and acquaintances in my demographic have become journalists and writers in recent times. It could be that, at our age, writing is an easier sport than more athletic ones, like cricket or sex, or that having lived on this planet for three-score and ten years, or more, these new writers have much wisdom to impart and are bursting to let fly like mansplainers, if only someone would listen.

Channels for expression have also proliferated: YouTube, blogsites, websites, social media, podcasts, newsletter platforms like Substack, Medium and their dozens of imitators – the choices keep mushrooming, flourishing, and dying. Some are even getting AI agents to write and post content under their name. And there is no more editorial judgment or curation, only likes and shares. No more do you have to write query letters to editors to sell yourself and your article, hoping to be selected. There is also no need to get one’s facts right because no one knows what the facts are anyway—even opinions can masquerade as facts these days, and the juicier the better.

Of course, the issue is – who will read your work? And why should they read you when there are thousands of others they could read in our time-strapped world? Especially the ones who have brand appeal and could be “trusted” (one of the worst assumptions today!).

For some of us, like me, writing became a compulsion, born in childhood and honed over many years of practice to become second nature. I write whether anyone publishes or reads my output, or not. But for a newbie or late-bloomer writer, this mad hobby couldn’t have been a compulsion, or they would have collapsed under a nervous breakdown long ago. Therefore, for them it must be a fad, I reckon. A status thing to say, “I am a writer,” which, IMHO is an old tape.

My plaintive cry to these wannabes is, “Don’t pick up this cross, unless it hurts you not to.” Thankfully, a majority of the newbies will pack up their tools early, after the novelty wears off and their subscriber lists peak, or never take off, or when the pressure to be always generating new content gets too much and they say, “F@ck it, I’m going back to baking or gardening, or golf.” But a few egotists will slog away until they have that nervous breakdown through rejection, ugly comments, or plain neglect from those painstakingly solicited audiences.

If they ask me why I am being such a wet blanket and dissuading others from taking up this “noble cause,” I will tell them, “Do you think that—even if anyone reads you—they will give a rat’s ass about what you have to say and change their lives?” No book has changed the world (Sorry, Harriet Beecher Stowe, your Uncle Tom’s Cabin did nothing to launch or end the American Civil War, much as many have touted!). Nor did Ellison’s Invisible Man, or Baldwin “going to tell it on the mountain,” or Tolstoy documenting the Napoleonic Wars and writing a treatise at the end of War and Peace on the forces that move people and nations. Artists can only lament, depict, and play prophets in the wilderness, at best! Their messages only resonate in hindsight, if at all, long after the calamities they warned about have come to pass, and when humanity is wiping out the fallout and pausing to say, “You know that…writer… what was his name…? He was onto something, eh?” At best!

And if you want to make money at this gig, you are better off selling your baked goods at the farmers’ market or church bazaar. Unless you win a publishing lottery, which still happens once in a blue moon with diminishing frequency.

The one thing you can achieve—if you stick at this gig long enough and become a prickly pain in the ass whom everyone will be curious about—is notoriety. Odd and Outrageous sells; Feel-Good is yesterday’s toast. Today’s most successful journalists are controversialists who reveal the most outrageous things to keep themselves in the spotlight. Ask Joe Rogan, Jeffrey Goldberg, Bob Woodward, or that guy on Truth Social. And they haven’t changed the world, either, really. And the moment you misstep with a post that is out of character for the persona you have created for yourself, you will be derided and replaced by the multitudes of wannabes waiting in line for a shot at their 15 minutes of fame (soon to be 15 seconds in social media time).

“So there,” I say, “do you, in your golden years of three-score and ten (or more), want to be remembered as a pain in the ass and still a failure to save the world?” If the impulsive answer is “yes,” then go ahead, make my day and yours, and write away. And pray that you don’t get taken out by ignorers, naysayers, or assassins. If the considered answer is “no,” then take up baking or golf. Or you could get ChatGPT to generate your articles by feeding it prompts, and flood the world with more useless content that nobody reads or needs.

We crossed the Deccan Plateau, heading east and descending to the coast to get to Pondicherry, a six-hour journey that went through the Eastern Ghats. The Ghats, clumps of loose granite boulders in places, loomed over housing erected precariously in their shadow, making me wonder about earthquakes and avalanches. The myriad establishments in the vicinity involved in granite cutting, polishing, and selling explained this co-existence. We passed lakes, ponds, paddy fields, isolated villages, makeshift roadside vendor stalls, and many “trader” shops when we crossed over into Tamil Nadu. My “tree app” noted China Berry, Toddy Palm, Teak, Neem, Tropical Almond, Mango, and Bamboo among the indigenous trees, and imports like Peruvian Pepper, Mexican Sunflower, and Texas Ebony along the route.

Pondicherry is the largest of the French trading posts in India and was colonized from 1674 to 1963, before it became a Union Territory of India. There were two periods when the French lost control: to the Dutch between 1693-99, and to the British between 1793-1814 (circa French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars), and it was this latter period that I was interested in uncovering for my new book, because the new city that we see today did not exist then; the old city was destroyed by the British during the Carnatic Wars of the mid-18th century and not rebuilt until the early 19th century. Pondicherry must have been a ruin in 1799, the year in which my novel takes place, and unlike the city I was seeing now. I would have to engage the fiction writer’s imagination into high gear to recreate my setting for that year.

The smell of sulphur and fish wafts constantly, due to the many lagoons dotting this enclave with its distinctive red soil. Skeletons of the old city peek out in places – traces of the moat and wall of the destroyed Fort Louis, the old harbour with its crumbling pier, and the grid shaped layout of the town that is bisected into White Town (for the French) and Black Town (for the Indians) by a dried-out river with many bridges running across it. White Town has the salubrious seafront promenade at its back, while Black Town seeps into the humid and hot interior. The buildings in White Town are large, well-maintained, with gardens, while Black Town is a warren of streets and hovels piled one on top of the other. Government buildings, museums, restaurants, the craft market, Bharathi Park, and the famous Sri Aurobindo Ashram – aka the tourist stuff – are all in White Town. So is the profusion of well-fed stray dogs that kick up a fuss if you get too close.

I found an interesting museum off the beaten track called the Selfie Museum. Its founder, A.P. Srithar, gave me the tour along with his obliging docent, Devi. Srithar has branches of his museum in various other Asia countries, and he specializes in miniatures of men and women dressed in the national costumes of all the countries in the world, in single-line art, in the world’s smallest teddy bears, and in full-size waxworks of famous personalities: Charlie Chaplin, Michael Jackson, Jackie Chan, and Amitabh Bachan were among them.

“The remaining French Pondicherrians (there are about two thousand of them still with French passports) are not seen in public anymore,” Devi explained. “Many live in France and visit during the winter only. And local students pick French only as a third language behind English and Tamil/Hindi.” The Indianization of French Pondicherry was going on before our eyes, the only relics to the past being segregated and stored inside the Pondicherry Museum (where photographs were not allowed, leaving me to take copious written notes) and in those vacant and shuttered colonial mansions whose owners were in France. The collection of furniture and artifacts in the Museum from the French period provides a great snapshot of what this enclave must have looked like during colonial rule – well worth a visit (without your smartphone!).

The local cuisine was a fusion of Indian-French, aka Pondicherry Creole. Apart from the Tamil Dosai and Goan Vindaloo, French Bouillabaisse had morphed into Puyabaise, and Fish Assad Curry was a delicious curry made with coconut milk. The seafood was in abundance, especially prawns. In fact, the smell of fish in the town could be attributed to the strings of vendors who sell their daily catch spread out on roadsides, collecting liberal infusions of gasoline fumes from tuk-tuks and vehicles that narrowly skirt them to add to the flavour.

The beaches, and we stayed on the famed Eden Beach, are broad and long, stretching for miles. They were not elegant beaches, merely functional, but being open to the public, they serve the locals well. I could not swim in the ocean because the red flags were out during our entire stay. The saltwater pool at the hotel was my compensation. And as we were staying a couple of miles out of town, I had to venture forth daily with Google Maps and a friendly tuk-tuk driver to navigate the maze of streets which connected us to the downtown area.

One such excursion was to the Department of National Archives, located in a suburb, where I was hoping to get more information about what had gone on in Pondicherry at the turn of the 19th century. Despite Google Maps, we got lost several times as the streets had subdivided into other streets since Google had last taken pictures. When we finally arrived, the National Archives was a sprawling, new, three-storey building in a spacious private garden, sitting amidst a jumble of houses and shops. No one was around, although the doors were open, and operating hours were supposed to be “24/7.” After going through many empty rooms, I located a security guard on the third floor, who took me to the only person who seemed to be at work, the Assistant Director. I was told that I needed a letter from my embassy and another from an academic institution to access any records. I lost it at that point and said that I had come “a long way” for this information, and that no one had responded to my e-mail queries from Canada. The Assistant Director, a kind man, took pity on me and gave me access to their online database, and suddenly, I had access to everything I needed, and I could even carry out my research after returning home. That was when I understood what “Open 24/7” meant. India’s move to digital is to be lauded – the surest way to link its one and a half billion citizens, even though the implementation is patchy.

Then it was time to take the long ride home. We were flying back to Colombo, but Pondicherry has no international airport, so that meant a four-hour drive north to Chennai, during which our driver broke every rule in the traffic code to get us there in time for our flight. “Driving on your horn,” “Diving into the gap and waiting to spring forward at the slightest crack in traffic,” were new driving rules I learned on this drive, never to be repeated back in Canada.  It was a ride that also brought home to me the vigour and rambunctiousness of this emerging nation that has now angled into “most populous country” and “fourth largest economy” in the world. These titles did not come easily for this country that had been stripped of its wealth and confidence during colonial times. These titles come from the type of confidence exuded by our Indian tour guides who are not afraid to “murder the queen” when they speak English—or Hindlish, as it is sometimes called—and it is a lesson to our more sheepish Sri Lankans engaged in tourism that you have to get out there and bat the ball if you want to hit it out of the grounds.

The air was clean, the sky blue, and the temperature moderate when we arrived in Bengaluru, the Garden City and former hill retreat where people had vacationed from bygone times. But why was the place so damned crowded? Traffic was a cacophonous nightmare with tuk tucks, cars, busses, pedestrians and cattle merging and blending around each other on roads that had long outlived their capacity. Thank God, the gasoline fumes were at least unleaded.

“Everything was salubrious, sir” the taxi driver explained, “until about the year 2000, when the IT business boomed and everyone came here from everywhere for employment.” That would explain it, for the communications part was excellent – right from the international terminal at the airport that was built for expansion into the 22nd century; it was cavernous, with dozens of immigration terminals and about only half a dozen requiring use for the paltry number of aircraft arrivals. High speed internet connectivity was excellent, and for the first time I was able to conduct an uninterrupted Zoom call and watch a video on my phone, and when my wife had an issue with her Wi-Fi, the technician was at our door before I finished my call for help to Reception.

The downside of the heavy automation was that you could only call for a cab if you had an Uber or other ride-share app account. Even the tuk-tuks were Ubers. Fortunately, there were a few golden oldies who still responded to a good kerbside wave as they sped through traffic; they would do a maniacal U-Turn, holding up the same traffic, and arrive at your feet with a smile. Even getting into Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace, downtown, required an e-ticket purchase; and when my bank required a two-factor authentication that my e-Sim wouldn’t help with, I had to get another tourist to buy our tickets and re-imburse them with cash. And yet, when using tuk tuks, I had to offer my Wi-Fi and Google Maps to the drivers to navigate as they were conserving their data plans. Automation is probably what India desperately needs, given its teeming masses (even the roadside beggars had cell phones), but its implementation is patchy. In other parts of Southern India where we travelled to, cell service blanked out several times.

Talking of Tipu Sultan, the guy I went to research for my next novel, his stamp is everywhere in Karnataka. With a summer palace in Bengaluru, and two palaces in Seringapatam (one completely destroyed), this guy’s spirit dominates this state which was formerly called Mysore. The only palace he didn’t own was the grandest one of all, the Mysore Palace, located in the city of Mysore, which we also visited, and which was the home of the official royal family, the Wodiyars. Tipu and his father, Haider Ali, had usurped the Mysore throne and relegated the Wodiyars to mere figureheads – the reason why he fell out of favour with the people and perished in the final Anglo-Mysore war in 1799. But enough of the history, let’s travel on…

An attraction worth visiting is the gigantic Lalbagh Gardens, built like an English Garden with its tall trees, imported and indigenous, and labelled. Lalbagh is encircled by a pond and a high-traffic arterial road; it is an oasis of respite from the teeming masses, for there were places one could be alone to admire the horticulture and the vast rose garden. The Gallery of Modern Art awakened me to local artists like JMS Mani, a prodigious genius who should rank among the greats, except that he chose to remain in his native state and fell under the hierarchy of Global North-South, where the latter is inevitably forgotten. His definition of naked vs. nude stayed with me: the former is vulnerable and human, the latter is provocative and tempting – he depicts both forms lavishly in his work.

The government handicraft shop boiled down to bargaining. The salesman said, “I’ll mention the discount only after you’ve decided on everything you are buying.” And the manager was having his lunch of rice and several fragrant masala dishes – he invited us to eat with him while the salesman tallied the bill. We politely declined his hospitality, paid, and scooted off with our purchases: beautiful silk scarves at a 15% discount.

Seringapatam, our next stop, once a fort, encircled by three walls and two moats, where Tipu fought and lost his last battle, is now a city that has evolved outside the walls of the old. Our guide was keen to show us Tipu’s other Summer Palace, located outside the fort, a rectangular, two-storey building, laid out lengthwise on a well-manicured garden of several acres; the property, bordered by giant Rain trees, is slowly being encroached upon by the city. The palace’s interior walls are adorned with paintings of Tipu’s many battles and his meetings with foreign dignitaries (the guy was a bit of an egotist). There are no paintings of his atrocities when he had Hindus and Christians decapitated by elephants, eaten by tigers, or when he inflicted other forms of torture on his enemies. Yet he was a brilliant innovator, credited with the first military rockets used in combat. And testament to “victor getting the spoils of war,” the British used his rockets in their subsequent wars, and Lord Wellesley (aka the Duke of Wellington) converted Tipu’s palace to his Indian residence after the despot was killed in 1799.

Tipu’s second palace inside the fort was completely destroyed by the British (only the foundations remain) who breached Seringapatam through the nearby Water Gate (Nixon must be rolling in his grave!). Tipu retreated but was finally gunned down by an unknown British soldier (the subject of my next novel), and a shrine dedicated to him is erected where he fell beside the third wall.

Our last stop in Karnataka was Mysore – a quieter city, traffic wise, and home of the famed Mysore Palace. The highlight was to get to the palace at 7:15 p.m. sharp when the lights would come on nightly – dimmer at first, then increasing in intensity to a shimmering diamond of light when viewed from a distance. The interior of the palace by day is also larger than any of Tipu’s palaces, and more opulent. The royal family was jealous to protect its heritage from the usurper, and there is a gallery of family portraits and paintings of important colonial events; its Durbar Hall is India’s response to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, I thought.

The sandalwood tree (native to this state) is going extinct, therefore handicrafts made from that fragrant wood is locked inside cabinets in the gift shops. There were no ivory ornaments either, due to the move to preserve the elephant population. I bought a small sandalwood camel, inside which was another handcrafted camel (how the heck did the craftsman reach inside?), in the hope that its smell will outlast my life (which it is supposed to).

The final attraction was the giant yellow pyramid that was the Shri Chamundeshwari Temple, where coconuts were being split outside for offerings, and where monkeys and cows roamed freely among bare-footed devotees who lined up inside metal-caged rows to get their turn to enter. I declined – the heat and crowds were getting a bit much for me by then.

And so, we left Mysore, which when viewed from the Chamundi Hills, shows us the old city and the new one, separated by the massive race course where the British gymkhana ran and where the once-in-a-decade Mysuru Dasara festival takes place. Mysore, with its quieter traffic, colonial charm, and abundance of greenery, is more the Garden City than Bengaluru is today.

To be continued…

Based on a promise made eight years ago, we returned to Sri Lanka this winter, visited some old haunts and some new ones, and got to say goodbye to both the land and the people, for another visit seems unlikely, although I “never say never.”

A lot seems to have happened in the eight years: a barbaric Easter Sunday bombing, a change of government, a pandemic, a bankruptcy and a runaway president, the return of an old veteran to the helm—one associated with Easter Sunday—to place the country under the IMF, and a landslide election win for the Marxist party that previously launched two failed but bloody revolutions over the last 50 years. There are glimmers of hope that the corruption of the post-Independence period could finally be left behind. We shall see…

That there had been economic harm from eight years ago was obvious. In terms of consumer prices, what had been Rs. 200 then was now Rs. 300, but it was still one dollar to us tourists, so we know who the losers are. That said, everyone seemed to be going on with renewed optimism and confidence, for they had wrested a country back from a gang of thieves and put honest but rookie politicians to work on their behalf. The city of Colombo had a crush of new buildings since our last visit: the Shangri La Hotel (one of the Easter Sunday bomb targets but now fully restored), the ITC Ratnadipa, and Cinnamon Life were massive luxury hotels just in the Galle Face Area, and the One Galle Face Mall took me back to the malls of Dubai for its scale and variety. The pile of landfill that had been the proposed Port City extension was also now showing commercial activity with a Duty-Free Shop and a Beach Club in operation at either end of the extension, with active construction of other commercial enterprises going on between those two bookends.

Older properties looked faded now- the Galadari and the Hilton – while the Galle Face Hotel (GFH), where we stayed, still maintained its colonial charm despite the onslaught of new competition. In fact, at the urging of the front-office manager, we visited the hotel’s museum, and after navigating around Prince Philip’s second-hand 1935 Standard Nine car sitting at the entrance, which he had owned when stationed in Ceylon during WWII, we got a photo exhibition of the various international personalities who had graced the GFH: Lord Mountbatten, Indira Gandhi, Sir Lawrence Olivier, David Lean, Roger Moore, Richard Nixon, Steven Spielberg, Che Guevara, and various foreign kings and queens. Imagine, I may have even been sleeping in the bed used by Ursula Andress or Bo Derek!

   Another promise I had made myself was to scale Sigiriya. Three prior attempts (made since the age of 21) had failed for various reasons: wasp attacks, muscle cramps, and bad weather. We set out early (6 a.m.) this time, before the sun got too hot, to visit this top ranked among the Top 25 International Tourist Attractions to visit in 2025, and the crowds were already building. So was the price – what had been marked as $30 per tourist by Google was $35 when we arrived. But it was well worth it. After making it past the lion’s paws (the highest I had been on previous occasions) it was only a few more staircases to the top, and I staggered over the last rock feeling the trip had been worth it just for this milestone alone. The AI-created simulation I saw later at the Cinnamon Lodge resort completed the picture of what this magical kingdom and its enigmatic king would have looked like in the day, and about whom I had written my first novel 25 years ago.

Another first was a visit to the Galle Literary Festival. I am called a literary snob, so take my comments with a large arrack. In fact, a patron of the arts living in the country, and a friend of mine, was more critical than me and described the festival as a “snob fest for the Colombo set.” Although the range of speakers was vast and subjects ranged from stolen foreign artefacts to literary prizes, war, colonialism, immigration, journalism, history, translation, and cooking, I found the messages being preached were for the consumer and did not delve deep enough for the serious writer. In fact, our hotel hosted many apres-conference events and I got a read on the attendees – debut writers and mid-to-late career hacks, mostly from Britain, out on a junket in a tropical venue. I chatted up one of the debutants who had the next room to ours, and whose sessions I attended, and was told that they did not have to prepare anything, just come and wing it from the heart.

The visit to Anuradhapura was also new on this visit. There were a lot of temples to cover over this very large archeological site, which lies in a far greater state of ruin than the more recent Pollonnaruwa. But unlike my last visit in the 1970s, a new museum had been built and the artefacts scattered over the area had been collected and placed inside, making viewing easier. Of course, I had forgotten my manners being abroad for many years and had to cover my sexy knees with a sheet in order to enter sites like the Ruwanwelisaya, Jathawanaramaya, and Thuparamaya among others. The highlight for me was to see the Sri Maha Bodhi tree that still grows strong, albeit assisted with golden bars now – understandable, being only 2300 years young.

An eco tour to see elephants in the Habarana forest ended up in a free-for-all between battling tourist jeeps trying to get to the scarce elephants before they disappeared into the bush. If we saw an elephant, it would only be a matter of seconds before an army of jeeps descended upon us from all trails because the monkey telegraph (operated by the tour guide fraternity) seemed to be working overtime. Extricating ourselves from a jeep jam was more fun than spotting these rather small, docile, mud-spattered Asian elephants who looked used to humans staring at them from roaring vehicles. Climbing the mountain lookout at the end of the tour was the highlight, for we got a panoramic view and picked out all the elephants we’d been fighting to see over the previous three hours.

I must comment on the hotel service we met along the way – in Colombo, Galle, and Habarana. The staff were excellent as usual. The cuisine, whether eastern or western, was world-class. Hospitality came from the heart, not the handbook. And yet the lack of the ability to speak English (see my previous articles on the tragic loss of English in Sri Lanka beginning with Bandaranayake’s flawed Sinhala Only policy) made the staff look diffident and withdrawn, and foreigners might even take this for surliness. Compare this to the staff in Indian hotels (also a destination visited on this trip and slated for a future article) who “murdered the queen” (or is it king, now?) with confidence. And some hotels were down-playing the excellent Sri Lankan cuisine in favour of western cuisine for their foreign guests. Who the heck wants to eat hamburgers in Asia, man? I decided to go off-language and off-menu and spoke to the serving staff in Sinhala. When they realized I was a local boy, who just happened to look like a foreigner, they sighed with relief and became talkative and informative as hell – lots of local stories poured out, and so did many off-menu local delicacies – watalapan, pittu, roti, katta sambol, ambul thiyal, seeni sambol, rice and curry, hoppers and string hoppers, and arrack – while other tourists looked upon me with suspicion. The only hotel I found still proud of its local faire was the old GFH where its Sri Lankan buffet eclipsed the western one.

 As the trip wound down, a sadness descended. I once belonged here. Not anymore. And as the years go past, that fact becomes clearer. As the lone bagpiper walked down at sunset on our last day to take down the national flag at the GFH, a practice that seems to have gone on since the hotel’s founding in 1864 (except that the flag has since changed from the Union Jack to the Sri Lankan Lion) I was grateful that some traditions still prevailed in this country to recognize its colonial past and my generation, the first post-colonial generation that arrived into a limbo of transition where the clear message was – “go forward and integrate, or go backward and get out.” We chose to go forward yet get out, the third unspoken option, and that plaintive drone of the bagpipe reminds me of how far we have come for taking that bold move.

“If you are not with us, you are against us,” said President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks. Was that the beginning of our world’s extreme polarization? But this saying goes back to Biblical times. Check out Matthew 12:30 for similar wording, or Luke 11:23 for “He who is not with Me is against Me.” Why is such an enlightened man of peace, Jesus Christ, attributed with the original of this statement? Did he mean to sow discord rather than peace?

You could argue that the constant wars we have had since time immemorial—until the nuclear destruction of WWII scared us into a half-century pause—were caused by that inflammatory statement that placed humanity on opposing ends with a protagonist and an antagonist.

The atom bomb, despite its destructive ability, brought about that “half-century pause” in the form of an awareness: pursuing a zero-sum game against the other guy who is “not with us” will ultimately lead to no one being around to enjoy the gifts of the planet. Instead of more destruction, it brought about detente. Conquest, or annexation, was outlawed. On the heels of this peace, human rights enablement and rules-based institutions flourished. “Live and let live” advanced, not seen since the Pax Romana of the 1st – 2nd centuries and the Pax Mongolica of the 14th – 15th centuries. Colonial empires unravelled with former colonies receiving independence. International trade expanded under the Most Favoured Nation principle, and barriers like the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union fell. 

During this “Long Peace” period, citizens, especially in liberated and enlightened nations, could reside on opposite sides of the political, religious, or cultural spectra and agree to disagree with each other. Ironically, disagreement and debate were now encouraged, like in Ancient Greece; they demonstrated the signs of a healthy nation. However, in such disagreements, respect for the Other was expected and offered. Nascent communications technology partly helped us here (only Internet 1.0—i.e. websites—was available around 9/11, and social media was a mere gleam in the eye of a teenager who couldn’t get a date at the time) because we did not know how badly the other half felt about us, neither did we have the means to reach out and stick it to our opponent; and this inability was bliss, we thought.

But all the while, two monsters were coming of age. The first, the Corporation, gradually gathering rights over the last two centuries, parachuted into the spotlight with the Supreme Court in the USA’s 5-4 First Amendment decision in 2010 that extended to corporations full rights to spend money as they wished in political candidate elections — federal, state, and local. Other countries quickly followed Big Brother’s example. Greed swung into full gear, and politicians helped their business “sponsors” rake it in, causing huge disparities in wealth. We were back to the conditions of yore that led to wars, and the “Long Peace” was over. Social media had also come of age by then, and dissatisfaction and frustration, even of the vitriolic kind, could be hurled in the faces of the Other from the safety of one’s computer or smartphone. Decorum went out the window, the Attack Ad reigned supreme, and Politics became Entertainment.

The second monster was the Autocrat, who fed on the shortcomings of the Long Peace, who exploited the uneven distribution of spoils brought about by the mighty Corporation, and who used the reach of increasingly invasive social media to subvert the minds of the gullible masses.

And when the dysfunction of this new period was manifested in all its facets in the most powerful ruler in the world, the world lost its anchor, and those with an established sense of morality were cast adrift. The “city on the hill” we all aspired to morphed into a gong show, and its cast-iron Constitution became “flexible.” The rules-based order collapsed, we were back to dog-eat-dog trading based on “Might is Right,” and all this was taking place against an increasingly militarizing world where the power blocks splintered from two to five (or are there more, depending on whoever has a nuke?), with those stuck in the middle having to align themselves with one or more of the dominant players.

Nothing has blown up yet on the nuclear front, but we are pretty damn close, because those holding access to the Red Button are no more enlightened than Nero of Rome. And “If you are not with us, you are against us” has now returned to its pre-1945 implications of mass destruction, albeit with better and deadlier arms technology.

 Can we dial this back by erasing this inflammatory statement recorded in the Gospels that started it all, and which is being echoed by political leaders whenever they are in a tight spot and need to rouse the rabble? Or could we neutralize its meaning by contextualizing it?  Is the new Pope, with his strong message of World Peace (“No more wars!”), elected for just that purpose? Perhaps Leo XIV too sees the damning consequences of what could happen when we take biblical texts literally or use them for unintended purposes.

Perhaps someone needs to clarify that the statement meant: “Neutrality is not an option in times of crisis, that active participation and commitment are required to steer everyone in the same direction to a safe and peaceful shore. Rowing in the opposite direction at this juncture will only keep us rooted to the same spot, even send us backwards, by countervailing force.”

I returned from six weeks in Sri Lanka and India, a trip back in time, in the company of beautiful people, great food, and warm breezes, and was looking forward to capturing my travels on paper and reliving the memories, only to find my adopted homeland of Canada in the middle of climate-challenging winter storms and a newly ascendent US president vowing to annex us as his 51st state while launching tariff wars to destroy wealth instead of create it.

“It’s a negotiating ploy,” say the naysayers who refuse to lift their heads from the sand of entitlement and safety they have enjoyed all their lives in North America. “It’s Hitler Redux,” say others who have immigrated here from war-torn countries that went down the tubes under dictators, and who see the creeping menace of Fascist forces destroying the truth, usurping power one stroke at a time, and reducing us to frogs in the cauldron, while we meekly thank them for their brilliance in displacing one despised elite with another.

Social media is no help either, unlike in the days of Obama and Trump I, because echo-chambers have tightened, non-believers are locked out of each other’s domains, and everyone is chest-thumping with their “bases” inside these enclaves. Invitations to debate are met with insults and crude jokes from the other side.

And the irony is that our Prime Minister is currently unemployed but finally performed his job during his exit lap by playing Captain Canada and giving Number 47 conniptions by daring to speak truth to power. His replacement, who will take some time to get into the saddle, is a choice between a skilled banker and a mini-Trump who has never held a real job in his life. The only real opposition during this leadership vacuum to the annexation threat is the will of ordinary Canadians who have risen to what matters – saving their country. Ninety percent of Canadians do not want to be the 51st state of the USA. Even our brethren in Quebec are now waving the Maple Leaf flag with gusto, and a Western Canadian premier has her hand on the oil spigot, dithering whether to turn it off, while her Ontario counterpart has no such qualms – heck, he is even going to renegotiate the USMCA on behalf of his absentee Federal colleagues.

But what about that remaining ten percent – those who are either not bothered about what’s going on (“After all, it can’t happen to us, can it?”) or who secretly espouse becoming part of the Land of the Oligarch (formerly the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave)? Call them Fifth Columnists, Traitors, Magas, or whatever you like – they are the Enemy Within. They suck off our largesse and dump on our flag. Thankfully, they are active only on social media for now (largely ineffective due to that echo-chamber lockdown I mentioned), and, hopefully, not spread to other spheres of influence, like a political party, government, law enforcement, or the military (or, are they?)

The Enemy Within are those who act to weaken the country during a time of crisis, be it with glib comments, alt-views, or votes, sowing the seed of discord, and making us ripe for the plucking by the foreign invader who will say, “See, they want to be taken over.” I combed the internet to find such groups but they are not readily searchable, being usually mixed in with coups and putschs conducted by a country’s military. Besides, you don’t normally see a country’s citizens, openly or subtly, asking to be occupied by the Other, especially when their country is constantly ranked in the top three to live in and the Other ranks only at the bottom of the top 20. Personally, I would like this Enemy Within to be given paid airfare to go and live in their Promised Land where they will have to figure out Medicare, hustle for work, and drink watered-down beer. And they can pray not to get deported with other “illegals.” We don’t need a dagger in our back as we face the Enemy Without.

But even if we pack these traitors in our midst off to Florida, we may not have much of a chance if Number 47 decides to rip-up NATO, ignore all norms of civilized behaviour, and invade Canada. Given our relative sizes and military strengths, the surface outcome will be clear. But we will have access to another Enemy Within, and this one will be our asset and secret weapon:  the Resistant 90% who will work towards liberating our country by stealth, aka The Resistance. And this goes beyond slogans of “Buy Canadian” and winning a Four Nations Hockey Final, to guerilla warfare.

There have been so many resistance movements in every major conflict around the world that Wikipedia has lists of these movements by each war dating back to the first century BC. And in most cases, if their motives were honorable and their cause gathered strength, the resistance prevailed, because they had time on their side, and the most at stake. Alas, that may be the only option open to us if the teetering stock market and 47’s sinking popularity rankings don’t rein him in.  Guerilla warfare is something America has always lost, be it in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq (or even in Canada back in 1812). I pray it does not come to that, because the cost will be huge on both sides. But when the ideals that brought many of us to Canada – freedom, opportunity, acceptance, tolerance, justice, and peace – are at risk, then it is time to pick up arms with time-worn hands and blend into the undergrowth, and keep those upturned elbows out of sight.

Of course, “51st state” could end up being only an uber-negotiating ploy, and Canada could make concessions on dairy, lumber, steel, electricity, autos (on whatever else you need, Don), and peace may prevail until the greedy beast returns for more. But negotiations won’t be the same because trust, all around the world, has been broken. Why? Because you can’t trust a trading partner who plays “win-lose.” Because the rest of America, the ones we love and who claim to love us, did not say boo while all this was going down. Because the Brits and Europeans and Latin Americans and Asians and Australians did not say boo either – they remained on the sidelines and let us battle this behemoth alone, hoping to be spared for good behaviour. And they weren’t spared when the steel and aluminum tariffs came down globally. It will take years to heal these rifts, and it proves that when cut to the chase, Canada is on its own, like every other small and middle power is, no matter how many international groupings we join. Self-interest rules the day.

As for America, its role in the world has changed irretrievably. Its hallowed Constitution was designed for a leader who walked in the footsteps of the founding Puritan fathers – a tenacious but honorable human being. But honour has now morphed into “might is right.” In the post-WWII New World Order, America’s role was that of leader, custodian, and supporter of the free world in all the international institutions it formed (UN, NATO, WHO, World Bank et al), in return for a seat at the head table of all these organizations, with access to set up military bases overseas to protect its interests and effect subtle regime changes to further those interests while the rest of us turned a blind eye, to get preferred merchant status in trade, and become the issuer of the de-facto global currency with it’s accompanying benefits. And in six weeks, in as quick a time as it took Hitler to dismantle the Weimar Republic, that role is now toast.

And as for the man who started it all, a man who is great at “breaking,” yet does not have an alternate plan for “making” (other than for a cheesy baseball cap that says “Make America Great Again”), but who only holds “the concept of a plan,” America needs to take a hard look at him and ask themselves whether he is their saviour, or their Enemy Within.

As for the travelogue I planned to write, that is for another day, when all this is behind us, if it ever goes away.

(Thanks to Maxime Doré – Unsplash for the photo)

Junfraujoch (elevation 3450 feet)

The 90-minute ascent from Interlaken up to the Jungfrau took three trains of constantly narrowing gage to penetrate many tunnels, but it took only a 20-minute gondola ride to descend into Grindelwald on the return journey. Even in this, the off-season, the lookout at the peak was packed with tourists – the smells of noodles and curry dominated and the ever-present shops with their chocolate, watches, and handicraft offerings surrounded us on every level of the spanking new lookout building. Tourists sprawled everywhere, some dizzy in the high altitude. The peaks stared back at us through the ceiling-to-floor glass on all sides—snow-covered, forbidding, even in this early fall. There was not much more to do but stare back, take some pictures, and head downhill. The gondola ride down was marred by rain, and for the first few minutes, we saw nothing as we were above the cloud. As we got through the white stuff, land appeared, aslant. If I do this again, I would ride both ways by gondola, on a clear day.

Bern

As our train to Geneva had to transfer via Bern, we decided to stop there for a few hours to sample the capital city of the country. Finding a left luggage office was a challenge as there was no signage, and automation, especially with Swiss-German instructions, was even more challenging. Finally, a uniformed railway worker directed us to a massive office on the other side of the station where you had to take a number to get service.

Bern is a showcase city, national capital, and canton capital all rolled into one. The old city burned down in a fire in the 14th century, so everything was rebuilt to a plan, in stone – unusual for medieval cities that evolve haphazardly. Here, there are long straight streets with standardized housing. Great care has been taken to document the evolution of the city and place it within the history of Switzerland in showcases and exhibits all over. And the Neo-Renaissance Federal Palace (parliament) building has a commanding presence – take lots of pictures of it.

Geneva

Train PA announcements switched from German to French as we neared Geneva, and on our side of the track, terraced vineyards rolled down to Lake Geneva that ran parallel to us until we arrived in the city that sits at the head of this fabled lake of the rich and (in)famous.

The order and method of the German side of Switzerland gave way to a more casual, laissez-faire look. And there were beggars here, like in most global cities today. The population is also more heterogeneous. Then I realized that Geneva is the home of the UNHCRA, which I later visited, where the refugee is welcome to knock at the front door and enter if seeking protection.

The waterfront is a grander one than Lucerne’s, though similar in shape, and seems to be overrun by advertising. All the mansions bordering the narrow lake mouth sport luxury brand neon signs. I guess, street addresses are unnecessary. “I live in the Hermès building” should suffice, for it glares back at you from wherever you are on the waterfront, as do its neighbours with their competing logos.

Judging from the tale of the Duke of Brunswick who donated his whole fortune (SFR 24 million) to the city if they would build him a monument in a prominent place on the waterfront after he died (the city obliged with one next to the Beau Rivage Hotel where the duke spent his last days, but for only SFR 2 million), this city must have been (and probably still is) the hideout of many dissolute millionaires with secrets.

I took the tram to the Nation stop to see the UN building but never did. It was Sunday and raining. And even though I saw Mont Blanc in the distance and the UNHRC headquarters, there was no one around to ask for directions, and my phone had lost its WiFi. The place was a ghost town on the weekend. Miserable and wet, I caught the tram back and looked up the UN building on my phone back at the hotel – I had walked the wrong way!

Lausanne

We took a ferry ride down Lake Geneva to its other end and the picturesque hill town of Lausanne. En route we passed other little towns and villages hugging the shores, surrounded by vineyards, with an occasional chateau on the hill. And always, Mont Blanc looked down benignly at us from afar. Cell phones kept jumping back and forth between French and Swiss providers with every veer of the ferry because the other shore was in France.

Getting bored with the slow ferry, we jumped off in the medieval town of Nyon and took a train to our destination – there was nothing to worry about – that magical Swiss Pass could get us on any form of transport. I didn’t push my luck with taxis, though.

Lausanne is one big hill, even a mountain, with streets ringing it. Check your heart and knees before climbing, and if in doubt, there are elevators at strategic places to take you up to various levels. At the summit is the famed Cathedral Notre Dame offering a commanding view of the city and the lake. But before you begin your climb make sure to visit the Museums Beaux Art, Design, and Photography (not all three may be open at one time – we got to visit only the latter two) – also accessible with that magical Swiss Travel Pass, located at lake level. One exhibition – The End of the World – where an organization known as “The Preparers” are gearing up for the end of the world—was chilling. This fringe group, numbering 23 million today, have on display all the items you need for survival should civilization collapse.

The “Cathedral” was gothic Catholic, built in the 12th century, and was another acquisition by those wily Protestants – this one too pricy to be returned. Thus there are no candles, no statues, and an open altar where tourists traipse around. Its world-beating feature is the massive pipe organ that hangs over the entrance and which was being played during our visit. I noticed that certain pews were reversed so that the faithful could turn and watch the organ performance while the priest offered mass behind their backs.

On our last morning in Switzerland, as we sat in the hotel lobby, waiting for a break in the rain to dash across the street to the station for our train to Paris, I reflected on our trip and observed the denizens passing through: millennials checking in for a conference, worried and chattering about changes of clothing for the grand opening, their presentations, who they were sharing rooms with – inane things that I worried about eons ago during my corporate life that are now inconsequential; the journeymen consultants sitting with their solitary coffee cups, staring into laptops—a more recent occupation of mine—also inconsequential now. Travelling in retirement is fun, all I had to do was worry about the rain and getting to our train on time. Then a crazy flower-power woman in her sixties breezed in off the street, wet but brassy, and asked my wife for a light for her cigarette, and got affronted when told that we didn’t smoke. She breezed out again looking for a fellow smoker. Ah, this was more my type, I thought, even though I don’t smoke. Eccentric, unfashionable, irrelevant, but sassy, and with a lifetime of stories stored in our heads. This trip had just added a pile more to the load.

Switzerland is a country I had constantly avoided during my travels around Europe. It lies in the middle of the continent, protected by mountains. Neutral and boring, I thought. I was surprised when I finally bit the bullet and put it on my bucket list as Country #70 to be visited according to my “one country for every year of my life” plan. I wasn’t disappointed.

Zurich

Everything runs like Swiss clocks. Swiss Rail is excellent and comprehensively covers the country – you do not need any other ticket to ride. Even when the rail tracks were washed away in the mountains and we had to be transferred to a waiting bus, we arrived eight minutes ahead of schedule. We did not pay extra for any of their forms of integrated transport (bus, train—broad gage, inter-urban gage, or narrow mountain gage—tram, ferry, and gondola) or museum entry tickets as they were all covered on the 15-day Swiss Travel Pass – a highly recommended piece of paper. And don’t lose it, for ticket inspectors come by regularly and fine you heavily for breaking the law, which we did on our first ride from the airport to the hotel in Zurich – we got into the First-Class car instead of the Second; we blushed and grovelled until the kindly inspector said, “Okay, this time, but not again!”

Like most major Swiss cities that sprawl around a lake head or mouth, Zurich claws the narrow north end of Lake Zurich. Churches with onion-shaped Byzantine cupolas dominate the skyline. Formerly Catholic, this real estate was “acquired” by the Protestants during the Reformation and only a few properties were returned. Therefore, the iconography is heavy in the returned Catholic ones and spartan in the retained acquisitions. Many of the cities have maintained their “old city” area. Cobblestone streets, covered bridges, squares with water fountains, and merchant buildings are well preserved in the old quarter, dating back to the 13th century when the Swiss confederacy was first incorporated. The Zurich Landesmuseum provided us with a guided tour through the history of the country, and I learned that the Swiss are not merely famous for their chocolate, clocks, and cheese, they also exported mercenaries to the colonial nations surrounding them (including my ancestor, Abraham, who first came out of Europe – the museum displayed an exhibit of his regiment, the De Meuron, that was hired by the Dutch in Sri Lanka; the regiment shifted allegiance to the British for higher pay and ended up in Canada fighting the War of 1812 – unfortunately my ancestor demobilized in Sri Lanka, leaving me to make the long trek to the New World 200 years later).

This is a clean country – even the lake water is crystal clear – with small towns and villages nestled in valleys beside lakes and rivers, or falling down mountains in terraces, to factories hugging the railway tracks. The grass does not grow wild—there is plenty of grazing livestock acting as lawnmowers – and the rain falls in manageable bursts, making the use of umbrellas practical. The only disrupter of the dour order is the graffiti that is everywhere and which I have now relegated to a global acrobatic art form for maniacs, for one must be insanely athletic to hang off bridges and tall buildings at unnatural angles to create such insurrectionist masterpieces. Michaelangelo, move over!

The day trip to Chur, Switzerland’s oldest town, was helped by bright sunshine and summer-like warmth. It helped lift our mood because as we climbed Chur’s car-free streets, all we saw were churches of ascending hierarchical importance, with graveyards to match and which told interesting stories on their gravestones.

There is a right-wing atmosphere in Zurich (and in most of the German-speaking parts of the country), where there are only workers, no beggars, where the cost of living makes it affordable only for the rich (do not look at the food prices, it will spoil your appetite – console yourself that wine prices are cheaper than in Toronto restaurants), and where women only got the right to vote in 1971. And if you think we have a non-ending English-French dispute in our country, the Swiss have been running a German-French-Italian spat for a longer time, with constant threats of secession being thrown around. The bureaucratic costs to hold this tiny country of 26 cantons and 9 million people together are huge, but everything still works – like clockwork, as I said. And everyone speaks good English.  

Liechtenstein

I got a bonus Country #71 to add to my bucket list when we took a short bus ride, crossed a small unguarded bridge, and landed in Liechtenstein – a landlocked and airlocked country (it does not even have an international airport), a former principality of the Holy Roman Empire that no-one wanted, not even Napoleon, and is now protected by Switzerland. The food prices here were higher than at “Big Brother’s.” You can walk around this country in half a day. Even the portalets are spanking clean and have flushes – I tried one in desperation when our walk to the restaurant kept getting further and further away and my bladder was threatening to explode; we were heading out into open farmland from the few city blocks that make up the urban part of this country because my wife had gotten her Google Maps into reverse gear!

Lucerne

I felt grand staying at the Hotel Grand National on the Lucerne waterfront with snow-capped mountains in the distance. Boat cruises took off constantly from both shores of the U-shaped mouth of Lake Lucerne in the foreground. Our journey was approaching the fabled Alps, the playground of the rich and famous, and Lucerne with its old town that seemed larger than the newer one was a gateway. The old city climbs steeply up to a remaining rampart wall – well worth the climb through narrow streets full of shops for those “firm of knee.” The Franciscans built their cathedral here in the 15th century, which was expropriated by the Reformists. The Jesuits hit back in the 16th century and built another Catholic church, and both sit in proximity today serving the same God but two different organizations. In the local museum, I stumbled upon an exhibit warning young people of the dangers of “Fake News” – this phenomenon seems to have gone global.

If Interlaken, which came later, was rustic, Lucerne was chic.

Interlaken

After a two-hour train ride that revealed waterfall, meadow, lake, village, church spire, tunnel, and repeat, we arrived in this city, a strip of land between two huge lakes, hence its name.  It serves as a base camp for the Alps which soar in the background, and the city sprawls on either side of the main drag that stretches between its two train stations, east and west. The drag runs parallel to the Aare River which connects the two lakes. The elderly Swiss lady on the train bound for Interlaken complained to us that “Things were not the way they used to be. Too crowded now with refugees fleeing the Ukrainian war.”

The tourist population here is mainly comprised of Japanese (they are all over Switzerland) and Indians (due to the famed Indian movie director Yash Chopra featuring Interlaken in his Bollywood films – there is even a statue of him in the Casino grounds). Other luminaries with their names engraved on hotel walls include Goethe, Mendelsohn, and Byron. We discovered a Museum of Tourism in the old town (actually, two old towns that fought with each other until they saw the light, made peace, amalgamated, and started to develop tourism with events such as Unspunnenfest that runs every 12 years and dates back to the 13th century) that details with pictures and miniature models how alpine tourism was developed in the area – worth the visit. As we walked the main drag, now having additional choices of sushi and biriyani for dinner, dozens of paragliders were jumping off the nearby mountain, sailing over the trees and buildings, and landing in Hohematte Park opposite the Victoria Grand Hotel & Spa. I bought my first “real” Swiss chocolate in Interlaken.

Before leaving Interlaken, we visited the Beata-Hoelen caves, a short hike from the city along paths that displayed warnings: “Beware falling rocks. Walk fast, don’t loiter.” The one-kilometre stretch of caves on a mountain overlooking one of the lakes retraces a subterranean watercourse containing 24 grottos, each of a unique natural design forged by water flow—another worthwhile visit. Make sure to visit the museum at ground level BEFORE visiting the caves, for the hiking trail back to Interlaken is on the mountain beside the cave entrance. I didn’t follow my advice and had to climb the mountain twice, and my knees declared war on me. 

(to be continued…)

I was raised to regard loyalty as one that once earned, remained for life, or until the demise of those to whom we were loyal, or until that loyalty was betrayed. So, one was loyal to one’s family, one’s country (even in battle), to one’s old school, and beyond academic years to being an “old boy” of the school, to university or college where networks built lasted until retirement. We even remained loyal to the political party that best mirrored our values, and did not see the reason to flip sides.

Whenever I re-established contact with an old school chum after many years (most likely on Facebook, for many are dispersed all over the world), the reunion was always fluid, as if we had only parted yesterday with just a lot of missing ground to cover. I didn’t have to constantly invest in them to earn or keep alive that loyal bond between us. But now that form of loyalty appears to have changed. It has become fickle and nebulous, and flips from one side to the other, making the custodians of loyalty untrustworthy and unreliable. One now has to constantly invest in loyalty and retention programs to keep one’s fans and friends, it appears.

I saw huge investments in this area during my final years in the corporate establishment when programs dedicated to loyalty  ̶  such as “employee loyalty” and “customer loyalty”  ̶  with commensurately huge budgets began to pop up. Fanciful titles like Director of Loyalty and Vice President of Customer Experience were born. Initiatives such as Best Place to Work, Company Values, and Customer Loyalty Points Programs interfered with the normal trading of goods and services which corporations had been created to transact in the first place. Politicians also tapped into this elusive loyalty factor by trying to convert “undecided voters” and by catering to their “bases.” That some of these politicos were cheap vaudevillians escaped us. So how deep does loyalty run today and why does it fade the moment attention is not showered upon the loyalists?

Advertising is the puppeteer pulling the strings of our loyalties today. Somewhere along the way when consumerism was reaching its zenith, we gave up internal discernment and gave in to being told what to like and dislike. We abdicated choice to the commercial ad. We let Oprah or Heather decide for us. Competing and compelling choices vied for our attention, and our loyalty was dislodged from a morally anchored base to start swaying in the winds of advertising. And social media ensured that six five-second ads were more effective than the old 30-second commercial. Independent thinking died, and so did loyalty as we once knew it. 

Winning came to be defined as how big your advertising budget was, and customers took their eyes off the product being sold. When Joe Biden sleepwalked through the first 2024 presidential debate, his donor contributions tailed off and his opponent was declared the de-facto winner. When Kamala Harris burst on the scene and upended the second debate, her donor coffers swelled exponentially and she was declared the potential winner. Gimme a break!

The winner is Advertising. Ads now need to increase year over year to maintain one’s lead in loyalty and retention and stay above the mounting noise. Attention spans deteriorate with the increasing barrage of advertising, so more ads are needed to stay top of mind – hence, the winner is always Advertising. And when the Attack Ad came of age, we conclusively descended into the Golden Age of Advertising – because shit had to be met with more shit, and those who threw the most shit won. Advertising sits in the middle of every shit-throwing party and siphons off the money that’s paying for all the shit.

There is no coming back from this pit unless and until we have an educated public who can think independently again. The road back will be long because, in my living memory, we started on this journey when Boomers fell prey to the post-war boom in materialistic abundance and passed the philosophy of “Me First” to the generations that followed. Now, people need ads as part of their daily dose of media consumption, more than they need their morning coffee.

A return to “Needs” instead of “Wants” would put the much-needed brake on this headlong plunge, because Advertising fuels Wants but isn’t required for Needs. Alas, it will take a tsunami of bankruptcies and personal losses, a global financial meltdown perhaps, even a war, before humankind, as a unit, would be pushed to refocus on Needs.

And my apprehension as a Boomer, if I go back to basics without that push and throw out all my accumulated junk, saying I’m henceforth a “Needs Only” guy, is that my children and grandchildren would shrug and say, “Oh, he’s just Downsizing – it’s a trend with Seniors these days. He’s been watching too many retirement ads.” I hope they’ll still remain loyal to me, though  ̶  without requiring more ads for that!

When I entered high school back in the old country, when “streaming based on aptitude” began, I asked my dad which of the three available streams should I enter: Science, Commerce, or Arts? Dad replied, “Well, in my time, the bright kids went into Science, the average ones into Commerce, and the duds went into Arts.” So, being a bright student who won most of the academic prizes up to that point, and because I couldn’t tell Dad that my heart was in the Arts, and break his, I chose Science. And I failed. Bigly. I never won any prizes after that. I scraped through my O’ levels and flamed out in my A’s.

I discovered that Aptitude and Attitude are different words, and both are necessary for Altitude. I may have had the aptitude to understand Pythagoras’s Theorem, Algebra, and Chemistry, but was I ever going to apply them in real life? This attitude was self-defeating. Without the ability to see the end game, effort dries up. Being in Science gave me another attitude, however, a high and mighty one, from which I looked down upon those poor sucks in Commerce and Arts as less than equals. Talk of Entitlement! This streaming really screwed me up.

On the other hand, had I studied Accounting, Economics, Business Strategy, Project Management and other Commerce subjects at an earlier stage than when I eventually did, I would have risen the corporate ladder at a much younger age, even if it was only to earn a buck and plough it back on my real passion, i.e., the Arts—theatre, music, and literature—stuff reserved only for the “duds.”

Dad was right, however, you couldn’t make any serious money in the Arts back then, not now, not ever, not unless you were a “chosen one” snatched up by the zeitgeist once in a blue moon, like a Bernhardt, a Beethoven, or a Rowling. Perhaps that’s why the duds were dumped there. The Arts are relegated to hobbies in our materialistic society, something to be indulged in only with spare time and money, sometimes with the support of a benevolent sponsor; it has become a place to consign misfits who do not know how to buy and sell things we don’t need, or invent a vaccine, or design a robot. Do they not understand that for a society to say it is “developed,” requires it to also have a thriving arts sector?

Now that I am older, and hopefully wiser, having quit Science after my hopeless A’ levels, and ditched Commerce after retiring from a modest business career, I have had the time to embrace Arts unashamedly and figure out whether it’s only for duds like me. My findings differ from the thinking of Dad’s generation.

Armed with these findings, when a TV interviewer asked me recently, “So why are the Arts important to you?” I replied, “It provides balance to the randomness of life and rearranges our experiences to provide coherence.” Let me clarify: a novel has a beginning, middle, and end, in that sequence, whereas in life the end may be the beginning or the middle, and there are long periods of meaninglessness in the crevices. Art extracts and displays the beauty of life while also showing its unvarnished ugliness and cruelty without apology. Art gives flight to our imagination by creating fictional worlds or re-designing our existing one. Art holds the mirror to our faces and says, “This is your life. Suck it up, buddy.” How does one value this humbling experience that enriches the soul but not the pocketbook? Monetary valuation will fail unless the world confers mass demand upon the artist’s work, or if the work becomes precious and is not reproducible when its creator dies.

Art is valuable to its practitioners who toil day after day for an idea or an ideal. This effort sometimes produces work of staggering genius that stuns those who remain in the wings or the audience. The pursuit of art can lead to inflated and unwarranted wealth (ask Rowling!) or to frustration, failure, poverty, and suicide (ask Van Gogh). This dedication to an elusive cause must come from an innate human need that responds to the Jesus-like call, “Give it all up and follow me, to wherever it leads.”

If I have another life and am given the task of rearranging the streaming of students based on aptitude, I would categorize those streams differently: Science, for those who like to experiment with and extrapolate factual data, and live on institutional largesse; Commerce, for those who wish to exploit the tried and true (including proven scientific discoveries and acknowledged works of art); Art, for those wanting to capture the meaning and explore the essence of life. And there will be bright ones, average ones, and duds in all three streams. If this is the normal bell-curve distribution of society, why should the classroom be different?

And I’d advise those who rush headlong in our developed society to pause and absorb what art has to offer—support it, nurture it, and benefit from it. Art may offer meaning to life and a detour from the headlong rat race to the cliff and into extinction.